OT: Why Do People Reject Science - Wrap Up

snuginarug wrote:

So Well wrote:And I think that governments that take repressive steps to move away from fossil fuels quickly will make life miserable for the majority of their citizens.

Exactly which repressive steps are you referring to? I would like to know exactly what you are talking about. Can you give examples?

They won't have to, the easily accessible fossil fuel sources have already been accessed, which is why they're now chasing coal seam gas and drilling for oil a mile under the sea! It will run out, it's not being replenished.

Does that mean that the people who did the research concluding that people who do research and then get published are wrong are also wrong themselves, since they did research and got published? So is the point really the opposite, since they are most likely wrong about published research being wrong, or am I wrong? Wait, I must be less wrong than them because I haven't been published!

from our friend, jnk, first response in this topic. viewtopic.php?p=310653#p310653


By the way, where has Roster been?

Much of what is posed as science is flawed from the get go. Maybe it would help it what is taken for proof of fact wasn't reversed every ten years by the next group of know it alls. (Is Pluto a Planet or not?)

Many things sold as facts by science are not, they are studies bent to conform to the makers ideas, without regard for truth or context. Acid Rain, Global Warming, ect, and the ways to control what is mother natures natural forces.

Point in fact, CO2 comes from us burning fossil fuels, (Coal , Oil ). Where did the CO2 or carbon in fossil fuels com from, out of our air, captured by growing biomatter (Plants) in the form of coal & oil. So the CO2 was in the air in the past, we are freeing it when we burn fossil fuels. Releasing CO2 MAY cause global warming, By the way this has happened before many times since the creation of Earth, it's a normal cycle nature. When the Earth gets warmer, more plants grow, and die, binding up the carbon and oxygen in their bio-mass, this over time becomes a new fuel source. Nothing is created or destroyed, only changed.

Our government leaders, think they can control everything by throwing money at it, (our money. not theirs), mainly they know that if they do it, they can devert a large amount of the money to themselves and their cronnies.

Flawed Science and Politics go hand in hand. Jim

snuginarug wrote:I am not terribly good at reasoned arguments, but I do know how to find facts.

If you follow this link: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/featur ... cords.html you will find an article on the NASA website. It discusses many different variables, and the details of weather recording by different agencies. You can do what you like with THAT. My interest is in the table on the top of the right sidebar. You can download a detailed PDF that shows the weather records of 4 different recording agencies since 1880. No ideology, no arguments, no interpretations, just a chart with temperatures on it.

Invariably, a great deal of attention centers on each year’s ranking, but it is critical to focus on the decade-long trends that matter more, the GISS scientists emphasize. On that time scale, the three records are unequivocal: the last decade has been the warmest on record.

"Warmest on record." The problem is that record is only 130 years long. 130 years is nothing more than a blip in the tens of thousands of years of the earth's existence. Still only a blip if you are a creationist and believe the earth is only 6000 years old.

We don't have data going back far enough, and we won't live long enough either, to absolutely, unequivocally, say the trend of the last 100+ years is a long term trend setting the direction for the next 1000 years, or is just part of a natural variation with a cycle time on the order of 5 to 10 thousand years.

A question I've never gotten a good answer to is this. If man is the principle cause of the warming of the earth we see now, then what caused the warming thousands of years ago that melted the polar ice cap off of the North American continent? How can we say with any certainty that same phenomenon is not being repeated now?

Goofproof wrote:Nothing is created or destroyed, only changed.

Additionally for the earth as a whole, energy is dissipated and gained. The earth every day absorbs billions upon billions of Btus of radiant energy from the sun. It simultaneously is radiating billions upon billions of Btus of energy to the blackness of space. How much is that balance shifting? I don't know if anyone knows. There very well may be a limit far lower than the alarmists can conceive. And then again there may be a limit far higher than the naysayers want to believe. As the earth warms it will absorb less energy and radiate more energy, keeping the exchange at some balance. That balance point may be close, thus avoiding any significant further temperature rise. Or, it may be much higher than now, in which case we're probably pretty well screwed.

idamtnboy wrote:"Warmest on record." The problem is that record is only 130 years long.

