Global Warming?

[toppop52]

So .....Ya think it's over? Global Warming?
Must be!

Sure, unless there is a frost free morning in Maine, then global warming will be full bore and bearing down like a well armed Soviet train! :laughing:

 

[murphy1244]

Does that mean I don't have to put on my snowblower this year?

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Baloney. Religious extremism may indeed cause irremediable conflict between people but science always resolves its conflicts with data and moves forward. Religious absolutists frequently resort to violence and war as they are by definition backward looking and unable to change key tenets of their belief system. Scientists often disagree but I don't recall any bloody battles fought over data or hypotheses.

I'm not sure I get your point; I agree with what you say, but the way I see it, the conflicts that stifle science are between science and the stilted religious community(s). When the church is as powerful or more powerful as the host government, and has it's own courts to punish (or convert, or stone or burn at the stake as the case may be), science has to work undeground or in a more hospitable country. In such a case, dogma wins every time. Admittedly, today science will progress in enlightened areas of the world, but things were a bit slow in the dark ages. It's really scary to think that at one time, you could be executed for theorizing that the earth revolved around the sun, instead of vice versa, simply because any science to the contrary was in opposition to the absolute "truth" as seen by the church.

 

[Renze]

...science always resolves its conflicts with data and moves forward. Religious absolutists frequently resort to violence and war as they are by definition backward looking and unable to change key tenets of their belief system.

Here in Holland another professor is denounced after structurally making up false data, from the pressure of meeting the expectations of the funders of his research. People are payd to do this, and will only keep on being payd if they keep bringing data. That makes scientists as corrupt as politicians. Even if there is no foul intent, data is as prone to false interpretation as a Bible, a Koran or any other data a religion is based on. Scientists speak arrogant about religion, but their own religion is as easy to corrupt as any other.
What you call a hypothesis, a christian or muslim calls a belief. There really isnt much difference.

Here a translated page of a Dutch university (where one of the denounced professors worked) with 30 accused frauding scientists.
Google Vertalen

 

[EE_Bota]

I'm not sure I get your point; I agree with what you say, but the way I see it, the conflicts that stifle science are between science and the stilted religious community(s). When the church is as powerful or more powerful as the host government, and has it's own courts to punish (or convert, or stone or burn at the stake as the case may be), science has to work undeground or in a more hospitable country. In such a case, dogma wins every time. Admittedly, today science will progress in enlightened areas of the world, but things were a bit slow in the dark ages. It's really scary to think that at one time, you could be executed for theorizing that the earth revolved around the sun, instead of vice versa, simply because any science to the contrary was in opposition to the absolute "truth" as seen by the church.

Nearly all groups and individuals with power seek to neutralize threats to that power. I don't think it had to do with religion so much as preserving a massive power structure that served the interests of many of those within the structure. Science itself plays out small and local examples of this behavior daily. I know it does but most would find it hard to believe until they see it with their own eyes.

 

[Renze]

Nearly all groups and individuals with power seek to neutralize threats to that power. I don't think it had to do with religion so much as preserving a massive power structure that served the interests of many of those within the structure. Science itself plays out small and local examples of this behavior daily. I know it does for a fact, but unless you have seen it too, you may find it a bit difficult to believe.

Now thats EXACTLY the point i was trying to make !! It doesnt matter if its Taliban or science, whenever a group of like-mindeds get a certain power or authority, they will do a lot to keep it that way. Even if it means that you have to turn the data (scientific research, or a Bible or Koran for that matter) into your own favour. Its just human nature, and religious leaders as well as scientists are only human. Whenever people ignore their human factor, they become a threat.

10 years ago there was a political murder in Holland. You could say the shooter was a zealous follower of science. so YES it may be few and far between, but science really is a religion in which some become extremists.

 

[toppop52]

Nearly all groups and individuals with power seek to neutralize threats to that power. I don't think it had to do with religion so much as preserving a massive power structure that served the interests of many of those within the structure. Science itself plays out small and local examples of this behavior daily. I know it does but most would find it hard to believe until they see it with their own eyes.

It's the Wizard Of Oz syndrome, as long as the curtain isn't pulled back"the mighty Oz" is in control. So those that are "Oz" will do all in their power to avoid the curtain being pulled back.

 

[houstonscott]

The big hitters in this thread have all lost interest. The companion thread had over 2000 posts, then this one. Randy all the so called science that these last few hold outs have been proven to be fake, altered, just plane wrong, by the people he sites as experts. CO2 has been long ago (years now) not to be a warming gas. (that ends the man made stuff) On top of that emails and other omissions (wikileaks) and other show these people in a hoax after their data showed no evidence of warming in last 16 years. The bottom line is there are many sciences that are studying global climate change, most now admit it's much to complicated to explain by one science. Not knowing for certain temps and atmospheric makeup in the past and even the very big one of mean pressure make it all but impossible to create a real model taking all the sciences into account. More modern and less biased science is showing sun activity and earth orbits are more a controlling factor than previously thought, the to point of studying atmospheric gases is a wild goose chase, that can never be accurate due to all the guessing about the past atmosphere, temps, and pressure. Things that will never be known to the exact numbers required to make predictions. The idea that mans activities are some how influencing the global climate of the future and making changes to weather now are all but stuff of the aluminum hat crowd now.

HS

 

[patrick_g]

I have never heard of that society before. What planet do they live on?

If you have to ask you may be one.

Flat Earth Society = Ludites

Look it up.

Me? I may not be from your planet, monkeyboy.

