4 ms·

It is interesting the other comments in this area are vague and emotional, whereas the only thought out comment is downvoted because it is critical of global wa

by yters 9y ago

It is interesting the other comments in this area are vague and emotional, whereas the only thought out comment is downvoted because it is critical of global warming. This constant dynamic is what makes me skeptical of the whole global warming thing.

adrianN 9y ago
Comments criticizing evolution in favor of intelligent design will also be downvoted for the same reasons. The scientific consensus is that climate change is happening, and it's caused by us. The evidence in favor of the theory is overwhelming, so you'd have to publish a pretty substantial study, not a comment on an internet forum, if you would want to sensibly argue against anthropogenic climate change without being ridiculed.
- yters 9y ago
  Well, I'm glad the consensus of scientists has never been wrong. It's also helpful the scientists can tell us who the true experts are, otherwise we'd never know.
  - rtp 9y ago
    Who else do you suggest should inform us if not scientists?
    - oldandtired 9y ago
      Maybe, you can look at the evidence presented and determine for yourself what conclusions you come to. It may be that you will determine that the evidence is for anthropogenic climate change. But then again, you might determine that the evidence is for natural processes and that anthropogenic climate change is extremely minor. It's up to you to decide how and what you will believe. [Afterthought edit]. Many years ago, I was given the following advice: Surround yourself with experts, but make your own decisions as you see fit. Experts are just that, specialists in a narrow field and they do not see the bigger picture. It is up to you to do that for yourself.
      - adrianN 9y ago
        Maybe you don't have time to study a subject for 5+ years fulltime to become sufficiently qualified to read scientific papers and assess their results.
        yters 9y ago
        What if scientists regularly engage in falsifying and otherwise manipulating their results to fit their agenda? What if the very statistical methodology they follow is open to abuse? If we are to give wholesale acceptance to anyone who is an 'official scientist,' yet they could well be corrupt, how is that epistemically responsible? Furthermore, why must we blindly accept the status quo when there are legitimate dissenters? The very nature of scientific advance is that it overturns the status quo. Your methodology would seem to undermine scientific progress. Finally, it is said that the mark of a true expert is the ability to boil a complex subject down to the lay level. If the layman must study fulltime for 5+ years to understand climate science results, is the field perhaps not at the necessary level of expertise?
        oldandtired 9y ago
        We have enough evidence of cooking the books in lots of different fields. Retraction Watch is a good site to see this. The problem today is that there is no encouragement to investigate ideas that are different to the accepted models. Nor are this encouragement to do full scale duplications of reported results. Anomalies are only investigated if they don't appear to dispute the current consensus. I had a recent discussion with a nuclear physicist that I admire about this and his response was to the effect that he would discourage such experiments. There was a lot more in the discussion which is not relevant here. What we must be careful of is blindly assuming that our theories and models are correct. We have to realise that our interpretations of the results are many times based on deeply held beliefs that are not provable but are assumed to be true.
        bigbugbag 9y ago
