# Yes, let's teach the controversy. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 8, 2014, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261 "2014-01-08T08:52:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/141 "2014-01-19T23:17:32Z")
> [@](#): > > So while not endorsing this attempt at undermining our basis for current exceptional global warming, I must say I find myself in sympathy with much of what Will Hutton writes. In particular his conclusion that the debate around climate change is fundamentally about power and politics rather than the environment seems undeniable. There are not that many “facts” about (the meaning of) climate change which science can unequivocally reveal. I am copying this to Asher Minns, since Asher has been giving the issue of “sound science” and Tyndall’s reaction to it some thought recently. Mike [Hulme] [http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1285.txt](http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1285.txt) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/142 "2014-01-19T23:32:41Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > [http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1285.txt](http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1285.txt) A discussion about an opinion piece, and the opinion of a critic before 2 more IPCC reports were out. Sad really. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/143 "2014-01-19T23:55:11Z")
This is still one of those golden moments. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > Then there is the really big bull elephant smashing about the living room. Global warming. **Fuckheads want to tell you** it’s all settled and only fools and deniers and paid shills would question any of it, which is complete horseshit. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > **Scientists are not saying that it is settled** , only that the like-hood of finding contrary evidence is diminishing constantly just like scientists in Evolution are telling us. I said “fuckheads are saying” and the counter is “Scientists are not saying”. Priceless. Did anyone ever say the science is settled? > [@](#): > > In testimony to Congress about global warming, Al Gore declared that “the science is settled” and he was right. The fact that CO₂ heats the atmosphere absolutely is settled science. The fact that the amount of CO₂ that humans have already emitted is causing warming at an unprecedented rate is also settled, and the longer we continue emitting CO₂ the worse it will get. [http://www.thescienceisstillsettled.com/](http://www.thescienceisstillsettled.com/) Whaaat?? > [@](#): > > **The science is settled** , Gore told the lawmakers. Carbon-dioxide emissions — from cars, power plants, buildings and other sources — are heating the Earth’s atmosphere. [Gore Takes Global Warming Message to Congress : NPR](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9047642) Yeah but he isn’t a scientist! > [@](#): > > Gore said that if left unchecked, global warming could lead to a drastic change in the weather, sea levels and other aspects of the environment. **And he pointed out that these conclusions are not his, but those of a vast majority of scientists who study the issue**. D’oh! ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/144 "2014-01-20T00:07:43Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > This is still one of those golden moments. > I said “fuckheads are saying” and the counter is “Scientists are not saying”. Priceless. > > Did anyone ever say the science is settled? > [http://www.thescienceisstillsettled.com/](http://www.thescienceisstillsettled.com/) > > Whaaat?? > > [Gore Takes Global Warming Message to Congress : NPR](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9047642) > > Yeah but he isn’t a scientist! > D’oh! Right, just his opinion, until you get quotes from the scientists who he is referring to you are just blowing smoke. The proper position is that it is very likely that most of the scientists are correct. The longer it goes with no deniers making a dent where it counts just adds to the certainty. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/145 "2014-01-20T00:18:45Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Nonsense claim, and even Wikipedia (which is pretty good on this one) clearly shows your errors. [Continental drift - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift#History) > > Among us scientists he is credited and honored, not dismissed. > > [http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html](http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html) > > Fight ignorance, don’t spread it. Sorry, Charlie, but Wegener, while admired for having a good idea – just as Ptolemy the Great is admired today for having a good idea – did not come up with the Tectonic Plate theory. He claimed that the continents drifted over the sea floors, and this was proven incorrect. Wegener was wrong. It took a significant change away from his theory for the workings of the plates to win scientific approval. You are the one who’s ignorant here. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/146 "2014-01-20T00:21:54Z")
