Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Alain Sepeda]

about experts, I've exchanged and seen exchange an dposition by many
experts on facts around climate story.

for example for paludisme, experts say climate is not the main driver, but
not too lood, and they say climate change is real .
numerical experts say modeling of climate cannot be correct and seems too
full of knob to be usefull and solid, but they tust climate change.
meteorologists say there is no increase in extreme events, as oceanologist
(like Judith curry who started to doubt when she hide evidence of no
increase)... but they trust climate change.
physicists support greenhouse theory, (like most skeptics) but know that
the only serious question is feedback... but they trust AGW claims.
climatologists have reduced climate sensibility to modest values below 3
(trend is toward 0, but you know trends... ) but they support conclusions
assuming 6+.
Oceanologist see no acceleration since the little ice age, but they support
the model who predict acceleration...
Climatologist say the hiatus it is explained by unmesurable ocean change,
that there is no hiatus since it need only to correct the land temperature
a little more (most of warming is just increasing corrections from the IPCC
beginning).
They say warming should first be seen in troposphere but sattelite disagree
and they prefer to use the only of the 3 temperature series which can
easily be tweaked because it is land based.
AIEA say they suppot IPCC repor on energetic transition, but all it's
report in fact say the opposite.

what I see is cognitive dissonance, or rather people who say that for their
domain of expertise IPCC is wrong, but that for the rest they trust IPCC.

what I've clearly heard from skeptics, real one, mostly ex-believers (no
oil conspiracy), is that they were shocked by the bad quality of the
science, the corruption, the harassment against questioners, but most
serious are simply puzzled and sadly have no theory...
problem is intractable. This is why it is impossible to convince
tru-believers because as Thomas Kuhn have said, a paradigm can only covince
if it provide theory, and practical responses.
IPCC have a good paradigm that trough theory, self-referent modelization,
tunable data, terror against dissenters, allow wagons of money to be sent
to the supporters without allowed opposition. Best invention since taxes.

The only theories I've seen recently is Russian finding that solar activity
can cause tendency for jet-stream to lock.
that sun activity change duration of day, through zonal wind averaged on
the globe.
and Judith curry theory of "Stadium Wave" that climate oscillate by
coupling of various ocean oscillations. I know little on chaotic system,
and she seems to have the good approach to find orbits in subsystems and
modelize how they couple... full physics modelization for such chaotic
system is absurd.

beside the epistemologist who have studied the story see mostly few key
actor (one canadian oil baron, hansen...) who have pushed a deep ecology
malthusianist theory, which created an environment where the ideology
supported by few activist could spread without opposition in US, US/UK, EU,
corps, academics... because each group imagined to get a personal
advantage, reason to exist, funding source...

I'm not the best professor on that story as I don't care any more on the
science.
the real things to analyse is not the science but the epistemology, the
methods.

What I've heard from that is that when we will provide the solution to
climate change, CO2, pollution,, poverty, demography, we will be insulted,
hated, as we are destroying the ideological substrate, and the funding
substrate of very wealthy groups.

I've heard horrible things about how honest people where treated, and worst
of all how honest students became templar knights for the truth.
One of those is leading both US science and one of the great high impact
journal, and was trained by one of the most competent french skeptic, who
was a believer until recently. From the eye of the professor, I imagin how
sad he is.

as if you were the professor of Huizenga.


2015-12-15 16:10 GMT+01:00 Bob Higgins :

> Jed, I think a problem in this dialog is that you are not an expert even
> in a related field. I happen to be an expert in a related field.  I spent
> my career in computer modeling of linear and nonlinear systems.  The
> climate modeling problem suffers in many ways from the same problem as LENR.
>
> Poincare proved that even the 3-body orbit problem was infinitely
> complex.  There are infinite solutions depending upon the starting state
> vector.  In LENR, because the interaction with condensed matter comprises
> many, many bodies, the solution depends entirely on the simplifying
> assumptions made to formulate the problem mathematically.  The problem is
> nearly infinitely complex to formulate with so many bodies participating,
> and it is impossible to completely know the starting state vector.  And,
> this is with the 

RE: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Chris Zell]

If the fanatics were to get the reins and turn the "Global Warming" theory into 
an emergency, it would cause a shift of lower middle class individuals into 
poverty to pay for the emergency efforts.  Many would die from not being able 
to heat their house, buy food, or go to work.

Exactly so. It continues to amaze me that atheist/agnostic/non religious people 
can behave in such a fanatical, ‘religious’ way – as with calling scientists 
“heretics”.
The world is ruled by an elite 1% that can afford gated housing , armed guards 
and even protected bunkers.  They are wrecking entire nations ( Iraq, Libya, 
Syria, Ukraine, Greece….)  Thank God there are a few visionaries among them.

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Lennart Thornros]

Jed, if all three gave you the same useless recommendation and you
disagreed and did something else that worked. I would say you had a better
understanding than the experts. I am not very good at medicine. However, I
often knows better about my body than the doctor. Sometimes they are just
plain wrong.

I think the answer to vaccination is less than clear. California has
mandated vaccination and that might be more good than bad. The problem is
that we now make vaccine for illnesses that are less severe and like any
alteration in the body vaccination has risks. It is a danger that the
benefits do not outweigh the risks and because of the political mandate any
evaluation will become impossible / not required. It is not cut and dry.
Instead it is a good example of something the experts has different
opinions about and perhaps there is room for many solutions. It also shows
you that a society with no competition / debate will eventually end up with
stupid and dangerous decisions. California's mandatory vaccination policy
fits big pharma and the politicians and it is easy to enforce. Scientists
are  depending on politicians and big pharma for grants, who is going to
critically examine the vaccination policy and new vaccines?

You have a clear misunderstanding of how well the majority can determine
what is best / correct. That we have a global warming seems undeniable.
That we had a global cold spell in the 17 century or so. None of those
facts is disputed. Also it is my understanding that most people agree that
pollution due to fossil fuel is no good. The connection between global
warming and our burning of fossil fuel is not so undisputed. Regardless it
will require economical and political *wants* and *determination* to make
that shift away from fossil fuel. Many issues are connected with this
change and it will take time as there is no determination or real will.
LENR might help speed up the process.

Best Regards ,
Lennart Thornros


lenn...@thornros.com
+1 916 436 1899

Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and
enthusiastically act upon, must inevitably come to pass. (PJM)


On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 5:27 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

> Lennart Thornros  wrote:
>
>
>> You go to three experts and the one who gives the correct answer is the
>> REAL expert. That is the problem in a nutshell - experts are often wrong
>> even if they say they are experts and it is hard to see which one is THE
>> expert.  I assume you did not go to the two first experts even as you know
>> they were less of an exper,t than the third one:)
>>
>
> Suppose all three had given me the same advice. I would be a fool to claim
> that I know better, wouldn't I? Suppose I were to go several hundred
> doctors, and almost every one of them recommended the same treatment? I
> would be insane not to believe them.
>
> To take a real-life medical example, the vast majority of doctors will
> tell you it is good idea to vaccinate your children. Only a few dangerous
> quack doctors will disagree. You should definitely go with the majority
> consensus, because you do not want to see your child die in agony from
> tetanus.
>
> In the case of global warming, nearly every expert agrees. Okay, you will
> find a small minority who disagree, but as a non-expert, you should go with
> the consensus.
>
>
> Getting back to the actual case of my rash, the second doctor, a GP, said
> to me: "Well if it is not getting better, why don't you go see Dr.
> So-and-so? He knows a lot about rashes." It is the mark of a true expert
> that he knows the limits of his own knowledge. He does not suffer from the
> Dunning-Kruger effect. He knows what he does not know.
>
> - Jed
>
>

RE: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[MarkI-ZeroPoint]

Bob,

Thanks for explaining the nuances of the modeling issue… I agree. I’ve 
commented on this topic before in the Vort Collective… 

 

I did my thesis (1990) under Dr. James Telford, atmospheric physicist. One of 
his pet peeves was all the $ going into GCMs (Global Climate Models) when they 
really didn’t know what even half the variables were – for instance, the effect 
of cloud cover; and many of the efforts didn’t even have real data.  Telford 
was unusual in that he was both a  theorist and an experimentalist, building 
many of his own instruments and data collection system which they flew on 
aircraft to collect in-situ data.  He was a recognized expert on cloud 
microphysics.  In his view, global climate modeling was so complex that it 
would likely never result in accurate models.

 

-mark

 

From: Bob Higgins [mailto:rj.bob.higg...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2015 7:10 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

 

Jed, I think a problem in this dialog is that you are not an expert even in a 
related field. I happen to be an expert in a related field.  I spent my career 
in computer modeling of linear and nonlinear systems.  The climate modeling 
problem suffers in many ways from the same problem as LENR.

 

Poincare proved that even the 3-body orbit problem was infinitely complex.  
There are infinite solutions depending upon the starting state vector.  In 
LENR, because the interaction with condensed matter comprises many, many 
bodies, the solution depends entirely on the simplifying assumptions made to 
formulate the problem mathematically.  The problem is nearly infinitely complex 
to formulate with so many bodies participating, and it is impossible to 
completely know the starting state vector.  And, this is with the presumption 
that the forces-reactions are linear.

