On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 11:32 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 12/9/2014 3:09 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > > On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 12:49 AM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 8 December 2014 at 23:36, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> >>> You can notice the subtle change in the meaning of being a "skeptic". >>> The original meaning is very close to "agnostic" but it has been slowly >>> sliding into a strong preference for common sense, which is to say, the >>> belief of the majority. >>> >> >> Yes that seems possible, indeed likely. Also it gets kidnapped by >> "climate change sceptics" and suchlike, >> > > I would say that anyone who labels themselves as "X skeptics" are > already missing the point. Skepticism is a general attitude towards > knowledge. > > >> who are using it in the "postmodern" sense that loosely translates as >> "you can't prove X 100% therefore not-X is 'just as valid'." >> > > Is this really the prevalent argument from climate change disbelievers? > > > It's a common argument I hear in regard to whether human activity is > responsible for any particular climate phenomenon. I hear, "It's just > natural cycles. CO2 was much higher in the past, before humans even > existed." > > I haven't personally researched this subject myself sufficiently to have reached any strong opinion on the matter, but I have come to believe that whenever some question in science becomes politicized, it becomes extremely difficult from that point forward for any real progress to be made in that area. Once money, people's jobs, agendas, etc. are on the line, the truth (whatever it might be) takes a distant seat in the back. A similar thing happened in the food industry when the government got involved in telling people what they should eat. Once the Senate Select Committee on nutrition decided to tell people not to eat saturated fat because it was bad for them it became very difficult to get grant money to research/test the opposing view, and now 40 years, when there is now compelling and sufficient evidence to conclude that fat and saturated fat is harmless if not good for you, and when it has become increasingly likely that advice to eat less was not only counter-productive but a probable cause of the obesity and diabetes epidemic in the United States and over the world, there remains widespread belief that its bad and to be avoided. Food manufacturers still tout the "heart healthiness" of their low-fat preparations, and the first lady has made it an agenda of the government to further reduce fat in schools across the country. Yet we see a profoundly different message coming from leading researchers: “For a large percentage of the population, perhaps 30 to 40 percent, low-fat diets are counterproductive. They have the paradoxical effect of making people gain weight.” Eleftheria Maratos-Flier, Director of obesity research at Harvard's Joslin Diabetes Center “It is now increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health consequences.” Frank Hu, Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health “The diet-heart hypothesis has been repeatedly shown to be wrong, and yet, for complicated reasons of pride, profit and prejudice, the hypothesis continues to be exploited by scientists, fund-raising enterprises, food companies and even governmental agencies. The public is being deceived by the greatest health scam of the century.” George Mann, Johns Hopkins-educated biochemist and physician who co-directed the Framingham Heart Study (one of the largest studies on the relationship between diet and health) And of course these researchers are using the outcomes of the latest studies to guide their reasoning: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/study-questions-fat-and-heart-disease-link/ http://www.wsj.com/articles/nina-teicholz-the-last-anti-fat-crusaders-1414536989 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/health/low-carb-vs-low-fat-diet.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/opinion/sunday/always-hungry-heres-why.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/11246112/High-fat-diets-not-as-dangerous-as-high-carbohydrate-plans-claim-scientists.html (If anyone would like more information on this matter, I'd be happy to provide it) As I said, I haven't developed a strong opinion in regards to anthropogenic global warming, so I certainly wouldn't label myself a "climate change denier" though perhaps some would take the fact that my mind is not settled as sufficient reason to put me in that bucket. However, there are some reasons that I remain unconvinced. Among them: 1. The fact that the question is so heavily politicized and that there is so much money involved naturally arouses my suspicion (must take every news article and report with a grain of salt unlike say, a paper on pure number theory) 2. Lack of consensus on what the effects will be: in the 1970s the fear was global cooling, in the 1990s it was global warming, and when neither long-term trend established itself it has since become climate change and extreme whether, but statistical studies have found no statistically abnormal increase in extreme weather events. 3. Failure of models: Early climate models projected an increase in global temperatures over the last 10 years, but those increases never materialized. (As a side-note, I used to find the existence of models which could accurately follow past temperature changes used to be extremely convincing with regards to the dangers of global warming, but years later I found after experimenting with developing currency trading algorithms that through training, genetic algorithms, etc. that it was relatively easy to create models that were exceptionally good at reproducing past trends, yet they utterly failed to have any predictive power. After this experience, I came to realize that generating models that match a given trend is easy, but that is no indication of the model's legitimacy) 4. Recent exposes on the corner cutting and general bad practices of climatologists involved in developing reports for policy makers. If human CO2 emissions are changing the climate, does that mean we should adopt a Kyoto (or similar) proposal? This is even less clear. This would require all of the following to be true: 1. Climate change exists 2. Human CO2 emissions are a significant factor in that climate change 3. Counteractive effects (clouds, biosphere) are understood and won't be enough to compensate for the excess CO2 4. We understand the general direction of what that climate change will be 5. The general direction of that change is more negative than positive and should be avoided 6. Reducing CO2 emissions is the best course of action to prevent the negative occurrence 7. Reductions that are possible will lead to a greater good for humanity and the world than the costs associated with those reductions Items 6 and 7 are the ones I am most apt to disagree with. Geo-engineering technologies are not only far more promising in being able to able to provide humanity with the tools to stabilize the environment, but they're also much much cheaper <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/5987229/Cloud-ship-scheme-to-deflect-the-suns-rays-is-favourite-to-cut-global-warming.html> than the associated economic costs of rationing cheap energy. All of these global warming projections over the next 50 - 100 years fail to take into account the exponential rate of growth in the power of technology and what the implications will be for opening new avenues for solving/controlling the problem, should it turn out to be one. Are humans having a profound and negative impact on the ecology of the rest of the planet? Almost certainly. We consume/control 40% of the planet's terrestrial photosynthesis capability, thus making life very difficult for the millions of other species who have to fight over the rest. Should we make every effort to conserve the limited resources we have? Nothing good comes from waste or excess. Would the advent of safe and cheap nuclear (or other) power bring enormous benefits to humanity and improve air quality? Again, I also think the answer is yes. But will political efforts or social movements that have the goal of slightly cutting back the rates of fossil fuel consumption save life on earth? I doubt it. If we are in peril, it will be technological change, not political change, that saves us. Jason -- 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/d/optout.