Yes, we've only directly measured and kept data for 130 years. But a myriad of other methods of obtaining data shows trends over tens of thousands of years, which is how we know about previous warming and cooling events. The current rate of change since the industrial revolution is unprecedented, the other events happened over thousands of years.

I have to say, I am stumped.

Me: We are experiencing unprecedented global warming.

Skeptic: Oh really? Prove it.

Me: OK, here are some studies, facts , reports, concrete, quantifiable data.

Skeptic: Oh, well, I can't believe that, you can't trust those scientists.

Me: So what do you want?

Skeptic: Proof.

Me: But I've given you all that might constitute proof.

Skeptic: That's not good enough. *spouts theories based on feelings and slight knowledge*


I don't know jack about climatology, meteorology, geological extrapolations of past climate changes, radiation, gas exchange, the theory of relativity. Because I didn't study them in college. I studied literature and teaching English as a second language. I didn't get multiple degrees in any of the sciences. I did not make it my life's work to understand climate. However, I personally know a climatologist. He is a world expert on drought. HE studied the sciences. HE got multiple degrees. HE has made it his life's work to understand climate. I think I'll go with his ideas on the topic, rather than my own.

I have been interested in GW for many years and read all I can on the subject.
As mentioned before, most people are not educated enough to make a rational opinion.
So they rely on others to do their thinking for them.

To rely on experts is troubling, it depends on WHICH expert you rely on.
Recently, there have been several reports that finally and conclusively settle the issue.
The problem here is that some agree and some are skeptical, so who do we believe.
One site I find most useful is http://www.icecap.us/
I am leaning to the skeptical views since I am a skeptic on all issues.
If one reads the above link, you will find many articles refuting the many claims made by the warmists.
It may just be that this issue will not be settled for MANY years to come.
I think NASA is the MOST misleading site of all followed by anything by James HAnson.
I could be wrong.

Hi,

I just looked at that website (Icecap) and all I can say is that anyone who cites Prince Philip on their home page spouting an opinion on wind farms must be sadly lacking in real information about the physical world around us... how sad.

Hi Snuginarug

You just have to remember what JohnBFisher said -

Ideally, the conversation can be brought back to the facts and the methods used to establish those facts. However, if the beliefs (political or religious) are more important to the individual than "facts" then no amount of discussion will dissuade such beliefs.

and what Dr Stephan Lewandowsky said -

Worldview is crucial to understanding people's risk perception. And it is not only HI individuals who respond to threats to their worldviews; for EC individuals there are mirror images involving nuclear power or nanotechnology.

It is revealing to analyse how far people are prepared to go when they are exposed to belief-threatening scientific evidence. In one study, people dismissed the scientific method itself when confronted with threatening information. People will rather declare that an issue cannot be resolved scientifically than accept evidence that's in opposition to their threatened beliefs.

And more relevant stuff is at -

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=70314&p=650482#p650482

I read the post by So Well, and I must say that you have to give him credit for being ......well.......So Well

If So Well can believe that his nonsense proves Dr Lewandowsky wrong, when what he says actually proves that Dr Lewandowsky is right, then we have to accept that Worldview and vested interests are what count , not the facts.

And the paper " Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" by John P. A. Ioannidis has many good points, but remember that when he is summing up he states quite clearly -

Second, most research questions are addressed by many teams, and it is misleading to emphasize the statistically significant findings of any single team. What matters is the totality of the evidence.

But for some - the totality will never be enough

cheers

Mars

Well, Mars, I agree with you and Lewandowsky that worldview affects whether we accept or reject certain scientific theories. However, I would agree with SoWell that this business about HI/EC people is pretty much nonsense. You can divide people into rough categories, I don't object to that . We are all unique, but probably not as different and special as we like to think. I am willing to allow some generalizations. However, I think Lewandowsky could have better presented his ideas without the HI/EC thing, and just discussed the fact that some people are resistant to encroachment on their tightly held beliefs, whatever those beliefs might be.

