Unfortunately, science works on neither consensus nor steadily growing data; science works off facts and proof. After all, there was once a consensus that the Earth was the centre of the universe. And data leads to theories. And theories may lead to facts.
I originally wrote quite a long piece, but it essentially boils down to this: the vituperation heaped upon the gadflies like Lomborg recently or Gallileo centuries ago ill serves scientific progress. Sometimes, someone has to say, “The King has no clothes.” Is that the case with ACC? I’ve no idea, but it pays to listen to both sides. With courtesy and respect.
If you only want to debate with jshore, then you needn’t bother replying to anybody’s posts but jshore’s. If you don’t want anybody but jshore to debate your posts, you can ask other posters not to respond to you. Otherwise, though, you’re expected to abide by the same standards of debate as anybody else. In particular, you can’t convincingly justify a weak argument with the excuse that you’re not “really” debating with the person you’re responding to.
Not much. In the “Comments on Cecil’s Columns” thread that spawned this one, you posted the same link to the Pielke Group website that you used here, the same link to the Financial Post letter that you used here, and a different link to Pielke’s work (which, again, does not support the contention that ACC is not a problem).
The only additional sources you cited in that thread were a link to a lecture by Richard Lindzen (posted twice) and an editorial by a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
In short, you seem to be relying on a very small, and apparently stagnant, amount of actual scientific evidence, plus unsubstantiated and non-specialist opinion, to back up your claims that anthropogenic climate change is not a problem. So where are you getting your stated opinion that the evidence supporting your position “is small but growing, not shrinking”?
Restating the obvious: Already admitted to not having a lot of “evidence” on my side. Beating the dead horse of consensus and amount of evidence when that is resolved is pointless. Beating dead horses is one of your favorite debating tactics so if it will upset you too much to stop, please beat away.
Science doesn’t work off proof. Mathematics does. In the sciences, the best you have instead is the weight of steadily accumulating evidence all piling up on the side of the truth of a theory, and none piling up on the other side, until nobody contests the theory anymore, and it’s accepted as fact.
Science itself may not work off consensus, but how else does one judge when a theory has stopped being contested by scientists in the relevant fields, and is accepted as fact?
If one is not a scientist with the relevant background to participate in the scientific debate, if one exists, how else but on the basis of scientific consensus or its absence is one to judge whether or not to act on the basis of scientific knowledge?
First of all, science is inductive. So, it does not work off proof. You can’t prove anything in science. (You can often prove things about mathematical models of physical systems since mathematics is deductive but this does not amount to a proof that nature follows the model.) Thus, those demanding “proof” of AGW are demanding something that is technically impossible.
As for consensus, I know deniers of AGW like to jump on the concept of consensus. However, it is much ado about nothing. Yes, science doesn’t technically proceed by consensus; all knowledge is provisional and nothing is ever certain (since there is no proof). However, when the public needs to know what the current thinking is in the scientific community on something like AGW that has important policy implications, it is reasonable to ask scientists what, if any consensus exists in the scientific community on the subject. While the consensus may not be correct, nobody has ever been able to tell me what a better alternative is. Usually people try to argue that we need to go back to the actual evidence or data…but what that amounts to is arguing the science in the public sphere rather than in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. While I can see the advantages of that from the point-of-view of the people who have essentially lost the debate in the scientific literature, I don’t think it is a very wise way to proceed. In actual practice, the debates in the public sphere often involve arguments that are laughably silly to almost any trained scientist in the field but that can seem quite convincing to the less informed.
Somehow I don’t think that Galileo and Lomborg belong in the same camp. But, at any rate, if you are going to be a gadfly, it is best to do so by learning the field carefully and then making careful and well-documented claims in the scientific literature, not by writing one-sided popular polemics that scientists in the field find riddled with misstatements. On a small scale, my advisor and I were “gadflies” in my thesis work…We went into a subfield and made a claim that went against the prevailing wisdom at the time. However, we were careful not to overstate our case and to provide as much documentation as we could. And, while our claim may have been treated with some skepticism, we did not have a problem of getting it published and treated seriously.
I make no claim that science is perfect in this regard and that there are not some referees who would be unfair to claims that go against their preconceptions. However, I think that for every “Galileo” there are probably at least 100 people who are making claims that are incorrect, poorly documented, or otherwise not so great.
RTFirefly, good for you to weigh in on the debate in such a, “I saw one post and now know what is going on,” kinda way.
Kimstu was not debating me. He was throwing out strawman after strawman, and then beating dead horses until glue flowed across the land.
Oh, I see the strawman is one of your debating methods as well. Good to see that tried and true tactic lives on in the forum. The funny part of your strawman is you do exactly what you accuse me of doing, the hilarity of hypocracy laughs on.
FWIW, I’m still here. Just so everyone knows I’m reading all the opinions on this subject. The OP I wrote was probably a bit confrontational in ways, but that just seems to be my posting style. Aplogies to anyone that wants one.
