Guest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
Science historians say the Scientific Revolution began with Copernicus when he proposed the heliocentric system that the Earth orbits the Sun. I used to think it was not worth discussing because one in four Americans and one in three Russians think the opposite, namely the Ptolemaic view that it is an earth-centered, geocentric system. You can argue, as I have in the past, that it doesn’t matter for them as long as the Sun rises and sets every day. However, understanding this basic scientific information becomes critical in the global warming debate because the sun/earth relationship and changes are central to the Milankovitch Effect and its impact on climate change. Sadly, the problem of lack of understanding and knowledge is much wider and deeper, as those in the struggle to expose the false or limited science of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) know. Skeptics of the AGW claims made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are painfully aware of the unnecessary energy and environmental policies imposed at the cost of trillions and counting.
Copernicus bounced his ideas off trusted friends in a handwritten book of 1514 but did not authorize publication until two months before he died in 1543. As a canon of the Catholic church, he knew their law and the dangers in even questioning it. The only major difference between then and now was the punishment for speaking out. How far have we come in the intervening 475 years? In general terms, a long way scientifically, but a very short distance in societal terms.
Science advanced because, despite almost constant harassment from many groups in society, it was practiced by a few with skills and a determination to uncover the truth through facts and logic. For the most part, they deliberately tried to be apolitical. However, even within the science community prejudice and ignorance made the practice of science difficult and unrewarding. Michael Faraday, in my opinion, one of the great scientist’s in history, suffered persecution and shaming because; he was the son of a blacksmith; he did not go to university; and he belonged to the Sandemanians, a strict fundamental religious group. Regrettably, today two of these are still considered impediments by too many people.
Society did not advance as much because it considered the 15% of the population a fringe group. They were very slow to adapt and adopt ideas from those mad and dangerous scientists; an image promoted by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein among others. Those opposed to scientific advances exploit these fears and slow things even more; consider the term “Frankenfoods” used to block the benefits of longer storage by irradiation.
A major part of the problem is in the two areas that arguably have the greatest impact on society, politics, and the law. They are also the areas where the percentage of people with scientific skills and interest are the lowest. It is, perhaps, double jeopardy that lawyers are the largest professional group in politics.
My personal experiences, although not definitive, underscore the problems. I appeared before the Canadian Parliamentary Committee investigating the ozone issue. There was only one committee member with any science training, and he had a bachelor’s degree in biology. Two significant events occurred. The first involved another scientist presenting with me. He showed graphs of ozone levels and spoke about them showing the lowest levels recorded over Toronto. When it was my turn, I did what I hope I never have to do again. I threw out my presentation and began by asking the politicians if they realized that there were no readings over Toronto at the time claimed. I discovered that none of them knew that what they were shown was not real data, but computer model generations. I also realized that none of them knew or understood the scientific method and the claim that CFCs causing a hole-in-the ozone was an untested hypothesis. I explained that science advances by hypothesizing and then testing it and the assumption on which it is based.
To underscore the ignorance, one Liberal parliamentarian said, “Dr. Ball, Galileo would be ashamed of you.” I replied that it was beyond my wildest expectations to be mentioned in the same sentence as Galileo and clearly you do not understand the role of Galileo in the history of science. To my knowledge, there were no politicians with science degrees in my two appearances before the US Congress.
It is easy to say the politicians were easily fooled by the deliberate misuse of science, but that is not acceptable. It is their job to do their research, and they have the staff and resources. It was Marc Morano’s job for Senator Inhofe as he challenged the prevailing wisdom. The problem is most are too busy being politicians about issues that should not be political. Those who chose AGW science as a political issue knew they could mislead politicians ignorant of science and far too eager to be ‘green.’
Maurice Strong knew and also exploited another weakness of politicians, their almost total dependence on bureaucrats. He assured bureaucratic control of every national weather office across the world by making them members of the IPCC through the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It is the original fake news story perpetuated by the ‘deep state.’
Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change is a good lead into the next problem facing science because she promotes the IPCC deception fed to her by the bureaucrat scientists at Environment Canada (EC). As a lawyer, she is in a group that openly admits they won’t arbitrate science disputes because they don’t know anything about science. Then displays this ignorance by publicly ridiculing those scientists practicing their role as skeptics. As a lawyer, Ms. McKenna should at least know there are two sides to every dispute. Scott Pruitt, a lawyer and head of EPA knows it because he wants a ‘red’ and ‘blue’ team to bring climate science out of politics and back to reality. McKenna would have more credibility if, like her predecessor Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart, she admitted it wasn’t about science. Stewart said,
“No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral benefits…Climate change (provides) the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Stewart talks about justice and equality, but how do you achieve that when the science is wrong and the people most hurt by the policies it engendered are the poor?
The second experience involved my lawsuits. I knew through research that virtually everyone who goes to law school is an Arts student. My challenge was to find a lawyer who could understand the science and the scientific method. The law says it is not qualified to resolve science disputes, but why not after almost 500 years? The law adjusted to societal changes as bureaucracies grew in size and complexity. For example, the US passed the Administrative Procedure Act 72 years ago in 1946 as bureaucracies need guidelines and controls. Why, after 475 years doesn’t society pass a “Science Procedure Act? Such an act would prevent the filing of racketeering charges (RICO) against climatologists who perform their scientific role as skeptics. Instead, it would file them against those failing to follow the dictums of science who withhold data, misuse methods such as proving a hypothesis or use science for a political agenda.
