Hmmm.
[The comments below include a prime example of someone claiming they're interested in truth but just want higher standard, whereas in fact they are simply wholly irrational. It's become somewhat popular to suggest that such people should be taken at their word for some reason - that because they profess to care about science they actually do. I submit that this is entirely wrong, that people driven by ideology to confirm their own pre-existing beliefs are most certainly not interested in a higher standard of reasoning. They are unable to properly assess their own irrationality because, just as Dunning-Kruger means that stupid people can't know they're stupid, irrational people can't know they're irrational. They only claim to want higher standards as a purely rhetorical device. There's absolutely no deeper search for the truth going on whatsoever.]
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-really-a-war-on-science/?wt.mc=SA_GPlus-Share
It's not science we are against, it's getting science wrong that we are against. The goalpost on global warming/ climate change/ warming up the atmosphere has been changed so many times because of how misguided it is. There are many countries that ban GMOs and evolution never was a science. It's the truth that we are after. Vaccines can be very good and they are often very bad.
ReplyDeleteIf you believe something which is in flat contradiction to the facts, you are not searching after truth. You are seeking your own pre-existing ideology.
ReplyDeleteI am from a country that is generally very anti-GMO, so this gives me a different perspective.
ReplyDeleteTotal anti-GMOs are often considered extremists, if widespread ones. But of course, a significant portion of voters (or at the least a significant loud minority) isn't something to rub the wrong way, so it does help maintain the legal no-GMO status quo. For many others, though, it is the principle of precaution pushed too far.
However, most people are wary of GMO in general, even if not opposed to the idea in principle. Not just because of human health risks, but also (and maybe more) for risks to the ecosystem - both for stains taken individually - and even more power given to textbook Evil Megacorps like Montsanto. (And things like pesticide-resistant stains ending up even more soaked in pesticides once in your dinner plate.)
A widespread fun fact here is that Montsanto forbade GMOs at its own staff restaurants. I don't even know if it's true...
So as this article note, people aren't fighting Science on it, but a perceived lack of control and consequences-checking, particularly with something like genetics where the first rule seems to be "actually, it's more complicated".
last time I checked, there was no serious long-term study on the effects of varied GMOs in both cases, and there were signs of accidental contamination of nature (the wrong GMO can destroy an ecosystem and/or contaminate gene pools in the wild) as well as modified genes moving around the chromosomes - but that was a decade ago. Hopefully, things are better now, but you don't hear about it here. The anti-GMO kind of slipped in the quite background.
But then, seeing apparent ok-by-default stances of other countries is strange from here - what feels right (and should be done here) is avoid-it-until-proven-benign. After all, proving one GMO benign (as with drugs or food enhancers) doesn't prove all of them benign.
Then again, about one artificial molecule in ten in food has been thoroughly checked for health risks, some agricultural products allowed here are forbidden in much else of Europe, farmers routinely use too much product because that's what they're taught - and their heath, and that of their family and neighbours, is put at risk from it.
I've heard that on average, though, people's food is still quite healthier than in the US, but this may have something to do with accessibility to things like vegetables or the ban on hormone-boosted meat.
As for me, given choice I try to avoid GMO by habit, just in case, but won't starve or degrade my dietary balance just to avoid them.
Or that would be the case if there actually were serious quantities of GMOs where I go shopping anyway.
Jungle Jargon re: "evolution was never a science" & "vaccines are sometimes good, sometimes very bad..."
ReplyDeleteNo, both of these positions are in total opposition to facts. Your positions are entirely political in nature whether you understand this or not. You, and many people, have been convinced that these are fuzzy, grey areas when they are not, and this is a result of pure "conspiracy theory" nonsense.
Fear follows ignorance, the way BO trails in the wake of someone who hasn't bathed in a week Yeah, that used to be one of those things that people were afraid of, too...bathing
ReplyDeleteThen someone with an agenda comes along and rallies that ignorance and fear into a codified belief system, complete with circular arguments, nonsensical talking points, and just bad science.
The problem is, there were some cases of vaccines causing health problems - particularly subpar vaccines contaminated with other products.
ReplyDeleteStrong mechanisms are in place to avoid those cases, but sometimes one slips through, and it's enough to give arguments to the anti-vacciners.
And there are those vaccines that just make you sick. I remember one that put me down for two friggin days.
Compare to the seat belt. My father told me how, when it was made mandatory, there was an outcry. "People will drown and be burnt alive in their car!"
It was true - some people did (and still do) die because they couldn't get away from their car due to the seat belt, where they would have otherwise survived.
He was also starting as a physician at the time, in a hospital, and told me about the lethal influx of broken heads turning into a non-lethal influx of contused chests.
The point is, vaccines can be frightening, pharmaceutical megacorps corrupt and we suck at statistics.
Arien Hellboy You don't have to test evolution. You just observe it happening.
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/evolution-watching-speciation-occur-observations/
Arien Hellboy re: 'testability'. This is not a problem with the science, its a problem with your understanding of it.
ReplyDelete"This misconception encompasses two incorrect ideas: (1) that all science depends on controlled laboratory experiments, and (2) that evolution cannot be studied with such experiments. First, many scientific investigations do not involve experiments or direct observation. Astronomers cannot hold stars in their hands and geologists cannot go back in time, but both scientists can learn a great deal about the universe through observation and comparison. In the same way, evolutionary biologists can test their ideas about the history of life on Earth by making observations in the real world. Second, though we can't run an experiment that will tell us how the dinosaur lineage radiated, we can study many aspects of evolution with controlled experiments in a laboratory setting. In organisms with short generation times (e.g., bacteria or fruit flies), we can actually observe evolution in action over the course of an experiment. And in some cases, biologists have observed evolution occurring in the wild."