BTW the explanation I rely on is here, from Realclimate, that is made and managed by real climate scientists: > **[RealClimate: Unsettled Science](https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/)** > > RealClimate: Unusually, I'm in complete agreement with a recent headline on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page: "The Climate Science Isn't Settled" The article below is the same mix of innuendo and misrepresentation that its author normally writes,... > [@](#): > > The attribution of the warming over the last 50 years to human activity is also pretty well established – that is ‘highly likely’ and the anticipation that further warming will continue as CO2 levels continue to rise is a well supported conclusion. To the extent that anyone has said that the scientific debate is over, this is what they are referring to. In answer to colloquial questions like “Is anthropogenic warming real?”, the answer is yes with high confidence. > > But no scientists would be scientists if they thought there was nothing left to find out. Think of the science as a large building, with foundations reaching back to the 19th Century and a whole edifice of knowledge built upon them. The community spends most of its time trying to add a brick here or a brick there and slowly adding to the construction. The idea that the ‘science is settled’ is equivalent to stating that the building is complete and that nothing further can be added. Obviously that is false – new bricks (and windows and decoration and interior designs) are being added and argued about all the time. However, while the science may not be settled, we can still tell what kind of building we have and what the overall picture looks like. Arguments over whether a single brick should be blue or yellow don’t change the building from a skyscraper to a mud hut. So Gore is going for the popular view of things when they are 90% or more likely to be or to take place. Incidentally the quotes you got were from the days even people like me told Gore to stop with that, the quotes found are from 2006 and 2007, seems that he is taking the advice now and this is another example of timeline trouble. Most of the recent denialist tripe only quotes from the same. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/147 "2014-01-20T00:38:18Z")
It has to be noticed that FX is doing the cowardly thing by ignoring the cite from The Union of Concerned Scientists with the links to the investigations and reviews made that exonereted the scientists, FX is regurgitating already debunked baloney. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/148 "2014-01-20T00:49:29Z")
Gosh Mr Science, who should I believe? Internet crank that never uses sources? Or rude asshole with a pretentious user name who always uses sources for every last goddamn thing? > [@Trinopus](#): > > Well, of course, they certainly do. The best geology courses explain why Wegener’s “Continental Drift” theory was rejected. This is not a case where the “dissenting voice was wright.” He wasn’t. Wegener’s theory was entirely wrong, and was correctly rejected. > [@](#): > > There were scientists who supported Wegener: the South African geologist Alexander Du Toit supported it as an explanation for the close similarity of strata and fossils between Africa and South America, and the Swiss geologist Émile Argand saw continental collisions as the best explanation for the folded and buckled strata that he observed in the Swiss Alps. Wegener’s theory found more scattered support after his death, but the majority of geologists continued to believe in static continents and land bridges. > > What prompted the revival of continental drift? In large part it was increased exploration of the Earth’s crust, notably the ocean floor, beginning in the 1950s and continuing on to the present day. By the late 1960s, plate tectonics was well supported and accepted by almost all geologists. We now know that Wegener’s theory was wrong in one major point: continents do not plow through the ocean floor. [http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html](http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html) I don’t know there Timmy. It’s a tough choice. Berkeley University or internet crank? I just don’t know who to believe. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/149 "2014-01-20T00:50:48Z")
It’s kind of funny that in a “teach the controversy” topic, there is no agreement on a controversy long over and done. Good luck with that global warming thing. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/150 "2014-01-20T00:59:07Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > I don’t know there Timmy. It’s a tough choice. Berkeley University or internet crank? I just don’t know who to believe. Your sources don’t even back you up. You’re the internet crank, and your ignorance is… Well, it’s typical, for you. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/151 "2014-01-20T01:00:44Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > It’s kind of funny that in a “teach the controversy” topic, there is no agreement on a controversy long over and done. > > Good luck with that global warming thing. Creationists are still fighting a controversy even longer obsolete. Yes, I’m casting you as the creationist. ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/152 "2014-01-20T01:06:06Z")
