2010/1/24 Michael Lewis <[email protected]>
> Per Edman wrote:
>
>> What you're saying is that Hoggan is right, that there is a massive PR
>> campaign from the denialist camp, but that this is all as it should be
>> because you say that there is a similar and equally-powered campaign for the
>> scientific perspective, so that makes it all right. Well, it doesn't.
>>
>
> No, that is not what I'm saying. I am saying that if one is to point out
> that climate "denialists" use PR techniques to advance their cfause, one
> must also point out that climate alarmists use exactly teh same techniques.
> It's not just corporations profiting from fossil fuels who use propaganda to
> influence public opinion. Science gets lost in this kind of propaganda
> exchange.
>
I'm sorry, but it is what you are saying. If you wanted to say that it was
untrue that the denialist camp is using propaganda instead of science, you
would have said that. Instead, you chose to claim:
"Indeed, and that's the way it works for climate alarmists as well."
As well. If you meant "only", you needed only write that, instead. But you
didn't. You admit that massive PR campaigns and loud complaints rule the
denialist camp, but you defend this by saying that the "climate alarmists"
do it too. That's not much of a defense.
This is confusing. Who says "global cooling stopped in 1998?" Global
> average surface temperature trend has been flatlined since 1998. I don't
> understand this reference.
There are many denialists who do. If you truly haven't seen any of them yet,
a simple google search for the very term you quote above, would give you
plenty of firewood. Global average surface temperatures were, according to
NASA, higher in 2005 than in 1998, but looking only at these two years and
ignoring the rising long-term trend is disingenious at best and misdirection
at worst.
> Proven? Nothing is proven in science. It only takes one verfied discovery
> to change an entire theory.
I was talking about proving something false, not true, such as when a theory
fails in its predictions. It could, concievably, just be awaiting the right
verified discovery sometime in the future, but until that time a theory that
has failed in its predictions cannot be taken more seriously than the wild
speculation of a napkin editor.
This is not how science works. Science doesn't find error. Scientists find
> evidence that contradicts claims, then verifies that evidence through
> hypothesis testing. We don't go around "finding errors."
You're a hairdresser now? Are you seriously saying that a scientific theory
cannot be in error, or that errors cannot be found? Falsifying claims is the
only thing science can in fact do. Aside from that, all we have is working
theories that have not so far been falsified. If you don't want to identify
the falsification of a theory as the discovery of an error in that theory,
well I do say they're the same thing. Making an incorrect assumption and
building a theory on it, will mean the theory is in error. And while rare,
an incorrect calculation is also an error. And science do find these errors,
because they never survive multiple verification.
> Climate alarmists claim that humans are producing greenhouse gases that
> are causing a rise in global average surface temperature above and beyond
> normal fluctuations, and that this temperature rise will have disastrous
> effects on all life on earth. These are speculations, not science.
Ah. And because you have defined the theory of antropogenic global climate
change as non-science, I suppose that frees you of any obligation to
actually falsify the theory, or pointing out any significant errors with it.
May I ask, where you believe the divergence from science occurs? Is it that
carbon dioxide absorbs infra-red radiation that you believe is not science?
Or is it that human activities have released carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere? Or perhaps it is the volume of gas released into the atmosphere
that is not... scientific?
--
/ Per
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