----- Original Message ----- From: "JDG" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2004 9:33 AM Subject: Re: Is it hot in here?
> At 09:27 AM 4/28/2004 -0500 Dan Minette wrote: > >Science is not all cut and dry. There are a number of global climate > >models, that have uncertainties in them. Global warming hawks tend to > >favor models that discuss about 3-4C increases in global temperature due to > >human activity over the next 50-100 years, while global warming doves ten > >to favor models that are more in the 1C-1.5C range. The most likely > >results are somewhere in between. Publishing both papers is a normal part > >of good science. > > I thought that good science required precision to multiple decimal > points??? ;-) Sigh, did you look at my definition of science and not respond or just not look at the definition? If you want to discuss what is and what is not science and why economics is not a science, then I'd be more than happy to. It is true that ecology is not as good a science as physics. Physics is the paradigm science; it is the first true science and it shows by example what science is. There are two reasons for this. 1) The problems in physics tend to be simpler. 2) There is nothing underlying physics. This points to how long term atmospheric studies fall under science. The science underlying atmospheric studies is well known chemistry and physics. For the short term, one can treat it as a complex thermo problem. It has always been complex enough so that one cannot simply turn the crank, even at a large level. At the level of where hit and miss thunderstorms will hit, I'm pretty sure its at the level where QM actually is important....especially hit or miss thunderstorms several days from now. But, on a large scale quantum fluctuations average out, and theoretical predictions are very makeable, in principal. On moderate time scales, the ability to model hurricanes has increased tremendously. In particular, it is amazing how models come together after NOAA missions drop a spread of sampling probes to feed data into the models. So, the study of the atmosphere is well grounded in more basic sciences, and has shown tremendous strides in its predictive abilities. Long term models have more scatter, but the scientific method is still usable. Contrast that with economics. Its been around close to the same amount of time as physics, and top people still argue about what actually happened, not what will happen. It is based, on the microeconomic scale, on the free will of people. Politics actually affects the results, not just what gets published. If you want to argue with this, I think it would be useful for you to point out where you think I am wrong in the guidelines for what is and what is not science that I posted. If you don't really differ, than I'd be happy to accept the burden of proof to show why economics is not a science by those guidelines. If you just want to fire off the occasional one line zinger, that's OK, I guess. I just don't accept proof by one line zinger. :-) Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