-this is from http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#e1
And as far as the specifics "still being considered"...this is hardly an argument against evolution as a science. We still don't understand a lot about gravity, but that doesn't mean the study of gravity isn't a science. This 'argument' against evolution is a common one among people with a religious bias, since its passively making the claim that in order to be taken seriously, any theory of the world must contain every answer at the outset or else its invalid....because that's how religion works. People who believe in biblical truths already 'have all the answers', therefore they assume any competing ideology must claim the same.
That, also, is a misunderstanding of science.
Good read. I think the author's thesis is rather well demonstrated with the discussion that immediately sprung up here.
ReplyDeleteClimate Change is a tough one because there is a deliberate, and very well financed, campaign to muddy the waters.
The GMO debate is interesting, because I know a lot of very well educated people that take GMOs as being bad as a given. I buy a good amount of my meat from a butcher that is certified humane and hormone free (the meat, not the butcher), but when I tell people that I have no problem with GMO food, they're usually surprised.
And don't get me started on nuclear power.
As for climate change, many issues are routinely mixed up, so let's detail a bit.
ReplyDeleteAFAICT, almost no one denies the existence of climate change. It is a well-documented fact.
On global warming, every single data I stumbled upon, including IPCC's data, indicates that it pretty much stopped a decade an half ago. Climate is changing, but global temperatures stopped rising. Which is why most people talk about climate change, not global warming nowadays.
Then there is the messy subject of anthropogenic climate change.
Note ow those three designations are often mixed up, despite designing three very different elements.
Here, we have basically three sides:
-Human-produced greenhouse gas are a major factor in today's climate change
-Human activity has a negligible effect on today's climate change
-We don't know what's actually going on.
Where I live, as far as the common man is concerned, there is no science involved anymore - regardless of the actual science arguments from actual scientists on the matter.
My city recently hosted a world forum on Climate Change, and for some time, there were billboards and news articles everywhere on it. Not one of those were actually detailing the mechanisms in place. There was that one billboard that was a retake of a famed French Revolution painting (with a panda as the flag-waving Republic Maiden - why a panda instead of a more symbolic polar bear?), others showing enraptured people, looking above the camera like in a religious meeting, many articles about the "advances", how we were going to "save the world" through mass people mobilisation.
Someone unaware of the issue would have had the impression of a world meeting of a World Youth Day from the Church of Global Warming, were multitudes would pilgrim (actual word used, in fact) and chant "I believe in Climate Change" together...
For this to be the context for some of the most important decisions of our time, it didn't make me feel comfortable at all.
Many will think "Who cares if they don't repeat well-known truths, as long as they do manage to help save the world!"
Well... to start with, conspicuous by its absence in media was how the top Climate Change journalist (and weather showman) published a sceptical book on anthropogenic climate change. And was fired in short order. Illegally, AFAICT.
Not a single medium talked about it. Just a few months before a major forum on the very subject, itself with full media coverage.
For what I can gather, this is typical from the media. There are actually quite a few climate scientists that disagree with the dominant view on anthropogenic climate change, but they are never talked about in mainstream media as far as I can tell.
Going against the scientific consensus is often very risky, at best. But here, there isn't actually a scientific consensus, only a dominant view. What there is, instead, is a media consensus - and unlike the former, those are not as trustworthy.
But then, the dominant scientific view, while not certain, is often solid (after all, most scientific consensuses started as dominant views), so hearing surprisingly many (otherwise reasonable) people tell me their scepticism, I started checking it, if only to have better counter-arguments.
So I started to check on the recent report from the main, official authority on the matter, the IPCC.
(The thing is 1500 pages long, though mostly raw data. Hence the "started" only.)
And I'm far less convinced now. Leaving aside secondary things like the fast-forgotten ClimateGate, and accepting their data as correct (huge data collection work went there) the scientific arguments of the IPCC have one serious problem.
Their main model is wrong. Proven wrong. By their own data.
Their model showed, even in the coldest hypothesis, a constant augmentation of global temperature. Global temperature rise came to a halt more than a decade ago - about two IPCC reports ago. They even display both observations and model curves on the same graphic, so you can't miss the divergence.
ReplyDeleteThey are still using, as their official model for the evolution of climate, destined to world leaders. I don't even.
There are also many details with problems in their work, like the reliability of data before early/mid-XXe century ; the absence in any form I can tell of a huge (if not the biggest) CO2 producer, wild fauna ; ignoring how their data shows CO2 levels being half a year late compared to temperature levels...
There is also their fixation on greenhouse gas (in particular CO2) without a word on other possible anthropogenic effects on something as maddeningly complex as the climate system and human activities. That's the part that is the most unsettling to me.
But I still have lots of data, and then other sources, to pour on. I could be wrong.
Hell, I want to be wrong.
I want to live in a world where we are causing climate change, and we can do something about it. Where one of the biggest mobilisations in recent history wasn't a twisted joke. Not one where people fake an non-existent scientific consensus for seemingly no good reason other than their own bias (not believing in organized conspiracy here), risking both giving a bad rep to environmental awareness and masking real anthropogenic climate effects, at the cost of billions upon billions.
But more importantly, check the data yourself, make your own opinion.
And please, please prove me wrong on that one.
Elie Thorne I'm sorry, but all you've really repeated here are the usual "it's a grey area" arguments that relies on fuzzy counter-arguments made by people trying hard to make the data confusing so anti-science rabble can hold onto hope that they are "right."
ReplyDelete2015 was the warmest year on record according to NOAA. And they would know.
Global surface temps were .29°F warmer than last year (the previous record year), and this is the largest margin of increase since record keeping began in 1880. (This info comes from the NOAA website. I would link but I'm on my phone.)
Earth's average surface temp has risen by 1.6°F since 1880. This doesn't sound like much, and is hardly the stuff of blockbuster disaster movies...until you consider the amount of energy required to raise that temp. The math is jaw-dropping.
The familiar refrain that "global warming has stopped" is a fuzzy understanding of the facts and a problem understanding the scale of the issue.
