On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 7:49 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > Obviously there is more CO2 in the air than there has been for a very long > time, and obviously the climate has changed somewhat in the last couple of > decades (warmest on record, again and again). It's hard to prove the > connection, of course, but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. Of > 13,950 peer-reviewed climate articles published between 1991 and 2012, 24 > rejected global warming. It's a little thing we've come up with to try and > understand the world. We call it "science".
This is just sophisticated arguing from authority, not science. Science is the process of formulating a theory with which you can make predictions and then testing these predictions. If the predictions are incorrect, the theory is falsified. The number of papers that say something and the amount of consensus is irrelevant in the face of experimental falsification. Science is not democracy, it's empiricism. All scientific revolutions started as minority views. There is overwhelming evidence in favour of the theory of evolution because of the number of predictions it got right, not because of the amount of papers that say that it is a spiffy theory. The theory of anthropogenic global warming does not look so stellar because it failed to predict the current cooling period. Given the tremendous human cost of reducing CO2 emissions, the rational thing to do is to weigh the probability of the theory being correct against this cost. I don't have an answer here, nor am I qualified to give it. I know a bit about complex systems modelling and this makes me very skeptical of "overwhelming evidences", especially in the face of surprising observables against the models. > Obviously fossil fuel will run out anyway, so even without climate change > we'd have to do something. Yes, but that something we have to do is very different depending on whether or not we have to cut CO2 emissions and, more importantly, one of the path leads to immense human suffering. Then there are the geo-engineering ideas that John mentioned. They appear to be ignored. This makes the entire thing start to smell a bit of religious moralism. Telmo. > I think nuclear is a good short term solution, > for sure. Especially subcritical reactors. > > > > On 14 November 2013 06:06, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 5:54 PM, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: >> > On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 11:15 AM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> >> > wrote: >> > >> >> >> >> > I would like to point out that I did not write the first two >> >> > sentences >> >> you cite and I was being sarcastic when I wrote the third one. >> > >> > >> > Sorry. >> >> No worries. >> >> Telmo. >> >> > John K Clark >> > >> > -- >> > 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 [email protected]. >> > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> >> -- >> 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 [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > -- > 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 [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
