From the UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING and the department of “tribal science”, comes this press release that is generally true, until you look at general science’s bastard child, climate science, and some of the ugliness and oppressive activism and tribalism that surrounds that branch of science.
Science builds bridges, not walls, diplomacy experts tell UA audience
From eradicating weapons of mass destruction to the scourge of malaria, speakers at a UA conference — including a Nobel laureate, ambassadors and advisers to secretaries of state — know firsthand how science can build trust where politics cannot
In times of diplomatic turmoil and combative negotiations, scientists and engineers will continue solving problems and seeking the truth, speakers affirmed at a recent University of Arizona summit on science diplomacy and policy.
“When others deny climate change, ask for the evidence,” said Norman Neureiter, a former staff member in the White House Office of Science and Technology and the first science and technology adviser to a secretary of state. “It is scientific evidence that is essential for setting sound policies. Science is how we know the truth, how we understand the natural world. It is not an ideology.”
Neureiter was involved as an interpreter in private discussions with scientists on nuclear weapons testing with the former Soviet Union in the 1960s and as a participant in semiconductor negotiations with Japan in the late 1980s. Scientists and engineers played a critical role in reaching final agreements, he said.
Neureiter spoke at a panel on February 21 to kick off the conference, which focused on climate change and water sustainability in the Americas. The conference was co-sponsored by the UA College of Engineering, Office of Global Initiatives and other programs and chaired by Kevin Lansey, head of the UA Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics.
More than 130 students, scientists, engineers, foreign diplomats and local residents attended the panel at the Tucson Marriott University Park.
Sharing Knowledge, Seeking Common Ground
“We have a responsibility to share our knowledge with people in countries throughout the world, whatever our diplomatic relationships may be,” said Peter Agre, recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry. He has led scientific delegations to Cuba, North Korea, Iran and other countries that have strained or nonexistent diplomatic relations with the U.S.
Agre, director of the Malaria Research Institute at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, shared stories and slides from his research programs to eradicate malaria in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and other African nations with authoritarian regimes.
“These countries are rich in terms of minerals, but they bear a staggering burden from malaria, which kills approximately 400,000 children each year worldwide,” he said.
He offered a rare glimpse inside North Korea, which he has visited three times as the head of AAAS delegations to teach students, meet scientists and facilitate research collaborations at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.
“We shared stories about our research and hopes for our children and our grandchildren,” said the former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Friendships can make a difference.”
Agre met with Fidel Castro as head of a U.S. scientific delegation to Cuba in 2011. “There were obviously many things we disagreed on,” he said, “but Castro understood that science would play an important role in advancing Cuba’s economy and lifting its people. That was one thing we could agree on.”
In 2012 he led a AAAS delegation to Iran. “Overall, it was a very positive visit,” Agre said in an article for AAAS. “Our meetings with faculty and students were always positive — it seems to me that we all have a lot to share…. From a scientific viewpoint, the doors are certainly open.”
When tensions did arise, the delegates focused on constructive science engagement.
“We weren’t there to apologize or criticize; we were there to talk about science and to find common ground,” he said.
Premier Ambassador of our Time
Thomas R. Pickering, vice chairman of a consulting company and former U.S. ambassador to seven countries — including the Russian Federation and Israel — and the United Nations, had to cancel his planned trip to Tucson to participate in the panel. So his address about his storied career spanning six decades was delivered via video.
In introducing him, E. William Colglazier, a former science and technology adviser to secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and the honorary chairman of the UA conference, called Pickering the “premier and most well-connected American ambassador of our time.”
Pickering, a participant in some of the most consequential diplomatic developments of the 20th and 21st centuries, considers the Iran nuclear agreement an important contribution to science diplomacy.
“This agreement might become the international gold standard for reaching agreements with developing nations,” he said. “It calls for surveillance from uranium mining extraction to disposal of spent fuel rods and ensures 24/7 knowledge of what is happening in the Iran nuclear program. It highlights the need for acceptance to compromise, on both sides, and could be an important guide for future negotiations with developing countries.”
Rare Opportunity for UA Students
“It is incredible for undergraduate students to be able to interact with such important scientists and policy experts,” said Estefanie Govea, who has a UA bachelor’s degree in political science and is pursuing a second bachelor’s in environmental and water resource economics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “Unless you are well-connected, most undergraduates miss out on great opportunities like this.”
She is one of several UA students, most in the College of Engineering, who served as rapporteurs and will write conference proceedings to be submitted in the AAAS journal Science & Diplomacy and ensure that all conference presentations are posted online.
During the Wednesday evening panel Q&A, speakers expressed apprehension about how the Trump administration’s travel bans and proposed budget cuts might hamper scientific research and innovation.
“America up until now has been a haven for thousands of scientists and scholars who have come to the U.S. to escape persecution and conflict elsewhere,” said Neureiter, an adviser at AAAS. “They have made huge contributions to America’s technical and scientific excellence.”
He added, “I have serious concerns about threatened cuts in various government department budgets. America must not fall behind in scientific research, engineering and innovation. These disciplines are vital for the future growth of the U.S. economy and for the health and well-being of the American people.”
