This turns out not to be the case. More below. On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 23:16, Steven Parker <[email protected]> wrote: > "denial of the existence of global warming, or denial of the truth of > evolution? The space race is a product of movie special effects? The earth > is flat? It is difficult for me to imagine my believing such. Do they > deserve a hearing?" > > Some of these are obviousily very ridiculous but yes it is a real problem > giving controversial issues a hearing, for example alot of educational > resources have been created and taught to students on the existence of > global warming based on the impact of human carbon emissions. > > From an education point alot has been politically and personally invested in > this premise based on IPCC data but yet only recently as I'm sure many of > you are aware there has been the "Climategate" controversy whereby the > British Climatic Research Unit's computers at the University of East Anglia > where hacked. From this emails and documents have been published which show > IPCC endorsed scientists engaged in the the falsification and destruction > of data
Humpty Dumpty fallacy: Words mean only what I want them to mean, rather than having different meanings in different contexts. By no means. In fact, shame on you for being fooled by industry shills and True Believers in Conspiracy Theories. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/26/17302/203 DS: When Phil Jones wrote in 1999, "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i. e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline," what did he mean? Michael Mann: Phil Jones has publicly gone on record indicating that he was using the term "trick" in the sense often used by people, as in "bag of tricks", or "a trick to solving this problem ...", or "trick of the trade". In referring to our 1998 Nature article, he was pointing out simply the following: our proxy record ended in 1980 (when the proxy data set we were using terminates) so, it didn't include the warming of the past two decades. In our Nature article we therefore also showed the post-1980 instrumental data that was then available through 1995, so that the reconstruction could be viewed in the context of recent instrumental temperatures. The separate curves for the reconstructed temperature series and for the instrumental data were clearly labeled. and so on. > and vindication of "sceptical scientists" with data contrary to the > global warming hypothesis. Cherrypicking fallacy. Also not the case, as discussed in the same story and many others on Daily Kos and elsewhere. The scientists have taken account of daily and annual warming and cooling cycles, the cooling effect of volcanic aerosols and warming from volcanic CO2, variations in El Niño/La Niña, and a multitude of other measured and modeled effects tending to more or less warming at particular times. Carbon-industry pseudo-scientists follow the techniques pioneered by tobacco industry pseudo-scientists, picking out one factor or another and claiming that it invalidates the analysis that actually includes it, while ignoring all of the real data, and expecting the public not to check up on them. > i.e the science is most definitely not closed. Strawman fallacy. Science is never closed. A theory can only be closed if it is held in a closed mind. We are still running tests on General Relativity, such as the recently completed Gravity Probe B. Initial analysis suggested detection of frame dragging, but a problem in tracking the rotations of the test spheres has put that result under a cloud. It was not clear when I last checked whether further analysis will clear up the matter. Denial of global warming would be equivalent to claiming that the failure of this experiment to return a valid result somehow calls General Relativity into question, even though the GPS system couldn't possibly work without GR time calculations for orbiting atomic clocks. The issues in global warming do not extend to whether it is occurring. The measurements of global air and water temperature, and of melting ice and permafrost, are unequivocal. The questions are how much, how fast, and with what effects on sea levels, agriculture, disease, extinctions, and other matters that affect human well-being. It is correct to say that all global warming models have been wrong. This does not help the deniers, because the models have all been wrong in the wrong direction. All of the major indicators show that warming is worse than expected, and accelerating faster than predicted. Contrary to all conspiracy theories, climate models have been consistently conservative. The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is apparently saturated, as it has recently begun releasing about as much CO2 as it absorbs. If this extends to the whole ocean, the rate of accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere will roughly double from the current rate. If the Arctic sea ice disappears, ocean currents may change dramatically. If the permafrost melts, it may release huge amounts of methane, a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, though not so long-lived in the atmosphere. I could go on. As with Holocaust Denial and "Creation Science", trivial objections are put forward to True Believers as reasons to dispute the entire story, a story actually based in each case on vast records and other evidence. The Holocaust occurred at large numbers of sites, for which detailed records were kept, whether or not you can find the remains of the demolished gas chambers or cremation ovens at Auschwitz. Evolution is a fact, not a theory. Many billions of facts, in fact. We can discuss details of DNA, ribosomes, the genetic code, the RNA world, the lack of a detailed roadmap of abiogenesis, but none of the questions about details and unknown sequences changes our understanding of mutation processes and of natural and sexual selection. Nor do the fake fossils of human and dinosaur footprints together. And the AIR and WATER and ICE and DIRT and ROCKS are WARMING, and the oceans are getting more acid. No possible discrepancy in modeling or in use of easily misunderstood jargon can change those facts. > See: > http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/British_Climatic_Research_Unit%27s_emails_hacked > > Climategate: Dr. Tim Ball on the hacked CRU emails - > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydo2Mwnwpac > > Does this deserve a hearing? Yes most definatley otherwise an education wiki > becomes non objective and counter to the aims of educating people into the > area of indoctrination. It has had a hearing, and has been extensively debunked. Do your homework. Search for comments on the issue using Google, and see whether you can tell the science from the pseudoscience. > Yes a real problem despite it being difficult to imagine. Cold fusion is a more interesting case. We are quite certain that chemists Fleishman and Pons believed their conclusions for a long time, even though physicists poked holes in every announcement, and published quantum mechanical analyses showing why their result was imossible. I can provide details if anybody needs them, or you can look it up. The graphs of supposed gamma ray emission from their experiments were physically impossible, because they showed no reflected gamma rays at the appropriate energy shifts. The next set of graphs showed the features required by that criticism, but failed to show others. And so on. Nevertheless, scientists tried to replicate their results for more than a year, without success, before giving up. Scientists never do an experiment or run a model just once. Deniers do no experiments and build no models, but claim that any single error in any scientific paper is grounds for throwing out the whole idea. This is based on a misunderstanding of the term "falsification" by Karl Popper in his book Conjectures and Refutations. One observation does not constitute a fact, and one fact does not refute an established theory. The Michelson-Morley experiments conducted over more than a year conclusively demonstrated that Classical Physics was incomplete for motion at a significant fraction of the speed of light, but not that it was fundamentally no good. Nobody abandoned physics between those experiments and Einstein's Relativistic explanation. We know that quantum mechanics and General Relativiy cannot both be complete, and in fact we expect that both are incomplete. But we do not throw them out. They remain accurate as far as they go. Someday, something new will go farther, and the old theories will be seen to be approximations of the new theory in the old realm, while the new theory explains much more in new realms. > On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 3:43 PM, Phil Bartle <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Rant for this weekend is about controversial subjects >> See: http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Philbartle#Phil.27s_Rants >> Cheers, >> Phil >> If the coach does the pushups, >> The athlete will not get stronger >> Community Empowerment: >> www.scn.org/cmp/ >> WikiEducator >> http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Philbartle >> Join our discusssion forum >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Community_Strengthening >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups "WikiEducator" group. >> To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org >> To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected] >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected] > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "WikiEducator" group. > To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org > To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