The law claims it is not qualified to distinguish between, “your paper” and “my paper.” Despite that, there are countless examples of them making judgments on scientific issues. Some occurred because those exploiting science also exploited the law. For example, the EPA under Obama engineered and lost a lawsuit against it for failure to protect the people of the State of Massachusetts from CO2 as a harmful substance. It ended up before the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) as intended. Justice Scalia questioned why they were being asked to make a decision on science when they weren’t qualified. He then pointed out that the court made its judgment on Administrative Law which gave the power of eliminating harmful substances to the EPA. What SCOTUS overlooked was it was EPA who designated CO2 a harmful substance. Even minimal scientific knowledge would have told them it is not harmful and about the important role in creating and sustaining life on the planet.
Another important and immediately relevant legal ruling likely would not have occurred if the judge knew and understood science. Virginia Attorney General (AG) Ken Cuccinelli lost the suit against the University of Virginia and Michael Mann demanding the release of data and information for his ‘hockey stick’ creation. The AG argued that taxpayers paid for the research and the results were used to implement global, draconian, and unnecessary policies on energy and environment. People had a right to know the scientific validity of Mann’s claims. To my knowledge, Cuccinelli did not argue that a fundamental test in the practice of science is ‘reproducible results,” which can only occur if data and methods are disclosed. The judge, knowing this, would not have ruled that the data and methods were Mann’s intellectual property. It is a measure of how little people understand science and its methods that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s call for full disclosure is met with vigorous resistance, even allowing for the political situation.
For 25 years I taught a Science credit course for Arts students. It was part of a traditional liberal arts idea but with the normal bias because Science students had to take two Arts courses. What was even more annoying was that the university created courses that were not even marginally science to make it ‘easier’ for the Arts students.
I taught the course as a basic instruction in how the Earth works. The course was basic science and understanding for people who were all going to become citizens of the planet. They were all going to be confronted with issues and decisions involving science and the environment. The more informed they were, the higher the chances of sensible fact-based decisions, but also, the lower the chances of them being exploited by people who use lack of knowledge to manipulate and control. Although I did not teach a course in the history of science, I gave many guest lectures in the history department course on that subject and incorporated several lectures into the ‘Earth works’ course.
There are many things we can do as a society to change and improve the knowledge and understanding of the people. One is to take back control of the education system, which is now more than ever a place of indoctrination. This will be difficult because politicians face a dilemma of needing an educated workforce but knowing when you educate people they start asking questions. We then introduce compulsory courses in all schools, whether public or private, on the history of science. You begin by acknowledging the simplistic division in any society between the minority (15%?) of people who are ‘comfortable’ with science and the majority who are not (85%). You then create courses relevant to the needs of all as future citizens of Earth. These courses are not career paths, but simple preparation for the complexities and challenges of life. There should be a compulsory course at Elementary, Middle, and High School and another at all post graduate institutions. As philosopher and mathematician A.N. Whitehead said,
“A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.”
We must create a section of law for science that applies basic scientific rules to disputes and conflicts. It will include a code of scientific conduct, such as applying the rule on math tests, ‘show your work.’ It should also include rules on morality and ethics for research. Variations are already in place at most universities. This area will become a separate option, like Corporate or Constitutional law. It will require lawyers who have science degrees with courses specifically in scientific disputes before practicing.
The strength of societies and the effectiveness of progress is in the ability to learn from mistakes. The AGW deception is the biggest in history and occurred because a majority of people, especially in the critical areas of politics and the law, were uneducated in science and the scientific methods. Scott Pruitt is a good example of the type of lawyer we need. He learned much about climate science from association with fellow Oklahoman, Senator James Inhofe, the only true champion of climate truths in US politics who fought for balance against great odds. We can produce more like Pruitt and reduce exploitation and become better citizens and stewards of the earth.
Sadly, as a B-girl in Saigon once said to me: “Nebba happen, GI.”
No money, no honey.
To a great degree the legal system, in the U.S., relies on logic, math and a search for truth, which are three tenets of science. Things can seem out of whack, and often they are, but it’s not hopeless at least.
It CAN be hopeless, when the axioms of logic are themselves errors, which produces an elegant logic of errors.
A very technical text could be written about the anatomy of unicorns or dragons. I have actually studied the anatomy of dragons, in order to perfect my own drawings in the past. Thing is dragons don’t exist. Yet the logic of their anatomy DOES.
It’s like creating gibberish sentences: “Purple thoughts run furiously through elated taste, while infant sensations wallow through the light.” A whole book could be written like this, but it would be gibberish. It has believable form, consistent patterns, seeming meaning, yet … .
Many years ago in a large, hi-tech engineering company, which shall be nameless, we were playing around with a random sentence generator. It provided four columns each of ten technical-sounding phrases, and a random 4-digit number would produce a sonorous but quite meaningless sentence, such as “The digitised phase space of the input drivers is synoptically linked to the spectrum bandwidth”. We produced several dozen sentences in this way with the aid of a random number generator, put them all together and submitted the result as a technical report, fully expecting to receive a blast from senior management for wasting everyone’s time. To our amazement and subsequent dismay, nobody said a word. As far as I know, that document is still in the company’s files.
BBB – bullshit baffles brains.
There is an amusing site called the Arty Bollocks Generator — in the event that you need an artist statement for your masterpiece.
* * * * *
Artist Statement
My work explores the relationship between Pre-raphaelite tenets and unwanted gifts.
With influences as diverse as Machiavelli and Francis Bacon, new variations are generated from both simple and complex narratives.
Ever since I was a teenager I have been fascinated by the ephemeral nature of the moment. What starts out as yearning soon becomes debased into a carnival of temptation, leaving only a sense of dread and the inevitability of a new order.
