Guest post by Steven Goddard
There is no question that some of the greatest minds have been scientists. Da Vinci, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Edison, Einstein, Fermi, Feynman are a few names that come to mind.
But how about the consensus? One of the most famous cases of consensus science gone ridiculous involved the theory of Continental Drift. In 1912, a German scientist named Alfred Wegener introduced the theory that the continents were not stationary, but rather moved.
Any child can see that the continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, yet the scientific community took over 50 years to stop ridiculing Wegener and accept his theory.
“Utter, damned rot!” said the president of the prestigious American Philosophical Society.
“If we are to believe in Wegener’s hypothesis we must forget everything which has been learned in the past 70 years and start all over again.” Geologist R. Thomas Chamberlain
“further discussion of it merely incumbers the literature and befogs the mind of fellow students.” Geologist Barry Willis
Sound familiar?
http://travel.state.gov/images/maps/brazil.gif
http://www.globalkids.info/v3/content/africa.jpg
Several earlier scientists had also observed the obvious – from Wikipedia :
Abraham Ortelius (1597), Francis Bacon (1625), Benjamin Franklin, Antonio Snider-Pellegrini (1858), and others had noted earlier that the shapes of continents on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean (most notably, Africa and South America) seem to fit together. W. J. Kious described Ortelius’ thoughts in this way:[1]
Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus … suggested that the Americas were “torn away from Europe and Africa … by earthquakes and floods” and went on to say: “The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves, if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three [continents].
Not only do the continents fit together, but Wegener observed that their geology matched.
http://www.scientus.org/Wegener-DuToit.jpeg
And the fossils match.
. 
http://www.scientus.org/Pellegrini-Wegener-1.gif
We see a parallel to global warming. The earth is not warming out of control. Sea level is not rising out of control. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are not collapsing. The IPCC documents have been shown to be littered with junk science and fraud. The hockey team has been shown to be misusing their positions. Yet the consensus hangs on to the ridiculous, for the same reasons they did from 1912 to 1960. No one wants to “forget what they learned and start over again.”
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“We see a parallel to global warming.”
No we don’t. This is such a simple logical flaw that sceptics should never, ever repeat it. It makes us look like all the crank science fans (although Galileo is generally their favourite).
There are plenty of examples of science accepting amazingly bizarre theories in quite short notice, despite scientists having to learn things from the ground up. Quantum theory never had to put up much fight. Birds descending from dinosaurs was pretty quick too.
There are lots more examples of science rejecting pretty obvious ideas, on the basis that they were totally wrong. Lamarkianism (Lyshenkoism) is one good one.
If you want to prove AGW is wrong, then you need to prove AGW is wrong. Nothing else will do. Going off on a tangent about how other scientists were wrong in the past is totally and utterly irrelevant.
Even worse – the 1928 annual meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologist included an entire symposium on disproving, debunking, defaming, reidculing, and trying to put to rest the well-articulated ideas of one man, who was almost 100% correct.
Wegener not only concluded that some of the continents were together, he concluded that there had been one supercontinent (Pangaea), that it had split first along an east-west line into a northern (Laurasia) and southern (Gondwana) continent, and then later into east and west sub-sections (Correct), and that before Pangaea, there had been a precursor super continent (correct again).
The important thing was that it was all supported by evidence which his critics chose to ignore. THAT is the real similarity to our current situation.
No.
More than half of PhDs’ intellectual scores are not high enough to support genuinely independent thought. Add to that — objectivity is needed — something not everyone posessses.
Very good article. Can’t agree more.
Thanks
CLIMATE CHANGE JOINT RESOLUTION, 2010 GENERAL SESSION, STATE OF UTAH
Have we actually some Statesmen acting on conviction instead of political correctness?
Einstein’s contribution to science is immeasurable, but when that guy stepped into politics/economics he was clueless. He loved socialism, which always baffled me because the guy didn’t live his own life that way. Growing up, he was so mad at the schools for the rigid way they taught that he started reading a ton on his own. He thought about physics like no one else did, in part, because he was such a hardcore individualist and didn’t want to approach it like anyone else. Sometimes he even made up his own math symbols.
You get all these brilliant scientists who think they’re brilliant in other areas, and a lot of times it just ain’t true. It’s like that for most any intellectual. They grow up with everyone saying how smart they are, which may very well be the case, but it does not always mean they’re smart about everything.
This is exactly what’s been going on with this climategate stuff. These people think they know how the world should be managed, and they let that sentiment override everything they stand for.
