Al Bore Blather

Actually, I'm talking about THIS winter vs. last winter vs. winter 10 years ago.

Warming implies that things are getting warmer, but they're actually getting colder.



People who use your tactics are trying to squash the truth or at least healthy scientific skepticism. Oddly, you bash religion and you fail to see that science is turning into a religion, complete with beliefs in the unseen and unmeasurable.

 

Cheap mathematical trick. Look what happens when you look at -4 degrees to +4 degrees.



And note, I do believe in global warming. It's obviously warmed since the last ice age, which would be the right most bottom point on the above graph. Must be from all the fossil fuels we burned starting 10,000 years ago.

You might notice the red line (CO2 level) trails the temperature (it is to the right of the blue line), hence it sure doesn't look like a cause of temperature change.

 

Cheap rhetorical trick. You didn't expand the y-axis (temperature), you expanded the x-axis (time). Your graph shows the last 450,000 years, rather than the last 1000 years.

I don't think anyone (except maybe our Christian fundamentalist friends) denies the ice ages happened, or that the climate changes without human intervention. That does not rule out the possibility that the climate might also change with our intervention.

barfo

 

"My" graph also shows that global warming and cooling is cyclical and has occurred several times, and also that we're below the most recent peak; probably cooling over the long haul, not warming.

You could pick a any spot on the graph where there's been warming and zoom in on it and play chicken little.

 

It's not clear to me on that graph whether we've reached the peak of our current warming cycle or not. It is true that over the long term, we are headed for another ice age. However, in the long term, we are all dead, including many generations of our decendants. Your graph has a very long timescale.

Not really, since for any other spot on the graph, the future is known. Ours is the only spot on the graph where we don't have future data.

And 1000 years is not exactly zooming in. 1000 years is a pretty big deal for humans. Not such a big deal for the earth. What happens on the timescale of 1000 years matters.

barfo

 

I'm not in the least a religious person. So this latest attempt to stifle scientific skepticism is lost on me.

What is the scientific method? When you have scientists saying "I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe" then it is a belief and not based on the scientific method. No scientific observation by man or machine shows that there is life elsewhere (hint: that's the "conclusion" bit of the scientific method).

Or maybe you think science has evolved to the point where consensus means anything scientifically. But hey, that's both a belief system (in the consensus without fact), and outright politics (consensus implies some sort of actual vote).

String theory is a good one, too. Lots of math, not a single observation.

Or maybe you think science is all about peer pressure.

Or maybe you think science is about getting grants. Those are awarded based upon politics more than the value of the science anymore.

Science is failing, dude. It is supposed to be cold and clinical and based upon measurement of things that actually exist, and with a healthy dose of skepticism.

So why is it that anyone who goes against the establishment is accused of being a heretic? Sounds like a religion to me.

 

Being skeptical is all good. However, being wrong is not the same as being skeptical.

Similarly, a scientist saying "I believe I'll have another beer" is not based on the scientific method. So what?

That's true. So what? If a scientist said "there is life on other planets, here's the evidence", then you'd have a case. But as far as I know no one has said that. I'd guess that someone argued that there is a statistical probability of life on other planets?

I take it we are back to global warming now? Scientific consensus just means that scientists are, by and large, convinced by the evidence presented. Not that they hold a vote. Every accepted scientific theory is a consensus, and no one is taking votes, nor does the consensus imply a lack of scientific evidence. Quite the opposite.

Wow. Do you realize that many, many scientific theories that are now experimentally well established were created prior to the experiments? In fact, scientists frequently design experiments to prove or disprove theories. The fact that a theory exists without experimental evidence is hardly an indictment of the science or the scientists.

Or maybe you do, from the sounds of it.

There is an element of politics in everything humans do, and scientists are humans. [No, I cannot prove the latter statement]. But you are exaggerating the political aspect greatly.

barfo

 

There's nothing wrong with making a hypothesis, testing it, analyzing the results of those tests, and reporting factually what the results were. Science is no longer doing those things when they're denying the results of those tests and reporting that the hypothesis must be true, we only need to find data to fit it.

I'm skeptical of life elsewhere in the universe - not because I think we're blessed by some god or anything like that - but rather that there are an enormous number of things that appear to be unique to our situation on earth. Things like some combination of a magnetic field, a large planet like Jupiter where it is to protect the earth, the large size of our moon (which is unique among all the planets we know of), that the Earth is also in the temperate zone (where H2O exists as liquid, not ice, not gas), and so on. Then of course, there's Enrico Fermi (he's a real scientist, you know) who asked "where are they?" which is such a simple question that no scientist has answered. In fact, given what we know of life and evolution, once it is established anywhere, it should evolve into billions of species (as it has on Earth alone) and the sky should be filled with all sorts of signs that it exists.

If I argue these simple observable truths, the typical "science as religion" argument used against me is something like "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" - which could equally argued about God; and is why I believe in neither.

Moses, I mean Al Gore, came down from the mountain after talking to God and to bring us the great oracle and laws, so we should follow! I mean, the guy is a certified scientific expert. No wait, he's not. He's a politician and not a very bright person in general.

And no, I wasn't particularly arguing about peer pressure regarding Al Gore's crusade against economics, but rather in general. I've brought up the case of the first humans in North America:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/11/17/carolina.dig/index.html

Yet when anthropologists found human artifacts (tools, fire pits, etc.) dated up to 16,000 years ago and presented their findings, they were treated like those 65,000 scientists who think man made global warming is a hoax. So again, it sounds like the Church burying scientific findings that went against its dogma...

And you can't have a consensus without a vote. If you call it one and refuse to have the vote, then you're scared your hoax will be uncovered. It's also not very scientific, as I already wrote.

 

I disagree that science is not doing that. Science is all about doing that.

All of that is perfectly reasonable, and it makes sense to be skeptical that life exists elsewhere. I certainly am. However, that's no indictment of science at all. Science isn't insisting that life does exist elsewhere.

As for Fermi, he's been dead 50 years now, but the fact that we haven't observed other life doesn't prove it doesn't exist. We may still be looking in the wrong places.

Who is asking you to believe in God or extraterrestrial life? Science certainly isn't.

Oh, please. He's reasonably bright. He is a politician and not a scientist, you are right about that. But you can't attack science and hold up Al Gore's lack of scientific credentials as a reason. That doesn't make any sense.

I don't see where you get that from that article. It seems to me that science in that case is working as it should: new evidence is discovered, and it's meaning is debated among scientists. What would the alternative be?

Doesn't sound like the scientific community was burying the findings or casting out the heretics. I think you've seriously misinterpreted that article, if you think so.

Consensus
1. An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole.
2. General agreement or accord.

I don't see anything there about voting. There is a consensus on the blazer board that Frye has sucked this year. There wasn't a vote. But there is general agreement that he's sucked. We made our observations, we discussed it amongst ourselves, and we came to a consensus.

barfo