As subtle phenomena become clarified through frantic and personal practice, the viewer is left with a hymn to the limits of our future.
Bingo, RK.
And thanks, Dr. Tim Ball. It cannot be said any better or any clearer than this. And only someone who has been through the fire and defeated it with truth could say it. This writing should be mandatory reading in every university, college, high school.
The financial Wizards of Oz—who operate behind the curtain—do so on the principle that “. . . in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” And, “. . . if the people don’t know what questions to ask, then the answers won’t matter.”
You, sir, sites like WUWT, and a handful of others, have ripped down that curtain and laid bare the despicable, lying, deceiving thieves and bilge rats behind it who profit from humanity’s misery and death. They have always been there—Rome through Kings to present day. Only when the Internet was released to the public did the people begin to truly see. Oz is on record as saying, “. . . we should never have let the public have access to the Internet”—probably the most truthful statement these sonsofwitches ever uttered. Copenhagen was the poster child. This is why they’re in the process of trying choke the ‘Net’ off and use it to “. . . identify domestic terrorists”—the ever-growing, critical audience of the massive lies and theft behind their climate shell games–acid rain/ozone holes/ “dangerous” CO2/greenhouse gases/runaway global warming/climate change/ ‘swine flu’/ . . .” It’s a long, long list. And they have no choice, because the longer it runs, the louder the footsteps.
Good speed, Dr. Ball, and to those who’ve brought/are bringing their knowledge to bear on this heinous problem.
“Robert Kernodle May 13, 2018 at 6:09 pm
A whole book could be written like this, but it would be gibberish.”
I think Vogon poetry is an example of this.
For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that which I conceived it. There is however, a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which as yet, I have found it utterly impossible to adapt to language. These fancies arise in the soul, alas, so rarely, only at moments of the most intense tranquillity, when the bodily and mental health are in perfection, at those mere points in time where the confines of the waking world blends with the world of dreams. And so, I captured this fancy, where all that we see, or seem, is but a dream, within a dream.
Orson Welles, Tales of mystery and imagination, The Alan Parsons Project, 1973.
Roger Graves, Ah Feal Yo Pane. And good for you on the gibberish. Many years ago on a weapon system development I shall not name, the customer and I were working on a design specification. It was late at night, just the two of us, milestone looming, we were exhausted, and we were down to the tiny details. Meaning in this case, the acronym list. One was “MG,” which as everyone knows means “milligrams.” I know it’s actually “mg,” but on that program stuff like that was capitalized. So anyway, I wrote a new definition: “An unreliable British sports car.” And I looked at the customer and asked, “Leave it?” “Yes.” And so it was baselined into formal configuration control. We didn’t exactly hide it. We told the program we had written something that would prove they really read the specs. “We won’t tell you what it is but you will know it when you find it.” A couple of years later an engineer who worked for me found it because he took upon himself the thankless task of standardizing the acronym lists for all the specs.
‘Twas brillig in the slithely toves
Jabberwocky
By Lewis Carroll
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Sorry, disagree. The US system is an adversarial system that is a more refined “trial by combat” that is being judged by people who have no training in the subject. In almost all cases a jury and in most cases a judge,who may or may not be smart, but is usually uninformed in the subject.
Ad sitting in on jury selection on a few occasions, I discovered that the goal of the attorneys is to pick jurors who are the most gullible and easily persuaded.
Justice happens by accident in the American courtroom. The best we can do is to make it a carefully contrived accident and hope for the correct outcome.
+10
+Alan McIntyre, I once saw PBS interviewing some jurors who had presided over a case that sent some male child care workers to prison for years on child abuse charges that depended on coaxed and preposterous testimony. I think it took a decade to overturn, and their lives were ruined. I listened to the jurors explain their decisions of years earlier, I thought, “God help me if my fate should ever depend on the best judgment of morons like these.” Nice enough people, but they had the brains of sheep.
Rationalism/ Rationalist — A person who bases their opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response: (Or politics.)
There have to be better words than ‘skeptic’ and/or ‘skepticism’ for the purpose.
It is hard for me to understand why some people who seem smart enough that they should know better do not see through this sham. Granted, some of them are motivated by a political agenda, but others seem to be sincere bandwagoners. So why do they bandwagon? It has to be a personality quirk or character flaw for some people. But I think most of the AGW True Believers just cannot think critically when bombarded with propaganda from figures on the loftier tiers of the deference pyramid. Max Photon’s idiocracy clip reminded me of this rather long but enlightening interview with psychologist Linda Gottfredson:
Sorry, R. Shearer, but while lawyers may be good at verbal reasoning, most of them seem to be barely numerate if some of the rulings occasionally reported in the press are accurate. As one federal attorney, commenting in the difficulty of handling a particular case that was science-heavy, told a reporter for the WSJ, “we lawyers” tend not to be very good at math and science–that’s why we went into law (!), he said.
I also do not agree that lawyers are trained to seek truth. Instead, they are trained to persuade, to make a plausible case. They are trained to be able to argue either side of any case, and if they must obfuscate in order to be convincing, then they will few obfuscation as their professional duty. If engineers were trained like lawyers, they would excel at persuading people that their projects were viable, but most of what they actually built would be collapsing.
The real solution must include, at a minimum, voting the lawyers out of congress.
If the planet’s future is actually on the line, we all have to think a little more like a Utility Commissioner to make sure we as North Americans are the makers of efficient energy, reducers of emissions, practitioners of energy efficiency and believers of clean economic development.
B.S., Stephen.