 

The instant you add non-linearity to even the smallest problem, the results 
become infinitely complex, highly dependent on the starting conditions, and 
highly dependent on the amplitude of the reaction.  Getting solutions in such a 
domain generally requires already knowing the answer to start, and then working 
back to understand what caused it.

 

There has been a century of evolution in paleoclimatology - grand research in 
determining the climate of the last million years.  It has shown the positive 
feedback effect of greenhouse gasses and how quickly the planet snaps out of a 
glaciation and into peak warm earth with no influence of man.  This is a 
highly, highly nonlinear process that simply cannot be computed with accuracy 
today - perhaps never.  If we stopped adding all greenhouse gasses today, we 
would not be able to predict with any confidence the rate of temperature rise, 
the difference in temperature rise, the change in timing of the temperature 
rise snap, nor the peak warming that will be reached.  

 

If you look at hurricane track modeling, and look at the disparity between 
solutions for track and intensity by different models, you see the problem.  
Beyond a day the results diverge significantly.  Yes, you can compute the 
average track, but the hurricane doesn't usually follow the average.  Like many 
things that are uncorrelated, the average is simply a useless number.  I assert 
that consensus in the climate issue is akin to "averaging" and is a useless 
metric.  If all of the models are wrong (and due to the simplifications, 
problem complexity, and the nonlinearity, they are all by definition wrong), 
then the average is wrong too.  I have no confidence what-so-ever in consensus 
in climate modeling.  Some one model may be closer to being correct but we 
don't know whose, and the correct solution is probably not close to the average 
of the predictions.

 

Such inaccuracy in modeling begs for a moderate response.  I say, do the right 
thing in general, and proceed with moderation.

 

Kerry is proposing that the Paris Accord will cost the US $50T over 35 years.  
If we spent $1T on LENR, much of the problem would be solved.  The remaining 
$49T is such a huge amount that it could relieve 1B of the world's most poverty 
stricken population.  Expending it instead in emergency elimination of carbon 
emissions, and the number in poverty will probably grow.

 

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 9:36 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:

MarkI-ZeroPoint <zeropo...@charter.net> wrote:

 

Here’s the real issue Jed…

 

Didn’t you once argue vociferously, that science is NOT done by consensus???

 

As Damon Runyon said, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to 
the strong, but that's the way to bet."

 

What I am saying is that when you are an outsider to a field, and especially 
when the issue is highly technical and takes years to master, your best bet is 
to assume that the consensus is correct. This sometimes leads you to make an 
error of judgement, especially a Fallacious Appeal to Authority. 

 

RE: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[a.ashfield]

Well Jed, you have seen the last half dozen posts that show just how 
rotten climate science has become.
You might conclude that climate science is not a "hard" science like 
physics but more like psychology where theory changes like fashions over 
time because hard facts are missing.  It wasn't so long ago some were 
forecasting a coming ice age and indeed some Russian scientists have now 
forecast that global temperatures will start to drop in a decade's time 
due to the sun entering another Maunder Minimum.


What is critically wrong is leading experts and groups like the IPCC 
being so definite about the results of climate models that have already 
been falsified, and claiming "the debate is over."  The believers are 
getting many orders of magnitude more money than the skeptics and they 
are the gatekeepers who hold the purse strings. Their papers are given 
pal review not peer reviews.


I would believe Steve McIntyre over any climate expert you care to name 
and he is not a climatologist.  He was the one that first showed the 
errors in Mann's famous hockey stick.  I got a sad laugh over his latest 
analysis of a paper by “renowned climate scientists" linked here

http://climateaudit.org/2015/12/07/what-science-is-telling-us-about-climate-damages-to-canada/

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[a.ashfield]

Jeb,
You wrote:  "You should at least acknowledge that I am defending the 
opinions of

experts. Educated people may disagree with experts but it goes to far to
say this is "indefensible." You, for some reason, imagine you know better
than these experts. Given the complexity of modern society and the advanced
nature of our science, I think your claim is more extreme than mine.

Perhaps you are suggesting that these climate researchers are fakes 
engaged in a massive conspiracy. That seems far-fetched, to say the least."


As far as global warming goes, yes, I think I know more than the 
"consensus" I see reported in the media.  Possibly I have been following 
it more closely than you.


You don't have to have a PhD in climate science to do the math and the 
climate scientists have got it wrong in some cases.  They don't have 
PhDs in related subjects either - the degree didn't even exist when they 
were at school.  It would be helpful if more of them were qualified in 
statistics too.  I think the basic problem has been laid out well by 
Prof. Akasofu in the following link.  Note Fig 2b.

http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/pdf/two_natural_components_recent_climate_change.pdf

The real bottom line is that new clean sources of energy WILL make the 
problem go away.  I am optimistic about LENR for one.
The real damage of the consensus is the thousands of billions of dollars 
being wasted by various governments on AGW and the MILLION deaths per 
year in the poor countries, caused by the green polices preventing the 
banks from providing loans for coal fired plants so they could have 
electricity.


No.  I am not confused about CO2.  I am well aware what causes smog.

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Bob Higgins]

Jed, I think a problem in this dialog is that you are not an expert even in
a related field. I happen to be an expert in a related field.  I spent my
career in computer modeling of linear and nonlinear systems.  The climate
modeling problem suffers in many ways from the same problem as LENR.

Poincare proved that even the 3-body orbit problem was infinitely complex.
There are infinite solutions depending upon the starting state vector.  In
LENR, because the interaction with condensed matter comprises many, many
bodies, the solution depends entirely on the simplifying assumptions made
to formulate the problem mathematically.  The problem is nearly infinitely
complex to formulate with so many bodies participating, and it is
impossible to completely know the starting state vector.  And, this is with
the presumption that the forces-reactions are linear.

The instant you add non-linearity to even the smallest problem, the results
become infinitely complex, highly dependent on the starting conditions, and
highly dependent on the amplitude of the reaction.  Getting solutions in
such a domain generally requires already knowing the answer to start, and
then working back to understand what caused it.

There has been a century of evolution in paleoclimatology - grand research
in determining the climate of the last million years.  It has shown the
positive feedback effect of greenhouse gasses and how quickly the planet
snaps out of a glaciation and into peak warm earth with no influence of
man.  This is a highly, highly nonlinear process that simply cannot be
computed with accuracy today - perhaps never.  If we stopped adding all
greenhouse gasses today, we would not be able to predict with any
confidence the rate of temperature rise, the difference in temperature
rise, the change in timing of the temperature rise snap, nor the peak
warming that will be reached.

If you look at hurricane track modeling, and look at the disparity between
solutions for track and intensity by different models, you see the
problem.  Beyond a day the results diverge significantly.  Yes, you can
compute the average track, but the hurricane doesn't usually follow the
average.  Like many things that are uncorrelated, the average is simply a
useless number.  I assert that consensus in the climate issue is akin to
"averaging" and is a useless metric.  If all of the models are wrong (and
due to the simplifications, problem complexity, and the nonlinearity, they
are all by definition wrong), then the average is wrong too.  I have no
confidence what-so-ever in consensus in climate modeling.  Some one model
may be closer to being correct but we don't know whose, and the correct
solution is probably not close to the average of the predictions.

Such inaccuracy in modeling begs for a moderate response.  I say, do the
right thing in general, and proceed with moderation.

Kerry is proposing that the Paris Accord will cost the US $50T over 35
years.  If we spent $1T on LENR, much of the problem would be solved.  The
remaining $49T is such a huge amount that it could relieve 1B of the
world's most poverty stricken population.  Expending it instead in
emergency elimination of carbon emissions, and the number in poverty will
probably grow.

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 9:36 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

> MarkI-ZeroPoint  wrote:
>
> Here’s the real issue Jed…
>>
>>
>>
>> Didn’t you once argue vociferously, that science is NOT done by
>> consensus???
>>
>
> As Damon Runyon said, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle
> to the strong, but that's the way to bet."
>
> What I am saying is that when you are an outsider to a field, and
> especially when the issue is highly technical and takes years to master,
> your best bet is to assume that the consensus is correct. This sometimes
> leads you to make an error of judgement, especially a Fallacious Appeal to
> Authority.
>
> http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html
>
> For example if you assume that the people at the DoE are experts on cold
> fusion, you will incorrectly conclude their opinion on the subject is valid.
>
> If you know little or nothing about a subject, it is safest to say: "I
> assume the experts are right, but it is possible they are wrong. I cannot
> judge."
>
> Some technical issues are not difficult to judge. For example, most well
> educated people have enough knowledge of statistics to see that vaccinating
> children is safer than not vaccinating them even though in very rare cases
> children die from vaccinations. Climate change, on the other hand is very
> complex. I have read enough about it to confirm that. I have written
> technical manuals and papers for the general public on cold fusion. I am
> usually pretty good at judging when an area of science or technology can be
> grasped by ordinary laymen -- or even a Georgia politician -- and when it
> is likely to be far over their heads. Climate change is one of 

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Jed Rothwell]

Lennart Thornros  wrote:


> You go to three experts and the one who gives the correct answer is the
> REAL expert. That is the problem in a nutshell - experts are often wrong
> even if they say they are experts and it is hard to see which one is THE
> expert.  I assume you did not go to the two first experts even as you know
> they were less of an exper,t than the third one:)
>

Suppose all three had given me the same advice. I would be a fool to claim
that I know better, wouldn't I? Suppose I were to go several hundred
doctors, and almost every one of them recommended the same treatment? I
would be insane not to believe them.

