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Quoting the great Bertrand Russell: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full

• DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  Quoting the great Bertrand Russell No need to do that. Socrates was saying the same thing two thousand years ago. I've come to the conclusion from watching other people that some people just have to know. I guess I can understand. It has to be hard to spend your life studying in a certain field and end up with "Well gee. It sorta looks this way guys, but we don't really know." When people slam the church for all the bad things they did in the past, they miss an important point -- the common denominator isn't religion, it's people. Certain people want to believe their stuff fervently. They want to believe that their belief system holds critical truths, and they want to persecute and ostracize those who fail to fall in line. It's not a problem with religion. It's humans that are the cause of this behavior. So it's not surprising to see church attendance down and scientific religious-thinking up. All those folks had to go somewhere, right?
  • Rod 18y ago
    OK, I attributed the quote to the wrong philosopher ;-) Science is not perfect. After all, Science is a human activity and humans are not perfect. Ideally, there should be no place for dogma in Science. In practise, there is some. Still, let us put things in perspective: Science is inherently non-dogmatic, while Religion is inherently dogmatic. I am not diminishing one nor the other. I am observing that they have entirely different essences and domains. The goal of Science is not to attain an "absolute truth". Indeed, one may study Quantum Mechanics for a lifetime and still feel uneasy about it. But the truth is that just as long as we can explain experimental results and observations with our scientific theories, we are making progress. No scientist will ever know everything about his field, but that does not mean he can't contribute to it. For centuries Newtonian Mechanics dominated. Then Einstein came up with his Theory of Relativity that could explain, for instance, the anomalous orbit of Mercury. In a few years, his theory was accepted. There was dogma, but it was not a big obstacle. By contrast, many religious fanatics in the U.S. in the 1960s still believed the Earth was flat, and when confronted with photos taken from Space they replied "OK, it looks a bit roundish at the edges." That is dogma. That is close-mindedness. It's not Religion's fault, it's a problem with us, humans (like you mentioned). In Science one should always keep a fresh mind and be willing to accept what goes against the dogma. Otherwise, we will end up in a new dark age where we have advanced technology but no true knowledge.
    • DanielBMarkham 18y ago
      I don't think we have a disagreement. My point was about human nature, not about religion. I really wish Kuhn was taught as much as Newton. I think what he discovered -- the human nature of the people who practice science and how it influences the study of science -- is just as important. Maybe more so.
    • eugenejen 18y ago
      Well, I think good scientists are always looking for facts that disapprove current theories and models of explanations. There is no affirmative for theories and models, but our inability to falsify them for the time being.
• logjam 18y ago
  Oh. People who know NOTHING about Science fall squarely in the "warmists" camp. The "nutcases", "tribal", or "primitives", eh? Certainly your own biases, politics, and ideology aren't apparent from your prose, right? Plenty of good scientists besides Freeman Dyson (one of my own personal heroes) have looked at the good science on the issue, and have concluded man's activities are causing harm.
  • eugenejen 18y ago
    You jump to conclusion too fast before reading the article. If you read it, you will know Dyson doesn't deny that human being's activities create the current global warming. But he doubts the consequences are as dire as what activists describe in their propaganda.
    • Tichy 18y ago
      So even Dyson says there is man-made warming, but still people who believe in man-made warming are ignorant, stubborn nutcases who have no understanding of science? This is getting a bit confusing...
      • dejb 18y ago
        Actually Dyson seems to be hedging his bets on whether it is caused by man. He seems less convinced than the conventional view but accepts it could be the case. His main point is that it won't be so bad or could even be good. The confusing part is why the global warming deniers would so instantly rush to him as verification of their views.
      • Rod 18y ago
        It is not exactly "confusing". The problem (as I see it) is that the question "does man cause Global Warming?" is ill-posed. OK, let us say that we have a mathematical model of the global climate: a bunch of partial differential equations describing heat and mass flow, etc etc etc. Since humans burn fuels and release C02 on the atmosphere, it is obvious that man influences the weather. The real question is not "whether", but "how much". The Sun's cycles also influence the weather. Varying levels of cosmic radiation also influence the weather. And if it's possible that the climate is indeed changing dramatically, what does "global warming" actually mean? The max temperatures are rising? Or does it mean that the average temperatures are rising? This is such a complex problem that interpreting it as a "yes / no question" is infuriating to say the least. Some people want to compress the entire global climate problem in one single bit of information. It's pathetic. And what pisses me off is that there are hords of ignorants who believe this is a "religious war" against big oil and corporate America and claim that anyone who dissents is an heretic who was bought by the dirty capitalists and who should be burned at the stake.