Stephen You obviously have never taken a course in basic economics which should be taught at the high school level. Let us take your bullshit statements one by one. I know you didnt have any thinking that went behind those bullshit statements because they proved that you were just parroting what you have been taught in grade school. 1) The world runs on money. Makers of energy will always maximize their profits.
2) if you meant reducing CO2 then you sre sadly mistaken. The world’s atmosphere needs more CO2 NOT less. If you meant only real pollutants then you get a pass on this one. 3) Everyone that doesnt practice energy efficiency wastes their own money but the kicker is that even if everyone did 100% of the time, society would not use less energy. Why? Because the money that any individual saved by being more efficient would simply be spent on some other frivolous or non frivolous activity. Ex:Mankind enjoys vacations and the more money one has the more one vacations or golfs or …….etc. Even if you as an individual doesnt spend the extra money saved but then just puts it in your bank account, the bank will lend it to someone else on a project that will use energy. That is why it is useless for governments to promote energy efficiency among their peoples. 4) What is clean economic development? Businesses will develop economically whether clean or not. It is up to government to implement and enforce pollution laws. We need to clean up the 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the oceans. That wont be done with your phrase of “clean economic development.”
Stephan,
It sounds like you have read:
http://docketpublic.energy.ca.gov/PublicDocuments/17-IEPR-01/TN223206_20180416T163110_Executive_Summary_of_the_2017_Integrated_Energy_Policy_Report.pdf
The lawyers, who are well versed in the burden of proof and hearsay, ought to be well able to understand the many weaknesses behind the evidence, and the logic upon which the scientific principle is based.
The problem is politics, not qualification.
It’s always “if”.
That the planets future is not on the line is well and truly proven.
Even the sainted IPCC doesn’t try to pass off that nonsense anymore.
Stephen,
Your comment makes me think of
“What is Best in Life?”
I can assure you Russian dictator Putin and China’s PM Xi subscribe to this Conan logic:
How does being a clean practitioner of energy efficiency help defeat them before they destroy everything in your life you hold dear?
Sadly they both have nuclear weapons.
No rational state actor today will be the first to use nuclear weapons.
But also no rational actor should make that a stated policy (no first use).
That is the essence of deterrence, not knowing where the line is for your adversary that will provoke them.
Obama came within a hair’s width of making no-first-use-of-nukes a stated, formal US policy. That would have been disastrously destabilizing. Every nation would have pushed the US to a line we could not breach, then they’d push it some more.
The US used nukes to bring an end to WW2 and prevent an invasion of the Japanese main islands. But no one else had them. That is no longer the case.
I don’t think “no-first-use-of-nukes” is a thing.
It is actually a set if nested ifs:
If the current temperature is unusual .and. the planets future is on the line:
If CO2 is the primary driver of temperature change:
if the world as a whole can reduced its CO2 levels to that of circa 1900:
if [your country here] can survive without industry
then remove fossil fuels and all causes of CO2 from [your country here]
endif
endif
endif
else
focus on strengthening [your country here]’s economy and industry against the future
endif
Personally, I go straight to the “else” statement and anyone that understands scenario analysis would do the same as it is the only sane course no matter what you believe about AGW.
I personally think the test falls through to the else statement at the first “if”.
Ozzies put the Leftards inpower and are still sadly just navel-gazing to get to “else”.
Spoken like a fellow programmer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stephen Heins
“If the planet’s future is actually on the line”
Which it’s not.
Begin by defining, “planet’s future on the line.”
It’s clear to those of us in the 15% that the 85% needs to go all the way back to educate themselves in the philosophy of science before even thinking about engaging in complex scientific discussions such as Earth climate.
Only nuclear energy ticks all those boxes, and only nuclear can replace fossil energy at the levels of energy then required. So that’s a happy co-incidence.
There are requirements for enacting regulations. link If those requirements are not met, a regulation may be challenged. It’s not easy.
The exposure most lawyers have with science are “expert” witnesses in cases, and a good many have no notion of how to challenge such testimony.
An example of purportedly expert witnesses were the so-called Satanic Panic cases, such as the McMartin Preschool case. The interview techniques used in that case were based on purportedly “theraputic” routines that were never tested as forensic tools. Had the defense known enough to ask anyone who knew the field even at a fairly low level, some obvious questions would have arisen.
Had anyone asked the “expert” “What sort of false positive rate was there when the method was tested?” What sort of false negative rate was there?” Both would have drawn the response that the interview technique was never tested, period.
Lawyers need a basic course in the scientific method
Lawyers will only use science when it supports their client’s case. When it doesn’t, they pound the table and use logical fallacies with great enthusiasm.
The CAGW boondoggle will die naturally as the word keeps getting out that “CO2 control” is a solution in search of a problem. Skeptics are now openly ridiculing alarmists in the pages of the WSJ–it’s apparent the business world now only virtue-signals to AGW if their direct revenue is involved. Actual scientific observations have harpooned this white whale and everyone who doesn’t uncritically accept arguments from the “authority” of lefty newspapers knows it; Pruitt is holding the lance to finish the job if he can be forthright enough to topple the Endangerment Clause without delay. Be bold and tell the world unequivocally the CAGW emperor has no clothes, indeed doesn’t exist! He needs to keep his eyes on MAGA and stop compromising his position with petty perk nonsense.
Goldrider – As I remember the predictions, gradual warming with small variations, no statistically significant cooling (trends), more flooding, more droughts, more heat waves, cold records being broken, stronger thunderstorms and blizzards, fewer hurricanes but stronger hurricanes, seasonal delays and shifts in storm tracks.
What are you seeing?
I’m not saying I’ve figured this out, but I would wait for statistically significant cooling.
