The Dangers of Junk Science.

[ottohauser1977]

By which I mean the global warming denial crowd as well as the Intelligent Design crowd, among others. You know, the ones who can't accept empirical data because some rogue pseudo-scientist offers them an alternative.

How dangerous are they? I believe them very dangerous, because they bring reality into dispute and cast doubt on empirical facts.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Indeed. What else can one say? They deny basic facts staring them in the face and trust crackpots instead.

 

[amicus]

Aww...Did I hurt your feelings with my Global Warming Hoax references, sorry...(not!)

Intelligent design is a religious movement. Accurate Climate Change statistics are the illusive 'empirical data' that global warming hysterics lack.

I suggested, kindly, that you read Trysail's point by point refutation of the 'pop science' of the left. I take it you just as kindly, discarded my suggestion.

So be it.

Amicus

 

[colddiesel]

I suggested, kindly, that you read Trysail's point by point refutation of the 'pop science' of the left.

Amicus

Trysail I believe has some claim to expertise in finance. He has told us so - many times. I am not aware of his qualifications as a scientist.

However when you state that 'pop science is 'of the left' it is worth noting that the two scientists who became the Prime Minister and Chancellor respectively of Britain and Germany were Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel.

Both are conservatives, both are scientists and both are concerned about global warming, in Thatcher's case her conviction preceded her fight with the Coal Unions by more than ten years.

Isn't it a nuisance when facts trump ignorance.

 

[amicus]

I didn't note any relevant, 'facts' in your post, cold diesel.

A large portion of the scientific and political community has endorsed the IPCC findings for one reason or another, the last being factual representation.

I don't know you, know who you are or why you hold the opinions you do; I have no vested interest, aside from truth, to take any position is this tussle.

I have no idea how long you intend to inhabit this big blue marble, but I hope it is long enough for the Global Warming Hoax to be completely exposed to public scrutiny. I have truth and fact on my side, how about you?

Amicus

 

[Epmd607]

Amicus wants facts, cold diesel, yet he's never provided evidence for any statement he's ever made.

Religious backed pseudo science is more dangerous than corporate backed pseudo science. Corporations can only sustain a decade or two of lies, if that; religions can sustain centuries of lies based on the idea of 'faith'.

 

[amicus]

Amicus wants facts, cold diesel, yet he's never provided evidence for any statement he's ever made.

