“In both evolution and climate change, the majority view of the scientific experts is well ahead. In neither case is there any known coherent alternative. But the complexities of the evidence are such that a higher standard of politeness to sceptics who raise serious problems would be well-advised.”
James Franklin, ‘What Science Knows: And How It Knows It’, Encounter Books, 2009
via Quadrant Online.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
So SGW deniers and creationists are similar. Thank you.
A former speaker of the California assembly, Fabian Nunez (dem), was addressing a rally of Mexicans in Van Nuys using the spanish language. He said something along the lines of ==
at the rate the gringos are dying off they better protect the bill of rights, because in the coming days of latino majority they are going to need them.
Subsequent to that Nunez’s son, Fabian Jr., was arrested for murdering a young man in Los Angeles which added to the popularity of Nunez the elder being termed out of office.
Kind of a shame too because as latino legislators in California go, I thought Fabian was one of the more thoughtful.
Fabian’s reasoning can be applied to SJT virsus creationists, without creationism, SJT, you are just an animal pushing a scam which for the good of the many, the world would be better off without.
God forbid the eco policy you are promoting ever becomes law, a lot of people will be thrown out of work. They will be pissed and vengeful. They’ll come looking to get a little payback.
And you are going to need those creationist beliefs.
I think a different position is needed for science to be used as the basis for policy. As dicussed on climateaudit what is required for climate policy is more an engineering report than a collection of scientific papers. As in: do we have enough understanding to safely build a bridge here?
I have not yet read James Franklin’s book (I will), but I found Professor D.M. Armstrong’s review in Quadrant excellent. I note his comment that Ian Plimer’s book (Heaven and Earth) ‘seems to show that the case for the global warming hypothesis is very weak’.
As a professor of philosophy, he takes a deeper view than those with only a shallow scientific background. Another philosopher, Robin Collingwood (1945) once said ‘ A scientist who has never philosophized about his science can never be more than a second-rate, imitative, journeyman scientist.’
I don’t know if SJT is a scientist or not, but I strongly suspect that s/he is not a philosopher, nor a pure mathematician. Both those humanities teach more respect for sceptics, based on history, if nothing else.
“I don’t know if SJT is a scientist or not, but I strongly suspect that s/he is not a philosopher, nor a pure mathematician. Both those humanities teach more respect for sceptics, based on history, if nothing else.”
Davey, you want respect, you give it. I have not received it here, I’m not complaining, but don’t expect it.
If you want respect as a sceptic, at least be a little choosey with the evidence you use to base your scepticism on. If you accept the first argument that comes along, no matter how poor, just because it confirms your preconceived beliefs, that’s not scepticism. Reject utter tripe like Miskolczi, G&T and Beck, and you’ll be getting more respect.
SJT, you seem determined to set up a straw man. Someone who is “a sceptic in relation to the majority view of scientific experts (on evolution)” need not be a creationist at all. I suggest you read David Stove’s “Darwinian Fairytales” for a non-mainstream perspective on evolution that is definitely not creationist. Stove’s incisive, witty and precise prose skewers many of the accepted wisdoms about evolution (notwithstanding that Stove himself accepted evolution as fact).
SJT,
I am a little sceptical about the validity of your answer. I can”t recall making any comment on Miskolczi, G&T, or Beck. My mind is roaming a bit further back, around Euclid and Bolyai, or Karl Popper and Pierre Duhem. In climate science there might just be a missing hypothesis or two, which, linked in, might make all the difference. Remember how Jupiter was discovered? That’s why I am sceptical that the AGW science is ‘settled’. Do you think it is?
Sceptics never come up with quality material like this
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/warminginterrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/
hahahahahahahahahahahaha !
Luke
I’ve seen better …
In fact I’ve seen more sober, concise, and thoughtful analysis from a newspaper horoscope section.
Realclimate can’t even bring themselves to utter the word cooling.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha ha.
We don’t cooling – what we have a climate variability episodes.
