Thomas Malloy wrote:
We conservatives question Liberal Orthodoxy, of which Scientific
Orthodoxy is an example. You've heard of Parksie's antics. Jed and Ed
agree with me on this when ox, LENR, is being gored.
Comparing AGW with cold fusion is rather different. With LENR-CANR the
majority of scientists probably do not believe in it because they swallowed
the party line a long time ago before there were many published papers. They
largely got their initial impression from Press coverage. They probably
still take their lead from people like Parks and sources like Nature. Within
the field of scientists working on cold fusion etc, there is a strong
consensus that it is real in exactly the same way that there is a very
strong consensus among the scientists working on global warming that it is
happening and that humans are mostly responsible and the chances are that it
will be uncomfortable at best with a small chance that it may be
catastrophic but that nobody can know for sure until we have run the
experiment (by which time it may be too late).
Scientists not working in the CF field who have not studied the papers and
take their attitude from people like Parks (who repeats false beliefs and
attitudes and are seemingly incorrigible) are clearly in the majority but
this does not mean that their views are worth anything. In exactly the same
way, thousands of scientists not working in the field of climate change,
who were not familiar with the thousands of papers and decades of work
behind them, signed the Oregon petition. This tactic is one of the
fundamental deceits of the deniers (in this case S. Fred Singer) who
purposefully confuse the public by misrepresenting majority as being the
same as consensus. Extending the analogy, if the majority of scientists had
to express an opinion on cold fusion, they would probably say that it was
disproved in 1989 because that's all they know but the consensus of
scientists in the field would almost universally say that it is real. The
situation with global warming is that the consensus view of scientists in
the field is that AGW is real - there is a difference from the cold fusion
situation though - the majority of scientists not working in the climate
field would probably also go along with the consensus view because they
would take their lead from the policy statements of every major scientific
organization in the world that AGW is real.
As for insanity, it's clear to us that Liberalism is a form of
mental illness. It is a set of ideas which has failed every time that it
has been tried. It ignores physical reality. Like the fact that Radical
Islam intends to take over the government and impose Sharia Law. Like
economic laws, the government can't spend the country rich. Now the
Porkulus (economic stimulus) package could work in theory, but it never
has worked in practice.
I've seen this claim of so-called liberal mental illness on some barking mad
neo-con websites. Just think of the situation of the person in a mental
hospital who says they are the only sane one and everyone else outside is
mad - who is closer to the truth? Similarly with this neo-con claim. Bear in
mind that the forthcoming global economic chaos was purely and simply caused
by insufficiently finance using greed is good methodologies. I am sure
that the neo-con libertarian viewpoint supported those ideas more than the
liberals. BTW, liberal and conservative mean very different things in
Europe, particularly in Britain, compared to their US meanings.
If I were to assert that a
wristwatch resulted as a result of random processes, (Jed) would never
accept that. However, the essence of Darwinian ideas is that living
organisms resulted from random chance ... Best of all, it fixes itself.
IMHO, this is the
informational equivalent of reversing the second law of thermodynamics.
Not really, the cell fixes itself by increasing the amount of entropy
(disorder) in the Universe by more than the amount of entropy it reverses by
fixing itself. It uses energy to run up the escalator to get higher but
always uses more energy than it ends up gaining. If you warm yourself up by
setting a fire your personal entropy decreases but the entropy of the whole
system always decreases.
The Liberals delight in cultural degeneration, of which Springer is not
only a classic example, but a celebration. Conservative Talk is banned
in Europe of course.
Ridiculous distortion. Lies and propaganda tending to increase hate crimes
is rightly legislated against over here. Some Yanks have got very strange
and often dangerous ideas about what the ideas of free speech and freedom of
action should allow.
The primary driver of atmospheric temperature is the Sun. It was producing
more energy during the period
of maximum sun spot activity
True but irrelevant - a red herring. The amount of the recent observed
global warming, that can be attributed to the sun's tiny increase in