Religious backed pseudo science is more dangerous than corporate backed pseudo science. Corporations can only sustain a decade or two of lies, if that; religions can sustain centuries of lies based on the idea of 'faith'.[/QUOTE]

~~~

Yoiu are a bit of a late comer here, Epmd, but it doesn't make you all bad.

I began in late 2003 or early 2004, dismembering the local gentry concerning Global Warming facts and figures. Like the true believers they are, the environmentalists and ecological activists want no part of any disparaging facts, thus I moved on the the moral and ethical side of arguments.

If you sincerely have an interest in facts concerning Global Warming, I suggest you read Trysail, there are hundreds if not thousands of real 'facts' concerning Climate Change and the Hoax that is Global Warming mania.

Amicus

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Scientists have no stranglehold of truth.

Until 1980 gay was a mental disorder inflicted by moms. Moms also made their kids schizophrenic. ADD was caused by sugar, no! allergies, no! food dyes, no! alcohol abuse by the mom, no! now its a natural developmental delay....like being short.

This week my town set a new temp record; the temp was 10 degrees colder than the 1927 record. And the bay & gulf arent flooding the streets. In fact, our mean sea level increases about 1 millimeter every 10 years, and some of it is due to Florida sinking.

Scientists are perfessers, and like lawyers who want to make every deed illegal to create more business, perfessers do the same.

 

[PREMwriter]

Global warming is no longer a hoax. Researchers have found definitive proof while studying a lake in Baffin Island, that shows we are indeed under a Global Warming Effect. The lake has survived the last three glacial ages and tests are accurately being done on microbial and other elements. They can go back accurately over 200,000 years, surpassing any of the ice boring tests done. The results are specific and proven that in the last ten years, we have been beyond normal limits and natural cooling and warming trends. So those who de-cry the existence of Global Warming are the same ones who say the US never landed on the moon.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Scientists have no stranglehold of truth.

Until 1980 gay was a mental disorder inflicted by moms. Moms also made their kids schizophrenic. ADD was caused by sugar, no! allergies, no! food dyes, no! alcohol abuse by the mom, no! now its a natural developmental delay....like being short.

This week my town set a new temp record; the temp was 10 degrees colder than the 1927 record. And the bay & gulf arent flooding the streets. In fact, our mean sea level increases about 1 millimeter every 10 years, and some of it is due to Florida sinking.

Scientists are perfessers, and like lawyers who want to make every deed illegal to create more business, perfessers do the same.

There's a bit of difference between doing a "science" in which there are no metrics--like psychology--and which depend on subjective judgment (does he have ADD or not? Is she gay or just experimenting?) and a data-based, nomothetic discipline. (Ha! Look that one up!) Climate science has the numbers that show that global warming is real. What's in doubt is the human contribution to it.

And the belief that global warming is going to make things hotter in your own backyard in the next few years reveals a deep misunderstanding of what the entire concept of global warming means and how it will manifest itself. It's not at all like turning up the flame under a pot on the stove (as in the silly "explanation" someone posted here a while ago.) It's instead a major disruption in existing weather patterns that could bring about changes we can't yet foresee but which we don't dare gamble with. More like stirring up that pot, making some areas hotter and cooling off some others.

Finally, scientists aren't like lawyers, who try to persuade and shape opinions. Scientists are constantly challenged and re-challenged by peers trying to test their theories. And while the fight over the anthrogenic origin of global warming rages on, no reputable climatologist seriously doubts that the phenomenon itself is real.

I have no vested interest, aside from truth, to take any position is this tussle.

There's a knee-slapper for you. As if the proof of anthrogenic global warming wouldn't absolutely destroy your beloved free-market, unrestrained-growth Randian dreams and your entire belief system. The validity of everything you stand for depends completely on anthrogenic global warming being false. If it's true, then your whole philosophy and reason for being is a sham.

More than anyone else here--even more than trysail, who also has a highly-vested interest in laissez-faire and in proving GW isn't real--you have a dog in this fight, and he's battling for his life.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Hmmm.

The STIRRING THE POT THEORY: When you light up a Camel or a water buffalo farts you unleash all kinds of wild shit that upsets the applecart everywhere.

DOC your theory is Fort Gore and the last refuge of perfessers desperate for government grants and lab assistants and a reserved parking spot close to his ivy-covered hall.

This morning I read a book featuring all the wild-assed prophesies your science team makes about current weather. Your team makes sure the papers get hold of the impending doom and race about like Chicken Little until time reveals it for hysteria.

I contend perfessers are street walkers.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

My understanding of "Intellegent Design" - A fraud developed by the far right, religeous nuts to push Charles Darwin off the map. From the time of the Scopes trial in the 1920's until now this has been going on. Intellegent Design was simply a new package of the old, worn out theory that God Created everything, simply leaving out the word GOD.