Wait for statistically significant cooling to do what? We’ve been in a natural warming trend since the end of the Little Ice Age, and every single prediction made by AGW alarmists has failed, including the tipping point at 350, oops now its 400, and new cold records are still being set worldwide. That wasn’t supposed to be happening. And neither are we supposed to be able to survive those tipping points either, beyond which we’re now doomed, I believe the rhetoric was.
AGW was never about science. AGW was always about using weather to gain political power. It worked for a while, now it is spectacularly failing.
Notanist – I approach this as any problem in weather forecasting. I try to explain phenomena after the fact. You’re ahead of yourself. I’m thinking of mistakes which have been made on both sides.
Mr Meteorologist in Research
Are you kidding us? Every database of extreme weather events in the world in any government agency that has kept statistics for the last 100 years and there are many of them; will tell you that there are no more extreme weather events than there ever were. The little bit of warming that you see has been going on for 300 years. The 1930s were in fact the warmest period for the last 100 years. Daily maximum temperatures over the last 124 years in the US at a 1000 different temperature stations show no warming either by aggregate of the 365 days or by looking at each one of the 365 days of the year for 124 years. That represents over 45 million data points. Since CO2 is evenly mixed in the atmosphere all over the world you can’t have AGW in the rest of the world and not have it in the US. You astound me with your ignorance. I can quote you a 100 other statistics that prove that CAGW is laughable and even AGW is laughable. Most people believe in it cause they were taught in school that AGW and CAGW are dangerous to mankind. They also were taught to respect government agencies. Well the alarmists have infiltrated most of the government agencies in the West. That has led to outright data tampering, data fudging and even data fraud. GISS the agency of NASA is guilty of data fraud along with NOAA the other main agency in the US that tracks climate. Most people dont know this and refuse to believe when told about it. I am hoping the Trump administration investigates this fraud and prosecutes the top officials of those agencies with treason. I really do think that a good case could be made for treason. To get an idea of just how much fraud has been going on; google Tony Heller and Youtube. He has 100’s of videos detailing the fraud.
To get his resume watch this video 1st
Alan – you’ll think I’m too ignorant to help you with your misunderstandings.
You have failed to observe three points – at least.
First the change in temperatures is tiny, 0.8 degrees since 1880, in 288 degrees Kelvin, for a CO2 change of 280ppm to 400ppm. not a lot of correlation there, and in fact long periods of negative correlation during that period.. The rate of warming has hardly changed since records started in the UK in mid 1600’s, unaffected by the level of atmospheric CO2, on the actual facts
Second there is no evidence that CO2, natural or human emitted, is responsible for much of this change, it is an assumption put into models that artificially reduce other causes to ampllfy CO2s supposed effects in the predictions, and hence fails to predict reality.
Thirdly CO2 effect is tiny WRT the much larger natural effect of water vapour, and even the natural variation in that water vapour effect. The models claim water vapour will amplify any insignificant rise due to CO2, but also admit that more water vapour may have a negative feedback effect of more clouds, they don’t know. Fact..
Finally Global climate change occurs over thousands of years, because oceans capture most solar radiation and hold 1,000 times more heat than the atmosphere they control, almost all the surface heat, oceans control atmospheric temperatures and energy on hundreds of year time scales, not vice versa. What human’s see is weather, a function of the regional variabiiity of oceans, but largely irrelevant in determining long term global temperature change. And don’t forget there is an ice age cycle, driven by forces massively larger that any human effect, and we are already approaching the end of the current interglacial, well into neo glacial decline on the few thousand year drop to the next dominant ice age, It won’t be warm again like now for 80,000 years or so.
In a few hundred short human life times oceans will again be 100 metres lower than today, their dominant level for the last 1 Million years of 100K year ice age cycles, and the Maldives will look as daft as climate religionists, or as crooked as the subsidy farming con men who made so much money to make each of the supposed problems of energy generation worse by law with “Renewable energy” – that must expensively fail to deliver anything it claims on the certain energy physics, easy to prove on a blackboard.
I read posts in here so that I can hear both sides. The geomagnetic ideas and the ultra violet ideas (causing SSWs) are new to me, and interesting.
Less than one degree is very little change. The forcers are weak, so it’s difficult to understand what’s going on. It’s early in the effect humans will have, but it seems so far that the feedback ideas of water vapor have been over emphasized. But it was a fear that people needed to be warned about.
Water vapor is probably in hydrostatic equilibrium over a few diurnal cycles. We’ll see as GHGs increase.
As I see it, there’s only been small changes in the position of storm tracks and recently (since 2011) year after year of delays in seasonal patterns, so I look at the temperature in the early 1900s and what it is now and extrapolate that trend. Until this trend is reversed I will continue to think about all the human activities changing the planet into the next few centuries. I doubt that anything can be done about the changes and we can believe whatever we ‘believe’ until something definitive is known. Maybe in a few more decades?
Rationalist: A person who bases their opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response: (Or politics)
It would appear that the quote by Whitehead goes directly against your argument that teaching the history
of science is vital. Surely the implication of the Whitehead quote is that science must forget its founders to
progress?
Agree. The quote certainly seemed misplaced and even pointless in the context when I read it. Also, “compulsory” anything goes against the grain to me. I also doubt the value of compulsory classes in science, or any other topic for that matter. Some can benefit – and that could be a value – but there are far too many that won’t learn regardless. Given an informed explanation from a biologist and what their pastor says about evolution, many will take the pastor as the authority.
Tim.
You make a common mistake about lawyers and their legal profession. The first thing most law schools teach on day of 1st year to the new students is they can’t be there for truth and justice. That is not what lawyers are for.