Last winter, some anti-science schmuck in the US senate brought a snowball into the senate floor and declared it was evidence that the earth wasn't warming up.
Anti-science pundits had a field day with a story of a ship in the Arctic getting stuck in the ice while conducting a study on changes and loss of arctic sea ice.
When you write these things out like that, it seems self-evident that there's good reason to question the concept that the earth is getting warmer. It seems intuitive to say that perhaps earth is not really much warmer at all.
And that's the trap.
Because sometimes what we find in through the scientific process is not at all intuitive. That's why science exists.
The idiot senator's mistake was taking what he saw outside his own door as being evidence of what was happening around the world. The eastern United States was having an unusually chilly winter...true (I was stuck in it too)....but meanwhile the Southern Hemisphere was hitting record high temps.
The trapped Arctic ship was indeed trapped by more ice than expected...but this is hardly evidence that the arctic was colder. (Bear with me here , I'm relying on my memory...) The average temp in the Arctic sea can be something like -40°F on some days. Even a massive increase in temp (say, a 40° rise...but that would be extreme) still leaves the average temperature well below freezing. Warmer air holds more moisture...therefore more snow...therefore more ice.
Warmer...but still more ice. Exactly what models predict. It's perfectly logical when you consider it this way...but it's not exactly intuitive at first glance.
I've been listening to "climate skepticism" for a long time now, and in that time I've never encountered any cogent counter-argument that didn't emerge from some fundamental misunderstanding of the facts. (Note: not a "different interpretation' of facts...but a full blown misunderstanding).
Climate denial is not much more than bumper sticker logic wrapped up in smug overconfidence.
It is the apotheosis of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Elie Thorne addendum: the "ClimateGate" email issue was forgotten so quickly because an independent (and quite hostile) investigation finally admitted they found nothing to suggest deception or "fakery." So the bit that's "quickly forgotten" is the explanation on why this is no longer an issue.
ReplyDeleteBecause it was never an issue to begin with...just another example of the anti-science rabble seizing upon a useful morsel of information without context.
And as far as all the fluff about how "climate rallies look like churches" or whatever, this is a matter of unpleasant culture shock for you....and not anything relevant to climate science. How people "react" to facts does not alter facts.
Note that I'm not living in the US, so all those examples are pretty much unknown to me. Here, in the last twenty years, I can remember exactly one notable politician to declare himself to be sceptic on ACC. And he was mocked to submission by the media.
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, he was also the only trained (and supposedly competent) scientist I remember being in the government in those last twenty years. (Regardless of his competence as a minister, or lack thereof, mind you.)
I'll also try to keep my possibly unfair bias against those [censored] Fahrenheit degrees, but I make no promise.
So first thing, I try to avoid judging the value of a scientific thesis on its worst proponents and opponents.
Those examples you describe are horrible, and frightening for the US. There are equally horrible examples from pro-ACC,.
They are equally irrelevant. I'm pretty sure you can find some atrociously nonscience idiots defending Relativity.
That said, I have read few ACC-sceptic literature, and fewer that retained my attention, so I don't know their arguments well.
What I did was to go for the last IPCC report. They are the official authority on the subject and have the single most important body of data put together.
So if their work convince me ACC-certainty is mistaken, that's a bigger problem than if it was from anything else.
Note that their data doesn't include not-yet-finished 2015, nor even IIRC 2013-2014. Which is unsurprising given how long those reports take to be made.
So I can't discuss conclusion based on those years' data at the moment.
What I've found is:
-The main model they present to be used for decision is proven false by their own data.
-There are glaring omissions. Wild fauna, possibly the biggest contributor to CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 levels following temperature levels by 6 months instead of the opposite. Other possible anthropogenic effects. Account for the large unreliability of data from early-XXe century and before.
Those aren't "grey area", nor "muddying the water". Those are fact I found in their own report, if that's not enough to cast a doubt on the entire thesis, I don't see what would.
Maybe I'm wrong, and misread their data. So feel free to download the IPCC report and check it.
Tell me how their model can be not proven wrong.
Tell me the data you find on wild fauna (also feel free to check on wild fauna biomass estimates, and use it to get an order of magnitude for their CO2 productions. I won't give links, they could induce my own bias.)
Tell me where they talk about the wide uncertainty and incomplete data on early measures
Tell me where they talk about possible other anthropogenic effects than greenhouse gas. If agricultural phosphate has an effect (or not), I want to know. If the Aral sea and the Three Gorges barrage had effect, I want to know (random examples).
Do your own low-pass filters on temperature and CO2 levels ant tell me how CO2 levels aren't following temperature.
Don't take my word or anyone else's for it, and check it for yourself.
And believe me when I say I want to be proven wrong here.
Grey area would be about human CO2 production, or CO2 levels before 1850.
I've read some possibly compelling arguments on how human CO2 production is vastly overestimated, and how data shows a rise of CO2 since the XVIIIe century, before human CO2 production started to significantly rise.
But I don't have the necessary expertise to judge those, so I'll avoid using them if I can. They do intrigue me, but checking on them would ask for painstakingly checking sources and analysis.
Finding glaring problems in the IPCC report is easier, faster and more unambiguous.
Arien Hellboy
ReplyDeletee.g., that giraffes got long necks from reaching for high branches rather than getting tall and then discovering there was food up there
There is no mechanism to explain why giraffes as a species would get longer necks simply because of continual stretching. Conversely, Evolution would say that giraffes with longer necks would have an obvious advantage and thus would have an increased chance of passing that trait on. At Darwin's time, that mechanism was not well understood. Now genetics is exceedingly well understood and every bit of it validates Darwin's ideas.
You compared this to physics. Let's take General Relativity. Also a spectacular success that has passed every test thrown at it; however, it does have a domain problem as it breaks down at the Planck scale. This suggests to many that there must be a deeper theory than Relativity at work.