To take a real-life medical example, the vast majority of doctors will tell
you it is good idea to vaccinate your children. Only a few dangerous quack
doctors will disagree. You should definitely go with the majority
consensus, because you do not want to see your child die in agony from
tetanus.

In the case of global warming, nearly every expert agrees. Okay, you will
find a small minority who disagree, but as a non-expert, you should go with
the consensus.


Getting back to the actual case of my rash, the second doctor, a GP, said
to me: "Well if it is not getting better, why don't you go see Dr.
So-and-so? He knows a lot about rashes." It is the mark of a true expert
that he knows the limits of his own knowledge. He does not suffer from the
Dunning-Kruger effect. He knows what he does not know.

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[MarkI-ZeroPoint]

Gee, how timely is this…

 

“Dr. Judith Curry is Professor and former Chair of the School of Earth and 
Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She delivered her 
verbal statement to last week's US Senate Commerce Committee Hearing on "Data 
or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate Over the Magnitude of the Human 
Impact on Earth’s Climate."

 

   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GujLcfdovE8=TLW-Xzkt74b0oxNDEyMjAxNQ=1

 

She too was then demonized and called a ‘heretic’ and ‘denier’ after she simply 
expressed her well informed opinion and suggestions as to how the field could 
improve…

 

One should immediately question the motive of anyone who attacks the person, 
tries to label them, instead of criticizing their suggestions or facts… 
propaganda is everywhere, in every sphere, be it political or commercial or 
academic. Perception is everything in the control freaks’ minds… and they 
actively manage the narrative and perception that they want to push… 

 

Time to clean house; clean up the corruption in all spheres, especially 
politics.

-Mark Iverson

 

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Jed Rothwell]

MarkI-ZeroPoint  wrote:

Gee, how timely is this…
>
>
>
> “Dr. Judith Curry is Professor and former Chair of the School of Earth
> and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She
> delivered her verbal statement to last week's US Senate Commerce Committee
> Hearing on "Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate Over the
> Magnitude of the Human Impact on Earth’s Climate."
>
>

>
>
> She too was then demonized and called a ‘heretic’ and ‘denier’ after she
> simply expressed her *well informed* opinion and suggestions as to how
> the field could improve…
>

Yes. As I said, no matter how well science is settled, you can always find
a few experts within a field who disagree with the majority conclusions. I
would not be surprised if there are some professional astronomers who do
not believe the universe is expanding.

A minority always starts with exactly 1 person. In rare cases, it turns out
that person is right, and the other 20,000 people in the field are wrong.
It usually takes a long time to convince the others. That one person is
usually demonized and attacked personally. You can find examples here:

http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html#j38

This is human nature. It is politics, and politics are everywhere, in all
human interaction and in all institutions. You can no more extinguish
politics than you can escape from sexuality or dying of old age.

However, despite all that, as an outsider you should bet on the consensus.
Unless you have some deep inside connections and you know that the
institution is hopelessly corrupt and run exclusively by idiots, you have
to assume that for that most part the experts there are correct.

It is important to understand that people can be smart about one thing and
stupid about another. With regard to cold fusion the editors at the
Scientific American are stupid. They are ignorant and closed minded. But
with regard to other subjects they are not so stupid, and much of what they
say is worth listening to. It makes me nervous reading the magazine because
I can never be sure they are right . . . but that goes for every magazine
you read. And every bank you deposit money into, every airline and
hospital. From time to time, institutions we assume are professional and
well run turn out to be a shambles.

When I first met Gene Mallove, he was an insider and true believer in the
nobility of science. He had PdDs from Harvard and MIT. What could be more
mainstream? He had the idea that scientists are open minded, fair, and that
they embrace novelty and new ideas. I told him that scientists are pretty
much like everyone else -- like most people they hate and fear new ideas.
(I knew that because I read a lot of history, not because I am cynical.)

Gene later became so angry about the way mainstream science treated cold
fusion, he swung to the opposite extreme. He began to think that any
science maverick must be right, and the mainstream must be wrong. He
thought all science institutions must be corrupt. I said then -- and I
still say -- the situation is nuanced, and complicated. Both individual
people and institutions can be a mixture of smart and stupid, fair and
unfair.

One day Gene said to me with a sigh, "this does not end neatly like an
Arthur Clarke story, does it?" He meant there is never a time when the
scientists finally all agree, doubts are resolved, progress is made, and
the next great adventure begins. I think what happens more often is what
Planck described:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die,
and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."


Regrettably, this is not happening with cold fusion. The opposite is
happening: the field is dying along with the generation who did the
experiments.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Jed Rothwell]

Lennart Thornros  wrote:


> If scientists had THE answer than the rest of us would be obsolete.
>

That depends on THE question. If the question is highly complex and and it
takes years of effort to understand then yes, scientists have the answer
(if anyone does) and the rest of us have nothing.

That's how civilization works. If you want a tall building made of stone,
you must to leave it entirely up the architects and stonemasons.


I think reality is that to take good informed decisions one need to take in
> data from 'all walks of life'. The example given above about weather /
> climate is a good example. There is a cost involved and there are political
> issues to consider and on top of it all the problems are largest where the
> economy will be most hurt by a quick enforcement of a world with no CO2
> pollution.
>

Those are different questions. I agree that the rest of us must have a say
in them. Climatologists are the only ones qualified to answer some complex,
fundamental technical questions:

1. Are temperatures rising worldwide? They say yes.

2. If so, what is the cause of it? They say CO2 from humans.

Once they answer those questions it is up to the rest of us to make use of
their answers.

What I am saying is that no politician is qualified to contradict them.
Even highly educated people who are used to dealing with technical issues
-- such as the people here in this forum -- are not qualified to dispute
their answers. If you happen to have a degree related to climatology, you
can offer an educated guess. You can probably understand more about this
than 99% of the public. But you are still miles away from being qualified
to contradict the experts.

I know a thing or two about calorimetry and electrochemistry. More than,
say, the editors at the Scientific American. When I spend five minutes
listening to a discussion by Pam Boss or Mike McKubre, it is abundantly
clear to me that I know practically nothing compared to them. Since I do
not suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect I have no illusion that I might
argue with them when it comes to electrochemistry. I have read enough about
climatology to see that it is equally difficult to understand. Of course I
understand the basics about the greenhouse effect but that does not even
scratch the surface.

One more thing --

A small number of experts disagree with the majority on global warming.
That is always true, in any field, about any complex issue. When there is a
large majority you have to assume they are right. Dieter Britz does not
believe the excess heat in cold fusion is real. Yes, he is a world-class
electrochemist. But I know several hundred world-class electrochemists and
experts in calorimetry such as Robert Duncan. Britz is the only one in that
group who has any doubt about the heat. So I think those of us outside the
field looking in should assume he is wrong. A massive consensus among
experts is meaningful. Non-experts should respect it.

The "consensus" of mainstream scientists that cold fusion is wrong is not a
scientific consensus. It is a bunch of ignorant nitwits spouting off about
a subject they have no business discussing. That does not count.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Jed Rothwell]

Bob Higgins  wrote:


> Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and is likely increasing the global
> temperature - probably at a miniscule rate compared to the rate of warming
> due to natural cosmological and geothermal causes.
>

Yeah? How many papers on this subject have you published? Do you have a PhD
in some closely related subject?

Frankly, your tone irks me. Your categorical assertions rub me the wrong
way. If you were to say with some hesitation, "it seems to me . . ." or "I
have read thus-and-such in an authoritative journal that . . ." it would
sound more professional to me.

I have sat with world-class experts on electrochemistry and various physics
problems. I mean I have spend weeks in labs with people such as
Fleischmann, FRS and people with Nobel laureates. They wrote the book on
modern science. They have physical effects named after them. Those people
do not make assertions with the kind of overweening confidence you express
here. Even when the assertions pertain to their own area of expertise, they
still hedge them.

I am pretty sure that I were to ask these world-class scientists "what do
you think of global warming?" they would largely defer to the
climatologists. I am sure they would not claim "I know better than the
experts." The might say, "I have some doubts about thus and such . . ."



Cold fusion happens to be new subject in which there are no experts yet.
Anyone's opinion may have merit. Practically nothing is settled yet, except
the heat, and the ratio and helium to heat with the Pd-D system.
Climatology, on the other hand, is well developed, deep science, with data
going back thousands of years, and many confirmations. As I said, it is
related to weather prediction, and anyone can see that discipline has
improved by leaps and bounds in recent decades. It is impossible for me to
imagine that weather forecasts have made tremendous progress yet a closely
related field is completely at sea with no progress and no better proof
than it had decades ago. Science does not work that way.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[a.ashfield]

Jed,
I voted for you.

