Slip Sliding Away--The Joys of Global Cooling

56 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

*snip*

That doesnt mean they are right. Often the concensus view is wrong. On very rare occasions the concensus view is right, but I don't think AGW is one of them.

"Rare" occasions that they're right? LOL As I said, take off the tinfoil hat.

Ofcourse companies are making huge amounts of money on fossil fuels. Nearly everything requires fossil fuels! From the food you eat, to this forum you see here before you, if it wasnt for fossil fuels none of it would be here.

Before we had fossil fuels, we've used horses, that was not very pretty. Even back then you had scientists tell you that if we would continue like that, the horse dung would pile up to ten feet. Why do people always buy into that end of the world crap? It's the same old story over and over and over. You are bad, but if you pay me for your sins, you are good and go to heaven,..

wake up!

But guess what, we moved on from horse power. Not because we ran out of horses, but because we found something better, coal! And that's how it shall be with the other fossil fuels, we will have moved along long before we will run out (in a couple of hundred years). And one last prediction is that it will not be solar, tidal or wind that brings the next revolution.

We need new fresh ideas, not technology invented 150,000 years ago by cavemen.

We need new fresh ideas, not technology invented 150,000 years ago by cavemen.

So cavemen invented heating up water till it boils, driving a steam turbine wich generates electricity that could be used in household appliances?

impressive.

1 hour ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

Often the concensus view is wrong. On very rare occasions the concensus view is right ...

Really?  You think that most of the time the commonest views of scientists are wrong? You think that when the majority of scientists agree on something they are 'very rarely' right?

I know of only one occasion where the scientific consensus was wrong (the existence of prions), can you point me to others?

Herbie

5 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

*snip*

So cavemen invented heating up water till it boils, driving a steam turbine wich generates electricity that could be used in household appliances?

impressive.

Setting sh1t on fire was invented by cavemen. Turbines were invented by humans, but turbines don't necessary have to be powered by setting sh1t on fire now, do they?

@Dr Herbie:

There are quite a few on wikipedia;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus

• the theory of continental drift proposed by Alfred Wegener and supported by Alexander Du Toit and Arthur Holmes but soundly rejected by most geologists until indisputable evidence and an acceptable mechanism was presented after 50 years of rejection.
• the theory of symbiogenesis presented by Lynn Margulis and initially rejected by biologists but now generally accepted.^{[citation needed]}
• the theory of punctuated equilibria proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge which is still debated but becoming more accepted in evolutionary theory.
• the theory of prions—proteinaceous infectious particles causing transmissible spongiform encephalopathy diseases—proposed by Stanley B. Prusiner and at first rejected because pathogenicity was believed to depend on nucleic acids now widely accepted due to accumulating evidence.
• the theory of Helicobacter pylori as the cause of stomach ulcers. This theory was first postulated in 1982 by Barry Marshall and Robin Warren but was widely rejected by the medical community which believed that no bacterium could survive for long in the acidic environment of the stomach. Marshall demonstrated his findings by drinking a brew of the bacteria and consequently developing ulcers, subsequently curing himself with antibiotic medication. In 2005, Warren and Marshall were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work on H. pylori^[9]

And there are plenty more in other fields too. The concensus is that government spending in crisis is a good way to keep the economy going (Keynes view). It only plunged us deeper into a crisis. 

Change comes when you do stuff differently, not doing stuff exactly the same because you feel confortable in your zone. Science is all about falsifying theories, not reinforcing them. Like I said, reinforcing existing theories adds nothing new to the table.

Ok, I'll give you symbiogenesis, prions, Heliobacter and continental drift. I'm not giving you punctuated equilibria, because in the end the consensus that punctuated equilibria and phyletic gradualism were both wrong and the truth was somewhere in the middle. Additionally I wouldn't say that the overall consensus was with punctuated equilibrium, but rather that consensus was split fairly well down the middle.

So, what proportion of progress in the last 100 years has come from people bucking the trend and what proportion has come from people doggedly following on from previous work to get to the truth?  Claiming that progress is only made by going against the consensus is patent nonsense, I'm afraid.  Most progress is made by the quiet multitudes just getting on with the job and following their noses, building on what has been done before. Controversial winners just make the headlines more often, but that doesn't mean they are the majority.  Scientific research is real life, not a Hollywood movie.

Herbie

PS : I should point out that my PhD went against the consensus, but that doesn't mean it is necessarily the most likely outcome in the natural environment. It also didn't prevent me from getting funding; I actually got above average funding for a PhD student.

@Maddus Mattus: You gave a list of hypotheses that were initially rejected until sufficient evidence was produced to deem them scientific theories. Continental drift has even further evolved into plate tectonics. But so what? These are examples of science actually working the way it's supposed to.

If any hypotheses explaining global warning as non-anthropogenic comes along and has overwhelming evidence to back it up, then it too will be accepted has scientific theory. Deniers don't want to put in the hard work to do this. They want to do an end-around like the Intelligent Design clowns want to do.

If you're going to start with the assumption that only scientists who go against the consensus are right, then you should probably stop taking flights or driving cars, because sooner or later that science you're using will be proved wrong by someone who controversially disagrees with the consensus that planes can fly or that cars run on petrol and not on washing up liquid.

The bit that you're missing from all of your examples, Maddus, is that all of that science was controversial, but is now accepted science because of the hard evidence and good science that the founders of that subject did. They didn't achieve greatness by carefully choosing evidence (or in your case, choosing the definition of evidence) to suit their own ends, but rather by building a consistent model of the world and testing it scientifically and rigorously.

That's why your view of global warming is more like religious dogma than scientific progress.