###
Neureiter would be well advised to ask for ALL the evidence about climate change, especially from those who claim that it is a big problem.
Not necessary. He will likely only accept evidence that supports global warming, because any that does not is predetermined to be false.
This is exactly how creation science works.
OK, I’ll bite: who is denying that climate changes ; where is the evidence ? Who are these “others”?
Can you provide evidence justifying that claim please?
( apart for the Bill D. Nyer, the science lier … 1750 etc. )
“This is exactly how creation science works.”
It’s exactly how Evolution Siants works, it seems to me . . but those who BELIEVE in Evolution can’t detect it, and treat anything an Evolution Siantist imagines happened, as fact.
This is (as far as I can determine), the mother of all “assumptive science”, wherein it is assumed the conclusion is true, and virtually everything becomes “evidence” for that conclusion, by default. That one was necessary for getting many scientists to go along with things like “climate science”, wherein we are now being asked for evidence that it isn’t happening . .
““When others deny climate change, ask for the evidence,” said Norman Neureiter, a former staff member in the White House Office of Science and Technology and the first science and technology adviser to a secretary of state.”
Now, that doesn’t mean Evolution didn’t happen, anymore than assuming the CAGW means that’s not happening, but treating what some “experts” imagine, as if actual evidence itself, opened the door to all manner of “experts conclude” style saints.
“but those who BELIEVE in Evolution can’t detect it”
Rubbish.
Take antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains and the ongoing evolution of the common cold virus.
Evolution of both bacteria and viruses in response to stimuli can readily be observed in vitro.
(Oops, I meant to write ‘siants” as the last word there . . sounds like science ; )
So, let’s have it your way, John. Evolution didn’t happen. It’s all a divine plan, instead. So, 4.5 billion years pass until the plan is realized in us. The plan has bacterial life appearing 3.8 billion years ago.
The plan calls for an oxidizing atmosphere only after another 1.5 billion years. Then it puts in two billion years of heaving green sludge, followed by 100-million years growth of multicellular life.
Carrying on, the planner sends in fossilizable animals, but only after 4 billion years of bacterial blah. The plan then calls for, and institutes, 500 million years of mindless bellowing and the screams of the predated.
Finally, after 4.4 billion years, the planner finally gets to humans; the apogee of the plan. Except they’re not very bright, and go around murdering, raping, and massacring one another. That, when not felled by disease or predatory animals. And lets not forget the plan blesses humans with birth-defected babies.
After 99,000 years of war, massacre, and slavery, the planner decides enough of that and sends down a morality code that requires murder for violating the day set aside to praise the planner for the greatness of the plan.
The late-blooming of the plan does not include fixes for epidemic disease, birth defects, or the crippling infirmities visited on the aged, though. That takes another 4000 years of suffering and war, broken only by flashes of human brilliance.
The first flash of human brilliance, the Greek Enlightenment, is obliterated by the plan of the planner. But through great effort and further agony, humans manage to emerge again from barbarity 2000 years later.
The European Enlightenment finally cements science in culture, yields effective treatments for disease, ends slavery, develops humane values, beats back the bacterial and viral scourges, and is now verging on genetic cures for birth defects.
No thanks to the planner because all our advances can be traced directly to human effort. None of them emerged spontaneously.
There’s your alternative to Evolutionary Theory, John.
From the article: “When others deny climate change, ask for the evidence,” said Norman Neureiter, a former staff member in the White House Office of Science and Technology and the first science and technology adviser to a secretary of state.”
By “climate change” he means CAGW. He wants skeptics to disprove CAGW exists, but he has things just backwards: It’s up to those who promote the theory of CAGW to prove CAGW is real and exists. Skeptics just deny that the CAGW promoters have done so.
You are the guys who have to “prove it”. Not the skeptics.
Pat Frank.
Your thinking in your post is fatally flawed.
You try to show the long drawn out process of creation as some inefficient Rube Goldberg contraption that no divine designer would create.
The problem with this is that you are thinking of creation in terms of engineering; time, resources, and efficiency. All that is irrelevant to God. He has UNLIMITED time and resources. He can create however he pleases.
What if God is more akin to an artist? Human artists are constrained by time and resource limitations but still do some very inefficient things to produce the desired art.
I once saw a chain several feet long that had been carved from a single piece of wood. Why would someone do such an intricate thing when clever woodworking from multiple pieces would have visually produced the same effect?
With unlimited time and resources, God can take 14 billion or 140 billion years to create if that is what they want to do. Who are you to say how God must create?
Actually, it is a GOOD thing God took all that time to create. He gave us a world with massive stocks of coal, oil, uranium, and a nearby moon fully stocked with Helium-3.
Imagine us without those resources. Thank God that God took the time to properly prepare and stock Earth for us so that we would be able to grow, develop, learn, and understand the workings of the creation as much as we have.
Nodak, your position effectively is that god can create as god likes, and can indeed produce, “some inefficient Rube Goldberg contraption that no [sane] divine designer would create.”
You dispense with god-of-the-gaps, and substitute in god-of-the-whims. The anything-goes god. There’s probably a flawed thought here somewhere, but I don’t think it’s mine. 🙂
It would seem you’d be better off embracing Philip Grosse’s 1857 book Omphalos, in which he claimed that the apparent great age of Earth was only a mirage, put in place by the creator. All the coal beds, the fossils, and everything else indicating age were created in place, when the world was created 6000 years ago.
