USA Today: Could we be wrong about global warming?

I don't claim there is any kind of conspiracy behind this. It's more of an institutionalized sort of thing that has evolved over centuries.

You can start with a great deal of friction between science and the church centuries ago. The church did what Al Gore tries to do - squash the differing view that was perceived as a threat to the status quo. Gradually, the church lost most of its dominance over society and has basically been supplanted by science. One group says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," and the other group says, "In the beginning, there was a great big bang..."

While I do think Science is asking the really big questions and finding a very different and Reasoned explanation for things, they aren't actually answering the ultimate questions. Evolution doesn't explain how life started, just how it evolved. The Big Bang theory doesn't explain how all the "stuff" that makes up the universe first got there. Or even "we know that the speed of light is 186,000 miles/sec, but WHY is it 186,000 miles/sec?" (How did the laws of Math and Physics get written in the first place?)

I'm not looking for any sort of spiritual answer to these questions. I realize things are what they are. But it's not my job to explain such things, it is Science's ultimate tasks.

As a group, scientists have been mostly immune to the big Wars and the Cold War. Part of the scientific "way" is to share observations and results, and to seek peer review. Even if you're an American and the peers are Commie Pinkos. What I'm saying is there's a natural lack of respect for nations and borders built in to their world.

Also built in to their world view (and ours) is a sort of pedestal we put them on; they're the great oracle. Somehow, the scientific way (and community) is above bias and misconduct; it would make a mockery of Science itself. We put more trust in these people - witness Barfo's protestations about anyone disagreeing with them not possibly being experts. We appreciate that Discipline and Reason are the foundation of their lives' work.

Perhaps Science started to become a perversion of itself with the two World Wars (and even until now). In World War I, science's contribution to the effort was not .1% better bullets or .1% bigger bombs; WMDs in the form of poison gases.

In World War II it was the A-Bomb. Einstein epitomized my earlier description of science. He didn't want to be bothered by the war, had friends who worked at places like the Max Planck Institute in Nazi Germany, and so on. When he was told his colleagues over there were working on the A-Bomb, he wrote a letter to FDR:

So we built his bomb and used it and won the war. With all this power comes consequences, though, and Einstein and other scientists, along with political leaders had to deal with the genie let out of its bottle. The scientists wanted an international organization to take control over the whole shebang, and no nations would possess such power. There's a sort of arrogance there that persists to this day. FDR had big plans for the UN, and according to the book "The Conquerers," he was planning on leaving the presidency to become the president of the international government.

http://www.amazon.com/Conquerors-Roosevelt-Destruction-Hitlers-1941-1945/dp/0684810271

As I see it, this is one source of the institutionalized Big Lie. It's the culture, the nature of the beast (Science).

There's more to it, though. Ike warned us of the Miltary-Industrial-Scientific Complex - the word Scientific was removed from his speech at the last moment. What these three things have in common is a heavy reliance on government for funding and other support. While the Left vilifies the first two (Military, Industry), they are overly in love with the third. Yet Ike was right, they're all a similar threat or positive force; as a threat the worst kind of force.

Today, Science has lost its way as I've posted quite a few times. It hasn't just supplanted religion, it's become one. Complete with origin stories, miracles, and a god named Mathematics. Like the church did hundreds of years ago, it is stifling the dissent to the status quo. It is quite obviously tied heavily to govt. for funding and lionization.

I'm OK with Science being oblivious to borders and nations. I am not OK with them wanting everyone else to have no borders or nations. What is Kyoto all about?

Of course there are plenty of folks who see opportunities in what Science is doing and take advantage. Enter Al Gore and the IPCC. Politicians. Influencing Science. Perverting it.

You may think I spammed a bunch of right wing talking point type quotes from scientists a few posts ago, but there are a few phrases within that are troubling.

"I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion." - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

"Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning." - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

Both talk about Science being a religion. The second guy is telling you what's really going on.

"Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly..."

He is outing the system. If you want funding, don't rock the boat!

"Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time."


He's downright saying that Science is being perverted. No longer fundamentally scientific.

"It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming." - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

He's calling it a blatant lie, I call it a Big Lie.

"The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse."

He's pointing out the agenda.

"Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined." - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

The lie is so big, it can't really be stopped.

&c

 

It's cool that you did some computer modeling, but you seem to be missing a very fundamental point, which is that models such as these try to predict probabilities, not events. Predicting the future, at the level you are suggesting in your examples, is indeed impossible - but no one seriously expects that. You don't write a program to predict that ARod will hit a double in the third inning on August 19, 2010. You write a program to predict what the chances of that happening are. And if you think getting hit by a bus will change the probabilities in a meaningful way, you could add that in easily enough - take the fraction of people killed by busses last year, adjust it if you think baseball players are more or less likely to be hit by busses than the average person. (I'd guess they are less likely).

barfo

 

"to gain insight into the operation of those systems, or to observe their behavior"
"enable the prediction of the behavior of the system from a set of parameters and initial conditions."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_simulation

A computer simulation, a computer model or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system. Computer simulations have become a useful part of mathematical modeling of many natural systems in physics (computational physics), chemistry and biology, human systems in economics, psychology, and social science and in the process of engineering new technology, to gain insight into the operation of those systems, or to observe their behavior.[1]

Traditionally, forming large models (spelt 'modeling' in American English) of systems has been via a mathematical model, which attempts to find analytical solutions to problems and thereby enable the prediction of the behavior of the system from a set of parameters and initial conditions.

 

Minstrel's use of "model" isn't a physical model, like you'd create with a spreadsheet or a stats program.

A model in his usage is a concept, like the atom has protons and neutrons in the nucleus and electrons orbiting the nucleus. That model has evolved over time so electrons do exist in the space around the nucleus but they're not in a known location but rather a cloud of probability. The valence model works for chemistry, even though the model is not at all a realistic representation of atomic structure.

 

Minstrel,

I'm not confusing the use of the word Model.

We've been talking about computer models, because computer models are what climate scientists are basing their predictions of the end of the world.

I think it is you who are confused because you brought up the scientific model strawman.

 

Like post #396

 

Unfortunately, there is no man made climate model (in your use of the term). The models you talk about actually do help us to understand things like how molecules are made. Any climate change model does not have the "molecules" that we can reproduce in the lab or in products - every time.

And your models are about a Truth. The best Truth that we can have for now. A changing Truth. And while you concede that the computer models aren't very good, they are what the scaremongers are using as the bulk of the support for their belief. See post 396, it's there in black and white from one of our top scientific institutions (MIT).

So when they advertise their model (your sense of the term) as the best Truth, but it isn't even a valid model, then what? It's an outright lie.

 

Even if true, that is better than uneducated guessing, which seems to be the alternative being offered here.

barfo

 

I think this wikipedia entry is more relevant:

barfo

 

So, to summarize, scientists are evil because they made the bomb. Therefore they cannot be trusted.
Things politicians do (e.g. Kyoto) show that scientists cannot be trusted. Things Al Gore says show that scientists cannot be trusted.

Your rejection of climate science isn't any different than the Catholic church insisting that the sun revolves around the earth. To hell with science, we are going to believe what we want to believe... Eventually history laughs at those who try this tactic.

barfo