This is what I wrote my local paper.  I didn't mention LENR because they 
have published a number of my pieces on the subject already.


Adrian

To the Times.

The Paris climate accord means little beyond others saying they agreed 
with President Obama's opinion.  The agreement was held up for nearly 
two hours  while the US pressed for changing "shall" to "should".


Apparently developed countries /should/ commit to reduced emissions and 
/should /continue to provide financial support for poor nations to cope 
with climate change.   Congressional approval is not required for others 
to agree to this opinion and there is nothing legally binding to make 
them do anything.


As far as one can tell, nations will continue to do just what they were 
planning to do without this agreement.   At least we will not be locked 
in to something unnecessary when new sources of clean energy become 
visible, and there are several on the horizon right now.

[Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Jed Rothwell]

Calling all cold fusion flacks!

I added a comment to this article at 10:15 (that's how you can find it). I
would appreciate up-votes to make it more visible:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/opinion/hope-from-paris.html

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[MarkI-ZeroPoint]

Here’s the real issue Jed…

 

Didn’t you once argue vociferously, that science is NOT done by consensus???  
If not then it was some other Vort…

And,

I want to know what % of the ‘consensus’ (proponents), who are knowledgeable 
about the issue, AND, AND, AND, are NOT receiving some of their funding for 
climate-related research???  

I want to know exactly where each person is getting funding, or who’s ‘soft’ 
research position is being funded by climate-change related research, so their 
‘opinion’ can be weighted appropriately.

 

The internet and social media makes it s much easier to spread propaganda, 
to ‘manage the perception’, that I need to know how one’s livelihood is being 
funded… PERIOD.  FOLLOW THE $.  

 

It’s all about ‘Perception Deception’… get a clue!

 

-mark

 

From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2015 6:28 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

 

MarkI-ZeroPoint <zeropo...@charter.net> wrote:

 

Gee, how timely is this…

“Dr. Judith Curry is Professor and former Chair of the School of Earth and 
Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She delivered her 
verbal statement to last week's US Senate Commerce Committee Hearing on "Data 
or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate Over the Magnitude of the Human 
Impact on Earth’s Climate."

 She too was then demonized and called a ‘heretic’ and ‘denier’ after she 
simply expressed her well informed opinion and suggestions as to how the field 
could improve…

 

Yes. As I said, no matter how well science is settled, you can always find a 
few experts within a field who disagree with the majority conclusions. I would 
not be surprised if there are some professional astronomers who do not believe 
the universe is expanding.

 

A minority always starts with exactly 1 person. In rare cases, it turns out 
that person is right, and the other 20,000 people in the field are wrong. It 
usually takes a long time to convince the others. That one person is usually 
demonized and attacked personally. You can find examples here:

 

http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html#j38

 

This is human nature. It is politics, and politics are everywhere, in all human 
interaction and in all institutions. You can no more extinguish politics than 
you can escape from sexuality or dying of old age.

 

However, despite all that, as an outsider you should bet on the consensus. 
Unless you have some deep inside connections and you know that the institution 
is hopelessly corrupt and run exclusively by idiots, you have to assume that 
for that most part the experts there are correct.

 

It is important to understand that people can be smart about one thing and 
stupid about another. With regard to cold fusion the editors at the Scientific 
American are stupid. They are ignorant and closed minded. But with regard to 
other subjects they are not so stupid, and much of what they say is worth 
listening to. It makes me nervous reading the magazine because I can never be 
sure they are right . . . but that goes for every magazine you read. And every 
bank you deposit money into, every airline and hospital. From time to time, 
institutions we assume are professional and well run turn out to be a shambles.

 

When I first met Gene Mallove, he was an insider and true believer in the 
nobility of science. He had PdDs from Harvard and MIT. What could be more 
mainstream? He had the idea that scientists are open minded, fair, and that 
they embrace novelty and new ideas. I told him that scientists are pretty much 
like everyone else -- like most people they hate and fear new ideas. (I knew 
that because I read a lot of history, not because I am cynical.)

 

Gene later became so angry about the way mainstream science treated cold 
fusion, he swung to the opposite extreme. He began to think that any science 
maverick must be right, and the mainstream must be wrong. He thought all 
science institutions must be corrupt. I said then -- and I still say -- the 
situation is nuanced, and complicated. Both individual people and institutions 
can be a mixture of smart and stupid, fair and unfair.

 

One day Gene said to me with a sigh, "this does not end neatly like an Arthur 
Clarke story, does it?" He meant there is never a time when the scientists 
finally all agree, doubts are resolved, progress is made, and the next great 
adventure begins. I think what happens more often is what Planck described:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making 
them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new 
generation grows up that is familiar with it."

 

Regrettably, this is not happening with cold fusion. The opposite is happening: 
the field is dying along with the generation who did the experiments.

 

- Jed

 

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Jed Rothwell]

MarkI-ZeroPoint  wrote:

Here’s the real issue Jed…
>
>
>
> Didn’t you once argue vociferously, that science is NOT done by
> consensus???
>

As Damon Runyon said, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle
to the strong, but that's the way to bet."

What I am saying is that when you are an outsider to a field, and
especially when the issue is highly technical and takes years to master,
your best bet is to assume that the consensus is correct. This sometimes
leads you to make an error of judgement, especially a Fallacious Appeal to
Authority.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html

For example if you assume that the people at the DoE are experts on cold
fusion, you will incorrectly conclude their opinion on the subject is valid.

If you know little or nothing about a subject, it is safest to say: "I
assume the experts are right, but it is possible they are wrong. I cannot
judge."

Some technical issues are not difficult to judge. For example, most well
educated people have enough knowledge of statistics to see that vaccinating
children is safer than not vaccinating them even though in very rare cases
children die from vaccinations. Climate change, on the other hand is very
complex. I have read enough about it to confirm that. I have written
technical manuals and papers for the general public on cold fusion. I am
usually pretty good at judging when an area of science or technology can be
grasped by ordinary laymen -- or even a Georgia politician -- and when it
is likely to be far over their heads. Climate change is one of these things
that most people do not have the background to understand. You can see
that, for example, in two claims often made:

1. We cannot even predict the weather beyond a few days, so how can anyone
predict the distant future?

2. It is cold here this winter where I am in Washington DC, so there is no
global warming. (This is particularly ignorant when the southern hemisphere
happens to be experiencing record high heat.)

It is also a highly politicized issue, and politicized science attracts a
large numbers of irrational, angry people -- as you see the Wikipedia war
on cold fusion. It also attracts conspiracy theorists. In the case of cold
fusion, these are nutty people who think the oil companies have suppressed
it, and in the case of global warming they are equally nutty people who
think that large numbers of climatologists are gulling the public so they
can . . . live the high life of a researcher, with the hot tub, the babes,
the free booze, the 4 hour optional workday, the 7 figure income.



> And,
>
> I want to know what % of the ‘consensus’ (proponents), who are
> knowledgeable about the issue, AND, AND, AND, are NOT receiving some of
> their funding for climate-related research???
>

Probably not many. How can you do climate research without being funded by
some agency that funds climate-related research? This is like asking how
many cancer researchers are not funded by medically related organizations
such as the NIH, the CDC or the drug companies. Who else is there? Nobody
else funds cancer research as far as I know.

Some of the anti-global warming experts are paid for by fossil fuel
companies. I suspect that influences their judgement. Or perhaps their
judgement came first and that influenced the fossil fuel company to pay
them. I do not think that NOAA has quite so large a financial stake in the
outcome, because I am sure that we will continue studying the climate even
if it turns out global warming is not happening. NOAA will not be disbanded
if global warming is not happening, whereas the coal and oil companies will
be disbanded if it *is* happening. The motivations are unequal.


>

> I want to know exactly where each person is getting funding . . .
>

You can always find that out. All scientific papers published in the last
several decades always list the source of funding, in any legit journal or
web site.



> , or who’s ‘soft’ research position is being funded by climate-change
> related research, so their ‘opinion’ can be weighted appropriately.
>

That does not work. You cannot magically "weigh" people's judgement. That's
a logical fallacy. You cannot read minds. You might suspect that people
funded by coal companies have an ulterior motive to reach a conclusion, but
the only way you can prove that is to find a technical error in it. If you
do not have the knowledge to find a technical error, you cannot tell
whether it is valid or not.



> The internet and social media makes it s much easier to spread
> propaganda, to ‘manage the perception’, that I need to know how one’s
> livelihood is being funded… PERIOD.  FOLLOW THE $.
>

That may be a good way to decide whether there is reason to be suspicious,
but you cannot judge something as complex as climate change on that basis
alone. You have understand the technical issue in depth.