That would include the apparently 3.5 billion-year-old stromatolites, which are really only 6000 years old, but created with the correct K-Ar ratios to indicate great age.
A young Earth and the creation of apparent age solves much of your problem of theodicy, because if all that insanity and murder didn’t really happen, then there’s nothing to explain about the creator’s ineptitude.
Pat Frank,
“So, 4.5 billion years pass until the plan is realized in us. The plan has bacterial life appearing 3.8 billion years ago… yada yada yada
I don’t believe (or disbelieve) that stuff . . I’m not a worshiper of the “scientific community”, such that whatever some “experts” figure is to me fact, or anything I must agree is factual (or not). That’s not scientific (or logical) thinking to me. This is;
IF, the CAGW is fakery/self deception, taking in virtually all of the “scientific community”, then ALL of that stuff you just spoke of could be too.
See how that works?
Pat,
“A young Earth and the creation of apparent age solves much of your problem of theodicy, because if all that insanity and murder didn’t really happen, then there’s nothing to explain about the creator’s ineptitude.”
Well, the Book I believe is an actual communication from God, says that stuff happened (and will continue happening) . . What in the world are you talking about? Some imaginary “ideal” world, He clearly speaks of not being what we now inhabit? Why? Who is claiming any such thing?
On “apparent age”;
Once it’s assumed that great age is true, appearances can become virtually irreverent, it seems to me . .
Spiral galaxies do NOT appear to be billions of years old, period. There’s no way they would exhibit “arms” after billions of years of rotating . .
Enter; “dark matter” to correct that not old appearance ; )
Sigh.
A scientist finds flexible tissue in a dinosaur bone that is supposed to be 65 million years old.
Instead of pondering whether the bone could be younger, the pre-determined answer is assumed: there is some way this tissue is 65 million years old. Let’s go figure out how that might be.
–The traditional word is “faith.” I have faith in my belief system. Faith is more broad than trust. Faith is when I trust you, or the government, or science, or my uni professors, or the police, in most anything, not just one specific thing, such as trusting you to show up on time to give me a ride to the airport, or dog-sit my pooch for a long weekend.
A better term is “world view.” Many people, including many scientists, buy into the world view that the earth is so very old, but almost none know who Clair Patterson was. Many buy into evolution, but have no idea how yet another gene might get added to a chromosome.
Macro-evolution – the emergence of our varied life forms we see in the present day from one original or a few original organism lines – requires a bunch of assumptions that are, when examined, quite difficult to accept. It really requires faith.
A human female requires a lot of estrogen to carry on the body changes of pregnancy. Without a tripling of estrogen, development and delivery will not go normally. This estrogen comes form the baby: it is produced by the placenta, which develops from the offpsring, not from the mother.
http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/reprod/placenta/endocrine.html
So, a baby cannot develop without guiding its mother’s body to develop suitably. This is an impossible chicken-and-egg problem. How was the first baby born?
And, as there is a blood-brain barrier, there is a blood-sperm barrier. The male body would attack its own sperm as foreign, if not for this barrier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%E2%80%93testis_barrier
So, how can human males have evolved, necessarily with sexual reproduction, when the male body would kill its own sperm? It makes no sense to say the sperm evolved, then the barrier evolved, and it makes no sense to say the barrier evolved, then the sperm.
–But with faith, some hand-waving, some back-tracking, and some big words, hopefully the skeptical will just shut up, right? If not, then change the topic to name-calling. Say things like “old man sky god,” or “stone-age myths,” and so on. Or, point to micro-evolution as evidence for macro-evolution. Yes, we know all of the dog breeds descended from the one dog. Anything but dodge the fact that you have to have a lot of faith to believe in macro-evolution.
[snip]
Griff:
Climate “science” lacks earmarks of a legitimate science that include falsifiability of claims.
Richard: And nutrition science, anti-vaxxing, evolution and most of science short of physics (even then, string theorists can be brutal). Taking a poke at religion and pretending it’s about science is very, very dishonest. Your prejudice is screaming out here.
John, the age of the Earth is determined by the half-lives of radioactive elements. Half-lives have been well-characterized in the lab. You’re welcome to disbelieve the parts of science you find uncomfortable. But disbelief grounded in prejudice is not disproof, even when it’s accompanied by derogative dismissal.
I’ve done work on the claim about CO2 emissions and global warming, and can demonstrate it’s not credible, using the tools of science. The same sort of tools applied to Evolutionary Theory say it’s correct.
You wrote, “IF, the CAGW is fakery/self deception, taking in virtually all of the “scientific community”, then ALL of that stuff you just spoke of could be too.”
So, if CO2 is fakery, are atomic bombs fakery too? How about the germ theory of disease. Fakery? Where does your skepticism stop, John? And how do you decide it stops there?
Your rejection of Evolutionary Theory has no apparent rational base. It seems to me there’s a problem distinguishing your skepticism from prejudice.