I turned on my advanced BS preprocessor/filter and ran a series of these posts through it. There wasn't nearly as much to read.

If awards were to be made based on childish name calling and tantrums the winners would be found here.

It seems for some here the "rule" is if you have no credible evidence to support your contentions then call your detractors names, impugn their intelligence and motivation, and act as a cheering section for like minded who in turn support you. (Credible evidence from refereed recognized scientific journals not National Enquirer level of BS.) Volume and repetition do not equal validity.

Science is not a democratic process where everyone gets an equal vote and physical processes are subject to political correctness. Science is ... well... science, the application of the scientific method. Scientists are flawed humans subject to all the human foibles but there is no better process for finding out how things work than the scientific method.

I note that in addition to name calling and mindless tis taint tis taint retorts where it seems the goal is "scoring sarcasm points" on your "enemies" there is pigeon holing. Statements such as if you believe that xxxxxx then you are a left wing *&^%$) or support yyyyyy and you are a right wing ^%^%4 &^*&!!!

I have never missed voting for president since becoming of legal age. I have never voted for a Democrat for president (but did for some other offices depending on available choices and some independents too.) I have several conservative tendencies. My job title at retirement was SCIENTIST.

Intelligent design? I think evolution IS intelligent design. I have a concealed weapon permit and I do carry and advocate it for all law abiding citizens.

So what camp does that put me in? AGW or denier????

I think the preponderance of evidence is insufficient to irrefutably identify a smoking gun for AGW but is certainly sufficient to warrant our attention and funding of research. To deny AGW out of hand because it would be inconvenient if conclusively proven and an expensive response were to be required is whistling in the dark. I bill myself as an optimistic realist, one who hopes for the best and deals with reality.

I have seen examples of folks who refuse to go to the doctor because if the doctor found them to be suffering from xzxzxzx they wouldn't like the treatment regimen. Similarly some folks who fear the consequence(s) of some situation deny all or part of its component parts like children getting hyperactive trying to avoid the inevitable bedtime.

Science works as a self improving system with corrective feedback not unlike Newtons method of successive approximation. Want the square root of a number? Say 139. Take a guess. divide the guess into 139 add the quotient to your guess and divide by 2. Use this result as the new divisor of 139. Repeat the process till you get as many accurate digits as you want. Being smart about the guess doesn't help much. By analysis it is easily seen that the answer is greater than 11 (squared is 121) and less than 12 (squared is 144.) So 11 1/2 would be a SMART first guess but the end result is not changed and the number of iterations to get the desired result is not greatly reduced. Improvement through self correcting feedback... the driving force behind the scientific method.

Science works a lot like this. You make a guess and then experiment to see if you can improve on the guess. The initial guess is not nearly as important as the method of proving/disproving/improving on the guess. If you make a simplistic model of the climate it will have large errors. Modifying the model by iteration, guided by its performance will evolve the model to a closer approximation of "the truth."

If this interests you, I suggest you read some on the topic of Artificial Intelligence through evolutionary programming.

I have a dog in this fight. I live in an area experiencing extreme drought with less than 15 inches of rain so far as the year is drawing to a close. Our average rainfall is 37 inches. In the last 12 years I have experienced the wettest year on record and the driest year on record, dryer than the dustbowl at its worst. The "normal" pattern is a roughly 7-10 year wet dry cycle with some odd flyers but... things are looking pretty bleak with credible experts suggesting a high probability of desertification (becoming a desert.) If some of this is human caused and reversible I'd be interested in reversing it. If not human caused but reversible, I'm interested. Otherwise... my wife and I enjoy the desert but not sure we want to experience becoming one.

Pat




d self corrects to rapidly converge on the cube root accurate to as many decimal places as you want depending on the number of iterations you perform.

 

[IslandTractor]

Here in Holland another professor is denounced after structurally making up false data, from the pressure of meeting the expectations of the funders of his research. People are payd to do this, and will only keep on being payd if they keep bringing data. That makes scientists as corrupt as politicians. Even if there is no foul intent, data is as prone to false interpretation as a Bible, a Koran or any other data a religion is based on. Scientists speak arrogant about religion, but their own religion is as easy to corrupt as any other.
What you call a hypothesis, a christian or muslim calls a belief. There really isnt much difference.

Here a translated page of a Dutch university (where one of the denounced professors worked) with 30 accused frauding scientists.
Google Vertalen

Again, baloney. There is no comparison between systematic religion inspired violence and the individual unrelated crimes of a small percentage of scientists. Listing the few dozen well described examples of scientific fraud, nearly all uncovered by other scientists, as evidence that scientists are "as corrupt as politicians" is absurd. There are hundreds of evangelicals who have been convicted of murder or adultery. Does that fact mean all evangelicals or Christians are cheating criminals?

Scientists self police. Examples of fraud are usually quickly identified because one of the tenets of the scientific method is to independently repeat experiments and when results cannot be repeated further investigation can uncover fraud. There is no such tradition in major religions where malfeasance is often covered up to protect the system. Witness clerical sex abuse in the Catholic church and some of the gross financial abuse by some TVangelical churches.

You cannot blithely state that "science is a religion". Religions virtually all look backward to some sacrosanct document that cannot be challenged. Science is the opposite, it looks forward and willingly reexamines older theories in an effort to improve upon them. Religions teach a series of unchanging facts from one generation to another and not infrequently resort to war in defense of that set of beliefs. Science seeks and incorporates new information and theories and changes constantly. It is simply absurd to say a hypothesis is the same as a religious belief. There is a huge and fundamental difference.