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I'm pretty sure they have budged on some of their points, and that folks have taken this as proof they admit they're entirely wrong, but putting that aside for

by makomk 7y ago

I'm pretty sure they have budged on some of their points, and that folks have taken this as proof they admit they're entirely wrong, but putting that aside for a moment... Suppose for a moment that the scientists hadn't budged. That they'd listened to all the folks who say that climate change deniers are simply liars who aren't worth listening to and not even bothered to look at their complaints. Who would you believe - the Nature-published scientists or the evil climate denial movement? Because unless you'd be willing to believe the deniers over the mainstream scientific community, it seems like we're in unfalsifiable territory here, where if the mainstream scientists admit they're wrong it proves they're right, and if they don't it also proves they're right.

dredmorbius 7y ago
"Let's suppose what didn't happen and assume it did...." Science, as a process, is a process at arriving at truths. It's fundamentally dialectic, as opposed to rhetorical, the profession practiced by many around the denial movement, several in this thread. Naomi Oreskes' name has already been mentioned here. In addition to writing on climate (and ozone/CFCs, tobacco, lead, asbestos, etc., etc., etc.) denial, she's written on the history of one of the more amazing feats of collective mind-changing in science: the adoption of the theory of plate tectonics, or continental drift, as it was first called. When proposed, the theory was ridiculed as completely crackpot. But what happened was that more and more evidence, and mechanisms, turned up. And, yes, over the course of about a half century, many of the original objectors died. But from roughly 1915 to 1965, established views changed from believing that the continents had always occupied their current positions to the understanding that they very much had not. Geography, geology, fossils, radioactive decay (as both heat source and clock), undersea surveys, earthquake faults, seismic analysis. The preponderance of evidence changed minds. https://www.worldcat.org/title/plate-tectonics-an-insiders-history-of-the-modern-theory-of-the-earth/oclc/1114571537 https://www.worldcat.org/title/plate-tectonics-an-insiders-h... https://www.worldcat.org/title/rejection-of-continental-drift-theory-and-method-in-american-earth-science/oclc/38989594 https://www.worldcat.org/title/rejection-of-continental-drif...

by makomk 7y ago

dredmorbius 7y ago

"Let's suppose what didn't happen and assume it did...." Science, as a process, is a process at arriving at truths. It's fundamentally dialectic, as opposed to rhetorical, the profession practiced by many around the denial movement, several in this thread. Naomi Oreskes' name has already been mentioned here. In addition to writing on climate (and ozone/CFCs, tobacco, lead, asbestos, etc., etc., etc.) denial, she's written on the history of one of the more amazing feats of collective mind-changing in science: the adoption of the theory of plate tectonics, or continental drift, as it was first called. When proposed, the theory was ridiculed as completely crackpot. But what happened was that more and more evidence, and mechanisms, turned up. And, yes, over the course of about a half century, many of the original objectors died. But from roughly 1915 to 1965, established views changed from believing that the continents had always occupied their current positions to the understanding that they very much had not. Geography, geology, fossils, radioactive decay (as both heat source and clock), undersea surveys, earthquake faults, seismic analysis. The preponderance of evidence changed minds. https://www.worldcat.org/title/plate-tectonics-an-insiders-history-of-the-modern-theory-of-the-earth/oclc/1114571537 https://www.worldcat.org/title/plate-tectonics-an-insiders-h... https://www.worldcat.org/title/rejection-of-continental-drift-theory-and-method-in-american-earth-science/oclc/38989594 https://www.worldcat.org/title/rejection-of-continental-drif...