Global Warming is a different kind of cat. There is emperical date the shows the norther glaciers are receding much faster than can be explained by any other theory.

HOWEVER, the real argument is this - Is this Global Warming and the end of everything as we know it or is this simply a long period cyclic climate adjustment that will turn around in some future time.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The problem is no one can explain why there isnt nothing. How is it we have a universe of somethings? I'm paraphrasing Richard Feynman, an atheist.

I sit here at my house, guessing what goes on at your house, based on what happens in my neighborhood. How dum is that?

 

[TE999]

My understanding of "Intellegent Design" - A fraud developed by the far right, religeous nuts to push Charles Darwin off the map. From the time of the Scopes trial in the 1920's until now this has been going on. Intellegent Design was simply a new package of the old, worn out theory that God Created everything, simply leaving out the word GOD.

Global Warming is a different kind of cat. There is emperical date the shows the norther glaciers are receding much faster than can be explained by any other theory.

HOWEVER, the real argument is this - Is this Global Warming and the end of everything as we know it or is this simply a long period cyclic climate adjustment that will turn around in some future time.[B/}

Well stated, Jenny. Man has not been around long enough to observe the results of millennias of climate change. It's all speculation on the part of various scientists. I don't see much of the world climbing on the Environmentalist bandwagon either, they're too busy growing their civilizations.

It appears that the West has become tired of running the race of progress and is inventing excuses to stop and contemplate it's navel.

 

[3113]

HOWEVER, the real argument is this - Is this Global Warming and the end of everything as we know it or is this simply a long period cyclic climate adjustment that will turn around in some future time.

Or, more to the point, how far away is that future time and can we get there faster in some way? If one is willing to wait thousands or millions of years, then there's every chance that our climate will turn around (unless we go Venus or lose the Ozone layer completely, in which case all bets are off, so are we and so is climate as we know it). The turn around might require that we be wiped off the face of the earth along with most of the ecology we know and love, but it probably will turn around eventually.

The real question about GW is whether it can be checked and changed quickly--like within a few human generations and while there's still time to save things like polar bears, coral reefs or U.S. pine forests.

 

[PREMwriter]

What puzzles me is trying to understand what the nay-sayers want as irrefutable proof of GW. What do they need to see for themselves that things are happening? A great many people of all walks of life understand it, and not from ridiculous sources either. This debate seems to rise from a refusal to accept the reality of things and want to believe their world is okay. So what will it take?

 

[3113]

A great many people of all walks of life understand it, and not from ridiculous sources either. This debate seems to rise from a refusal to accept the reality of things and want to believe their world is okay. So what will it take?

Well, there's a few things going on. First, to be "fair" to those denying it, the term Global Warming is going to confuse a layman. They get the coldest winter on record someplace or other and a person's going to say, "Global warming is hooey!" That's evidence before their eyes, right?

So communication and how this problem is being presented does have to shoulder some of the blame. If it had been called "Radical Climate Change" then there might be less argument.

Next, there is the matter that humans find certain things that are large hard to believe. The reason people keep denying evolution is because it outrageously slow--to us. If it happened quickly, we'd probably all believe it--like in the old sci-fi shows where the guy puts himself in a machine and goes back to being an ape with one turn of a dial and forward to having a huge head with another turn of the dial.

GW involves the entire planet, and people find it hard to grasp something that involves the planet rather than, say, a spate of cold winters in the North East.

Last, of course, is that human beings hate to believe in anything that has no short term solutions or happy ending. We like quick and easy answers. And we're better when the problem is right there and then. If a kid is trapped in a well, we'll work to get them out. But if the ice caps are melting--what can we do about that? Why should we worry about that? Are we sure they won't come back?--how do you convince people that this is as serious as that child trapped in a well and they have to act? And how to you convince them of taking an action which, unlike the kid in the well, is going to take a long time of sacrificing things they want and may not show results till they're old and grey--if then?

Science is a tough sell to creatures that want to believe in magic. And we want to believe in magic.

 

[Stella_Omega]

What puzzles me is trying to understand what the nay-sayers want as irrefutable proof of GW. What do they need to see for themselves that things are happening? A great many people of all walks of life understand it, and not from ridiculous sources either. This debate seems to rise from a refusal to accept the reality of things and want to believe their world is okay. So what will it take?

They want to know that it won't cost them money. They want to know they won't be made to feel guilty. They want to know they'll be able to keep their air conditioners, big screen TV's, and souped-up offroad trucks. Those things will count as irrefutable proofs.

 

[Liar]