And **FX** continues **Masturbatingfuriously**. But he’s _still_ a fucking moron… Even though he gets off on it… Hey, who am _I_ to judge. Keep choking that chicken, _FX_. Whatever works for you, stooge… ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/153 "2014-01-20T01:15:07Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Gosh Mr Science, who should I believe? Internet crank that never uses sources? Or rude asshole with a pretentious user name who always uses sources for every last goddamn thing? > > [http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html](http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html) > > I don’t know there Timmy. It’s a tough choice. Berkeley University or internet crank? I just don’t know who to believe. > [@](#): > > We now know that Wegener’s theory was wrong in one major point: continents do not plow through the ocean floor. Instead, both continents and ocean floor form solid plates, which “float” on the asthenosphere, the underlying rock that is under such tremendous heat and pressure that it behaves as an extremely viscous liquid. (Incidentally, this is why the older term “continental drift” is not quite accurate – both continents and oceanic crust move.) I think it is the internet crank that is more accurate. \*\*Trinopus \*\*is right, instead of continental drift we have plate tectonics and Arthur Holmes elaborated on one of the ideas of Wegener and his mechanism was the one used for the modern theory. [http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/techist.html](http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/techist.html) > [@](#): > > In 1929, about the time Wegener’s ideas began to be dismissed, Arthur Holmes elaborated on one of Wegener’s many hypotheses; the idea that the mantle undergoes thermal convection. This idea is based on the fact that as a substance is heated its density decreases and rises to the surface until it is cooled and sinks again. This repeated heating and cooling results in a current which may be enough to cause continents to move. Arthur Holmes suggested that this thermal convection was like a conveyor belt and that the upwelling pressure could break apart a continent and then force the broken continent in opposite directions carried by the convection currents. This idea received very little attention at the time. > > Not until the 1960’s did Holmes’ idea receive any attention. Greater understanding of the ocean floor and the discoveries of features like mid-oceanic ridges, geomagnetic anomalies parallel to the mid-oceanic ridges, and the association of island arcs and oceanic trenches occurring together and near the continental margins, suggested convection might indeed be at work. These discoveries and more led Harry Hess (1962) and R.Deitz (1961) to publish similar hypotheses based on mantle convection currents, now known as “sea floor spreading”. This idea was basically the same as that proposed by Holmes over 30 years earlier, but now there was much more evidence to further develop and support the idea. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/154 "2014-01-20T01:16:47Z")
I know it’s a dead waste of time, but here’s a cite… [On Continental Drift](http://www.scientus.org/Wegener-Continental-Drift.html): “New theories donot always arrive with all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted. Wegener did not have an explanation for how continental drift could have occurred. He proposed two different mechanisms for this drift, one based on the centrifugal force caused by the rotation of the earth and a ‘tidal argument’ based on the tidal attraction of the sun and the moon. These explanations could easily be proven inadequate and opened Wegener to ridicule because they were orders of magnitude too weak. Wegener really did not believe that he had the explanation for the mechanism, but that this should not stop discussion of a hypothesis. The scientists of the time disagreed. After Alfred Wegener died, the Continental Drift Theory was quietly swept under the rug. With the Continental Drift Theory out of the way, the existing theories of continent formation were able to survive, with little challenge until the 1960’s.” Anyway, for anyone rational out there who is still interested, Wegener was not a “crackpot.” He was a serious observer, who had a good idea. The idea was wrong, for being incomplete. He never came up with the actual solution. That honor falls to someone else, a bit later. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/155 "2014-01-20T01:42:10Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Anyway, for anyone rational out there who is still interested, Wegener was not a “crackpot.” He was a serious observer, who had a good idea. The idea was wrong, for being incomplete. He never came up with the actual solution. That honor falls to someone else, a bit later. I get a laugh out of reading pre-sixties science articles that talk about mountain building and other events that they know happened, but there is no accepted theory or mechanism to explain how it happens. " He never came up with the actual solution. That honor falls to someone else, a bit later" could be the tagline for so many scientists. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/156 "2014-01-20T01:43:49Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > " He never came up with the actual solution. That honor falls to someone else, a bit later" could be the tagline for so many scientists. That’s how science works. Shoulders of giants, and all that. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/157 "2014-01-20T01:49:44Z")
Yep. When data is shared, it works really well. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/158 "2014-01-20T01:51:17Z")
Most peeps probably don’t know how many time H Pylori was “discovered” before the Nobel prize winners discovered it. ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/159 "2014-01-20T02:09:21Z")
We’re still waiting for you to explain that “us scientists”, there, **FX** … ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261/160 "2014-01-20T14:15:59Z")
You know how to keep a moron in suspense? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-lets-teach-the-controversy/678261.md?page=9)