@Dr Herbie: All concensus will fall, eventually. Maybe someday consensus will fall on Darwin's theory, because we find out it's all been planted by aliens and intelligent design turns out to be true,.. who knows?

@cbae: Herbie asked to post, so I copied from WikiPedia, case closed.

@evildictaitor: No, I am arguing that funding to validate the concensus is a bad way to bring up new ideas. As they will only do what you ask, validate the concensus. If you need new ideas, you need to fund a whole range of views as a good government should.

There are controversial ideas, backed up by good science that are in conflict with AGW. But the status quo are keeping them out "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow", because they dont agree with the concensus. Hell, even people who agree with the concensus get rewritten, because their predictions are not scary enough for the public.

It is indeed more of a religion then a science. You have your saviour "Al Gore". You have the path to enligtenment "carbon free economy". You have hell "death, desease, floods, starvation, etc, due to AGW". You have a holy scripture "The AR of the IPCC". And you have followers "the green movement". How is that not a religion?

15 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@Dr Herbie: All concensus will fall, eventually.

All? I'm just going to sit around and wait for somebody to prove we were wrong to think the earth isn't flat then....

@AndyC: Maybe the Earth spans even a fifth dimension? Who knows!

No, I am arguing that funding to validate the concensus is a bad way to bring up new ideas. As they will only do what you ask, validate the concensus. If you need new ideas, you need to fund a whole range of views as a good government should.

Science can't validate anything. It tries to prove beyond reasonable doubt. It there is reasonable doubt, it has to try harder. Finding something out that you already know is true is boring, and science doesn't do it. That's why climate skeptics are so boring, because they're trying to keep scientists busy "proving" something where there is no longer any reasonable doubt.

It is indeed more of a religion then a science. You have your saviour "Al Gore". You have the path to enligtenment "carbon free economy". You have hell "death, desease, floods, starvation, etc, due to AGW". You have a holy scripture "The AR of the IPCC". And you have followers "the green movement". How is that not a religion?

I don't care much for Al Gore, and relying on academic panels of internationally recognised climate scientists for a report about science seems thoroughly sensible. It's certainly more sensible than asking, say, a historian for their view on science or a greengrocer for their view on atmospheric models.

But anyway, you've already decided that AGW isn't true and blocked out all of the evidence that might disprove you as fake and all of the scientists who disagree with you as frauds. Sadly science has been held up by that "I don't believe it, so it isn't so" kind of stupid thinking for hundreds of years - before it was religion, now it's just stupidity.

@evildictaitor:

and relying on academic panels of internationally recognised climate scientists for a report about science seems thoroughly sensible

They are not scientists, but politicians.

What evidence? The models? They can hardly count as evidence, as they do not fit observations. There is no tropical hotspot, the troposphere isn't warming, none of them predicted the lack of warming in the past 15 years, so the models are out.

9 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@Dr Herbie: All concensus will fall, eventually. Maybe someday consensus will fall on Darwin's theory, because we find out it's all been planted by aliens and intelligent design turns out to be true,.. who knows?

So you think that Homoeopathy will eventually be proven right?  You think that Chiropractors will eventually be shown to be able to cure all diseases (as D D Palmer the inventor of the practice claimed)?

You might also like to consider the fact that the original consensus was that humans had no effect on the climate. Then new studies came along and went against that consensus, giving us evidence that actually humans do have an effect on the climate.

Herbie

@Dr Herbie: That's a reductio ad absurdum, I do agree that my statement lacks nuance, that's one of my many flaws. 

My point is, that in the future we will laugh about stuff we think is true now. Same as we now laugh about the theory that the earth is flat. Same as that we now laugh about that the sun revolves around the earth. Those consensus views change over time.

AGW is no different. We can't imagine that we are too small to have any impact on the climate, so it must be true. We can't explain something, so by deduction we are to blame. That sounds to me like a lack of imagination.

I've said it before and I will say it again, if you look at the big picture, our impact is next to nothing. The earth is 4 billion years old, we've only been around for a few thousand, the planet is doing just fine, will continue to be doing just fine and will be fine long afther we are gone. It doesnt require us to save it. I know it's a tough nut to crack and it goes against all you have been fed via your government, schools and your media, the fragile blue planet, but the earth is tougher then you think.

@Maddus Mattus: OK, I'm glad that you accepted that the sweeping statement you made was flawed.

Next we have to move on to probability.

It is absolutely true that occasionally consensus is dramatically overturned, it's just that it doesn't actually happen very often.  This is why, in all fields of research, the bulk of the funding goes to the consensus.  Some money is given to research that appears to go against the grain, because the people awarding the money are smart enough to know that such research occasionally bears fruit. But, just like any investor, they put their limited resources where they are most likely to get results.

As an analogy: If a friend gave me money to bet on horse-races for him, I wouldn't be betting on long-shots I would be betting on the odd-on favourites; it's not my money so it would be irresponsible to take excessive risks.

Herbie

@Dr Herbie: The horse analogy is flawed IMO. You can check with 100% accuracy wich horse crossed the finish line first. AGW is not checkable with concrete facts, all we have to go by are  secondairy effects attributed to AGW. Therefore it's open to interpretation and debate wich horse won. Therefore it's not prodent to bet on one horse. Mitigate rather then try to stop it (if it's happening at all).

5 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@Dr Herbie:

AGW is no different. We can't imagine that we are too small to have any impact on the climate, so it must be true. We can't explain something, so by deduction we are to blame. That sounds to me like a lack of imagination.

Except that, as pointed out previously, the consensus used to be that we were far too small and insignificant to have any impact on the climate. Then that consensus changed as the evidence started to indicate to the contrary.