Evolution has no such domain problem. It has passed every test thrown at it. It is predictive and predictions have been verified again and again. Not accepting it is denial.
Arien Hellboy
ReplyDelete_It appears you understand neither evolution, physics nor science. _
Funny, it occurred to me to say the same thing, but I don't like making it personal. It takes away from your argument.
I'm at lunch and this is a lot to unpack and refute but I'll do my best to cover everything.
ReplyDeleteArien Hellboy "The scientific method is 'theory - experiment / observe - refine / repeat' right? With astronomy we can observe the phases of things like stellar/galactic evolution so even though we can't experiment directly it's going on all around us."
Yes, just as we observe the details of evolutionary processes both directly and indirectly. Directly in terms of, for example, bacteria, fruit flies, birds, etc and indirectly through a satisfyingly large wealth of fossils and comparative morphology. This is not a comprehensive list...I am not a biologist.
The specifics of evolution - what is 'fittest'? Was it just individual competition or is social-cooperation also important? Does physical evolution precede or follow a change in survival behavior (seems reasonable, e.g., that giraffes got long necks from reaching for high branches rather than getting tall and then discovering there was food up there) - are why I question its fitness as 'scientific'.
Im not sure why you're caught up on the word "fittest." It's a shorthand description of the complex mechanisms we call evolution. It's like saying "stars are big and hot". True, yes, but it's hardly what you pin a science on. Look up "Red Queen", BTW.
We're still at a primitive understanding of it and we don't have observable examples around us of all the stages to show we're guessing right.
There are plenty of observable examples of evolution in progress. I'm not going to list them from memory on my lunch break (especially when I have other topics to move on to.) Read literally any book on evolution.
So, Chris, rather than a personal attack ('problem with your understanding of it') based on insufficient data, how about data and logic? How does evolution qualify to be in the same category as physics, math, chemistry? I think my reservation is logical and data-supported.
A personal attack would be if I said "you're argument is wrong because you're ugly and your mother didn't love you." Saying you have a misunderstanding of science is a fact when you demonstrate a misunderstanding of science. That's not an insult, it's just reality, and the good news is that it's easily correctable.
Regarding your final statement: evolution is a science because it fulfills all necessary criteria for scientific study. It's observable, predictable, and repeatable (see 'convergent evolution').
Elie Thorne
I can appreciate the anecdotal evidence as being meaningful to you, but there isn't any meat there regarding the notion that climate change is at its core a problem stemming from human activity.
All I can respond to is your implication that NOAA is wrong, misleading, or generally hasty in declaring 2015 a record hot year. At this point it would be appropriate to ask for your credentials as a climate scientists who can provide data and reasoning contrary to NOAA. If you can, then negotiations could begin on where NOAA is wrong and your conclusions are correct.
"Proven False" : you claim the model they present is "proven wrong". By whom? When? Which model?
"Wild Fauna" : yes, CO2 is produced naturally in very large quantities and is a vital part of an ongoing cycle. However, humans don't need to produce more CO2 than natural processes to upset that cycle considerably, which is what is happening. Industry over the past 100 years has introduced more carbon into those natural cycles than the cycles are adapted to process. Ergo, the problem.
Regarding the rest of your post, as I said, I'm at lunch and don't have time (or inclination, really) to 1)figure out exactly what you're asking and 2)lay down a bunch of climate statistics that are publicly available. I'm curious, however, how "CO2 levels aren't following temp"...as this very much seems to be the case over the last few centuries.
ReplyDeleteSorry guys, that's all I've got time for at the moment. Gotta get back to work for the man.
PS: Rhys Taylor sorry to hijack the thread. You know how I get. :D
ReplyDeleteChristopher Butler Not at all, you've saved me a lot of typing. :)
ReplyDeleteI will just add a few thoughts :
I believe the "flaw of averages" applies to ideas as well as physical characteristics. That is, most people believe in most established scientific ideas, but perhaps very few people indeed accept all of them. So perhaps there's something in the original article's claim that people are attacking individual scientific ideas rather than science itself. I still think this usually happens for various ideological reasons, but then we're none of us free from ideological beliefs. That's just being human.
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html
I wouldn't put evolution on the same pedestal as physics or chemistry, but them I'm not an evolutionary biologist. However, it is an established observed fact that evolution happens. The analogy with gravity is correct : we know gravity exists, we don't know everything there is to know about gravity but we have some very good theories. That doesn't mean that gravitational theories aren't scientific. The same applies to evolution.
As for climate and the "there's no consensus" argument, I've already dealt with that one in detail here :
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2015/06/consensus-and-conspiracy.html
Which also covers the nature of a scientific consensus since many people seem to have profound misunderstandings about what "consensus" means. TLDR version : a consensus is arrived at independently, not by democratic vote or discussion. See also :
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160113-are-your-opinions-really-your-own
I also examine in detail why a false consensus is very difficult (but not impossible) to establish through the academic/scientific system here :
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2015/10/false-consensus.html
If climate change science has established a false consensus, they must have a radically different scientific culture to what I've experienced. One should also remember that this is an international consensus, not the view of a single country.
Arien Hellboy Then you must have read the response of a different Christopher Butler because the one above seems entirely logical, rational and authority-free to me.
ReplyDeleteChristopher Butler The fact is that mindless things can't make you. It has nothing to do with politics or religion.
ReplyDeleteJungle Jargon You keep saying that. The last time I asked you to prove it you said you didn't need to because it's not a belief.
ReplyDeleteI rest my case.
Arien Hellboy and this is always what the anti-science/anti-evolution debate boils down to: people that just really don't want to believe start getting irrational and saying "but you didn't show me the evidence" despite having logic and reason smacked over their head.