To understand this, a decent place to start is here:
But I think it would be well worth your time Tim to read this and understand lawyers exist to serve their clients.
Because seeking truth and justice is not what lawyers really are for, it leads to the humorous realization that “500 lawyers on the bottom of the ocean is a good start” has as truth to it as it does humor.
Joel, your point is a profound one. The average Joe imagines that courts are fair, rational, truth-seeking arenas; just tell the truth and everything will work out fine. People get a RUDE awakening when circumstances find them in court, dealing with lawyers, and they collide with cold, hard reality.
I am a Harvard trained lawyer. What you cite is critical legal studies BS that was emerging while I was there. It was then, and remains now, absurd nonsense. Study the Code of Hamurabbi, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and all the other philosphy of law thinkers. Take your vile elsewhere.
So you argue lawyers should (as a profession) seek truth and justice?
That is naive.
The legal profession exists to represent a client in an adversarial role. Truth and justice do not matter. A lawyer whow wins a big case on a fine legal technicality that others overlooked is much revered within the profession.
Lawyers are attracted to politics because politcs are the ultimate application of power in a civilozed society. And in most politics today it is practiced as a blood sport. Lawyers turned politician serve a client. And it is naive to think that client is always the public that elected them in democracy.
Even you Rudd,
I would argue your client has been the molecule: carbon with two covalently bound oxygens floating around in Earth’s atmosphere.
CO2 has been accused of all manner of Earthly and human atrocites in recent decades. And you have spent a great deal of time defending CO2 with hard counter evidence and by pointing to poor procedure by the prosecution.
But a scientific adversarial role will allow you to turn-on your client if the eventual evidence against it becomes conclusive after examining for deceptions or mistakes in experiment from the prosecution.
The legal profession allows for no such turning on a client.
To pretend that the purpose of attorneys is to seek truth and justice is beyond naive, it’s delusional. The justice system itself has lost the inherent pursuit of truth and justice and is now nothing more than a self-serving industry. But I do love it when legaleze types give us their “rationale” for how things like legal diversions adhere to the actual philosophy of law.
“To pretend that the purpose of attorneys is to seek truth and justice is beyond naive, it’s delusional”
Agreed.
ristvan, think about it. Every legal case has (at least) two lawyers (the defense and the prosecution) both arguing opposite ends. As there is only one truth, at least one of those two lawyers can’t be arguing for the truth. And the lawyer that is arguing against the truth, clearly isn’t arguing for justice.
I had to go into court one day to attempt to get a restraining order. The municipal judge and the prosecutor were going through the docket and doing everything they could to be pragmatic about the cases. They were not out seeking blood. They were just trying to get through the docket while helping people get out of the situation they were in. In just about all of the cases, the path to getting out was simple … SHOW UP. If they showed up, they would be done. These folks were not showing up.
Joel O’Bryan,
Lawyers are not much worse than the of us. The system is not perfect but the output is probably better than most of us deserve. It is amazing we even have that when you look at history.
I agree. But it is the adversarial process that is to be championed in our justice system.
The adherence to a Due Process by all sides.
The lawyer lawyer who serves a client, guilty or innocent, aggreived or accused. His/her sole duty is to the client. Even if the client is well established pedophile-child murderer, then getting them off on a legal technicality, such as violated Due Process by the prosecution or police, is what the lawyer does. Don’t mistake what they do for truth or justice.
And to Tim’s point that that we need lawyer-scientists or scientist lawyers, it creates a schrizophenric beast if that person tries to be faithful to both professions. They will fail at both if they try to be both.
Which brings up the point of why I detest advocacy in science. To wit, Dr Hansen and his advocacy of a failed hypothesis* that he now cannot admit to. The poltician-lawyers embraced the advocate Hansen because it serves a power legitimization agenda. Because Hansen turned his back on truth seeking and correction in the face of evidence and decided to serve a politcal master, his scientific soul is lost.
* Failed hypothesis: a trace gas minor increase will result in catastrophic runaway global atmospheric heating.
A short anecdote about how I learned a valuable legal lesson. I had injured my forearm and the x-ray showed a crack in the ulna. The doctor put a split on it and sent me on my way. Two weeks later I was back with pain and additional swelling. Another x-ray showed the ulna was now broken all the way through. This time the doctor put a full cast on the arm and in 8 weeks or so it healed. I refused to pay for the initial treatment as it failed to accomplish anything and may have made matters worse. They took me to small claims court where I lost even though I truly believed I had a valid argument. The judge told me that in order for him to rule in my favor I would have to bring testimony from an equal professional (another doctor) that the initial treatment wasn’t proper. I argued back that it was impossible because no doctor would do that to another unless it was such gross negligent the offending doctor should lose their license. The judge told me he completely understood and agreed but that was the law and his hands were tied so he had to rule in favor of the doctor.
Some years ago, I took over project management of a major engineering project which was way behind schedule, costing far more than budgeted(tendered), and having very serious contractual disputes. I kept the previous PM on board as requested by the company employing me to provide him with guidance and training for the future.
Events on the project inevitably led to the courts and we had a preliminary meeting with a specialist engineering/construction lawyer representing us to discuss the pros and cons of any our case and our opponent’s case. The ex-PM attended with me. He got very upset when the lawyer made some statement he couldn’t agree with: “that’s totally unreasonable and wrong!” he said. The lawyer replied, “Understand this: the law is nothing to do with right or wrong and too often little to do with justice; it’s all about tactics!”