It’s like Mother Gaia’s sciaticca is acting up. Heheheh
Lubos highlighting a Gavin Schmidt quote that the GCM’s didn’t even model ocean shifts. That was sometime last winter. I’ll give a look, see if I can hunt down the link.
Now RC is all abuzz with talk of ENSO’s and PDO shifts!
How things change when the weather doesn’t cooperate with the agenda.
Let me rephrase
We don’t have cooling – what we have are climate variability “episodes”.
We’ll skip the laugh.
Here’s that Lubos link. And here is Lubos’ take on it.
As a protestant but not a creationist, who in fact has done papers on evolutionary biology, I think Franklin has made a good point in a verbally felicitious manner. It took me some time to get my head around evolutionary theory – religious questions aside, evolution entails a certain way of thinking. But I have found that it has made sense of further data as it came in.
And I think that there is a place for a certain amount of evolution in theology – for example, our interpretation of earlier parts of the old testament can become less literal in the light of increased knowledge of science and of a moderately critical analysis of the texts themselves. And parts of the old testament are harsh by modern standards and should be interpreted in the light of the new testament (and the higher parts of the old). These changes in interpretation could be considered as a kind of evolution.
I only question evolution when its advocates like Dawkins go ‘bananas’ over it and reduce humanity entirely to molecular materialism. If our minds are just molecular mechanisms, with no free will, how can anyone use free will to choose truth over error and good over bad? The point is not just a hypothetical – look at the ethical excesses of social darwinism or the dire body count of marxism.
On the other hand, SJT would like to link greenhouse scepticism and creationism. I would say these are separate issues. I accept evolution but think the greenhouse policy debate has been distorted by alarmism; I have a church friend who is a creationist but is a passionate crusader against global warming. Neither of us conforms to SJT’s stereotyping.
Both evolution and climate science, and dare I say it, astronomy, archaeology and some areas of geology are essentially pseudosciences.
All require debate to establish “facts”, and once those issues are settled the science becomes a dogma which is maintained by peer review and the other herd instincts humanity is prone.
None of these sciences start with an empirical fact from observation. Astronomy, for example, is based on a Big Bang, but scientifically this could never have been observed. Evolution was based on Lyell’s uniformism (substantive as Derek Ager writes in his very provocative book “The nature of the stratigraphical record”). One reason industry geologists are so sceptical of the academic ideas is from the sheer weight of field evidence against the prevailing dogma. Study the history behind Carey’s attempts to get published over the years.
And one of the reasons so few coherent alternatives are put might lie in the very nature of the culture that science sprung from – Western Culture which was firmly Christian, and remains so, to this day. It is difficult for a scientist class in such a culture to entertain theories contrary to that culture’s fundamental beliefs, so Lyell’s rhetorical ploy of shifting Ussher’s date of creation at 4004BC to some arbitrary older time kept the fundamentalists sort of happy, and the of course the uniformists.
Few scientists have thus realised that shifting a fiction from one point in time to another does not alter its fictionality, and anything deduced from such a fiction is itself a fiction.
Not anchored in physical fact, such intellectual edifices need to rely on the art of persuasion to become established and while the practitioners of those sciences might be technically skilled, they are non the less doing pseudoscience. No one argues about the effect of gravity, for example – but when two contrary camps arise debating over an issue, whether evolution or AGW, my take is that both are wrong and that a third line of enquiry is needed. That line is based on the Plasma Model, or Electric Universe theory.
And it looks like the ever increasing weight of physical evidence coming from the various satellites etc, and observations in geophysics, the Third Way seems to be emerging.
“Sceptics never come up with quality material like this”
“we are not talking about global cooling, just a pause in warming.”
Quality material all right Lukey boy! And to think the GCMs predicted it too.
Mind you, that was after it happened.
But how about that! They understand natural variability.
“That line is based on the Plasma Model, or Electric Universe theory.” – what a load of bunk. Stop philosophising – so boring – and start publishing !
“And to think the GCMs predicted it too.” well yea they did !
Green Davey reckons “In climate science there might just be a missing hypothesis or two, which, linked in, might make all the difference”. I reckon Green Davey and AGW sceptics generally should revisit Bayes Theorem, back to square one and grow and go from there.
