That raises a point that I've been thinking about for awhile. The complexity of understanding climate change is significant and, like you point out, it's not like there's one easy experiment that makes it obvious one way another. What data would it take to convince you that there is a problem? Any extremes we've seen can be called (1) just "bad weather" and not climate change or (2) part of the natural cycle of heating and cooling that has occurred over the ages. Given the inherent difficulty in proving/disproving climate change, what would it take to convince you climate change is real? The reason I ask is that the situation reminds me of Pascal's wager about deciding to believe in God because the upside of going to heaven beats the downside of not believing and going to H E double hockeysticks (a bad reason for being religious, but that's a whole other thread.) The upside of treating climate change as real and trying to change our ways seems to beat the downside of incorrectly treating it as real and developing alternate energy strategies despite the fact that climate change is not occurring. The first paragraph is more scientific, but the second one is philosophical. I'd be interested to hear your take on both.
First of all, I do believe the earth is warming. The question of whether it's being affected by Man is much tougher to prove. Where did all the glaciers go? You know, the ones that covered most of the northern hemisphere and carved out the Great Lakes? They've melted because the earth is warming and has been warming for 10,000 years (most of that time). So why do we expect they'd stop melting? Or melt at some consistent rate, where more melting means Man is making them melt faster? There are a few things I see that Man is doing that contribute to the measurements we see. Clear cutting rain forests means less trees that breathe in CO2 and breathe out O2. Or paving much of everything around us in asphalt, which is 95% efficient at trapping heat (too bad we can't make solar panels from it). So I'm not a denier in the least. My view is that the warming is happening, has been happening, and there's nothing we can do about that. What makes a lot more sense is to figure out how to keep cities like Miami from being underwater at some point in the future. Second, what would it take to get me to believe Man's general activities (as opposed to cloud seeding and other deliberate attempts to affect things) is causing climate change? I was convinced CFCs affected the ozone hole without any arm twisting. I can see the chemical formula and realize there's legitimate cause for concern. CFCs are synthesized by Man and not a normal part of the atmosphere. There is cause and effect in the case of CFCs. Which brings me to the third issue, cause and effect. What happens if you overlay global warming/temperatures on this graph? OMG, kill people because they're the cause! They're not the cause. It could be the other way around - warmer climate makes a habitat suitable for more people. In any case, I'm not sure at all there's any cause and effect relationship here. Nor am I convinced AT ALL there's a cause and effect relationship between what certain scientists are selling us. Finally, Pascal's Wager. While I may not buy into MAN MADE global warming, I've posted all along that air pollution is not good, so we should do things to reduce it, etc. I also think that where you can err, err on the safe side. But there's also the issue of cost vs. the uncertainty. Find a balance where you don't have to wipe out the entire world economy without any certainty you'll affect a single thing you're trying (and claiming) to, and I'm sold on that. EDIT: The IMMINENT THREAT nature of some claims is the kind of thing that got us into Iraq, no? More specifically, it's meant to be a call to immediate action. Yet I think we're under immediate threat of being hit by an asteroid. There's all sorts of proof they are out there. There's no proof there's not one going to hit us really soon, or even that an asteroid we know about is truly going to follow the path we calculate. So should we spend all the world's money, time, and other resources on eradicating all the asteroids?
I assume that the scientists in this thread would know the difference between computer models that attempt to predict the future, and experiments in a controlled setting that produce consistent results that can be replicated and used as evidence to predict future results.
There are often theoretical scientists that make accurate predictions before we have the means to test these predictions. Clearly making predictions about something as complicated as the world is trickier.
Given the same data as input and the same random number seed, the models will produce consistent results that can be replicated. They are DETERMINISTIC. I don't think anyone claims they are truly predicting future results. They only predict future results within the model's constraints. If models could accurately predict the future, there'd be people making NBA models, predicting tomorrow night's game results, and winning big in Vegas at the sports book.
And they're not that accurate. "However, Small warned that roulette "is a game of chance. Even if the odds are in your favor, there is still a probability of losing, and losing big. In the long run you would come out ahead but you may first need very deep pockets."" (They're only talking about improving the odds, not making accurate predictions)
Back to the actual OP... This section interested me: Am I alone in seeing a corollary between this judicial decision and many of the medical malpractice suits? Don't a lot of those arise from a doctor making a reasonable judgment based on available data and simply being wrong?
I could very easily be wrong, but I don't think so. At least many I've seen or heard of first hand, not the ones that get talked about in the news for being outlandish, but most I hear of seem to be due to negligence on the part of the doctor. Either ignoring the available data, not getting data, etc. And I say most. I know there's plenty different.
I think any time something goes wrong where a doctor or hospital is involved, there's a lawyer who'll gladly sue.