        No need to resort to FUD, the thing you are mentioning happen and we can look at them. One such high profile example is Andrew Wakefield study published in the lancet which is the starting point for the "vaccines cause autism" controversy. What happened is the author got caught, found guilty of professional misconduct and removed from practicing medicine while the paper was retracted. But this had consequences as a growing and vocal fringe population used this to fuel their agenda and spread misinformation against vaccines playing a role in the resurgence of contagious diseases. But your arguing about climate change makes no sense, climate change has been happening for a while now there's no denying it field measure all points to this; sea level rises gradually, ice cap disappear, athmosphere composition changes, mass extinction of species is happening, natural disasters are increasing, etc. Instead of wasting everybody's time on minute details and discussing attribution you should focus on what can be done to minimize the consequences.
- oldandtired 9y ago
  Which scientific consensus? The IPCC climate scientists with their models or the physicists, engineers, climate scientists and others who are raising the questions and the information that disputes these conclusions? There are many who don't dispute that climate change occurs, what they say is that anthropogenic effects are, at this time, unknown and that any anthropogenic causes are minor compared to the various other causes. Since I started taking an interest in this subject in the 1970's, the evidence of anthropogenic causes has been underwhelming. As far as evolution and intelligent design are concerned, I have consigned both to the field of religious discussion and belief. I was an avid evolutionist until I started reading the actual results of experiments in the field. The results did not support any evolutionary model and still don't. As a result, I started to question why these scientists were pushing the wheelbarrow of the this model. Just because someone is a scientist doesn't mean that they will completely logical and fair-minded about some model or another. Scientists are no different to any other group of people. They are people too and as such, have their own foibles and unsubstantiated beliefs. If these scientists can demonstrate fair results then certainly we must look at those results. But the conclusions about what those results mean will depend on what an individual's starting point is. Just remember that old adage, to someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you are standing on scientific consensus as your "authority" then you are not acting in a manner that says you are investigating the facts as they are. It may well be that anthropogenic causes will disrupt the planets climate in dangerous and possibly even unalterable ways. But I have yet to see any such evidence presented, nor have I seen valid questions being answered by these same anthropogenic climate change scientists. From where I stand, it appears that money still speaks louder than the facts.
  - b1daly 9y ago
    I agree with your point that we should consider the evidence, and conclusions, presented to us as the work product of scientists. Especially as much of the information is shaped by innumerable cognitive biases. However, I’m fascinated that someone could realistically doubt the “theory of evolution.” For one thing, it is very much an active area of research, with new discoveries all the time. (Reading about the epigenetic aspects of hereditary traits kind of blew my mind. It turns out that animals adaptions to specific environments can influence later generations.) So how do consign a relatively young area of research, that is making concrete contributions to science as being akin to religious belief? The specifics, and controversies, of evolutionary theory, and it’s scientific cousins, are quite complex, and it seems rather capricious to wave it all away as if it was some cartoon theory of reality. My own, very limited, view of the weakness of evolution as a theory, is that it can seem like a “just so theory,” almost true by tautology. But the mechanisms of natural selection, and hereditary transfer of traits are so well established that to dismiss the lot of it strikes me as irrational.