I grant SoWell that point, but disagree with his particular worldview in general. That is, of course, because my opinion is right. No offense, I still like you SoWell.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011 ... -loss.html

But of course scientists all over the world have conspired for us to believe that... gone to elaborate lengths to fool us on a global scale... to push some obscure agenda that makes no sense at all... and one day the homes of those that scoffed will be flooded, burned down, covered in mud or just get swept away, and who will scream loudest that it's not really happening?

No no no, scientists haven't conspired. They are just incompetent. ALL of them.

131 wrote: Yes, we've only directly measured and kept data for 130 years. But a myriad of other methods of obtaining data shows trends over tens of thousands of years, which is how we know about previous warming and cooling events. The current rate of change since the industrial revolution is unprecedented, the other events happened over thousands of years.

Thank you - yes. Exactly so. The only thing I'd like to add to your point is that the record actually goes back millions of years.

Earth materials (like polar and glacier ice, tree rings) record past climate through their chemistry, thickness of layers, and dust and gases trapped in them. Tiny fossils in the sediments of lakes and ocean basins tell us what the water was like, how warm, how salty, how acidic, and what was in the diet of the creatures that made them. When it snows, the falling snow brings with it particles of atmospheric dust, and each snowfall also traps tiny bubbles of atmosphere. The ice in the Greenland Ice Sheet is finely layered, and each layer records direct evidence about every year for the past 110,000 years. Scientific teams drill and extract ice cores that are miles long. The ice is like a book that we read to understand the past. The same holds true for the ice of Antarctica, except there, the ice is so thick that the record goes back for 750,000 years.

For deeper time than that, there are cores of sediment taken from the ocean floor; they get us back 20 million years or more. Small fossils in the mud record the chemistry and temperature of the ocean at the time they died. Like the ice cores or the leaves of a book, ocean sediments are layered. Hundreds of cores have been taken, and compared, and compared again by groups of scientists all over the world, to build up the information we now have about Earth's past climate. Further back than that, the rocks themselves hold records through fossils, isotopes, and their chemical composition. We actually have a remarkably clear picture of Earth's climate in the past - not just from 1870 or so, but millions and millions of years.

I am a climate scientist. I've spent my life studying this stuff. I can talk about it for hours (and regularly do, with school kids and anybody else who has questions).

I myself took some convincing, several decades ago, because I know Earth's climate to be inherently variable. The ice cores and sediments show it, and Earth's landscapes show it as well. I spent my research career in Earth's deserts, where dead river valleys run, and dunes cover paleolithic settlements. Earth is a changeable place. But what is different about the data now is the speed. The rates of change we see in cold, hard, data are way faster than anything in the past, and what's more, we understand the physics and chemistry of it well enough to have determined that it can't be explained by the sun, or the planet's orbit, or volcanoes, or anything else outside our control.

idamtnboy wrote:A question I've never gotten a good answer to is this. If man is the principle cause of the warming of the earth we see now, then what caused the warming thousands of years ago that melted the polar ice cap off of the North American continent? How can we say with any certainty that same phenomenon is not being repeated now?

There are orbital mechanics that affect Earth's climate in a very, very slow and predictable way. These are well-understood, and over tens of thousands of years, the timing of Earth's orbital eccentricity, obliquity, and precession sometimes lines things up to allow a little extra sunlight to reach the Arctic (and the rest of the world too). The last known ice-free Arctic was about 6,000 - 8,500 years ago, as shown by both calculations of the orbital mechanics, and direct evidence from sediments and landforms themselves.

The orbital configuration that caused Earth's warming 8,500 years ago is not the case at present. In fact, the orbital mechanics right now would have us moving into a slow, lengthy cooling period. That is one of the reasons that the observed warming is so unusual - if everything were proceeding the way it always has with Earth, warming is not what the planet should be doing at this point in time.

RocketGirl, thank you.