ReplyDeleteYou should check YouTube for "Richard Dawkins vs. Wendy Wright". It's fascinating. She's a fucking Right Wing robot and it's amazing. She's doing precisely what you just did. He is throwing facts and logic at her like congress throws money at big banks...and she keeps saying (to hilarious effect) "show me the evidence." He's using goddamn evidence. But she either dismisses evidence out of hand or seems to expect him to start pulling fossils, lab equipment, and spreadsheets of data out his his pockets. In other words, she's not interested in facts...she's interested in justifying her preconceived notions and will use every tactic in the book to avoid recognizing that she is vastly outgunned. Ending...predictably...with getting offended at his "smugness" because he has the audacity to not respect her choice to be an ignorant idiot.
The "you're appealing to authority" jab you just made is, also, predictable and expected and how debates with anti-science people generally goes. I've done these kind of debates a lot, and every time it's like somebody wrote an anti-science script and gave it to you.
I haven't appealed to authority in my responses. Im sure you're referring to my asking why I should believe your opinion trumps NOAA's. But this isn't an appeal to authority....the NOAA is a huge collection of scientists who, through established methods, have arrived at conclusions regarding climate. You're some faceless someone on the internet who claims to know better facts than people doing legitimate research. Logically, I will not choose to accept your facts over theirs. (Duh). This is not an appeal to authority. An appeal to authority would be if I said "Stephen Hawking is right because he's so smart." As opposed to "Stephen Hawking may be right because he has a track record of being right on the subject of X."
The mistake here...and it's a common one on the Right Wing...is that simply having an opinion entitles one to be given equal consideration on the spectrum of ideas. This is very untrue. You're not entitled to being heard and respected unless you give us a reason to hear and respect you. Ergo, "what are your credentials?" I respect and listen to NOAAs opinions because they're arrived at properly and through a history of appropriate diligence. Are yours?
A huge component of the anti-science movement sweeping the US and parts of the world is the persistent belief that there's no such thing as a true expert and that all ideas are valid ideas and deserve respect. "Teach the controversy!"
No, because I don't care how hard you believe....belief is not equal to facts in the real world.
Jungle Jargon I'm not even sure what that means. "Mindless things cannot make you." It sounds like it's an attempt at being profound while not actually saying anything.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean "mindless things"? "Make" me what?
Why is it that anti-science peeps start speaking like they're in the Lord of the Rings when they're trying to lob an ace over the net with profound-sounding one liner of metaphysical gobbledegook?
If whatever point you're making cant be made without dressing it up in spooky prose...it might not be much a point in the first place.
Christopher Butler
ReplyDeletetl;dr : Please, forget what you know, what I said and just check the data. If I made mistakes interpreting it, I want to know.
Here is the IPCC website:
http://ipcc.ch/index.htm
Here is the full 1454 pages report:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_wg3_ar5_full.pdf
It is my only source here.
/I can appreciate the anecdotal evidence as being meaningful to you, but there isn't any meat there regarding the notion that climate change is at its core a problem stemming from human activity. /
I went directly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the official UN organism on the subject, the ones whose report is used as an official basis by nearly all the world's nations - and looked at their official report.
In which I found major flaws.
How can this be called anecdotal evidence?
/All I can respond to is your implication that NOAA is wrong, misleading, or generally hasty in declaring 2015 a record hot year. /
Uh... what?
If I implied this in any way, my apologies, it wasn't my intention.
What I /meant/ was that, based on the official IPCC 2014 report, I didn't have data on 2015, so I am not using 2015 at all.
The fact that 2015 is a record hot year has no bearing on the 2014 report and its flaws.
/"Proven False" : you claim the model they present is "proven wrong". By whom? When? Which model? /
I invite you to check on the report yourself. No need to read it all here, but look at their models for temperature previsions based on CO2 production,compared to the actual temperature measurements. You will see that in the last decade, they clearly diverge.
Incidentally, the moment they diverge is around the moment they created the model.
This is how they are proven wrong : the model clearly failed to predict observation.
/"Wild Fauna" : yes, CO2 is produced naturally in very large quantities and is a vital part of an ongoing cycle. However, humans don't need to produce more CO2 than natural processes to upset that cycle considerably /
Indeed, I never said otherwise.
The problem is not that human CO2 may be enough to cause unbalance. The problem is that in their analysis of the situation, they let out one of the biggest factors entirely, with no explanation at all. No analysis on how it doesn't impact, not even a short dismissal. The report isn't even acknowledging its existence.
How does this not invalidate their analysis?
/Regarding the rest of your post, as I said, I'm at lunch and don't have time (or inclination, really) to 1)figure out exactly what you're asking and 2)lay down a bunch of climate statistics that are publicly available. /
That's too bad, all I ask is to be convinced. And for someone to explain away those apparent major flaws in the most import climate science document of our time.
No need to align climate scientists, only believable explanations on the apparent flaws in their official report.
/I'm curious, however, how "CO2 levels aren't following temp"...as this very much seems to be the case over the last few centuries. /
Again, please check the official 2014 IPCC report.
Take the data on CO2 and temperature levels for, say, the last 50 years (best coverage, best precision...)
Now, plot the curves and smooth them (for example, apply a low-pass filter on it, i.e. eliminate high frequency variations - but feel free to use the method you see fit).
If you put them together, you will clearly see that the CO2 curve is following the temperature curve with 6 month delay. A spike in temperature is followed by a spike in CO2 six months later, same for a chasm.
Shift them around, and you will see that shifting them by 6 months gives you the best correlation.
ReplyDeleteBut please just do it and tell me what you see.
Rhys Taylor /As for climate and the "there's no consensus" argument, I've already dealt with that one in detail here :
ReplyDeletehttp://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2015/06/consensus-and-conspiracy.html /
This was a very interesting article, but I think it may miss one case : the media consensus.
The media may wrongly present something as a scientific consensus. In fact, according to many media, there is a long time consensus on things like dark matter, black holes or even string theory. While the former two are dominant views, and seem more and more probable with time, none are scientific consensuses AFAICT.