To take an easier case --

It was recently revealed that the Coca 

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Bob Higgins]

For fear of being branded a card carrying republican, I hate to comment on
such topics.  I believe the "global warming movement" is a false flag -
just another lie being broadcast as propaganda to achieve some government's
pet objective.  It is not that I don't believe the earth is warming - I
do.  The reality is that the earth goes through cold and hot cycles.  Ice
cores show a period of 100k-200k years between glaciations (peak cold).
What happens in the middle between peak cold glaciations?  The answer is a
peak hot earth.  We are only about 25k years from the last peak cold
glaciation, and probably 25k-75k years from peak hot earth.  The earth is
presently in a gradual heating portion of the cycle as we move toward the
peak hot earth.  The false flag is the promotion that warming as being
caused by man - the science is not good enough to say this with any
reliability.  Yes, there is rise in CO2 and there is warming, but the earth
would be warming even if there were no CO2 additions.  The question is only
whether there is a small change in rate of warming caused by the CO2
addition.  Cutting CO2 emissions drastically will likely have no
significant effect on warming but may incur significant cost.  Wouldn't
that money be better spent in elimination of world poverty?

Having said that, I believe there is good reason to design out the use of
fossil fuel burning: it is poisoning the air we breath.  It is particularly
acute in the cities and worse in the industrial coal burning cities in
China.  The average person does not realize that with every 20 gallons of
gas they burn in their car, they are adding over 300 pounds of CO2 to the
air.  Another side benefit is elimination of the fighting that has its
roots in oil supply favoritism.

The justification for LENR is clean air, and clearing the landscape from
power distribution ugliness through distributed power generation without
the scale, danger, and nuclear waste of the fission industry.  The third
world will benefit from this readily because they don't have a grid to
start with.  Availability of small, non-polluting power generation systems
(particularly CHP) will help their rise from poverty via access to energy
without the expense of a grid and without need for world controls on
nuclear proliferation.  And what about solving the world's fresh water
crisis?  This is a real opportunity: LENR powered desalinization.

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 8:34 AM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

> Calling all cold fusion flacks!
>
> I added a comment to this article at 10:15 (that's how you can find it). I
> would appreciate up-votes to make it more visible:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/opinion/hope-from-paris.html
>
> - Jed
>
>
>
>

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Jed Rothwell]

Bob Higgins  wrote:

For fear of being branded a card carrying republican, I hate to comment on
> such topics.  I believe the "global warming movement" is a false flag -
> just another lie being broadcast as propaganda to achieve some government's
> pet objective.
>

Scientists often do rotten things. They can be political animals. Few
people have as much direct experience of their shenanigans as I do, or
greater contempt for them. But one thing they have never done, in the
history of science, is what you describe here. They have NEVER organized a
large scale conspiracy to fool the public. They are not capable of it.
Three reasons: that violates the rules of science; scientists are inept at
communicating or convincing the public of anything (look at the cold fusion
researchers for proof of that); and their social skills are so undeveloped
they could not conspire their way out of a paper bag.

Furthermore, as I said before, one of the most important lessons of cold
fusion is that experts are usually right, and you should not listen to
strange people from outside the scientific establishment. The mainstream
researchers who confirmed cold fusion are right.

If experts in climatology say there is global warming induced by humans,
you can be sure they mean it, and you can be pretty sure they are right.
People outside the field of climatology -- including you -- do not know the
details and your critiques are probably wrong. I have seen many critiques
of cold fusion written by scientists outside the field, including
distinguished experts in physics and plasma physics. These critiques had no
merit. They had glaring errors, omissions and misunderstandings in them.
Some are outrageous nonsense, such as some the DoE panel comments:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEusdepartme.pdf

Critiques by scientists who have not done their homework or have no
knowledge of calorimetry are wrong. Even when they are supportive of cold
fusion, they usually miss the point. Needless to say, critiques written by
Wikipedia-style amateurs are beyond the pale. Years ago when I reviewed the
Wikipedia article I could not find a single accurate substantive assertion
about cold fusion. Not one! Everything from tritium to reproducibility was
nonsense.

I cannot judge climatology, but I can see that it is complicated science.
It seems likely to me that all of the outside critiques are as bad as the
Wikipedia-style critiques of cold fusion.

Science works. In the end it gets things right, or mostly right. No one
should disagree with this. It is self evident. No one would dispute that
engineering works. Airplanes do not fall out of the sky; bridges do not
collapse; your computer CPU does a billion operations a second without a
single failure for months on end. Science and engineering are closely
allied and closely comparable to one another. They both work, for similar
reasons.

Weather forecasting is different from long term climatology in some ways,
yet closely related in others. They both use data from satellites and earth
station observations. They use the same basic physical models. They deal
with an enormous number of variables and gigantic databases. Weather
forecasting is astoundingly accurate and reliable compared to how it was 20
or 50 years ago. It is undeniable that great progress has been made in it.
It is foolish to imagine that similar progress has not been made in long
term climatology.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Jed Rothwell]

Alain Sepeda  wrote:

there are case where communities of scientist were locked in groupthink,
> often locally because until recently science was not globally judged.
>
> N-Ray was very popular in french science.
> Wegener was very Impopular
> LENR is unpopular
>


Those are bad examples:

The N-Ray was briefly popular among a small number of scientists. It was
never confirmed. Most scientists paid no attention to it. Polywater, which
was similar, was only partially confirmed by one laboratory. Many others
look for it, found nothing, and never claimed a replication.

Wegner was unpopular but most scientists paid no attention to his findings
or data. They did not know what he claimed, so they had no business
criticizing it. Most scientists who criticize cold fusion know nothing
about the subject. They are not experts in any sense.

LENR is unpopular among scientists who know nothing about it. Their
opinions count for nothing. As far as I know, every scientist with
expertise in a relevant field, such as electrochemistry or tritium
detection, who has looked at the data carefully has been convinced that
cold fusion is real. Nearly every scientist, except for Dieter Britz.

Seriously, asking a scientist who has read nothing about cold fusion to
express an opinion is an absurd thing to do. How can they know anything?!?
By ESP? You might as well ask police officers or cashiers at a grocery
store whether cold fusion is real. It is like asking a typical Georgia
politician whether global warming is real. Most of them are so ignorant
they think the world is 6000 years old!

What is so funny is that many of these politicians predicate their response
by saying, "I am not a scientist but . . ." I would tell them: "Okay, if
you are not a scientist then shut up! Since you are not a scientist you
should defer to the scientists. Would you advise doctors how to perform
brain surgery? Would you tell NASA how to fix a complex problem with the
Curiosity robot explorer on Mars?"



> What can lock people who seems honest is "Groupthink".
>

I think it is mostly just old-fashioned stupidity. Also the Dunning-Kruger
effect.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Bob Higgins]

Jed, you certainly have a right to your opinion and to express it.  In the
case of LENR, there are well respected scientists in positions of power in
the US government that claim LENR doesn't exist - "it is bad science".
They say this either from being right (I don't think so personally), from
being wrong (even though they are respected experts), or because they have
a purpose for claiming the LENR research false even though they know it to
be true.  There are politicos that are using their "Global Warming"
position to bolster their political support - whether they believe in the
science or not is irrelevant because they are getting something for having
taken the position (I.E. Gore).

In any business, all of the scenarios are equally examined.  What would the
situation be if we do nothing?  What would happen if the world truly made
its best possible effort?  What would happen if the world worked on
remediation - subtracted out all of the CO2 from the atmosphere to
pre-industrial levels (at great expense)?  How much difference will there
be between the best possible scenario and the worst scenario?  AND, how
much will it cost for the best possible scenario?  What alternative uses
could be made of that money?

I am not saying the world should continue emitting CO2 without regard to
its effects on the Earth.  Reduction of CO2 emission is important to keep
from poisoning our atmosphere.  The Chinese suffer from this so badly in
many of their major cities that they will be compelled to change (hopefully
to LENR from coal).  Reduction of CO2 in the US will do nothing to help the
Chinese problem.  I am stating that I believe CO2 elimination/remediation
is not an emergency.  I believe that with the best effort the world can
muster, the global warming rate will continue unabated.  CO2 policy
creation deserves balanced treatment over the next 100 years as does
preparation for warming; and elimination of poverty and war.