ThelastDemo, “A scientist finds flexible tissue in a dinosaur bone that is supposed to be 65 million years old. Instead of pondering whether the bone could be younger, the pre-determined answer is assumed …”
Except it’s not assumed. Fossil ages are determined by radio-dating the surrounding rock.
“Macro-evolution … requires faith.
It requires HOX genes (more details here if you want them) and heterochrony (with more details here if you want them).
Your “chicken-and-egg” problems are no problem for Evolutionary Theory. Your argument rests implictly on systems going from non-existent to fully developed in just one step. Hardly. All the mechanisms you worry about iterated piecemeal across a billion years of co-evolutionary development.
Pat,
“John, the age of the Earth is determined by the half-lives of radioactive elements.”
It’s “determined” by people, sir . . Fallible people, with complex theories about how to interpret various observable phenomena . . right?
“You’re welcome to disbelieve the parts of science you find uncomfortable.”
Parts of science? Isn’t skepticism a part of science to your mind anymore?
“But disbelief grounded in prejudice is not disproof, even when it’s accompanied by derogative dismissal.”
That’s kinda my point, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to steal it ; )
“So, if CO2 is fakery, are atomic bombs fakery too?”
If CO2 is fakery??? WTF are you talking about?
“Where does your skepticism stop, John?”
Wherever it stops . . ?? . . I don’t plan it out . .
“Your rejection of Evolutionary Theory has no apparent rational base.”
You could ask, ya know, and something might appear ; ) but I haven’t rejected Evolution Theory, so much as lost faith in it. I still “get it” . . better’n you I suspect ; )
Best too, to simply ignore the evidence that the medieval warm period was worldwide or alarmism collapses entirely. Denial is just too profitable to some scientists.
Asking for the evidence that the climate is not changing is like asking somebody to prove a negative. Ridiculous! It’s up to the alarmists to prove that it IS changing. Did this guy never hear about the null hypothesis?
There is, however, such a thing as a negative proof, best described by Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
That’s easy. That’s what it does. What we mustn’t do is let the alarmists define us as people who deny climate change. Most of us agree that the climate is changing. Most of us even agree that the world has been warming up as it emerges from the Little Ice Age.
The question is how much influence people have had (and will have) on the climate. What the alarmists have to prove is that human activities will cause a catastrophic change in the climate.
That the climate is changing is trivial to prove. We can measure glaciers retreating and oceans rising.
That man is responsible for the bulk of this change, especially since the current change is smaller than previous changes, is the thing that’s impossible to prove.
Since climate is the average of weather, to change the climate for the better, we must first be able to change the weather for the better. Where is the evidence that humans can control the weather?
If we cannot control the weather for the better, then it is mathematically impossible to change the climate for the better. No amount of money can overcome this problem. Until humans can control the weather they cannot control the climate.
And if you cannot control the climate you cannot prevent climate change. The law of unintended consequences dictates that in the absence of weather control, any attempt to prevent climate change is as likely to make the problem worse as it is to help. As such, any money spent is simply wasted.
“When others deny climate change, ask for the evidence,” is like asking someone to prove they don’t beat their spouse. How do you prove a negative?
Not true. The climate system is …. NOT LINEAR …. For example surface EM radiation cooling rates generally change as the 4th power of the surface Temperatures; not linearly with the Temperatures.
So more correctly; climate is the integral of the weather. The total sum of everything that has happened before, including all the non-linearities, and all the tipping points, and all the unprecedented disasters that happen all the time.
NOTHING in the physical universe is even aware of the average of anything, let alone march in lock step with it.
Well statisticians of course; but then it was they who invented the concept of average, and all the rest of the stat math numerical Origami.
G
Friends:
The matter under discussion is not whether climate changes; it does change, it always has changed, and it always will change.
At issue is whether emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from human activities (i.e. anthropogenic emissions of GHGs) are altering the global climate. And, whatever Neureiter may say, there is no evidence that anthropogenic emissions of GHGs have altered the global climate; none, zilch, nada.
I note that Neureiter says,
I always demand evidence to substantiate anybody’s claim that anthropogenic emissions of GHGs have altered the global climate. I demand it because there is NO EVIDENCE which indicates anthropogenic emissions of GHGs have altered the global climate.
In the 1990s Ben Santer claimed to have found some such evidence but that was soon shown to be an artifact of his improper data selection. Since then much worldwide work has been conducted to search for such evidence at a cost of more than $5billion per year, but it has failed to find any.
And Neureiter says,
YES! So it would be expected that he would cite some evidence that anthropogenic emissions of GHGs have altered the global climate, but he cites none: this not surprising because there is none.
If Neureiter claims to have found some evidence which indicates anthropogenic emissions of GHGs have altered the global climate then he should publish it because he would be awarded at least two Nobel Prizes (i.e. Physics and Peace) for his finding.
Please note, the number and/or authority of believers that anthropogenic emissions of GHGs have altered the global climate is NOT evidence of their belief being correct: more people believe in Santa Claus.
Richard
“When others deny climate change, ask for the evidence.”
This is backwards. I don’t have to prove your theory is wrong, YOU have to prove it is right. And because the data do not match the models, you can’t.
“but Castro understood that science would play an important role in advancing Cuba’s economy and lifting its people. That was one thing we could agree on.”