No.
Only half of PhDs’ have intellectual scores high enough to support thinking outside the box (according to some sources). Add to that — objectivity is needed — something probably fewer than half of the population has in abundance. Moreover, a load of self confidence is needed to handle the criticisms and admit mistakes.
Tough to find all the needed factors in one person.
Aw Mooloo… I’ll add to what I’m sure will be a chorus.
“WE” don’t have to prove anything. Those who BELIEVE in AGW have to prove it. Currently there is no credible evidence, the evidence that has been presented has been shown to be flawed, the physics don’t add up, the people involved were caught with their hands in the cookie jar (disrupting the peer review process), and the pockets are deep for promoting the idea.
But the idea itself has not only not been proven, but has been convincingly enough disproved for anyone who will simply look.
If Edison said that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, then in the case of AGW I would suggest something like 90% imagination and 10% perspiration.
If we can up the perspiration levels, as we have seen with the huge efforts of Anthony, Steve et al, and cut down on the imagination, we might head back towards a real science.
This reminds me of the whole deal about Cold Fusion. There was lots of excitement at the time. It was shown to be an artifact. Artifacts in science are common when you don’t control every parameters. It’s often not easy to see that the signal can be an artifact some times.
The science from the the IPCC is what is called “Pathological science” and billions of dollars have been put into studying artifacts that certain scientists were not smart enough to figure out it was just that… artifacts.
Def.: Pathological science is the process in science in which “people are tricked into false results … by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions”. The term was first used by Irving Langmuir, Nobel Prize-winning chemist, during a 1953 colloquium at the Knolls Research Laboratory. Langmuir said a pathological science is an area of research that simply will not “go away” —long after it was given up on as ‘false’ by the majority of scientists in the field. He called pathological science “the science of things that aren’t so”
Uh, Mooloo, it is the warmists who have to prove AGW right, and they haven’t. And they can’t.
Mooloo:
“If you want to prove AGW is wrong, then you need to prove AGW is wrong. Nothing else will do. Going off on a tangent about how other scientists were wrong in the past is totally and utterly irrelevant.”
No, you are wrong. It is up to the proponents of the hypothesis to prove it, not for rationalists to disprove same.
It is impossible to falsify an hypothesis that is based purely upon conjecture, assumptions, and computer modelling.
The trouble with the Warmers is that they have lost sight of the Scientific Method, or perhaps had no concept of the Scientific Method in the first place.
I suppose that this is the best outcome we can expect from the “dumbing down” of education in the latter part of the 20th century.
Topic: “Are Scientists Always Smart?”
Hence Tim Lambert’s claim that WUWT is ‘Anti-Science’.
Jack,
Amen and Amen! We skeptics don’t have to prove anything, except that the hypothesis can be falsified – if only once.
The AGW hypothesis has been falsified by its own authors…several times in the last few months.
Put down the Koolaid and step back, no one needs to be hurt here.
Mike Bentley
Mooloo –
“If you want to prove AGW is wrong, then you need to prove AGW is wrong. Nothing else will do. Going off on a tangent about how other scientists were wrong in the past is totally and utterly irrelevant.”
You seem to forget the null hypothesis.
The obligation of proof lies, not with those who are skeptics of AGW, but with those who posit that the climate is dramatically changing. Actually, Wegener’s “Continental Drift” Theory is similar to AGW – in that it was doubted until a mechanism – seafloor spreading – was discovered to explain the process. Unlike AGW, Plate Tectonics brings together many disparate parts into an understandable whole. AGW, on the other hand, requires the dismissal of the MWP, the UHI, post-LIA warming to make its case.
TR-104195, Developments in Advanced Concepts for Nuclear Effects in Deuterated Metals, 1994, Electric Power Research Institute.
Find it on the Web. 234 Page report. Please stop making “Cold Fusion” a whipping boy, for “unproven” science.
Mooloo (20:21:05)
This article is not suggesting that because the consensus has been wrong in the past, therefore it is wrong now. It is merely suggesting to keep an open mind and not to assume that the consensus view is necessarily the more credible.
They (AGW’er) have certainly made Herculean efforts to hide the refuting real-world evidence while at the same time fallen over themselves to pick out special places to support thier hypothesis. Some of it they just plain made up, and that is where AGW turned from a wrong theory into a hoax.