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 12:55 PM, Jed Rothwell 
wrote:

> Bob Higgins  wrote:
>
> For fear of being branded a card carrying republican, I hate to comment on
>> such topics.  I believe the "global warming movement" is a false flag -
>> just another lie being broadcast as propaganda to achieve some government's
>> pet objective.
>>
>
> Scientists often do rotten things. They can be political animals. Few
> people have as much direct experience of their shenanigans as I do, or
> greater contempt for them. But one thing they have never done, in the
> history of science, is what you describe here. They have NEVER organized a
> large scale conspiracy to fool the public. They are not capable of it.
> Three reasons: that violates the rules of science; scientists are inept at
> communicating or convincing the public of anything (look at the cold fusion
> researchers for proof of that); and their social skills are so undeveloped
> they could not conspire their way out of a paper bag.
>
> Furthermore, as I said before, one of the most important lessons of cold
> fusion is that experts are usually right, and you should not listen to
> strange people from outside the scientific establishment. The mainstream
> researchers who confirmed cold fusion are right.
>
> If experts in climatology say there is global warming induced by humans,
> you can be sure they mean it, and you can be pretty sure they are right.
> People outside the field of climatology -- including you -- do not know the
> details and your critiques are probably wrong. I have seen many critiques
> of cold fusion written by scientists outside the field, including
> distinguished experts in physics and plasma physics. These critiques had no
> merit. They had glaring errors, omissions and misunderstandings in them.
> Some are outrageous nonsense, such as some the DoE panel comments:
>
> http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEusdepartme.pdf
>
> Critiques by scientists who have not done their homework or have no
> knowledge of calorimetry are wrong. Even when they are supportive of cold
> fusion, they usually miss the point. Needless to say, critiques written by
> Wikipedia-style amateurs are beyond the pale. Years ago when I reviewed the
> Wikipedia article I could not find a single accurate substantive assertion
> about cold fusion. Not one! Everything from tritium to reproducibility was
> nonsense.
>
> I cannot judge climatology, but I can see that it is complicated science.
> It seems likely to me that all of the outside critiques are as bad as the
> Wikipedia-style critiques of cold fusion.
>
> Science works. In the end it gets things right, or mostly right. No one
> should disagree with this. It is self evident. No one would dispute that
> engineering works. Airplanes do not fall out of the sky; bridges do not
> collapse; your computer CPU does a billion operations a second without a
> single failure for months on end. Science and engineering are closely
> allied and closely comparable to one another. They 

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Alain Sepeda]

there are case where communities of scientist were locked in groupthink,
often locally because until recently science was not globally judged.

N-Ray was very popular in french science.
Wegener was very Impopular
LENR is unpopular

What can lock people who seems honest is "Groupthink".
http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Groupthink%20IOM%202012_07_02%20BW.pdf
http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/REP_4_BW_nolinks_corrected%201.pdf

It works that way.
first you take people who analyse a situation, and given partial data,
invest asset into an hypothesis... their career, their budget, their
investments...

When new data dissent with the hypothesis there is good reason to doubt on
it.

But human mostly optimize their impression of wealth, not the wealth
itself, and they can avoid data and deform what they see.

If the people who invested in the error, can benefit alone from their
realism, they will accept the data and take benefit , harming the others
but without damage for themselves.

If the people who invested in the error, need the support and acceptance of
the others to benefit from their realism more than what they lose as dream,
if they can be harmed by believers, if there is nothing to win and all to
lose then they enter "groupthink mode".
they then have huge incentive to harass and silent the dissenters, making
them mindguard like who they are...
quickly a full community of deluded minguard is created who implement it's
own motivation.

what is funny is that like the boss of Enron, the IS bombs, the suicide
sect victims, people can finally pay a huge price to their beliefs...
anyway until then they have a very comfortable mental life, where behaving
like a monster is good, where all is simple and clear.

How can you interpret the behavior of white-knight like those who harassed
Bockris ?


never say a whole community cannot be deluded to the point of terrorizing
dissenters despite evidences.

You are the holder of the Evidence as our respected Librarian.


2015-12-14 20:55 GMT+01:00 Jed Rothwell :

> Bob Higgins  wrote:
>
> For fear of being branded a card carrying republican, I hate to comment on
>> such topics.  I believe the "global warming movement" is a false flag -
>> just another lie being broadcast as propaganda to achieve some government's
>> pet objective.
>>
>
> Scientists often do rotten things. They can be political animals. Few
> people have as much direct experience of their shenanigans as I do, or
> greater contempt for them. But one thing they have never done, in the
> history of science, is what you describe here. They have NEVER organized a
> large scale conspiracy to fool the public. They are not capable of it.
> Three reasons: that violates the rules of science; scientists are inept at
> communicating or convincing the public of anything (look at the cold fusion
> researchers for proof of that); and their social skills are so undeveloped
> they could not conspire their way out of a paper bag.
>
> Furthermore, as I said before, one of the most important lessons of cold
> fusion is that experts are usually right, and you should not listen to
> strange people from outside the scientific establishment. The mainstream
> researchers who confirmed cold fusion are right.
>
> If experts in climatology say there is global warming induced by humans,
> you can be sure they mean it, and you can be pretty sure they are right.
> People outside the field of climatology -- including you -- do not know the
> details and your critiques are probably wrong. I have seen many critiques
> of cold fusion written by scientists outside the field, including
> distinguished experts in physics and plasma physics. These critiques had no
> merit. They had glaring errors, omissions and misunderstandings in them.
> Some are outrageous nonsense, such as some the DoE panel comments:
>
> http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEusdepartme.pdf
>
> Critiques by scientists who have not done their homework or have no
> knowledge of calorimetry are wrong. Even when they are supportive of cold
> fusion, they usually miss the point. Needless to say, critiques written by
> Wikipedia-style amateurs are beyond the pale. Years ago when I reviewed the
> Wikipedia article I could not find a single accurate substantive assertion
> about cold fusion. Not one! Everything from tritium to reproducibility was
> nonsense.
>
> I cannot judge climatology, but I can see that it is complicated science.
> It seems likely to me that all of the outside critiques are as bad as the
> Wikipedia-style critiques of cold fusion.
>
> Science works. In the end it gets things right, or mostly right. No one
> should disagree with this. It is self evident. No one would dispute that
> engineering works. Airplanes do not fall out of the sky; bridges do not
> collapse; your computer CPU does a billion operations a second without a
> single failure for months on end. Science and engineering are closely
> 

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[John Berry]

Bob, you seem to agree there is warming...

That CO2 is increasing, by humans...

I presume you agree that increased CO2 heats things up with the greenhouse
effect.

I presume you understand that oil pays a lot of people a lot of money to
make global warming look like some kind of conspiracy...

I can agree that CO2 and greenhouse gasses may not be the only cause of
global warming/climate change/disruption...

So do you think humans continue to make the situation worse?

How sure are you we shouldn't worry?
What if you are wrong, what is the cost?  Pretty high right?
What if I and those concerned about global warming are wrong, what's the
cost? Wouldn't being greener bring other benefits anyway?

John

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 6:04 AM, Bob Higgins 
wrote:

> For fear of being branded a card carrying republican, I hate to comment on
> such topics.  I believe the "global warming movement" is a false flag -
> just another lie being broadcast as propaganda to achieve some government's
> pet objective.  It is not that I don't believe the earth is warming - I
> do.  The reality is that the earth goes through cold and hot cycles.  Ice
> cores show a period of 100k-200k years between glaciations (peak cold).
> What happens in the middle between peak cold glaciations?  The answer is a
> peak hot earth.  We are only about 25k years from the last peak cold
> glaciation, and probably 25k-75k years from peak hot earth.  The earth is
> presently in a gradual heating portion of the cycle as we move toward the
> peak hot earth.  The false flag is the promotion that warming as being
> caused by man - the science is not good enough to say this with any
> reliability.  Yes, there is rise in CO2 and there is warming, but the earth
> would be warming even if there were no CO2 additions.  The question is only
> whether there is a small change in rate of warming caused by the CO2
> addition.  Cutting CO2 emissions drastically will likely have no
> significant effect on warming but may incur significant cost.  Wouldn't
> that money be better spent in elimination of world poverty?
>
> Having said that, I believe there is good reason to design out the use of
> fossil fuel burning: it is poisoning the air we breath.  It is particularly
> acute in the cities and worse in the industrial coal burning cities in
> China.  The average person does not realize that with every 20 gallons of
> gas they burn in their car, they are adding over 300 pounds of CO2 to the
> air.  Another side benefit is elimination of the fighting that has its
> roots in oil supply favoritism.
>
> The justification for LENR is clean air, and clearing the landscape from
> power distribution ugliness through distributed power generation without
> the scale, danger, and nuclear waste of the fission industry.  The third
> world will benefit from this readily because they don't have a grid to
> start with.  Availability of small, non-polluting power generation systems
> (particularly CHP) will help their rise from poverty via access to energy
> without the expense of a grid and without need for world controls on
> nuclear proliferation.  And what about solving the world's fresh water
> crisis?  This is a real opportunity: LENR powered desalinization.
>
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 8:34 AM, Jed Rothwell 
> wrote:
>
>> Calling all cold fusion flacks!
>>
>> I added a comment to this article at 10:15 (that's how you can find it).
>> I would appreciate up-votes to make it more visible:
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/opinion/hope-from-paris.html
>>
>> - Jed
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Jed Rothwell]

Bob Higgins  wrote:

Jed, you certainly have a right to your opinion and to express it.  In the
> case of LENR, there are well respected scientists in positions of power in
> the US government that claim LENR doesn't exist - "it is bad science".
>

Yes. I know those people well. I have met with them, and I have read all of
their books, and all of the articles they have written in magazines and
newspapers. Those people are all -- without exception -- ignorant fools who
know nothing about cold fusion. Their opinions count for nothing. As I
said, you might as well ask the cash register lady at the grocery store
what she thinks of cold fusion.