So first add your data to the hypothesis. If you keep adding your hypothesis to the data, then that new data would suggest to me you will stay a loser. A random example follows.
“In plain words (thanks to Kristoffer Rypdal) this means that if we have no strong opinion about the validity of the global warming hypothesis to start with, and have good scientific reasons to consider it highly unlikely that huge hurricanes should occur more frequent than once per century, then the occurrence of two such hurricanes in one century should change our belief strongly towards this hypothesis. “
But you would have to despair. If so-called AGW sceptics dont have a sensible rational approach to handling old data, what chance have they got on new data. Bayes Theorem will tell you that too.
Luke: I would be most grateful if you would with your usual applomb point out specific errors in the following text:
New Theory of Climate Change?
There appear to be some misconceptions in the recent papers by Meinshausen et al.1 and Allen et al.2. These authors argue it is cumulative anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) since the industrial era began that produce rising global mean temperature (GMT), rather than the net emissions, that is, after allowing for new global biospheric absorption of manmade CO2 emissions through increasing Net Primary Productivity (NPP). Previously, rising GMT was believed to be the result of a growing atmospheric concentration of CO2, henceforth denoted as [CO2]11.
None of Nature’s 7 articles3,4,5,6,7,8,9 supporting Meinshausen and Allen mentions that since records began in 1958 less than half of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions has remained airborne13. Thus the atmospheric concentration of CO2 (i.e. [CO2]) has increased by less than half of cumulative emissions. In the world of finance, this would qualify as omission of material facts. Nature’s editorial 9 claims the carbon “burden swells by at least 9 billion tonnes a year”, yet the increase in [CO2] as measured at Mauna Loa between mid-2007 and mid-2008 was just 4.33 GtC12.
The conclusion of these articles is that whether twenty-first century warming will exceed 2oC relative to pre-industrial temperatures “depends on limiting cumulative CO2 emissions over 2000-50 to 1,000 GtCO2” (11581). Their authors appear not to be aware that cumulative emissions over the period 1958 to 2008 were actually 25% larger than their benchmark, at 1,253 GtCO2, for an observed increase in GMT of only 0.46oC over that period, and they do not explain why a lower cumulative increase in emissions from 2000-50 than in 1958-2008 would raise GMT by over 4 times more than that12.
Multivariate linear regressions (Table 1) show that GMT from 1959 to 2007 are negatively correlated with gross, and positively with net, cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions, contrary to the claims in Meinshausen et al.1. They also show that the fertilisation effect of CO2 on world cereal crop yields is directly associated with terrestrial biospheric uptakes of CO2. Those in turn depend on the partial pressure of CO2 at plant level14. This is directly dependent on [CO2]15 but that is what the EU, USA, and Australia amongst many other countries are planning to reduce, to as low as 350 ppm if the advice of NASA’s James Hansen is adopted10.
The incorrect attribution of changes in GMT to cumulative total anthropogenic emissions is clearly aimed at encouraging the drive for stringent reduction targets (of up to 90% of the 2000 level). Even if the target adopted at Copenhagen 2009 (and implemented) means that anthropogenic emissions are reduced to only 40% of the 2000 level by 2050, i.e. to 3.26 GtC p.a., that is far below the 5.8 GtC of incremental annual biospheric absorption of anthropogenic CO2 emissions by NPP in 2007-08 and still rising. The resulting reduction in the partial pressure of [CO2] at the world’s surface will produce a significant decline in growth of global NPP and food production15.
A correct appreciation of the role of NPP and of its determinants would lead the Copenhagen Conference to focus on steps to raise global NPP rather than on reducing CO2 emissions, giving it a much greater chance of success in securing a global consensus, especially from developing countries if they were offered help to boost their NPP rather than reduce their consumption of cheap energy. Raising NPP could lift annual new biospheric CO2 absorption to as much as 80% of ongoing rising annual emissions and obviate any need for reduction in anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
1. Meinshausen, M., Meinshausen, N., Hare, W., Raper, S.C.B., Frieler, K., Knutti, R., Frame, D.J. & Allen, M.R. Greenhouse gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 oC. Nature, vol. 458, 30 April 2009, doi:10.1038, 1158-1162 (2009).