The basic reason I started the thread was to get some ideas on GW from an angle I haven’t seen a lot of debate on. I think it’s going pretty well for the most part. Lots of stuff and ideas I haven’t seen argued in this way.
Anyway, just letting everyone know I appreciate the posts so far and ask for the info to keep coming.
You mean, like for evolution? [My point being that it is easy to manufacture artificial debate on scientific issues when people have a strong incentive to do so.]
Rubbish. For example, I can prove that if you combine hydrogen and oxygen, you get water. For example, I can prove the bending of light by gravity by looking at gravitational lensing.
You are aware of what happened to Lomborg, aren’t you?
You can’t prove any such thing. Hell, you can’t even prove that the sun will rise tomorrow. You can’t prove that the next time I drop an apple, it will fall to the ground rather than float away. Sure, you can appeal to what we have seen it do in that past but that is simply induction. And, you can talk about the theory of gravity but that is only a theory based on inductive inference.
Roughly speaking…He published a book talking about lots of things outside of his own field of study and the book got trashed by those people actually in the fields. The book made him a darling of the right and he was appointed to some science position by the conservative government in Denmark.
Your first quoted sentence can appear to be an example of “attack the idea, not the poster” if I squint at it just right, however, in conjunction with your second sentence, it appears to be a direct insult which is forbidden in this Forum.
If you truly hold the high ground in terms of the argument, you do not need to resort to insults and if your arguments are no better than those of your opponents, adding insults appears to demonstrate a weakness in your position.
If you need to hurl personal insults, take it to the Pit.
I’ve been reading Kimstu’s posts for six years, and haven’t seen a strawman in one yet.
Clearly you disagree. That’s life.
Feel free, then, to explain the difference between your “I am really only debating with jshore because he is the only one who wants to debate this issue and not harrass the desenters” and my restatement, “I’m really only debating with Poster A, so even though Poster B has just demolished my argument, it doesn’t really ‘count’.”
I’ve ‘accused’ you of (a) trying to avoid dealing with other posters’ arguments by saying you’re not arguing with them, and (b) wanting to be able to argue on and have those arguments taken seriously, despite having conceded that you don’t have much evidence on your side.
I’m not sure how I could have done either of those things myself in my one previous post in this thread, but I’m sure you can explain that too.
Then I suggest you read his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Yes, he got trashed but he did know what he was talking about and was subsequently vindicated.
I can think of a few problems with that. The biggest one, IMHO, is that under your terms, the judgment of when a theory has been accepted as fact can be postponed indefinitely by a handful of well-funded cranks.
A case in point would be evolution, where there is a clear and overwhelming consensus, but we still need to use that consensus as evidence for what is accepted on account of the ‘Intelligent’ Design cranks.
There are cranks cranking constantly about how Relativity is bunk.
I don’t here anyone defending Relativity using the consensus argument.
I also don’t see **any[\b] MIT professors being cranky about Relativity.
As to ‘Intelligent Design’ cranks, from what I have read there are only one or two psudo-academics that posture that. The list of scientists questioning ACC, the amount of ACC and the uncertaintity of our current conclusions is long and distinguished. I agree with you that there are many, many fewer critics than supporters but the total composition of the critics in this debate can hardly be compared to those in ‘Intelligent Design.’
And there isn’t an overwhelming consesnsus, you overstate. Or please at least tell me what **exactly[\b] the overwhelming consesus is about.
Don’t forget to drop the strawman that I claim there is zero ACC. I don’t. It is non-zero in my opinion.
Finally, one last thing about the consensus argument. To say the science is complete, correct and nearly finished is incorrect. To those people, you are trying to squash the one aspect of science that benefits you the most. The opposition of hypothesis in science forces **both[\b] sides to work on finding the correct answer. You all correctly point out when the other side is wrong but put on the blinders when your own side makes false claims.
Like the claim that the science on this matter is complete: Lmao
Oooops, didn’t see that one. I wonder what else our just opened eyes will see next?
No, he was merely found not to be outright academically dishonest. That does not vindicate his non-expert assertions in any way.
I’ve told you already: that the Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference limit will be reached this century if we don’t reduce our emissions, first to 1990 levels and then lower again.
The “Higher end” of the projected temperature rise is around 11[sup]o[/sup]C. Can you name a single climatologist who thinks this doesn’t constitute DAI? Failing that, one who thinks a concentration of 750 ppm wouldn’t constitute DAI?
In any case, why is the burden on those who agree with the overwhelming (if not unanimous) majority of climatologists (that DAI is a genuine threat) to “reference” this tiny handful, if they exist at all? Surely that creates a false “balance”, rather like the handful of scientists who deny evolution being phoned up for a quote every time it’s in the media?
Again, how is telling people what people like Jim Hansen say “hysterical”, “screaming”, “doomsaying” or any other strawmanising term?