For what I gather, it is also the case with ACC, but reinforced by what is at stake here.
I'll try to find a few disagreeing climate scientists later, if you wish. (The point is not that they are right or wrong, mind you, but that they disagree.)
/If climate change science has established a false consensus, they must have a radically different scientific culture to what I've experienced. /
Given that the problems I found in the IPCC report should never have passed any peer review, I am now inclined to think that way...
Elie Thorne Are you reading the articles you're linking to, because they seem to clearly state the exact opposite of what you are arguing?
ReplyDeleteFor example, from http://ipcc.ch/index.htm, page 1 of the Summary For Policy Makers.
Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.
This goes on and on with the links you provided.
Mike Aben As I detailed, the IPCC full report had major flaws that cast doubt on their entire analysis.
ReplyDeleteI read the report (in parts, not the full 1500 pages, mind you!), yes. I put a link to the IPCC website as reference.
I invite you to read the data in the report and tell me how you interpret what I found to be major flaws.
Elie Thorne this is probably going to be my last response, because I'm not here to argue over data points, I'm here to argue that consensus science should probably be listened to.
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost..and this is utterly inescapable: if you have some credentials as a climate scientist which is allowing you to re-interpret climate data and you have reached a significantly different conclusion that the consensus of climate scientists in the world now is the time to declare yourself otherwise you're wasting everyone's time.
(NOTE: a computer programmer, a florist, a botanist, a high school science teacher, a Subway sandwich maker, a graphic designer, a salesperson, etc do not constitute a 'good enough' amateur citizen climate scientist. I, also, don't claim to be a climate scientist...but I am not making claims based on my own research, but merely reiterating the broad facts consensus science.)
_You will see that in the last decade, they clearly diverge.
Incidentally, the moment they diverge is around the moment they created the model._
A decade is not sufficient time to separate natural variations/turbulence in weather from a change in climate. You can have warming/cooling trends for many years at a span and the overall trend will still be present. We have, for example, experienced an unusually calm solar cycle which seems to have some effect in weather/temp and can possibly account for a decade or so of sporadically cooler temps in the data, however this is not a change in the factors affecting climate at large.
The problem is that in their analysis of the situation, they let out one of the biggest factors entirely, with no explanation at all
Left out what factor? Are you referring to the natural production of CO2? Please tell me that you don't believe that scientists that study CO2 levels in the biosphere somehow do not account for the natural cycle of CO2 levels in the biosphere. Please tell me that's not what you're saying, because that's depressing.
If you're referring to some other 'biggest factor', please explain. Because again...unless you are a scientific authority with some reason behind why this comprehensive report is leaving out some big, obvious factor, this is a waste of time.
That's too bad, all I ask is to be convinced. And for someone to explain away those apparent major flaws in the most import climate science document of our time.
Have you considered the possibility that the 'major flaws' you're going on about might be a flaw in your understanding the science/the report/the data, etc? This is not as smart-ass a response as it sounds...I'm legitimately asking. Because when a whole bunch of scientists say one thing and some person says he/she thinks they're all wrong, logic suggests maybe that person has some further studying to do. This is not an appeal to authority...its just sound reasoning. I have experienced this first hand. There was a major issue that I just couldn't understand the scientific conclusion that was reached, and my gut told me that the scientific consensus was wrong. I doubted myself, dug in further, and...lo and behold, I didn't understand the subject as well as I thought I did. This is easy to do.
Take the data on CO2 and temperature levels for, say, the last 50 years (best coverage, best precision...)
This is the one thing you said that convinced me to back up and review, because it was tickling a memory of something in the back of my head. Turns out you're pseudo-correct in that the correlation is not directly proportional, but not in what that means. I'll just link you to a better explanation of how this works than I can probably manage.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-temperature-correlation.htm
ReplyDeleteThough please note: "a 6 month delay" of anything in climate science is not high enough 'resolution' data to draw meaningful conclusions from regarding a process this massive, complex, and long-term.
As I said...this is probably my last response because I'm not here to argue over data points, I'm here to spread the word that ignoring consensus science is dumb.
The consensus science says evolution is real.
The consensus science says humans are making the world's climate dangerously and increasingly turbulent.
My mind can change, but it takes more than anonymous people on the internet saying 'nuh uh'.
Elie Thorne I'm sorry, but you can't make a general statement, say it's in a 1000 page report, and expect the reader to mine the report to corroborate it. When you do, it smacks of cherry picking, taking out of context, or flat out misinterpretation.
ReplyDeleteWhat this guy said. ^^^
ReplyDeleteOn a final note: If you walk into a village and virtually the whole town tells you not to go into the forest at the edge of town because a bear will eat your face off...and if that village is full of a lot of ugly people....choosing to side with the underdog opinion in town is probably a bad idea.
ReplyDelete#finis
Mike Aben Christopher Butler
ReplyDeleteI have detailed at length four major flaws in this report, with details on missing data, missing analysis and disproven models.
"It's too long I don't want to check" isn't a valid answer.
Your only response so far has been "lots of people tell you are wrong", without even giving a cursory glance at the data those very people are advancing.
You will never convince anyone that way, quite the opposite. I am not yet convinced that climate science is an unscientific mess, but you sure did try to. In fact, if that was the result on someone like me who is at least trying to keep an open mind and is still unconvinced either way, you can be sure you will drive people against ACC more than anything.
What would have worked, though, was to actually look at the points in the report I claim are so clearly faulty, at the very least.
Elie Thorne
ReplyDelete"This was a very interesting article, but I think it may miss one case : the media consensus.
The media may wrongly present something as a scientific consensus. In fact, according to many media, there is a long time consensus on things like dark matter, black holes or even string theory. While the former two are dominant views, and seem more and more probable with time, none are scientific consensuses AFAICT."