I wonder exactly which alternative universe version of Castro was Agre talking about, and the line about sharing hopes for children with North Koreans, that one is priceless.
Castro’s Cuba couldn’t even maintain the standards that were in place in the 1950’s when he took power.
I remember talking to a leftist on campus at UCLA in 1964. I asked when the free elections Castro promised “within a year” in 1959 were going to occur. He said Fidel had just been “too busy” to get on to them. Looks like he was too busy for an awfully long time.
Like it or not, Batista’s Cuba was not a free country but an American investment capital. Ergo: what the EU was doing to Britain in modern times. Profit was made in natural resources but only a select few Cubans earned from it. The rest were cast aside.
Quit playing dodgeball. If Fidel was so much better than Batista, he shouldn’t have had a problem with free elections.
And if the health care was so good there, why did he go to Spain for medical treatment near the end of his life?
Well, he kept some of the cars running…
Shooter, was Batista perfect? No, far from it. However that isn’t the question.
The question is, was Castro better. The answer to that is quite clearly no.
PS, Cuba had the highest standard of living, for all of it’s citizen’s prior to the revolution.
Interesting places to visit like Iran and North Korea, lots of Potemkin Villages and people. I am sure they all sat there like sponges listening to everything that was said. How much information was there on the progress of nuclear research, or perhaps aerodynamics of re-entry vehicles? I would think that the exchange of information was all one way – with all contributions being gratefully received.
The problem in the US is that billions of dollars are being thrown down politically attractive rat holes and welcomed by rent-seeking ‘scientists’.whereas real research into engineering and innovation is not attractive as innovation is not welcome and engineering is seen as unfashionable and moreover tends to falsify the work of some pure scientists.
I just want to meet he people who deny climate change.
in my 49 years alive I have not met one single person who denies climate change.
met some who question mans role or the whole effect co2 has but not one single person who has denied that climate changes.
…and “climate change denier” is not as ridiculous as “climate denier”.
Agreed.
The real question is when (according to the Klimate Inquisition) did natural climate change suddenly morph into man made climate change. As far as I can see, the official view is that this occurred sometime around August 1951.
As we have no way, other than guesswork, to tell how much of today’s climate change is natural and how much is man made, the whole debate (in the rare instances when alarmists allow it) is moot.
Right. Every fact re past climate is guesswork that is extrapolated until it fits. If we don’t know where we have been we don’t know where we are going. Climate will change on it’s own schedule with or without humans.
14 September 1951.
Fact.
Proven by the Citrullus(= Watermelon)-folk in their belief.
(So I have dreamed up . . . . Why not?).
Cannot two play at that game/fraud? ? ?
Yes, climate changes – and Man is responsible for Urban Heat islands, and also change in land use, which will have some effect – most local or sub-regional.
If you have ever sailed across the South Atlantic, from Cape Agulhas to Buenos Aries, at 15 knots, seeing two ships in nine days, or a little over, you will appreciate that the Earth is actually pretty big.
We humans have an effect – but I am unsure how much of one, because the Earth is pretty big.
CO2 has risen – per Mauna Loa believers..
I am told that is representative.
Some folk believe that, but show little or nothing to give evidence for that view.
They may be right, for sure.
Are they right?
Or are the facts right?
Auto – fearing the suggested Mini-[and Pray it .is. a Mini-]Ice Age more than a half degree warming before my grandchildren die, at about 102 years of age . . . .
actually there is plenty of proof that man effects climate, it’s called data adjustments :-)))
Harry, “actually there is plenty of proof that man effects climate, it’s called data adjustments”
So, (wink, wink), climate = a certain number a graph, and bears no resemblance to the temperature on earth?
Currently, climate “science” is pseudoscientific. Needed for climate “science” to join the legitimate sciences is for the statistical populations underlying the climate models to be identified.
Peter Miller: “As far as I can see, the official view is that this occurred sometime around August 1951.
Thank god !! it could not have been me I was born 4 months later. On the other hand? (
Sorry Mom we must have been altering the climate around 5 months into my successful attempt to add even more to climate change)
dmaclio, why do you think people tout “climate change denier”?
… but there are indeed a shitload of people that claim that the climate should not be changing; that we should strive to maintain the current temperature(s).
They are called “Claimers”; they make repeated (and proven false) claims in the hope that one day they will be correct.
“When others claim the climate should be static, ask for the evidence,”
Don,
Good point! The next time someone accuses me of being a “climate change denier”, I’ll respond with “OK, I admit it, the climate is changing. Do you think it shouldn’t be?” It will be interesting to see what their answer is. If they say it should be changing, then the obvious followup would be “How should it be changing, and how do you know the current change isn’t what it should be?”
“current” = 1750
Isn’t the basic premise of Michael Mann and his Hockey Stick that climate DOESN’T change, except under the influence of human activity? Aren’t he and his cohorts the only Climate Change Deniers?
He stopped short of moving to Cuba or North Korea. But we should never criticize these places. He still hopes that appeasement might work one day.
I can’t help but think the conference was utter nonsense.
“From eradicating weapons of mass destruction to the scourge of malaria”.
When did WMD get eradicated? How effective have scientists been in this field? Seriously? This was the opening statement?