• Alex3917 18y ago
  "Interesting how so many people who know NOTHING about Science are SO sure that global warming is caused by man. Such dogma reminds me of the times of the 16th century Inquisition: no amount of evidence will ever convince the nutcase warmists that there MIGHT be a possibility that global warming is not caused by humans." I'm calling your BS. There are very few if any people who believe that it is impossible that global warming is not caused by man. I don't think I've ever heard that view expressed in the media, even once.
  • Rod 18y ago
    Well, since when is the media reliable? They also said Iraq had WMDs. Read some scientific papers. Seriously.
    • jibiki 18y ago
      I don't think you followed the double negatives there. The masses generally believe the media, and the media acknowledges the possibility of non-anthropogenic warming. If you are saying that the scientific establishment is 100% sure of AGW, then you just completely skewered your own argument.
  • nkurz 18y ago
    "There are very few if any people who believe that it is impossible that global warming is not caused by man." Are you saying that nobody claims that the observed global warming could not be caused by natural causes, and thus the warming must have been caused by man? For if you are claiming this, I think you are wrong. There are definitely a few very influential people claiming that climate change can only have been caused by man: "Only anthropogenic forcing of climate, however, can explain the recent anomalous warming in the late 20th century." http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/jones2004/jones2004.html http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/jones2004/jones2004.html This is from the abstract of a paper co-authored by Michael Mann, the lead author of the IPCC report on climate change. Or am I misreading your negations as well?
    • dejb 18y ago
• DaniFong 18y ago
  In business, war, governance, love, and the climate, people are forced to make decisions based on sorely incomplete data because time is of the essence, and it is all they're ever going to get. If likely exaggeration is to be called out, so too are those who assert that doubt should necessarily imply inaction.
  • robotrout 18y ago
    Why is "time of the essence"? Who told you so? Al "Save the Polar Bears" Gore? I promise you, those polar bears were in no danger. Do you know what a stampede is? It's a frightening thing, where a large herd of animals is frightened and begin to run. They run and run, trampeling anything in their path, killing anything that gets in front of them, and each other, as they run from the danger on their heals. Never would the danger they flee cause nearly the harm that the stampede itself causes. There are groups in the world that can stampede the human herd as well. The amount of stampeding that's been happening in the last 10 years is amazing. We stampede through this Patriot Act, and that Stimulus Plan, and the global warming stampede has been worse than both of them. Take a breath. Time is not of the essence. When somebody tell you that, they're trying to make you rush to judgment and make a poor decision. Timeshare salesman do it, politicians do it, and I'm sorry to tell you, Al Gore does it.
    • deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]
    • DaniFong 18y ago
      Al Gore has nothing to do with my reasoning process. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071119122043.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071119122043.ht... These are the risks mentioned in the IPCC Synthesis report. The seem sound and reasonable. * The report says that around 20 per cent to 30 per cent of the plant and animal species assessed are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if global average temperatures exceed 1.5 degree C to 2.5 degree C over late 20th century levels. * The report also points to the likelihood of "irreversible" impacts. For example if temperature increases exceed about 3.5 degrees C, between 40 per cent and 70 per cent of the species assessed might be at increased risk of extinction. * Increases in sea surface temperatures of about one-three degrees C are projected to result in more "frequent coral bleaching events and widespread mortality." * There is also concern over the oceans and seas becoming more acidic as they absorb rising levels of carbon dioxide and the impacts on "marine shell-forming organisms" like coral reefs. * Other reasons for concern focus on the risks of extreme weather events with higher confidence in the projected increases in droughts, heatwaves and floods as well as their adverse impacts. * The report also flags up concern that the poor and the elderly in low-latitude and less-developed areas including those in dry areas and living on mega-deltas are likely to suffer most. * There is high confidence that by mid-century "many semi-arid areas, for example the Mediterranean basin, western United States, southern Africa and northeast Brazil, will suffer a decrease in water resources due to climate change." * The IPCC summary also expresses concern that any benefits linked with climate change will be gone after more modest temperature rises. The guide, launched after five days of discussions in the Spanish city of Valencia, will be essential reading for delegates attending the upcoming UN climate convention meeting in Bali, Indonesia. * Concern is also raised that new observations linked with the Greenland and possibly Antarctic ice sheets may mean that the rate of ice loss will increase above previous forecasts.