Brent
>> If most scientists in a field agree on something, I count that as evidence
>> in favor of their position.
I don't see how it can be, the fact that scientists agree about relativity
isn't a fact that has any information content about relativity. Its at best a
dubious kind of 'evidence by proxy'.
>> f course that's a chicken-and-egg problem. Physicists accepted it because
>> it agreed with experiment.
Exactly, because it agreed with experiment. Theres nothing chicken and egg
about it. Einstein dreamt up a theory. People treated it with general
suspicion. It made predictions, which were confirmed by experiments. People
began to accept the theory. At no point in this story did anyone accept things
on consensus. And if they did, they were wrong to.
>> No, of course not. But I didn't repeat their calculations and measurements
>> and neither did the deniers.
Im not suggesting people should personally repeat experiments. There is a
difference in accepting relativity provisionally because you've read about
Eddington's observations of light bending around the sun and accepting
relativity because you've read that a bunch of physicists accept relativity. In
one you have a reason to accept that relates to the phenomenon itself, in the
other you just have this information-less consensus.
Likewise, when climate science accepters make gambits on blogs like '97% of
scientists agree!!!' its an empty statement and should be discarded as such.
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
From: spudboy...@aol.com
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2014 09:27:00 -0400
Let's agree its a real problem, but it's also an opportunity for more control.
Or should we be good with handing control of the internet, as well, to the UN?
What is the remediation for this problem and how long will it take to
implement?
-----Original Message-----
From: chris peck <chris_peck...@hotmail.com>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sun, Apr 6, 2014 7:08 pm
Subject: RE: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
The real story here is that a peer reviewed journal was intimidated into
withdrawing a paper that had passed through the proper review channels.
That the internet is full of conspiracy theory isn't news. And to the extent
that climate science denial is correlated with beliefs in conspiracy theories,
so is climate science acceptance. You don't have to read blog rows for long to
see that climate science acceptors are the lackeys of communist Illuminati hell
bent on denying the world freedom and that climate science deniers are in bed
with the oil barons attempting in a capitalist frenzy to do pretty much the
same thing. What gets lost on both sides is the actual science. A fact that I
think is illustrated perfectly when climate science acceptors demand
capitulation on the basis that 97% of climate scientists agree there is human
caused problem. That 97% of scientists agree is an empirical fact, presumably,
but it is also an irrelevant one. Not a single fact about the climate is true
on the basis of a 97% agreement between scientists. Its an argument from
authority writ large. its the kind of fact which if persuasive would have kept
us believing the earth was flat. Yet every time I see blog rows on climate
change it gets trotted out as if it is informative.
I think what this paper really shows is just that part and parcel of debate is
to weave a narrative about your opponent: 'Obviously', if you are not convinced
by my water tight arguments then there must be something wrong with you.
Unfortunately the paper shows it by doing it. Thats not to say that it
shouldn't have been published, it should have. But the shame is that by not
publishing it, it has somehow earnt respect and currency.
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2014 12:15:26 -0700
From: meeke...@verizon.net
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: If you can't disprove the science, you can always try suing
On 4/6/2014 11:36 AM, Telmo Menezes
wrote:
On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 6:47 AM,
meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 4/5/2014 4:18 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at
1:04 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 4/5/2014 3:54 PM, Telmo Menezes
wrote:
Sure, I also
find it quite likely that powerful
fossil fuel companies are lobbying or
using even dirtier tricks to discredit
AGW theory. On the other hand, this
says nothing about the truth status of
AGW theory.
Doesn't it? If it weren't
true, then dirty tricks wouldn't be
needed to discredit it, would they? It
could be discredited like the flat
earth, creationism, and
cigarettes-are-good-for-you theories.
If that was true, the world would be free
from religious superstition
So do you classify religion as a conspiracy? Do you
think clergy are really all atheists and are just
conspiring to fool others?
I subscribe Bruno's and Kim's replies.
But this is besides the point here. You claimed that,
if AGW was false, then oil companies would only need to
falsify the models to affect political change. If that
were true, then it wouldn't be the case that the majority
of the world population is religious, because most
religious claims are trivially and publicly falsified by
the many fields of modern science, from cosmology to
archeology.
Religions make vague claims which are 'interpreted' and so cannot be
falsified - notice that even Bruno believes in a God and refers to
angels (of course he 'interprets' them very differently). But the
oil companies don't offer any corrections to the absorbtion spectrum
of CO2 or the insolation power or the measurements of
temperature... They just attempt to obfuscate the problem of
climate prediction by pointing to minor gaps in knowledge and
saying, "What about THIS?": Maybe cosmic rays make clouds. Why is
the stratosphere cooler in the equatorial zone? Maybe weather
stations have been moved. Didn't temperatures rise before CO2 did
in prehistoric times? ...
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