Weapons of mass destruction have been eliminated????
Since when?
The only times I know of where this was true was military might forced Saddam Hussein to get rid of his programs and when the Soviet Union fell and both side didn’t need as many.
In neither of those cases was “science” the primary mover of events.
“When tensions did arise, the delegates focused on constructive science engagement.”
In other words, they taught the N. Korean scientists how to build bigger and better weapons.
Travel bans might hinder science?
How much science is being done in places like Syria and Iran?
Travel bans would limit people from taking specific information back to places like Syria and Iran … places like Syria and Iran would be scientifically hindered. No problem there.
DonM , I think you do not understand that every time someone in the west publishes a scientific paper it has become public knowledge. Anyone can read it and so can use it in their own investigations. And If they are in Iran, North Korea?,
Do you really think they would share their own conclusions or improvements on the web?
I seriously doubt that.
DonM just as an example:
The Tech Portal
Check out all this free software that NASA just made public
To DonM : https://thetechportal.com/2017/03/03/free-software-nasa-just-released/
asybot,
90% of what I ‘contribute’ to this site contains some level of sarcasm (this doesn’t, the above did) … sorry about not being more clear. I didn’t mean transporting actual physical information.
The travel bans will restrict some folks from attending conferences/mingling; some people would claim this hinders science. I don’t see a problem with the ‘level of hinderence’ that would occur (especially with respect to Iran).
Thanks for the link.
Mark
I imagine that some nations are seeking better methods of harming their enemies.
They know such methods exist, and seek to replicate them.
We would be incredibly foolish if we were to downgrade our capability to respond.
See Mr Cameron’s (so-called) Defence Review, in the UK, of 2010 or 2011.
Not at all responsible, in my opinion, although it was in the context of a COLLOSAL Budget deficit bequeathed by the Blair/Brown Socialist predecessor Administration.
Auto – still pining for balanced Budgets . . . . .
[Do NOT hold your breath!]
I’ve published with people from the Middle East.
Can you give us a link as to what you published with people from the ME?
I didn’t say Middle East, I was referencing the 7 countries that were under the travel ban.
Science progressed even when the Germans were imposing travel bans during WW2 and Jews had to be sneaked out of Germany. Science has never been hindered by these things—scientists find a way around the situation and keep working—the true, dedicated ones, anyway.
Yes, let’s get the evidence. Where is it? We know it isn’t in computer models which, if anything, are evidence the current “consensus” theory of CAGW is way off base, given that every prediction they make is in stark contrast to observations. It doesn’t seem to be in any of the trends in weather events reported by various bodies and used in IPCC reports. It also doesn’t seem to be in proxy records of pre-industrial climate which all suggest the climate behaviour since Earth’s beginning was typified by dramatic and often rapid climate shifts unassisted by human activity. Please can someone help find the evidence that we skeptics are all denying.
The problem is that climate is not the only thing that is treated in a none scientific manner. Ask someone that has tried to criticize Evolution. A Chinese scientist said doing that in the US is like criticizing the government in China.
US is much more tolerant than that. You can publish a scientific article assuming that the Earth is flat, provided that you disguise as a Simple Radiative Equilibrium In an Atmosphere Containing Greenhouse Gases.
I do not agree. Over the years I have read about many scientists that have lost jobs, etc. because they challenged Darwin. They received the same treatment that those that critized global warming.
How about cosmology? Dark energy? Dark matter? I.e., the stuff of “we don’t know”, but we are sure our theories are correct, so we will invent some quantities to maintain its existence (and funding flows).
…not to mention the multiverse- scientism’s answer to God (enough to make climate constancy deniers blush).
When others deny climate change, ask for the evidence
==============================
Neureiter is denying Natural causes Climate Change. Where is his evidence that Nature does not change climate?
Here is my evidence that Nature is changing Climate:
The mile of ice over most of North America 20,000 years ago. The Arctic mostly ice free during the Holocene Optimum 5000 years ago. Arctic tree lines 2-3 hundred miles further north 5000 years ago as compared to today.
The Minoan Warming, the Roman Warming, the Medieval Warming approximately 1, 2, and 3 thousand years ago. The Little Ice Age 500 years ago and the Modern Warming since 1850. The Dust Bowl and warming of the 1930’s? None of this was due to humans.
The Null Hypothesis is the bedrock of the scientific method. This tells us that in the absence of extraordinary evidence, whatever caused previous climate change is what is causing current climate change. Where is the extraordinary evidence that Nature is not causing climate change today?
Where is the evidence that Nature is not changing the climate? Where is the evidence that humans have the power to stop natural climate change?
ferd? re last sentence? Oh, don’t worry, they’ll find something ( although their screeching is getting lesser and lesser).
He has led scientific delegations to Cuba, North Korea, Iran and other countries
This reminds me of Jane Fonda with her disastrous trip to North Vietnam in 1972, at the height of the war.
Here is Hanoi Jane sitting in the gunners seat of an anti-aircraft gun and making nice.
These people seem cut from the same colt of cloth.
Some bridges should be burnt rather than built.
Yep. Iran gets nukes; we get platitudes.