At a time when we most need to know exactly where things stand, we have a record that has been damaged. Record late snow in Dallas, TX and across the deep South plus rare snow in Rome underscores the need to know.
Exaclty where do things currently lie as to the southerly track of cold in the N.Hemisphere?
Mooloo
. The burden of proof is on those proposing the novel model. Has anyone yet quantitatively validated models predicting catastrophic AGW?
Has anyone shown that global temperatures are following IPCC’s projections with better uncertainty than the default warming trend? (Nature may not be cooperating)
Has anyone shown IPCC’s projections to be more accurate than Don Easterbrook’s 2001 projections of cooling till 2040, then heating till 2070, then cooling till 2100?
Let the real “scientific” games begin!
To be fair, Wegener and everybody else had no idea how continents could plow through the crust. In parallel, anyone who understands Thermodynamics and the behavior of gases has no idea how a trace gas could cook the planet. When lots of new technology and observations opened up the field of plate tectonics, all the centuries of geological observations were, in a sense, jacked up and plate tectonics was slid under as a new foundation. In the case of Climatology, all the books have been cooked, the observations have been corrupted, and the data disappeared. So Climatology now has to restart from scratch.
LOL,
I have occasionally brought up this very point that “consensus” has been very wrong before.I would bring up this example along with J.Harlan Bretz (you look it up) to show that consensus is not the proper metric in determining if the “lone rascal” is wrong.
AGW believers would get irritated,when I do that and burrow deeper into the consensus silliness,by pushing the appeal to authority,post a long list of links and think he has made his point.And other dam excuses.
Too many AGW believers are simply lemmings who will bodily follow the “charismatic leader”, such as Al $$$ Gore or some other people who have a conflict of interest a mile long,that AGW believing lemmings amazingly overlook.
Consensus is a common tool in politics and common with ignorant followers,who has no idea what a scientific method is.
I think line of reasoning drifts dangerously close to creationism.
You’re not going to win a fight against scientists by claiming scientists are stupid. They’re not.
Point out conflicts of interest where they exist (not hard to find), sloppy research where it exists (not hard to find), present alternative possibilities (that’s harder and an area where skeptics need to do some more work).
If you want to argue with scientists about their area of expertise you need to put the work in. Otherwise, the only stupid person in the argument is you.
As a skeptic, it’s great to see a history lesson about how lots of people were wrong.
But as our first commenter pointed out, to prove “AGW” wrong there’s some serious scientific work required, not history.
In fact, AGW is made out of lots of different elements of science, some of which are strong and some of which are weak.
Even to talk about disproving AGW needs some definition, because lots of “AGW adherents” might disagree with, as examples:
– the removal of the MWP from last 1000 years’ climate reconstructions
– the fact that sea level rise is “accelerating”
– how reliable GCMs are
– whether clouds are understood well enough for us to understand climate
Lots of “AGW skeptics” might agree that:
– sea level is rising and global temperatures have increased in the last 100 years
– more CO2 in the atmosphere will increase the radiative forcing at the earth’s surface
And surprisingly there is a lot of published science supporting many of the different elements that make up the core AGW proposition. Not all from a few people. And from long before the IPCC existed.
Some of the basics, like quantifying the radiative effect of CO2 and water vapor, go back 30-40 years.
As you can see in CO2 – An Insignificant Trace Gas? Part Five
And if – as a basic proposition – CO2 doesn’t have a warming effect on the surface, why is there downwards longwave radiation measurable at the earth’s surface which matches the absorption characteristics of CO2, O3, CH4? Where does it come from?
As you can see in CO2 – An Insignificant Trace Gas? Part Six – Visualization
Ray (20:42:47) : Pathological Science..
“Cargo Cult Science” as Richard Feynman put it.
Or Post Normal Science if you want to make it sound better than junk.
A better parallel for AGW would be eugenics, as the late, great Michael Crichton pointed out:
Certainly there are examples of people derided as crackpots by mainstream scientists who turned out to be right. There are also many more examples of people derided as crackpots by mainstream scientists who actually were crackpots.
I don’t know whether AGW is wrong or not. All I do know is that every time I get close enough to examine a key piece of evidence for AGW, it falls apart under examination. I am then told that although this piece of evidence doesn’t hold, there’s lots of other evidence somewhere (usually behind a firewall) that “all scientists agree” must be conclusive evidence of AGW. Can I see this evidence? No, because you’re not a mainstream scientist/activist/musician/whatever.
In other words, I lack prior belief in the truth of AGW – a religious axiom.