Have a read of this :
http://io9.gizmodo.com/bbc-institutes-changes-to-prevent-false-balance-in-sc-1600207025
Perhaps contrary to France, in the UK there was concern that far too much time was being given in the mainstream media to anti-consensus views. So the idea of a media consensus in Britain, at least, is falsified. Anyway you'd still have to address why there is a global media consensus if there isn't a global scientific consensus... hmm, did someone whisper, "conspiracy theory" ? :)
I am not sure how you would distinguish between a consensus and a dominant view. There is a consensus on dark matter and black holes. That doesn't mean it's correct or even that every expert agrees in the existence of dark matter or black holes, because you can always, always, always find an expert who disagrees with the rest. Look at Edgar Mitchell, Apollo astronaut who believed in flying saucers.
A consensus is "only" what most experts believe is the most likely explanation given the evidence available at the time - it becomes a false consensus if experts don't really reach that conclusion independently. It is not set in stone and certainly doesn't claim to be indisputable fact but it does claim to be the best information on which to make a decision.
So, _"Your only response so far has been "lots of people tell you are wrong", "_ is actually perfectly valid provided lots of experts really do share the same conclusion. Hence the dam analogy. I would even a say it's a better option than asking non-experts to go through a 1500 page report that they won't fully understand because they're, well, non-experts.
If there was really a significant difference between the widely-reported 97% believers in AGW and the reality, I think we'd know about it. Especially in the era of social media.
Rhys Taylor It's not my belief mindless things made you so I don't have to prove it. It is your belief so you have to prove it before claiming it happened.
ReplyDeleteChristopher Butler Then again, I could be saying something very profound and you wouldn't even know it because you can't think using your own mind. Mindless things can't make you and they also cannot remake you billions of times like evolution claims.
ReplyDeleteShow me the equation of specific directives making or remaking themselves billions of times in succession.
ReplyDeleteJungle Jargon You seem to be absolutely convinced that minds cannot originate from mindless things. I don't see why this should be the case. To assume so you'd have to first know exactly what a mind was and be certain that it is fundamentally different from the physical world, i.e. that it cannot originate from nothing but a collection of atoms. How is it that you know with such certainty that this is the case ?
ReplyDeleteClearly, we are made of atoms. Many atoms are found in non-living things. Therefore, some arrangements of atoms lead to life and some don't, but since it's all atomic that proves that life can arise from non-living substances (unless you think some atoms are alive, for some reason). I see no reason why it should be different for minds. Additionally, even if I accepted that there is some sort of mystical life energy, it's obviously inhabiting and controlling non-living materials.
Evolution isn't just about minds. That's not even the reason for the theory at all - it primarily explains why different animals in different environments have different physical characteristics. Even if life is due to something more mysterious, I see no reason to think it wouldn't evolve. We've seen speciation actually happen in the wild. We can even, to some extent, directly manipulate DNA and induce different features. We see every single day new animals born with slightly different features to their parents. Why in the world wouldn't the ones with features least suited to their environment stand less chance of reproducing, and why in the world wouldn't the ones better suited have more offspring ?
Dealing with people who are irrational and/or stupid is one thing. Managing conflicts between entirely rational intelligent people who come to honest but different conclusions regarding the same evidence... this is probably one of the most difficult problems of all.
ReplyDeleteArien Hellboy I am confused as to what your positions is on evolution. You seem to accept that it happens as a fact, but state that it is an opinion.
ReplyDeleteI doubt anyone in their right mind would say that we fully understand evolution, but I don't see why an incomplete understanding means it's not a science.
Rhys Taylor Only specific arrangements result in a living organism. The burden is on science to prove mathematically that unarranged things arrange directed working things before saying they can. You can't get proteins sequenced and arranged in working order in 20 billion years by chance and they would fall apart long before they were ever sequenced correctly. You have to admit there is a problem there. There is a Maker and the Maker is not matter or energy.
ReplyDeleteArien Hellboy is right about mutation not being able to account for all of the variation that we see and we already know that the genome responds directly to the environment and that does not explain the origin of the genome or the different sets of instructions in different organisms.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor It is true that French media are, in general, far more homogeneous, so it's less of a concern here.
ReplyDeleteThe difference I would make between dominant view and consensus is one of degree. Going against the consensus, apart from special cases, can be seen as a waste of time. Thermodynamics and relativity fall into this category, and you will find pretty much no expert seriously going against it nowadays.
A dominant view is considered valid by the majority of experts, but not all, and it is reasonable to see a few alternate attempts. Black holes and dark matter are transiting from dominant view to consensus, I'd say. For black holes, they will probably be "officially" consensus when one is imaged directly at most. For dark matter, I suppose it will be when something fitting will be proven to exist (that is, we finally know what it is).
String theory has many proponents, but isn't unanimous (leaving aside the "is it science?" debate), but it's not necessary what you would feel listening to general media.
At least, that's the definition I would use.
I think media, by nature, simplify things and this can cause them to sometimes erase this distinction.
...
But my problem here is a bit elsewhere. Actually, if you have advice, I'd love to read it.
The IPCC is the one authority speaking for all interested nations on climate change. Their report is the ultimate compilation of the ongoing efforts in that field.
And yet, in this report, I found several seemingly huge flaws. And I can't find anyone saying anything to explain those apparent flaw anywhere.
I can understand most people don't want to dig in this massive report and read it all. I didn't either anyway. And I accept I may have missed something.
The problem is, I can't find articles explaining those, or people willing to point me to those, or even - as we just saw - people willing to actually check the incriminating data I pointed out, let alone try and explain them.
You would think that in the scores of experts, there would be someone having talked about it.
After all, in any other context, any one of those would be enough to discredit the entire report, if true.
And yet, nothing.