Quote: “When others deny climate change, ask for the evidence”. Aside from the straw man of asking for evidence that proves a negative, they have succeeded in labeling skeptics of their methods as “climate change deniers”. We need a concerted effort to turn that around. As for the insufferable Thomas Pickering….his record speaks for itself.
Two relevant soundbites.
1. Except for a now rapidly cooling 2015-16 El Nino blip, there has been no warming this century. Yet that same time period comprises ~1/3 of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration since 1958 (verifiable by the Keeling curve).
2. The GAST rise from ~1920-1945 is essentially indistinguishable from the rise 1975-2000. Yet even IPCC AR4 WG1 SPM figure 8.2 said the earlier period was not AGW; simply not enough change in CO2. It was mostly natural variation. Natural variation did not cease in 1975.
Begs a correction.
“When others promote Man-made climate change, ask for the evidence,”
Such a request for the evidence should not require an FOIA request.
(Are you reading this, Mikey?)
The emphasis on the proposed temporary ban on travel from a few select nations shows how political this was.
See? The way to avoid riots on campus when you have a political speech is to *praise* brutal dictators, or make excuses for them.
Someone give me the *evidence* that these institutions aren’t worthless.
Well Merovign. They usually have places of tranquility and beauty due to their being set apart from the people. You can often find a quiet bench under a shade tree. Does this justify the $billions spent each year?
I think they’ve hoisted themselves on their own petard by bringing up malaria as an example. As far as I am aware, scientists have either actively or passively (by doing nothing) prevented the saving of tens of millions of childrens lives by preventing the effective and safe (when used inside, the most effective use) product DDT.
To forestall the usual trolls claiming DDT was never banned, no it wasn’t, but when you refuse to trade with or provide aid to a country using it, and they rely on that trade or aid, they do what you want.
“Science” is just somebody’s opinion. There is nothing magic about it. It’s silly to make a religion of it.
The religious version is called “scientism”.
John_QPublic
Right.
“Estefanie Govea, who has a UA bachelor’s degree in political science and is pursuing a second bachelor’s in environmental and water resource economics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.”
Right I am sure that she will be well qualified.
Even Political “Science” is a misnomer to me.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Meanwhile…
asked to resign for refusing to review papers unless he can see the data
https://boingboing.net/2017/03/02/psychology-journal-editor-aske.htm
Nobody that I know denies climate change. Denial of climate change is a strawman argument and is among the several fallacious arguments by which academic pseudoscientists have disgraced themselves.
This person seems friends with mostly dictators and communists. That’s disturbing. Plus, there is a confusion of science and diplomacy and a clear left-leaning sentiment. What does science say about the outcome of dictators and communism?
“America up until now has been a haven for thousands of scientists and scholars who have come to the U.S. to escape persecution and conflict elsewhere,” Yet now, Americans who are skeptics would have to go to Russia to escape persecution. Ironic, isn’t it?
National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) has joined the American Chemical Society (ACS) and American Institute of Chemical Engineers ( AIChE ) in censoring comments on their “open forums” that don’t subscribe to their green gobmint CAGW handouts.
This high-ranking ex-bureaucrat believes that some people are denying climate change? He needs to get out more – either that, or book an appointment with a psychiatrist without delay, because that is mad talk.
That may be correct. But science is how we know the truth only if we ourselves actually do the science that produces knowledge of the truth. If we leave it to others to do the science for us, we are also leaving it to them to know the truth for us and that is not possible. Leaving it to others to know the truth for us is to take a trip into a world of make-believe, not knowledge. And when we’ve taken that trip all we are left with at the end of it is precisely the ideology that we have learned along the way. But we still have no more knowledge of the truth about reality than we started off with. The truth about nature can only be found in natural reality; it doesn’t exist in make-believe.
Pat Frank’s hilarity is the evidence of self intoxication through fervently pursued cognizant dissonance.
Pat since you haven’t ever actually formally worked in instrumentation and systems analysis, it’s fine with me you don’t understand the ridiculous nature of belief in the modern synthesis.
Pat you’re under the impression it’s possible for entropy to be reversed without an outside force. This is thermodynamical law: and the fact evolutionary ‘theorists’ claim to have surpassed it isn’t realistic.
You can’t create ever higher complexity in our natural world without an outside intelligent force doing it.
You can create it to a point: that point assigned by charge differential: but there’s no such thing as explaining your way out of it. The synthesis of life mandates a preliminary cause. There’s no objective reason for life to want to replicate itself. There’s no objective reason for life to invent itself.
Regardless of the supposed legitimacy of claiming ‘then what of the original intelligence? When and where does it come from?’ it is NOT authentic application of any real scientific postulate.
Evolution supposes the laws of thermodynamics for no reason whatever, created the templated life forms found on earth.
No reason, just first life invented itself.
No reason, just life then improved on itself.
No reason, just life then continued this improvement,
for millions and millions of years.
No reason. For even a single one of these life forms. It all just invented itself, and schemed along through some creeping, eternal violation of entropy. Since you’re not a trained working systems analyst maintaining complex systems it’s understandable you think all that shit’s remotely possible: that you believe the laws of thermodynamics just step aside so you can feel smart. But it isn’t that way. There’s no such thing as a bank of several thousand transistors that suddenly reverted and healed themselves and then created more of themselves until they invented an entire new sensor type – nasal, auditory, optical etc – just – no reason. Just did.