See for yourself! Gene Mallove collected some of their choice comments here:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MalloveEclassicnas.pdf

See also the Sci. American compendium of mistakes:

http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?p=294

And the DoE panel, as I said:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEusdepartme.pdf



>   They say this either from being right (I don't think so personally),
> from being wrong (even though they are respected experts), or because they
> have a purpose for claiming the LENR research false even though they know
> it to be true.
>

I doubt they have any purpose for claiming LENR is wrong. They would not
make such fools of themselves if they had a rational goal. If it ever
becomes widely known that cold fusion is real, these people will be held up
as a laughingstock for generations to come, like the scientists who claimed
that airplanes were impossible before 1908.

This is human nature. Most people despise novelty. They hate and fear new
discoveries and change. Even scientists are often like that. You can find
hundreds of quotes such as the Nobel laureates who tried to stop Townes
from discovering the laser: "You should stop the work you are doing. It
isn't going to work. You know it's not going to work. We know it's not
going to work. You're wasting money. Just stop!"

See also:

http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html#j38


  There are politicos that are using their "Global Warming" position to
> bolster their political support - whether they believe in the science or
> not is irrelevant because they are getting something for having taken the
> position (I.E. Gore).
>

There may be such politicians, but that has no bearing on the scientific
validity of the claims. You cannot use that fact to judge the technical
arguments.



> In any business, all of the scenarios are equally examined.
>

This is science, not business. The only opinions that count are those of
experts in climatology. Asking anyone else what is likely or what we should
do about it is like asking me how to perform heart surgery.

There is a reason why it takes many years to get a PhD and why science is
so difficult.

This is not to suggest that all experts are always right, but non-experts
are never right, and they cannot be right, even in principle. If they
happen to be right, it is a lucky guess. Like if you asked me what scalpel
to use in the operating room and I happened to point to the right one.



>   What would the situation be if we do nothing?  What would happen if the
> world truly made its best possible effort?
>

These are complex technical issues. Only people who have studied them for
many years have any clue what the answers may be. Those people may be wrong
-- as I said -- but the rest of us have no basis for even addressing the
questions, and no way to judge. We have to trust in their expertise just as
you must trust the pilot of an airplane you board, or the surgeon who is
about to operate on you.

In life you must often defer to expert opinion. That is the whole basis of
civilization. People know different things, and if you don't know what they
know, you cannot judge them. It has been that way for thousands of years.
If you are not a stone mason you cannot judge which stones will likely
cause the cathedral to collapse. You could not have judged that in the year
1400, and you could not do it today.

Of course, when someone makes a terrible mistake, you know he is not an
expert. He may thinks he is, but he is mistaken. When rock gives way and
the cathedral collapses, you are not dealing with qualified stonemasons.
When Gen. Burnside ordered an attack at Fredricksburg, Lincoln could see he
should be fired, even though Lincoln himself was no military expert. And
when DoE "experts" claim that cold fusion has never been replicated, anyone
can see they are not experts! They are nitwits.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[a.ashfield]

Bob Higgins,
I think Jed is attempting to defend the indefensible.  But you stated 
the Chinese pollution problem is due to CO2.  It isn't.  If it were just 
CO2 there would be no smog.  CO2 levels would have to get a lot higher 
than that for people to even notice it.

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[John Berry]

Correction "I presume you understand that oil companies pay a lot of people
a lot of money to make global warming look like some kind of conspiracy".

I think there is room for the experts to be mistaken But when you look at
who believes in human caused global warming, the Oil companies internally
believe (and did early on), the insurance industry, the military believes
it is real.

At least the last 2 are taking actions on the presumption rising seas.



On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 11:51 AM, John Berry  wrote:

> Bob, you seem to agree there is warming...
>
> That CO2 is increasing, by humans...
>
> I presume you agree that increased CO2 heats things up with the greenhouse
> effect.
>
> I presume you understand that oil pays a lot of people a lot of money to
> make global warming look like some kind of conspiracy...
>
> I can agree that CO2 and greenhouse gasses may not be the only cause of
> global warming/climate change/disruption...
>
> So do you think humans continue to make the situation worse?
>
> How sure are you we shouldn't worry?
> What if you are wrong, what is the cost?  Pretty high right?
> What if I and those concerned about global warming are wrong, what's the
> cost? Wouldn't being greener bring other benefits anyway?
>
> John
>
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 6:04 AM, Bob Higgins 
> wrote:
>
>> For fear of being branded a card carrying republican, I hate to comment
>> on such topics.  I believe the "global warming movement" is a false flag -
>> just another lie being broadcast as propaganda to achieve some government's
>> pet objective.  It is not that I don't believe the earth is warming - I
>> do.  The reality is that the earth goes through cold and hot cycles.  Ice
>> cores show a period of 100k-200k years between glaciations (peak cold).
>> What happens in the middle between peak cold glaciations?  The answer is a
>> peak hot earth.  We are only about 25k years from the last peak cold
>> glaciation, and probably 25k-75k years from peak hot earth.  The earth is
>> presently in a gradual heating portion of the cycle as we move toward the
>> peak hot earth.  The false flag is the promotion that warming as being
>> caused by man - the science is not good enough to say this with any
>> reliability.  Yes, there is rise in CO2 and there is warming, but the earth
>> would be warming even if there were no CO2 additions.  The question is only
>> whether there is a small change in rate of warming caused by the CO2
>> addition.  Cutting CO2 emissions drastically will likely have no
>> significant effect on warming but may incur significant cost.  Wouldn't
>> that money be better spent in elimination of world poverty?
>>
>> Having said that, I believe there is good reason to design out the use of
>> fossil fuel burning: it is poisoning the air we breath.  It is particularly
>> acute in the cities and worse in the industrial coal burning cities in
>> China.  The average person does not realize that with every 20 gallons of
>> gas they burn in their car, they are adding over 300 pounds of CO2 to the
>> air.  Another side benefit is elimination of the fighting that has its
>> roots in oil supply favoritism.
>>
>> The justification for LENR is clean air, and clearing the landscape from
>> power distribution ugliness through distributed power generation without
>> the scale, danger, and nuclear waste of the fission industry.  The third
>> world will benefit from this readily because they don't have a grid to
>> start with.  Availability of small, non-polluting power generation systems
>> (particularly CHP) will help their rise from poverty via access to energy
>> without the expense of a grid and without need for world controls on
>> nuclear proliferation.  And what about solving the world's fresh water
>> crisis?  This is a real opportunity: LENR powered desalinization.
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 8:34 AM, Jed Rothwell 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Calling all cold fusion flacks!
>>>
>>> I added a comment to this article at 10:15 (that's how you can find it).
>>> I would appreciate up-votes to make it more visible:
>>>
>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/opinion/hope-from-paris.html
>>>
>>> - Jed
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Eric Walker]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 4:57 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

This is not to suggest that all experts are always right, but non-experts
> are never right, and they cannot be right, even in principle. If they
> happen to be right, it is a lucky guess.
>

This is complete nonsense.

Eric

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Lennart Thornros]

Jed,
I frequently say that I am not a qualified science person, particularly in
regards to nuclear science, which I have very little background in.
However, and to your disappointment:) , I will voice my opinion as I see
fit. If scientists had THE answer than the rest of us would be obsolete.
I think reality is that to take good informed decisions one need to take in
data from 'all walks of life'. The example given above about weather /
climate is a good example. There is a cost involved and there are political
issues to consider and on top of it all the problems are largest where the
economy will be most hurt by a quick enforcement of a world with no CO2
pollution. So even if the increase in global temperature is depending
mostly (which I doubt) on our CO2 pollution we need to overcome other
problems to get the issue in a better state.
US has been very late to adopt any pollution recommendations made by
institutions like UN. The reason has been that strong industrial powers did
not want this expensive regulation. Europe, which is more densely populated
, has had to take steps in this direction for a long time. Now the big
expense will hit areas where the economy cannot take the cost (same
reasoning as the  US put forward 30 years ago). In other words we need to
cough up the money if we want to see any progress in that field. LENR would
certainly be a great help. In the meantime we will see statements like the
one from Paris coming out at great cost and with zero impact. When US make
a 10% import fee on all Chinese  merchandise and then turn those money into
improvement of the pollution in China's developing cities then things will
happen. Popular - don't you think?

