Thanks, Nazgulnarsil; I’ll try to check it out soon.
Juan, if you haven’t read any of the “pseudoscience,” then how could you know that it’s really guilty of all the missteps that you attribute to it? How would your argument be anything besides a blanket ad hominem?
Danny, your ‘argument’ reduces to the following non sequitur : "Juan didn’t read all the state propaganda, so it follows that the state propaganda is actually ‘real science’ ".
That would be analogous to saying, for instance, that unless I read the whole bible I can’t state the fact that christianity is a scam.
Problem is, you’re stuck with the peer-reviewed collectivisitic university mentality. No different than the church ‘scientifically’ proving that the earth is the center of the universe - there were a lot of respectable scientists ‘proving’ the official story, you know.
No, my argument reduces to the following entirely relevant point: “Juan didn’t read all the state propaganda, so it follows that he doesn’t have any basis for commenting on its quality.” [To which I should add, “Plus, Juan doesn’t actually understand the issues that the state propaganda discusses, so he’s ill-equipped to opine about the truth of the conclusions reached in the state propaganda”]
Actually, let me try to approach this another way.
Juan. Can you explain the mechanisms by which the mainstream scientific community postulates that the global climate system will change in disturbing ways in the future, and explain why those postulations are misguided?
But I do. You seem to be ignoring a basic fact. It is state propaganda.
Your pretending that 100% state funded ‘research’ which justifies political action is ‘objective science’ is a joke. And it’s doubly a joke since we’re in a libertarian anarchist forum.
However, if claiming that makes me an ignorant ideologue, then there are things like this :
http://www.petitionproject.org/
That’s just something you say, not a fact.
Rather, why don’t you explain your understanding of physics from, say, the kinetic theory of gases to how the behavior of a complex system such as the the sun/earth can be accurately predicted ?
Do you understand the role of controlled experiment in physics ?
What sort of controlled experiments have the ACC scammers carried ?
Do you realize that computer simulations are not experiments ?
Have you at least read the 12 page summary of the peer reviewed literature that goes along with the petition? And what do you make of the fact that in order to sign the petition, you need to have a relevant level of education in a related field? Are you not seeing a pattern here?
Yes, bureaucracy. But have fun.
I’m not sure about the relevance of each of the questions you posed…it would seem like your implicit demands would entirely rule out as pseudo-science fields of inquiry like meteorology, predictions about the tides, modeling of stellar phenomena, etc. If you want to take a position like that in the demarcation debate, it seems like you’d need to provide an argument.
It’s obviously true that some of the components of the mainstream position, like estimations of the magnitudes of the forcings resulting from changes in insolation, can only be understood through historical statistical methods which are inherently plagued by noise, insufficiently large data sets, and uncertainties relating to measurement techniques. Other components, like the capacity of greenhouse gases to absorb and scatter long-wave radiation or the capacity of changes in land-use to alter surface albedo, are subject to experimental verification. Other components, like atmospheric circulation, are inherently more reliant on modeling. And still other components, like cloud dynamics, are so poorly understood that scientists cannot quantify them with any degree of confidence. There should be a lot of questions about the capacity of such a combination of inherently uncertain prediction tools to tell us very much about the future that we can rely on. There are, without a doubt, significant epistemological barriers to our ability to make robust predictions about the future state of the climate system.
But first, all of these issue are incorporated into the mainstream position that the possibility of anthropogenic global change is something that is worrisome and deserving of attention. In fact, I first learned about these problems from members of the mainstream climate science community. Second, it does not follow from the fact that there are still substantial uncertainties that the work that has been done thus far is “pseudo-science” and garbage. Surely you wouldn’t want to say this sort of thing about other areas of science! And third, for the hundredth time, even if it were true that the mainstream approach to this issue has been terrible, it still wouldn’t follow that anthropogenic global climate change is not happening.
My two cents:
1.) The theory of climate change created by increased CO2 levels that are a result of energy production by humans is sound.
2.) The models used to predict climate change magnitudes are almost as bad as macroeconomic forcasting models. In other words, they are mostly junk.
Not exactly but I certainly want to underline the difference between ‘hard’ physics and other applications of physics which are way more inaccurate.
For instance, you mention tidal predictions and meteorology. Tides are rather well understood and regular phenomena. They are explained and predicted using well understood and relatively simple mechanics. That level of understanding is currently not available with respect to the climate…as you note.
Also, I used “pseudo-science” to underline the fact that ppl working for the gov’t are not that interested in truth but rather in getting paid and in being useful to their bosses. So, while climatology may be a science of sorts, it morphs into something else when done by state employees.
I simply want to point out that as phenomena get more complex it’s harder to predict them. And the complexity of the climate from the point of view of deterministic mechanics/physics is staggering.
It’s easy to predict how billiard balls move in a table. Now, put a drop of ink in a glass of water. How easy is it to predict the patterns that arise as ink and water mix ? Is it even practically possible to predict them ? How about predicting the future behaviour of the atmosphere…?
So…I frankly don’t see how it’s possible to claim that ACC is an objective fact and furthermore that the ‘scientists’ can predict how climate will evolve.
My argument is epistemological and leads me to challenge the metaphysical postulate of ACC existence =]
But the scientists who work on these issues are generally not employed by government agencies; they’re professors at universities. I guess you could argue that because many of the largest research universities are state schools, this represents a conflict of interest, but I think that’s a pretty weak case. None of my professors in climate-related subjects have been particularly politically-minded, and are more interested in being right than promoting a statist agenda. That’s not to say that they aren’t biased, but I don’t think the sources of their bias are really clearly the government. If anything, I’d expect there to be more biased people on the other side, where private interests and conservative agendas would create a market for people willing to take a skeptical stance. And this seems to be borne out in some of the really awful skeptical literature that’s come out over the last decade or so (not to say that all skeptical literature is awful, but there have been some really, really awful publications). I guess I don’t think of the mainstream scientists as being as corrupt as you seem to think they are; I mean, I know some of them personally, and for all their hang-ups they do genuinely believe that what they’re doing is searching for the truth.
As for the relevance of complexity and chaotic effects on the global climate system, I agree that our ability to model the climate is inherently constrained by our obvious inability to precisely model the phenomena that are involved in the climate system. But the question is whether the predictions made by the climate models are more like “This is what we think the pattern will be when the ink drop falls into the water” or more like “The drop of ink will move downward in the solution approximately this far in this amount of time, though we don’t necessarily know exactly the path it will take or what pattern will be formed.” If they take the former form, then obviously the project will be hopeless. But if they take the latter form, then progress may be possible, though inherently subject to significant uncertainty.
this is what I meant by there being no conspiracy. you don’t need a bunch of politically minded professors, and you don’t need a school to be a “state school”. All you need is to have almost all of the money flowing from one place. Over time the interests of the fundees drifts towards the goals of the funders. This is a natural process and requires no supervision.
I agree that the potential for that sort of thing exists, but I think it’s important when conducting intellectual inquiry to stay away from ad hominem arguments as much as possible. Of course, such arguments aren’t necessarily false, but they aren’t particularly effective at determining the truth. I think it’s important to take the possibility of bias into account, for sure, but I also don’t think it’s appropriate to dismiss all of the work being done by scientists around the world on the grounds that they might be biased. Even a biased scientist can be right, and even a person who has been exposed to biasing influences can be unbiased.
the issue isn’t really with the data but with inappropriate allocating of resources based on the threat level climate change poses even if it is as bad as the upper end predictions.
I dunno…if the upper end predictions were correct, it would be pretty catastrophic…