2. Allen, M.R., Frame, D.J., Huntingford, C., Jones, C.D. Lowe, D.A., Meinshausen, M. & Meinshausen, N. Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne. Nature, vol. 458, 30 April 2009, doi:10.1038, 1163-1166 (2009).
3. Parry, M., Lowe, J. & Hanson C. Overshoot, adapt, and recover. Nature, vol. 458, 30 April 2009, doi:10.1038, 1102-1103 (2009).
4. Schmidt, G., & Archer D. Too much of a bad thing. Nature, vol. 458, 30 April 2009, doi:10.1038, 1117-1118 (2009).
5. Monasterky, R. A burden beyond bearing. Nature, vol. 458, 30 April 2009, doi:10.1038, 1091-1094 (2009).
6. Jones, N. Sucking it up. Nature, vol. 458, 30 April 2009, doi:10.1038, 1094-1097 (2009).
7. Morton, O. Great white hope. Nature, vol. 458, 30 April 2009, doi:10.1038, 1097-1100 (2009).
8. Schneider, S. The worst-case scenario. Nature, vol. 458, 30 April 2009, doi:10.1038, 1104-1105 (2009).
9. Nature. Time to act. Nature, vol. 458, 30 April 2009, doi:10.1038, 1077-1078 (2009).
10. Hansen, J., Sato, M., Kharecha, P., Beerling D., Berner, R., Masson-Delmotte, V., Pagani, M., Raymo, M., Royer, D.L. & Zachos, J.C. Target atmospheric CO2. Where should humanity aim? Open Atmos. Sci. J., 2, 217-231. (2008).
11. Solomon, S. et al. (eds). IPCC Climate Change 2007: The physical science basis. (CUP, 2007)
12. NOAA, www.ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/
13. http://www.globalcarbonproject.org.
14. Farquhar, G.D., von Caemmerer, S. & Berry, J.A. A Biochemical Model of Photosynthetic CO2 Assimilation in Leaves of C3 Species. Planta 149, 78-90 (1980)
15. Lloyd, J. & Farquhar, G.D. The CO2 dependence of photosynthesis, plant growth responses to elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations and their interaction with soil nutrient status. Functional Ecology, 10.1, 4-32 (1996).
Many thanks
Best
Tim
“Not anchored in physical fact, such intellectual edifices need to rely on the art of persuasion to become established and while the practitioners of those sciences might be technically skilled, they are non the less doing pseudoscience. No one argues about the effect of gravity, for example – but when two contrary camps arise debating over an issue, whether evolution or AGW, my take is that both are wrong and that a third line of enquiry is needed. That line is based on the Plasma Model, or Electric Universe theory.”
Louis, they must have been thinking of you when they placed this quote in the article Luke linked to.
“Electricity and magnetism are those forces of nature by which people who know nothing about electricity and magnetism can explain everything. “
Louis,
I’d like to elaborate on a point that you made in this thread.
“None of these sciences start with an empirical fact from observation. Astronomy, for example, is based on a Big Bang, but scientifically this could never have been observed.”
If I’ve understood correctly, your beef is with astrophysics, rather than astronomy. Hair-splitting aside, the larger problem is that two of the popular theories–the Big Bang that you alluded to, and Black Holes aren’t really compatible with each other.
Both theories enjoy a fair amount of respectability within the astrophysics community. However the Big Bang theory comes closer to being generally accepted than the theory of Black Holes. Unfortunately, at least one of these theories is mainstream junk science. Why?
In popularized science articles about the Big Bang, we sometimes encounter statements of the form:
When the universe was the size of a grapefruit…
Does this raise any red flags? Well, there’s the obvious question about the falsifiability of such a claim. Even if Doctor Who could travel back in time to observe that event, the EXTREME temperatures and gravitational forces would quickly destroy him, his tardis, and his long scarf, before he had the opportunity to take measurements, make other observations, and then report back to us.