TB has quite rightly identified the root cause of the current CAGW fraud, namely our politicians and lawyers are too ignorant of even basic science and engineering to resist the demands and the preaching of the hordes of lobbyists paid for by the left leaning Green fraternity and their media comrades. It seems from comments here that the USA and other Developed Countries have the same difficulties as the USA simply because, apart from a few medical professionals, there are no former professional scientists or engineers in Parliament. They are easy meat for the Green lobbyists. Given the investigations that Pruit wishes to set up/; namely an open public debate between alarmist warmists and CAGW skeptics, the CAWG religion will soon be exposed for the heresy it is, and a very expensive heresy at that for all of us!
All the Developed Countries need professional Scientists and Engineers in their parliaments to properly raise the CAGW issues involved and to properly interrogate CAWG supporters and scientists prior to any government approving any further CAGW driven expenditures and projects!
My mistake’ penultimate paragraph, 5th line should be “…as the U.K… “
A potential client storms into an attorney’s office, pounds on his desk, and exclaims indignantly, “I demand justice!” The lawyer’s first question: “How much justice can you afford?”
One nit to pick: the earth, sun, and other objects in our solar system orbit around the barycenter.
And here I thought it was Sagittarius A*.
That center is somewhere inside the sun, isn’t it? But it isn’t at the center of mass of the sun. How far apart are these two centers?
Verboten topic here at WUWT.
The barycenter can be outside of the photosphere, but within the corona.
That there is a barycenter is not and never has been verbotten.
Does the Moon orbit around the barycenter, and if not, what makes it special?
For the Earth–Moon system, the barycenter is located on average 4,671 km (2,902 mi) from the Earth’s center, well within the planet’s radius of 6,378 km (3,963 mi).
(Wikipedia)
You have a nice collection of barycenters.
I see part of the problem. Who is this “society”? What are these “social this” and “social that”? I see individuals who interact. They are all the same only in that each is different. “Society” has no brain, no nerve-system, no capability of rationality or free will or decision-making. Clear these hand-wavey collectives from your thinking and writing and it becomes more clear and precise.
Every individual is ignorant…which is to say no one is omniscient, but every one knows some things, even though a few of those things turn out to not be trye. Every one makes mistakes.
The scientific method is designed to deal with these imperfections. It is realistic. Individuals can be persuaded through application of it.
mib8 wrote: Who is this “society”?… I see individuals who interact. …“Society” has no brain,
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts–it possesses emergent properties that cannot be foreseen by examining the properties of each individual. Society itself is a sort of brain, its individual members are the neurons, and the connections between them, the synapses. A complex, adaptive system, as physicists use that term, cannot be understood or even perceived by focusing on its individual components. A forest has properties that cannot be deduced from the study of individual trees.
False logic.
It’s not because there exists no viable solution to power a 7 + billions people civilization with carbon neutral renewable energy sources that the science of man-made GW is anywhere false.
In spite of twisting repeatedly themselves into bretzels none of the so called “skeptics” could ever provide even the least argument against CO2 enhanced GHE, agreed by every physics literate scientist.
What’s uncertain (for very good scientifically understood reasons) is only the amount of warming. Maybe it’s not really going to be a serious problem at all, maybe it is going to be a very serious one.
Thus from a strict scientific point of view and as to scientific progress one doesn’t have to care;
-neither about what physics illiterate “skeptics” with political agendas believe or claim.
-nor about what physics illiterate “environmental activists” with opposite political agendas believe or claim.
-nor even about what a handful of scientists with various political agendas believe or claim.
gammacrux
What are you talking about??
“False logic.
“It’s not because there exists no viable solution to power a 7 + billions people civilization with carbon neutral renewable energy sources that the science of man-made GW is anywhere false.”
Carbon neutrality says nothing about CO2 and it’s atmospheric effects. Carbon neutrality is a bean counter’s game signifying nothing. You could just as easily have water vapour neutrality.
The greatest proof of the ‘heating power’ of CO2 is the atmosphere itself and the temperature changes caused by CO2. The effect of CO2 doubling from 300 to 600 is not detectable with current instrumentation against a background variability far larger than any anticipated observable effect. That is basic science and statistics. Absent a basic understanding of the basic physics, the statistics involved in making such a determination and the history of the climate over recent geological times, no progress can be made identifying any human influence.
Measurements are very valuable. They show empirically that the influence of additional CO2 is very small. The recent addition of 50ppm has made no statistically detectable change in the global temperature.
The climate models are unskilled. If an engineer built bridges using a model that specified bridges that invariably failed, at some point customers would stop giving her money unless she started using a structural model that produced bridges that withstood their design loads. Unless that happens, we say the model is ‘not fit for purpose’. Climate models that cannot predict global temperatures in future are unskilled and should not be used to inform policy. It is that simple.
If someone tells you they know the ECS is more than one degree Celsius, they are pulling your leg because they know no such thing. We have several decades of measurements and all we know is that CO2 even emitted in huge quantities, has a very modest effect on temperatures.
That is just how it is. I fully expect the global temperature to start dropping, based on the historical trend.
Nice example of wishful thinking.
gammacrux I’m only a chemist. But I’m also a farmer. There is no global warming. Al Gore told me 20 years ago that I could grow Honey Dew Melons in Swansea, Ma. He lied. CO2 is plant food. We aren’t even as warm as the Vikings settlement of Greenland. When we hit 4000 PPM get back to me, in the meantime start drinking decaf.
mark, I’m only a physicist. But I’m also a wine grower. There is global warming. Al Gore told you 20 years ago that you could grow Honey Dew Melons in Swansea, Ma and he lied ? Possibly, he is a politician not a scientist and I don’t listen to politicians. Anyway harvest of grapes is here (North-East of France) typically up to three weaks earlier and frost now very rare in May as it used to be 40 years ago. CO2 is plant food ? Certainly but here again beware of false logic. It is not because CO2 is plant food that it cannot induce global warming and (possible) adverse effects in this way. We aren’t even as warm as the Vikings settlement of Greenland ? Possible but doesn’t preclude future trouble either on business as usual track.