No what you’re doing is projecting that you’re as smart as the men telling you it’s impossible for something to violate entropy like that for ten minutes much less several hundred million years, without a guiding intelligence.
You belief in radiocarbon dating’s absolute veracity is nothing short of stunning. Objects are regularly dated at millions of years old rock – with hammers, padlocks, vases, etc embedded in them.
Your – Pat I’m gonna use this maybe rhetorically but – not really pat your ignorance of the faulty nature of radio-carbon dating is nothing short of willful self deception. EVERYONE interested in instrumentation knows of the SCORES of objects found embedded in otherwise obviously, solid rock: solid coal.- radiocarbon dated in the cases of the stone, MILLIONS of years old – and they’re obviously from the 1800s, the last couple thousand years at most.
On and on down the rote of “thou shalt not be found wrong utterly or thy bullshit is wrong, utterly” list, violating reality based observation’s warning bells again, and again.
Further – your claim that this system is somehow inefficient isn’t something you can even indicate. You made referral to the “sloppy God” claim not sounding authentic – in other words, God doesn’t have permission to create a simulator that functions the way this one does.
But you can’t answer the problems this presents. Why can’t he and we all know – it’s actually “why can’t THEY.”
What makes you as a skeptic of the concept of this being intelligently created, able to critique a system of gods, who can create life and make it work in OBVIOUS – OBVIOUS violation of the FUNDAMENTALS in thermodynamical law – entropy itself is violated through life’s existence, in any form, alone. Particularly at a ceullular level, – you’re already way, WAY beyond the obvious reason this can’t happen on it’s own: it’s a violation of charge differential driven dynamics.
But back to whether these gods could have your permission to create life the way they have.
What is your valid excuse for the massive templating of all life? In any free evolutionary magic where things ‘evolved’ in continual violation of entropy itself, growing more and more complex and fragile for no reason at all, –
what’s your excuse for the obvious and ubiquitous templating of the chordata and even everything using the simple four compound DNA mechanism?
I’m a systems analyst. I maintain some of the most complex things mankind has ever invented, and live in an era where there is literally,, hardly an instrumentation type I don’t understand inside and out. My job at times has had me physically handling many, many of them; working on them or assuring their compliance with the standards for their deployment.
You forget that – as an analyst I have all the time known – how to analyze your claims. About how these late-comers to humanity, the Adamics – don’t have access to some special niche of understanding.
But every time a disinterested observer trained in checking your story vs those of creationists, your story is always the one which proves to be the propped up crock of thermodynamic law violating sh** it really is.
Who told me that the section of spectra we see, is just a tiny portion of all the available spectra around mankind? Atheists? Or the Adamics when they repeatedly stumbled in out of the wilderness saying “I was visited by a man like creature who spoke as a man speaks and he told me that – he can see me and I can’t see him. He told me that I am one of the ones who run this and make this and that I am down here to get experience, – left out in the cold to die.”
Atheists didn’t invent that story and tell me about the endless spectra out there that make my part comprise 4% of it all. Creationists told me that.
Creationists invented the instruments,
Creationists invented the space age that surrounds the instruments,
Creationists invented it all. This is the Christianic interplanetary space age.
Atheists had men living in a cave eating ticks out of the family’s ears as an evening pastime.
We know this because Creationists also invented the University system and sent Atheists to check.
The verdict is clear: till these Creationists got here you lived in a cave. ATHEISTS VERIFIED THIS FACT in the UNIVERSITIES the CREATIONISTS CREATED, so the ATHEISTS can CHECK.
You can’t ever escape the fact that your challenge that the gods’ simulator is sloppy or somehow errant is based in your own fear of your existence.
See Pat there’s only one reason to create any kind of simulator with so much pain and sorrow and temporary joy.
That would be because when you’re perfect you never feel pain, you never hunger, you never feel lonely and it’s never dark when it should be light.
People play the simulator because when you are perfect and unkillable, life gets boring as hell.
People come here for the same reason they play online games. To undergo the benefits of a realistic experience without there being a long term cost for crashing the vehicle: the human being we inhabit.
You as an atheist and worhiper of the kookville that is evolutionary ‘theory’ – it has to be science to be theory and science has to obey – the laws of thermodynamics so it’s not really a theory –
as a worshipper you can’t escape ANY of the arguments against your supposition that the record looks like real evolution, and that there’s no ample reason for such an intense experience by a species of creatures that learned to make these animals, briefly controllable or at least, inhabitable.
Why invent an intense, briefly painful, temporary simulator? Because it’s safer to learn that way. End of your bullshit about ‘why?’
“It’s sloppy.”
Says who? You can’t figure out it’s impossible for entropy to simpy defy itself till an elephant, a hawk, a man and an octopus, all have a similar eye structure.
Just a few brief ‘we don’t need to crack a book to check this’ observations about the KooKViLLiaN nature of evolutionary ‘Har Har’ ‘theorists’ and your beliefs.
Prolix drivel.
E. Mendes:
What’s your argument?