Best Regards ,
Lennart Thornros


lenn...@thornros.com
+1 916 436 1899

Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and
enthusiastically act upon, must inevitably come to pass. (PJM)


On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 2:23 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

> Alain Sepeda  wrote:
>
> there are case where communities of scientist were locked in groupthink,
>> often locally because until recently science was not globally judged.
>>
>> N-Ray was very popular in french science.
>> Wegener was very Impopular
>> LENR is unpopular
>>
>
>
> Those are bad examples:
>
> The N-Ray was briefly popular among a small number of scientists. It was
> never confirmed. Most scientists paid no attention to it. Polywater, which
> was similar, was only partially confirmed by one laboratory. Many others
> look for it, found nothing, and never claimed a replication.
>
> Wegner was unpopular but most scientists paid no attention to his findings
> or data. They did not know what he claimed, so they had no business
> criticizing it. Most scientists who criticize cold fusion know nothing
> about the subject. They are not experts in any sense.
>
> LENR is unpopular among scientists who know nothing about it. Their
> opinions count for nothing. As far as I know, every scientist with
> expertise in a relevant field, such as electrochemistry or tritium
> detection, who has looked at the data carefully has been convinced that
> cold fusion is real. Nearly every scientist, except for Dieter Britz.
>
> Seriously, asking a scientist who has read nothing about cold fusion to
> express an opinion is an absurd thing to do. How can they know anything?!?
> By ESP? You might as well ask police officers or cashiers at a grocery
> store whether cold fusion is real. It is like asking a typical Georgia
> politician whether global warming is real. Most of them are so ignorant
> they think the world is 6000 years old!
>
> What is so funny is that many of these politicians predicate their
> response by saying, "I am not a scientist but . . ." I would tell them:
> "Okay, if you are not a scientist then shut up! Since you are not a
> scientist you should defer to the scientists. Would you advise doctors how
> to perform brain surgery? Would you tell NASA how to fix a complex problem
> with the Curiosity robot explorer on Mars?"
>
>
>
>> What can lock people who seems honest is "Groupthink".
>>
>
> I think it is mostly just old-fashioned stupidity. Also the Dunning-Kruger
> effect.
>
> - Jed
>
>

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Jed Rothwell]

a.ashfield  wrote:

>
> I think Jed is attempting to defend the indefensible.


You should at least acknowledge that I am defending the opinions of
experts. Educated people may disagree with experts but it goes to far to
say this is "indefensible." You, for some reason, imagine you know better
than these experts. Given the complexity of modern society and the advanced
nature of our science, I think your claim is more extreme than mine.

Perhaps you are suggesting that these climate researchers are fakes engaged
in a massive conspiracy. That seems far-fetched, to say the least.



>   But you stated the Chinese pollution problem is due to CO2.  It isn't.
> If it were just CO2 there would be no smog.


I think this may have gotten confused in the discussion here. It is often
confused in the mass media. I think everyone here understands that the
pollution problem in Beijing is caused by particulates, not CO2. These
particulates could be greatly reduced by using scrubbers with coal fired
plants.

Chinese automobiles also cause particulate pollution. As far as I know the
automobile pollution controls are up to U.S. and Japanese standards so I do
not think they could easily be improved. They are already about as good as
modern technology can achieve. I think I heard on NHK that Chinese gasoline
refining standards are not up to our codes, and that is causing problems.

Other problems are being caused by CO2, according to experts. These
including rising sea levels, extreme temperatures, and damage caused by
heat to agriculture and the ecology. This is getting beyond the scope of
the discussion.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Jed Rothwell]

Eric Walker  wrote:


>
>
This is not to suggest that all experts are always right, but non-experts
>> are never right, and they cannot be right, even in principle. If they
>> happen to be right, it is a lucky guess.
>>
>
> This is complete nonsense.
>

Obviously I mean with regard to complex technical subjects, such as global
warming or brain surgery. Or controlling robot explorers on Mars.

Experts are often wrong about ordinary subjects, and subjects outside of
their own expertise. They can even be wrong about their own fields, but
logically that means they are not actually experts.

Anyone can judge an expert by looking at results. Over the last few months
I have had an itching rash. I consulted with two doctors, and followed
their advice, but it did not get better. Obviously they are not experts on
that particular problem. I went to third doctor. The treatment he
recommended seems to be working, so I guess he is an expert after all. Or
he made a lucky guess. I can't judge.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Bob Higgins]

Yes, CO2 is increasing by humans.  In many ways fossil fuels keep us alive
and fed.  It runs the furnace for my house to keep me from freeaing (20F
outside), it runs the tractors that farm the fields, the trucks and trains
that deliver the food, and most people in the US require driving a car to
get to work.

Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and is likely increasing the global
temperature - probably at a miniscule rate compared to the rate of warming
due to natural cosmological and geothermal causes.

Yes, humans continue to make it worse (in a tiny way), but without the CO2
creation the polulation would die in large numbers at the present state of
technology.

I didn't say don't worry.  In fact we should be preparing for warming.  We
should reduce our use of fossil fuels as the economy and technology permit.

What if I am wrong?  No difference. Everyone is polarized one way or the
other.  The reality is that no matter what the president commits the US to,
what I am suggesting is what will happen in the end anyway - gradual
reduction of CO2 as the economy and technology permit.  But, we should not
be selling the effort on the basis of Global Warming - we should be selling
it on the basis of not poisoning our atmosphere.

If the fanatics were to get the reins and turn the "Global Warming" theory
into an emergency, it would cause a shift of lower middle class individuals
into poverty to pay for the emergency efforts.  Many would die from not
being able to heat their house, buy food, or go to work.  It would delay
contributions of the US toward elimination of world poverty.  It would
create a huge demand for a technological alternative that the world doesn't
have.  After all is said and done there would be significant economic
damage, perhaps greater war as many of the poverty stricken look for a way
out, and I believe a total failure to abate global warming in any
meaningful way.

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 3:51 PM, John Berry  wrote:

> Bob, you seem to agree there is warming...
>
> That CO2 is increasing, by humans...
>
> I presume you agree that increased CO2 heats things up with the greenhouse
> effect.
>
> I presume you understand that oil pays a lot of people a lot of money to
> make global warming look like some kind of conspiracy...
>
> I can agree that CO2 and greenhouse gasses may not be the only cause of
> global warming/climate change/disruption...
>
> So do you think humans continue to make the situation worse?
>
> How sure are you we shouldn't worry?
> What if you are wrong, what is the cost?  Pretty high right?
> What if I and those concerned about global warming are wrong, what's the
> cost? Wouldn't being greener bring other benefits anyway?
>
> John
>
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 6:04 AM, Bob Higgins 
> wrote:
>
>> For fear of being branded a card carrying republican, I hate to comment
>> on such topics.  I believe the "global warming movement" is a false flag -
>> just another lie being broadcast as propaganda to achieve some government's
>> pet objective.  It is not that I don't believe the earth is warming - I
>> do.  The reality is that the earth goes through cold and hot cycles.  Ice
>> cores show a period of 100k-200k years between glaciations (peak cold).
>> What happens in the middle between peak cold glaciations?  The answer is a
>> peak hot earth.  We are only about 25k years from the last peak cold
>> glaciation, and probably 25k-75k years from peak hot earth.  The earth is
>> presently in a gradual heating portion of the cycle as we move toward the
>> peak hot earth.  The false flag is the promotion that warming as being
>> caused by man - the science is not good enough to say this with any
>> reliability.  Yes, there is rise in CO2 and there is warming, but the earth
>> would be warming even if there were no CO2 additions.  The question is only
>> whether there is a small change in rate of warming caused by the CO2
>> addition.  Cutting CO2 emissions drastically will likely have no
>> significant effect on warming but may incur significant cost.  Wouldn't
>> that money be better spent in elimination of world poverty?
>>
>> Having said that, I believe there is good reason to design out the use of
>> fossil fuel burning: it is poisoning the air we breath.  It is particularly
>> acute in the cities and worse in the industrial coal burning cities in
>> China.  The average person does not realize that with every 20 gallons of
>> gas they burn in their car, they are adding over 300 pounds of CO2 to the
>> air.  Another side benefit is elimination of the fighting that has its
>> roots in oil supply favoritism.
>>
>> The justification for LENR is clean air, and clearing the landscape from
>> power distribution ugliness through distributed power generation without
>> the scale, danger, and nuclear waste of the fission industry.  The third
>> world will benefit from this readily because they don't have a grid to
>> start with.  Availability of 

Re: [Vo]:N. Y. Times article comment

[Lennart Thornros]

Yes, Jed you are right.
You go to three experts and the one who gives the correct answer is the
REAL expert. That is the problem in a nutshell - experts are often wrong
even if they say they are experts and it is hard to see which one is THE
expert.  I assume you did not go to the two first experts even as you know
they were less of an exper,t than the third one:)

Best Regards ,
Lennart Thornros


lenn...@thornros.com
+1 916 436 1899

Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and
enthusiastically act upon, must inevitably come to pass. (PJM)


On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 3:19 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

> Eric Walker  wrote:
>
>
>>
>>
> This is not to suggest that all experts are always right, but non-experts
>>> are never right, and they cannot be right, even in principle. If they
>>> happen to be right, it is a lucky guess.
>>>
>>
>> This is complete nonsense.
>>
>
> Obviously I mean with regard to complex technical subjects, such as global
> warming or brain surgery. Or controlling robot explorers on Mars.
>
> Experts are often wrong about ordinary subjects, and subjects outside of
> their own expertise. They can even be wrong about their own fields, but
> logically that means they are not actually experts.
>
> Anyone can judge an expert by looking at results. Over the last few months
> I have had an itching rash. I consulted with two doctors, and followed
> their advice, but it did not get better. Obviously they are not experts on
> that particular problem. I went to third doctor. The treatment he
> recommended seems to be working, so I guess he is an expert after all. Or
> he made a lucky guess. I can't judge.
>
> - Jed
>
>