In contrast, the good doctor could easily go back 65 million years in time to observe the demise of the dinosaurs, and the cause thereof. Did the Chicxulub asteroid impact do them in, as most of us suspect? Or was it a three-way evolutionary arms race with increasingly toxic green plants and with herbivorous mammals whose senses could better alert them to the phytotoxins? In principle, he should be able to tell us.
Big Bang theory is too far ahead of observational facts, and it will remain so in the foreseeable future. But falsifiability is a relatively small issue. Getting back to the main point, the Big Bang is not consistent with the theory of Black Holes. How so? First, a little background.
One difficult-to-verify consequence of the standard version of Relativity theory, which in other respects has withstood numerous experimental challenges, is that you get a black hole whenever you stuff a sufficiently large mass into a sphere having sufficiently small volume, such that the escape velocity from the event horizon is greater than the speed of light. Neither matter nor light can get out.
If there was a Big Bang, the universe definitely qualified as a Black Hole in that first zillionth of a second. Recent astronomical measurements suggest that not only is the Universe continuing to expand, but that it’s expanding at an ever-increasing rate. That doesn’t sound like a Black Hole to me! There may have been a Big Bang. Or Black Holes may exist. But we can’t have it both ways.
I asked an astrophysicist acquaintance about this a few years ago. His response: The theory of Black Holes is a domain solution. In other words, Black Hole theory is a fallback position, in case the Big Bang theory turns out to be untenable. That admission is not something that you’re likely to read about in the popular press!
Mainstream astrophysicists would have us believe that the cosmic microwave background studies are the icing on the cake of the Big Bang theory. Yes, BB is consistent with the microwave studies. Problem is: If Black Holes exist, there’s no cake to put the icing on!
My conclusions. First, astrophysicists feel obligated to provide the benighted public with fairy tales to serve as fodder for idle chit-chat at cocktail parties. Second, theoretical astrophysics is grossly over-funded. We’d learn more about the cosmos if more of those scarce research dollars were transferred to basic research in astronomy. Now let’s move on to the big picture.
Scientific Fundamentalists usually don’t know very much about the physical sciences. Unfortunately it’s possible to memorize magic formulas and to recite scientific catechism, without internalizing the spirit of scientific investigation. The idea that Climate Alarmism is pure codswallop would be less of a shock to Scientific Fundies if they were familiar with other examples of mainstream junk science.
Larry,
Right, probably with astrophysics, but the beef is widespread I may add, and it raises the issues the late Tommy Gold raised concerning the herd instinct – lead article in the latest AIG News at http://www.aig.org.au – in which he points out that while seeing the science is in a mess, no one, in that science, really wants to be the first to step outside.
As for black holes etc – those things were created to allow gravity as the primary force explaining galaxy rotation – anomalous in the first place because there wasn’t sufficient mass observed. Rather then using the equations of Maxwell and Lorentz which do explain the observations as is, they instead made an ad hoc adjustment to the existing theory and added mass to the centre of gravity of the galaxy to make the numbers work out. You can’t really criticize a mechanic for using his familiar tools when confronted with a problem – and this particular problem exists because students in astrophysics etc are not exposed to basic electrical theory.
In any case the plasma physicists have extensive publications on it and no need here to repeat it.
You’ll notice that some of the loudest critics of AGW are geologists and geophysicists, particularly those not in the government sector. Why? Because in the mining game we actually get to physically test all the models by drilling holes and it doesn’t take long for a practical appreciation of the scientific method to germinate, and an ability to see when it is not being used in science. It’s the engineers and like professions who seem to be critical of AGW, and that came out in the recent Plimer climate debate in Perth. The academics generally thought the issue was settled, but were surprised to discover it wasn’t, and that disparity is a well known social problem – leading to the term “Ivory Towers”.