by yters 9y ago

adrianN 9y ago

Comments criticizing evolution in favor of intelligent design will also be downvoted for the same reasons. The scientific consensus is that climate change is happening, and it's caused by us. The evidence in favor of the theory is overwhelming, so you'd have to publish a pretty substantial study, not a comment on an internet forum, if you would want to sensibly argue against anthropogenic climate change without being ridiculed.

yters 9y ago
Well, I'm glad the consensus of scientists has never been wrong. It's also helpful the scientists can tell us who the true experts are, otherwise we'd never know.
- rtp 9y ago
  Who else do you suggest should inform us if not scientists?
  - oldandtired 9y ago
    Maybe, you can look at the evidence presented and determine for yourself what conclusions you come to. It may be that you will determine that the evidence is for anthropogenic climate change. But then again, you might determine that the evidence is for natural processes and that anthropogenic climate change is extremely minor. It's up to you to decide how and what you will believe. [Afterthought edit]. Many years ago, I was given the following advice: Surround yourself with experts, but make your own decisions as you see fit. Experts are just that, specialists in a narrow field and they do not see the bigger picture. It is up to you to do that for yourself.
    - adrianN 9y ago
      Maybe you don't have time to study a subject for 5+ years fulltime to become sufficiently qualified to read scientific papers and assess their results.
      - yters 9y ago
        What if scientists regularly engage in falsifying and otherwise manipulating their results to fit their agenda? What if the very statistical methodology they follow is open to abuse? If we are to give wholesale acceptance to anyone who is an 'official scientist,' yet they could well be corrupt, how is that epistemically responsible? Furthermore, why must we blindly accept the status quo when there are legitimate dissenters? The very nature of scientific advance is that it overturns the status quo. Your methodology would seem to undermine scientific progress. Finally, it is said that the mark of a true expert is the ability to boil a complex subject down to the lay level. If the layman must study fulltime for 5+ years to understand climate science results, is the field perhaps not at the necessary level of expertise?
        oldandtired 9y ago
        We have enough evidence of cooking the books in lots of different fields. Retraction Watch is a good site to see this. The problem today is that there is no encouragement to investigate ideas that are different to the accepted models. Nor are this encouragement to do full scale duplications of reported results. Anomalies are only investigated if they don't appear to dispute the current consensus. I had a recent discussion with a nuclear physicist that I admire about this and his response was to the effect that he would discourage such experiments. There was a lot more in the discussion which is not relevant here. What we must be careful of is blindly assuming that our theories and models are correct. We have to realise that our interpretations of the results are many times based on deeply held beliefs that are not provable but are assumed to be true.
        bigbugbag 9y ago
        No need to resort to FUD, the thing you are mentioning happen and we can look at them. One such high profile example is Andrew Wakefield study published in the lancet which is the starting point for the "vaccines cause autism" controversy. What happened is the author got caught, found guilty of professional misconduct and removed from practicing medicine while the paper was retracted. But this had consequences as a growing and vocal fringe population used this to fuel their agenda and spread misinformation against vaccines playing a role in the resurgence of contagious diseases. But your arguing about climate change makes no sense, climate change has been happening for a while now there's no denying it field measure all points to this; sea level rises gradually, ice cap disappear, athmosphere composition changes, mass extinction of species is happening, natural disasters are increasing, etc. Instead of wasting everybody's time on minute details and discussing attribution you should focus on what can be done to minimize the consequences.
oldandtired 9y ago
Which scientific consensus? The IPCC climate scientists with their models or the physicists, engineers, climate scientists and others who are raising the questions and the information that disputes these conclusions? There are many who don't dispute that climate change occurs, what they say is that anthropogenic effects are, at this time, unknown and that any anthropogenic causes are minor compared to the various other causes. Since I started taking an interest in this subject in the 1970's, the evidence of anthropogenic causes has been underwhelming. As far as evolution and intelligent design are concerned, I have consigned both to the field of religious discussion and belief. I was an avid evolutionist until I started reading the actual results of experiments in the field. The results did not support any evolutionary model and still don't. As a result, I started to question why these scientists were pushing the wheelbarrow of the this model. Just because someone is a scientist doesn't mean that they will completely logical and fair-minded about some model or another. Scientists are no different to any other group of people. They are people too and as such, have their own foibles and unsubstantiated beliefs. If these scientists can demonstrate fair results then certainly we must look at those results. But the conclusions about what those results mean will depend on what an individual's starting point is. Just remember that old adage, to someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you are standing on scientific consensus as your "authority" then you are not acting in a manner that says you are investigating the facts as they are. It may well be that anthropogenic causes will disrupt the planets climate in dangerous and possibly even unalterable ways. But I have yet to see any such evidence presented, nor have I seen valid questions being answered by these same anthropogenic climate change scientists. From where I stand, it appears that money still speaks louder than the facts.
- b1daly 9y ago
  I agree with your point that we should consider the evidence, and conclusions, presented to us as the work product of scientists. Especially as much of the information is shaped by innumerable cognitive biases. However, I’m fascinated that someone could realistically doubt the “theory of evolution.” For one thing, it is very much an active area of research, with new discoveries all the time. (Reading about the epigenetic aspects of hereditary traits kind of blew my mind. It turns out that animals adaptions to specific environments can influence later generations.) So how do consign a relatively young area of research, that is making concrete contributions to science as being akin to religious belief? The specifics, and controversies, of evolutionary theory, and it’s scientific cousins, are quite complex, and it seems rather capricious to wave it all away as if it was some cartoon theory of reality. My own, very limited, view of the weakness of evolution as a theory, is that it can seem like a “just so theory,” almost true by tautology. But the mechanisms of natural selection, and hereditary transfer of traits are so well established that to dismiss the lot of it strikes me as irrational.