HOWEVER, the real argument is this - Is this Global Warming and the end of everything as we know it or is this simply a long period cyclic climate adjustment that will turn around in some future time.

What if it's a natural climate adjustment AND the end of everything as we know it?

We've built our proverbial huts at the waterfront, we've settled in fertile regions and irrigated less fertile ones, we've shaped industries and argiculture and culture after the flow of seasons and the thermostat of ocean currents. If that is going topsy-turvy fast, and we seem to have some pretty solid indications that that is the case, billions of people are going to be in a world of hurt.

Is it natural or man made? I'm not a scientist. Has it happened before? Maybe, but back then there weren't billions of people and a global community to mess up.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Yes, it's difficult to convince someone of anything that calls into question their personal worldview. Even moreso than if their salary depends on not believing it.

Since the 50s, America has championed the idea of a consumption society, where "wealth" and "productivity" are measured in strictly monetary terms. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping, as Bush so famously urged after 9/11/01. "The Market" is the object of faith.

Now that those unsustainable beliefs are being called into question, people cling to them like a religion.

 

[DeeZire]

Expanding on Stella's point, Ami's self interest mantra is most evident in the global warming debate. Those with the most self interest have the most to lose if GW is human-caused, because the solution to GW is a threat to their short term self interest. What's ludicrous is the fact that their long term self interest is jeopardized by their short term self interest, which makes self interest in itself self destruction. Taking that a step further, their self interest actually impinges on my individual freedom when their self interest prohibits actions to curb global warming.

So the next time Ami mentions self interest, or individual freedoms, remind him of the fact that he's negating both by his mere existence.

 

[Epmd607]

Yes, it's difficult to convince someone of anything that calls into question their personal worldview. Even moreso than if their salary depends on not believing it.

Since the 50s, America has championed the idea of a consumption society, where "wealth" and "productivity" are measured in strictly monetary terms. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping, as Bush so famously urged after 9/11/01. "The Market" is the object of faith.

Now that those unsustainable beliefs are being called into question, people cling to them like a religion.

Since the 90s America has championed the idea of consumption world society. The expansion into BRIC and Eastern Europe is driven by the same program we've adhered to since the second ww. Exponential growth is unsustainable, which happens to conflict with the premise of global capitalism, that exponential growth is globally sustainable. Everyone knows how the story's gonna end, too bad it's gonna to hit America first, probably sooner than anyone thinks. The credit bubble isn't just something that happened because people got too greedy, it happened because growth in financial markets had to be manufactured for the financial companies to stay increasingly profitable.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I'm repairing the old abandoned chicken coop as we speak... Looking at a goat or two, and the truck patch did real good for us this summer. I figure I can trade eggs and milk for a lot of things.

Welcome to the Brave New America!

 

[elfin_odalisque]

By which I mean the global warming denial crowd as well as the Intelligent Design crowd, among others. You know, the ones who can't accept empirical data because some rogue pseudo-scientist offers them an alternative.

How dangerous are they? I believe them very dangerous, because they bring reality into dispute and cast doubt on empirical facts.

Whilst I sit on the fence concerning the man-made CO2 issues, there is no way you can use 'empirical' as an adjective.

It is zillions of percent away from empirical.

In my simple mental database;

- The earth has been cooling for ten years.

- The earlier increase in temperature cannot be correlated with increases in human CO2 emissions

- The computer models that supposedly forecast future warming have all their parameters set by prejudiced quasi-scientists. Give me a true Resume of a climatologist.

- Why does no-one explain that humans are only responsible for 25% of global CO2 emissions?

I could go on but I am a searcher after truth.

Climate Change, at the moment, has about as much credibity as Genesis. Someone show me the irrefutable science. Please not Gore in a polar bear suit ( the photo was faked, by the way).

If I hve to live in a hut in my yard to save the planet from extinction, I will, but I need some more convincing evidence than the alchemists have produced so far.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Trysail I believe has some claim to expertise in finance. He has told us so - many times. I am not aware of his qualifications as a scientist.

However when you state that 'pop science is 'of the left' it is worth noting that the two scientists who became the Prime Minister and Chancellor respectively of Britain and Germany were Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel.

Both are conservatives, both are scientists and both are concerned about global warming, in Thatcher's case her conviction preceded her fight with the Coal Unions by more than ten years.

Isn't it a nuisance when facts trump ignorance.

Fool! Politicians want to get elected, they go with the flow.

Neither Merkel or Thatcher - or Obama, Sarkozy or - whatever that guy in Iran's called, have any knowledge of the science. Like Gore, it's just politicos snuffling for votes.

We need to look at this much more analytically. The science doesn't support the polemic - so far.