I think the discovery that a particular theory is recognised as having problems comes from outsiders who have a peripheral interest in the science – geologists have always had to grapple with climate issues, and here we have a new hypothesis claiming that an epiphenomenon of the earth, one of many species in the biosphere, can control the planets climate by oxidising carbon. Huh? Uncontrolled hubris and such can only happen when the science, such as it is, is hijacked for political purposes.
Equally I also think AGW is a socialogical problem insofar that it seems the logical development of the post-modernist takeover of the schools and universities. I hear students are now being taught science in socially responsible frames, whatever that means. So I sometimes think we sceptics are sometimes tilting at windmills, given the inertia this AGW movement has.
error in reasoning- should be – they kept the existing theory but added extra “physical objects” to make the physical fact fit the equations.
Tsk tsk.
Luke,
They have been publishing the Plasma Model theories for quite a few decades – except not in the journals you read. But we have been through this before, haven’t we. Try the IEEE journals – peer reviewed and not under the control of the climate change police.
Oh, and I have been published, twice now, so not boring and as most of us here would agree.
Luke,
You raise an important point – the balance between philosophizing (A) and publishing (B). You think too much A, and not enough B. I think it is the other way round.
Administrative (and ego) pressure for high publication counts, and the lure of popular cults, threaten to reduce science to shallow, obscure and poorly written journalism. Remember Alan Sokal’s tussle with the post-modernists?
Let’s get back to Isaac Newton’s idea of ‘few and ripe’. Refereed by self, not cult members. Does your latest paper really add to human knowledge and welfare? Is it beautiful, straight out of ‘The Book’? If it’s just another wordy pot-boiler, throw it in the bin. Now that’s philosophy. Ethics indeed.
P.S. Hey Larry, have you solved Goldbach’s Conjecture yet?
“I am a little sceptical about the validity of your answer. I can”t recall making any comment on Miskolczi, G&T, or Beck. My mind is roaming a bit further back, around Euclid and Bolyai, or Karl Popper and Pierre Duhem. In climate science there might just be a missing hypothesis or two, which, linked in, might make all the difference. Remember how Jupiter was discovered? That’s why I am sceptical that the AGW science is ’settled’. Do you think it is?”
You don’t make any comments on Miskolczi et al, but you are quite content to have people here claim them as ‘scepticism’. Shouldn’t you be educating your friends on the value of not just thinking that the opposite of what I don’t want to believe must be true. Scepticism needs standards, otherwise it is just denialism.
Comment from: Louis Hissink July 13th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Both evolution and climate science, and dare I say it, astronomy, archaeology and some areas of geology are essentially pseudosciences.
I strongly agree. Both examples are “sciences” which deal with the non observable and either extrapolate back in time or forward. There are seven groups of theories that clash within evolution. They can’t all be correct. They can all be wrong.
The other three also make a lot of unsubstatntiated assumptions. The observable is the deal breaker that keeps some of these from ever being scientific.
Hello SJT,
Good constructive little chat we are having. I like it.
You are half right, in saying that I don’t attack Miskolczi’s supporters. The reason I don’t is that I am not qualified to do so. At the same time, and for the same reason, I don’t attack those who disagree with Miskolczi. I believe in open debate, and I will attack those who try to close it down by abusive rhetoric such as ‘denialist’.
By the way, you did not answer my question. Do you believe that climate science is settled? I remain sceptical, mainly for historical, and philosophical reasons, but I am genuinely interested in your answer.
cmon now bazza, scientific theory also tells us that a theory is valid until it is shown not to work. There are numerous examples and questions that cast doubt on the theory/ hypothesis.
Are temperatures back near 1980 levels?
are oceans warming?
Is the hot spot appearing in the tropics?
Is sea level rise increasing?
has co2 been rising since early last century and yet how much of this period has seen warming?
Is the warming seen actually unusual in its magnitude?
Has it been warmer in the near past?
Have we been coming out of a little ice age?
what has been happening with the sun?
