At 07:25 AM 12/4/2012, Robert McKay wrote:
On Mon, 3 Dec 2012 22:02:33 -0500, Jed Rothwell wrote:
I will grant that in some cases, experts are blinded by their own
professional knowledge and by the bias of the field as a whole. That
is why many physicists do not believe in cold fusion. But the key
That's pretty much exactly the problem with climatologists- they
only believe in global warming (sorry "climate change") because
that's what they do.. as you say the field as a whole is biased.
This might be true for some, but it's an error as applied to the
whole field. Someone who studies climate may be involved in that
regardless of any prior opinion about global warming. Climates do
change, and the issue is how and why.
IMO you don't need to know anything about climate science to
understand global warming - it's all about politics and banking
(imagine a global economy underpinned by financial products where
the only underlaying deliverable is itself an intangible book
keeping entry). The powers that be have decided that co2 trading is
the way forward and are determined to ram it down everyone's
throats. It doesn't matter if it's a pack of lies or not, they're
already too invested in the idea to do anything else at this point.
The explanation is making an assumption. It's "all about" politics.
Certainly politics has become involved. But if human activity and
increased CO2 release into the atmosphere is changing climate, that
has nothing to do with politics, per se. It's a physical effect, if it's real.
It's plausible that it would cause change, and it's also plausible
that these changes could cause substantial disruption. So, my view,
it's important to find out the reality of this, and our attachment to
one side or the other, based on "politics," simply confuses the
issue. The climate doesn't care about our politics. It will not warm
because every climatologist thinks it will, and it will not cool
because every libertarian or contrarian thinks climate change is bogus.
It's correct that you don't need to know anything about climate
science itself to understand some of the political forces, but we
*do* need to understand climate science to understand how serious the
problem is, and to understand if expensive measures should be taken.
Some economic forces will very understandably try to make a profit
from environmental measures. That is totally irrelevant to the issue
of whether these measures are necessary or advisable or not.
Generally, the interest of this list is science. At this point, the
majority scientific opinion seems to be that AGW is real and
dangerous. I'm fully aware that "majority scientific opinion" can be
defective -- cold fusion demonstrates that, as did the
fat/cholesterol hypothesis. If, however, one looks closely at these
issues, one can find what Jed proposed. Those who actually were doing
the research, and whose opinions were based on that research, who
were following the scientific method, were generally correct, and
those who didn't follow the scientific method were fooling
themselves. Cargo cult science.
Keep your eyes open. Don't fool yourself.