So now I am faced between three equally bad options:
- I accept the argument of authority against the clear evidence I found against it
- I consider the entire field discredited and I am right "against the world"
- I continue pestering people until someone gives me a better explanation on those
Seriously, am I insane, is it the world, or am I just not enough of a pain? What should I do there?
Jungle Jargon You've missed my point entirely. You said minds can't come from mindless things. I said minds are made of atoms, which clearly don't have minds themselves. Therefore what is the evidence that you need something more mystical to have a mind ? Why, if the physical brain is damaged, are minds also damaged ? The most logical explanation is that it is the specific arrangement of atoms that allows a mind, whether that is due to the arrangement acting to actually create that mind or merely acting as a receiver for a mind, if you really insist that there must be something else involved. So I ask again, why are you so certain that minds cannot come from mindless things ?
ReplyDeleteEvolution of life and creation of life are two entirely different things. No-one pretends that we understand how life started, but we do know for a fact that it evolves. We literally see it happening.
In any case, the argument, "I don't know, therefore God" is not a sensible one. It doesn't advance anything.
Elie Thorne I think we only have a difference in terminology here. What you are defining to be consensus I would call established science. There's no consensus that the Earth is round, it's just an established fact. What I call consensus you would call the dominant or prevailing view, which changes over time according to evidence whereas the established science never does, or very rarely.
ReplyDelete"And yet, in this report, I found several seemingly huge flaws. And I can't find anyone saying anything to explain those apparent flaw anywhere."
Indeed, that is a dilemma. Given the magnitude of the claim, I'd say the most likely explanation is that you didn't understand something. If you can point me to the specific parts of the report I'll take a look at it... however this might not do any good since I am not a climate scientist either. The best option by far would be to find an Ask A Climate Scientist Anything At All About Climate Science or some such equivalent.
I don't seem to have stumbled upon any climate scientists on Google+, unfortunately.
Rhys Taylor You need direction to make a mind and atoms are not able to significantly sequence any specific directions.Evolution requires the creation of significant sequencing that is unique to each specific organism. Starting life and creating different organisms both have the same problem of acquiring unique directives that are not there. You may think those are very different things but the problem of coming up with directives that are not there is the same and there is no natural explanation. Why you fully expect for mindless things to be your daddy is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteJungle Jargon I have no idea what "sequence any specific directions" means, or why evolution requires "sequencing". You're not using words correctly.
ReplyDeleteStart with zero assumptions about the nature of the mind. Then learn that you are made of atoms, which, in other forms, are not conscious. The only logical conclusion is that some arrangements of atoms permit consciousness while others do not.
What does, "you need direction to make a mind" mean, and why do you think that ?
Rhys Taylor If you were not sequenced to be a human, you would not be one. Your specific sequencing is the result of the recombination of your parent's preexisting written directives to be humans. No animal has the directives to make you a human.
ReplyDeleteWe are specifically sequenced chemistry, not just random chemicals and atoms. There is a very big difference between the two.
You need the directives to make the proteins and you need the proteins to make the directives.
Jungle Jargon http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sequencing
ReplyDeleteSeriously, you're not using words correctly. You also appear to be confusing "directives" and "directions" which mean completely different things.
I think you mean combination, not sequence, and probably instructions, not directions. No, we are not random chemicals, that's the entire point of evolution. It isn't a purely random process because anything which can't self-replicate won't survive on its own. That is self-evident. Why would you think the process needs instructions ? An animal poorly-suited to its environment because of its specific characteristics is less likely to survive than one that's well-adapted. That is also self-evident.
Like any offspring, I am not exactly the same as my parents. Hence over time new species can emerge, a process which, I repeat, we have actually seen happening, and we know enough about the genome to artificially induce new characteristics. It is not just random mutations that do this, it is also a natural feature of sexual reproduction - our parents genes are not combined in a totally random way, but through a process that reproduces the major features whilst still allowing variation.
I would urge you to go and read a book on evolution, but since you're willing to ignore mountains of observational evidence, I don't think it would do any good. You are putting theory before fact.
Your entire argument boils down to "this just can't work because..." and that's it. You never say why it can't occur through natural means, you just say it can't. Natural processes are perfectly capable of creating other complex features, like clouds and rainbows and volcanoes and tectonic plates and canyons, so why you think life is impossible I just don't understand. But then you probably think everything is the will of God and that it's "obvious" nothing happens naturally.
And you have yet again failed to answer my question as to why minds, which was what we were originally discussing, need instructions. You just assume you know what a mind is without any justification. You keep avoiding my questions, and it's becoming seriously irritating.
- How is it that you know with such certainty what a mind is ?
- Why wouldn't animals with features least suited to their environment stand less chance of reproducing, and why wouldn't the ones better suited have more offspring ?
- What is the evidence that you need something more mystical than atoms to have a mind ?
- Why, if the physical brain is damaged, are minds also damaged ?
- Why are you so certain that minds cannot come from mindless things ?
Rhys Taylor Thank you, I really appreciate it. I'll have to dig into it again to point to the specific parts, though the absence of wild animal life is obviously not referencing a specific point. Even if you are not a climate scientist, you may see things I missed :)
ReplyDeleteInteresting difference between established science and consensus. Now that you say it, it does makes sense...
The sequence is the combination. You have to prove random unrelated changes result in additional significant sequencing. You can only ever change what is already in place you cannot put in place significant sequencing that is not there. It is not that hard to understand. Changing what is there will never result in another living organism requiring additional sequencing. Atoms don't do significant and/or specific sequencing.
ReplyDeleteWithout the sequencing, there will never be a physical mind. I know physical minds are made by recombination of preexisting genomes. We can see given sequencing, we cannot see additional sequencing being made. It is the sequence that makes the mind, It cannot make sequencing that is not there.
Jungle Jargon You're not listening. I'm done here.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor You assume genomes gain directed function over the long run when the reality is that they lose direction and function over time.
ReplyDeleteSssh now. Enough.
ReplyDelete