“You are half right, in saying that I don’t attack Miskolczi’s supporters. The reason I don’t is that I am not qualified to do so. At the same time, and for the same reason, I don’t attack those who disagree with Miskolczi. I believe in open debate, and I will attack those who try to close it down by abusive rhetoric such as ‘denialist’. ”
I’m not asking you to attack the supporters, I’m just asking you to see if they actually know what they are debating. I have already asked Jen to justify her support for Miskolczi, she declined on the grounds she was not able to. That is not skepticism. Skepticism requires that you demand evidence, and then evaluate it. If you cannot do so, you have to defer to authority. The Melbourne branch of the Skeptics Society have publicly stated this.
You are happy to say you don’t understand it, and ask for a debate. There is rarely a debate here, just pretense at understanding. A giveaway was Jens claim that Miskolczi had single handedly created a new law of physics. You would think the skeptics antenna would be quivering at anyone making such a claim.
Is climate science settled? It has a well understood and undeniable physical basis. You will find that most of the science ‘sceptics’ with any brains are classified as luke warmers. They wouldn’t be seen dead associating themselves with G&T, Miskcolczi or Beck. McIntyre is too smart for it, for example, he just gets a useful idiot like Watts to do that for him.
The only real debate is, how much warming will there be? If can at least all agree that we have got that far, things will be much more sensible and intelligent.
SJT:
“Skepticism requires that you demand evidence, and then evaluate it. If you cannot do so, you have to defer to authority”.
Wrong – no evidence means one cannot do science, so deferring to authority is the hallmark of a supine devotee.
SJT, again, ,,,,
“Is climate science settled? It has a well understood and undeniable physical basis.”
We take it, then, that it is settled.
Green Davey, do form the same conclusion from SJT’s reply?
SJT, for the third time:
“You will find that most of the science ’sceptics’ with any brains are classified as luke warmers. They wouldn’t be seen dead associating themselves with G&T, Miskcolczi or Beck. McIntyre is too smart for it, for example, he just gets a useful idiot like Watts to do that for him.”
I demand evidence for this statement please.
If you refuse to supply it, do you then expect me to accept what you write as authoritative?
Using false comparisons between skeptics of AGW and creationists is fun but does not work.
AGW is not the climate science. Just like eugenics was not evolution.
But I do see that the ‘Luke’ combine is braying away about the latest thing the political site RC claims AGW causes:
Nothing.
So, not only does AGW cause warming. Not only does AGW cause cooling. Now AGW causes nothing to happen.
I would suggest that belief in AGW is much closer to Young Earth Creationism than in anything to do with events in the real world, much less rational thought.
As far as the red herring AGW believers use about luke warmers, it could be the basis for rational discussion if the AGW community was not so deranged as to reject any modification of their dogma. It is the AGW true believers who attack the luke warmers, not the skeptics.
All skeptics are pointing out is the failure of AGW predictions. Luke warming is a great inavlidation of the apocalyptic clap trap we read from the believers here and that you just endured at breakfast from the grand poobah himself.
SJT,
In your ever increasing need to reframe the AGW debate, you have coined a phrase I was not aware of, “SGW”. Please be so kind as to define it (or redefine it, if you have already).
TIA,
“SJT,
In your ever increasing need to reframe the AGW debate, you have coined a phrase I was not aware of, “SGW”. Please be so kind as to define it (or redefine it, if you have already).
TIA,”
If you look at your keyboard, the “S” and “A” keys are very close to each other, and you can’t edit a post here.
But you can add a post admitting error, and showing the corrected word.
SJT,
Thanks for the clarification.
I can certainly appreciate the ability to produce typos.
Green Davey wrote:
“P.S. Hey Larry, have you solved Goldbach’s Conjecture yet?”
This is one of the great unsolved problems in mathematics. You keep bringing it up; so it’s your baby. I wouldn’t want to spoil the passionate purple pleasure of discovery for you.
In the meantime, I have a prime-number-related problem for you. What’s a reasonable approximation of the percentage of the first guzzillion positive integers that are divisible by 2, by 3, or by both, but NOT divisible by primes greater than 3. As Erdos would say, this is so easy that even a baby can do it.
P.S. I’ve never taken a course in number theory, and I have no idea if this is one of the standard exercises.