When we hit 4000 PPM get back to me, in the meantime start drinking decaf ?
We won’t ever hit that mark and guess what I’m going to drink anyway instead of decaf…
The only scientific question worthy of debate is,
“What is the Earth climate sensitivity to man-made releases of CO2?”
Debate over the existence of a GHE is more than useless at this point, it’s a distraction.
Sure, but even blog debates about climate sensitivity is as vain as well. There is no way to know better from a theoretical point of view, whether one likes it or not.
Only careful observations may tell in future, not any theory, and this has nothing to do with any past or future scientific revolutions.
So what is all this fuss about with so called “corrupt” or “false” climate science and ridiculous invoking of Copernic, Faraday and Feynman ?
“Debate over the existence of a GHE” is far from “useless” or a “distraction”.
It is absolutely FUNDAMENTAL to understanding the workings of the atmosphere (and not just on Earth) that the hypothesis of the existence of a Greenhouse Effect be properly tested via multiple experiments and observations.
To date this has not been done. There has been a lot of hand waving and theoretical discussion but there has not been a serious body of experimental / observational work. This is because of this unhelpful attitude of “no need to discuss it, it’s agreed, move on”.
Well it isn’t agreed by everybody. And (you know who) “IF IT DOESN’T AGREE WITH EXPERIMENT….”
So, assuming its not YOUR money I am spending, is there anybody here who wants to stop me from doing my own experiments? And publishing the results. With all the data.
The GHE isn’t agreed by everybody.
This is quite true, yet exactly as there are still people claiming idiotically the Earth is flat.
Possibly “the hypothesis of the roundness of planet Earth is not yet properly tested via multiple experiments and observations” ?
Hilarious.
Nobody, nowadays, believes that gravity doesn’t exist, but equally nobody lives in fear of being pulled to the ground and made immobile. This is a matter of record!
CO2 can cause warming, but does not have the effect CAGW supporters and scientists continually preach and forecast; but fail to provide the scientific proof via accepted scientific methods and procedures.
I don’t think you know the first thing about thermal absorptivity and emission of gas molecules, let alone climate.
gammacrux wrote: harvest of grapes is here (North-East of France) typically up to three weaks earlier and frost now very rare in May as it used to be 40 years ago.
excerpt:
Since yesterday, the four departments have been on “orange alert” – the second-most severe level – for snow and ice, with the forecaster predicting that the conditions could make driving dangerous and difficult.
The late appearance of the snow – which Météo France called “heavy and settled” – is expected to have a significant impact on spring plants and vegetation, as well as road conditions, and any “fragile buildings”.
It is continuing to snow today (Sunday May 13), with Météo France suggesting that up to 50 centimetres could settle in areas higher than 1,000 metres….
Drivers and residents in the area are warned to be vigilant, and make sure that they carry provisions in their car in case they become stuck.
https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Heavy-May-snowfall-surprises-south-Massif-Central
I wouldn’t be too eager to establish a “Science Procedure Act.” The Administrative Procedure Act established Federal Agencies, in the Executive Branch, and delegated to them the powers of the Congress to make law (the power to delegate which is nowhere to be found in the Constitution), along with the Judiciary Branch powers of adjudication (which aren’t the Congress’ power to delegate in the first place), all ensconced in the Executive Branch where they have the power of enforcement. That one act took the entire structure of the Constitution, and all of its checks and balances, and threw it out of the window. I know. I work for one of those Federal Agencies, and every day I do, I realize that my very presence there violates my oath of office, to defend the Constitution of the United States.
Great name!.
Here is an essay I wrote on this topic: https://insuspectterrane.com/ If you enjoy it, there are more at http://www.insuspectterrane.com
Here is an essay I wrote on this topic: ttps://insuspectterrane.com/2016/05/31/jocks-for-rocks/. If you enjoy it, there are more at http://www.insuspectterrane.com
I am definitely going to read your work as time permits. Glanced through some and found lots of interest.
Perhaps you would like to glance at an essay of mine. Criticism would be welcome. https://goo.gl/9Ns3ux
…”Earth orbits the Sun. I used to think it was not worth discussing because one in four Americans and one in three Russians think the opposite, ”
….build the wall
On the law and science, I found James Franklin’s The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal (JHU, 2002) enlightening. In the beginning, two accusers of stature constituted proof; why Pilate could not convict Christ and threw him back to the mob. Later, torture constituted a half-proof.
Good people ought to be armed as they will, with wits and guns and The Truth.
Its not just normal people who are ignorant about science in many cases, but it is in my experience, also politicians and local governments who are pushing the nonsense – but of course these people are affected by 1. The United Nations, 2 ICLEI, and 3. Agenda 21
I have written about this at some length, some of which is on the link below.
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/are-we-experiencing-a-communist-infiltration-sponsored-by-the-united-nations/
Cheers
Roger
My brother taught the history of science at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. The Dean of Science was appalled to discover that an ‘Arts’ graduate was resident in her Department. “What does an arts graduate know about science?” Her emphasis was in the wrong place. What does a scientist know about organising history lessons?
He replied that it would in fact be a good idea to have the history of a subject taught by a historian, don’t ya think? You know, that stuff about organising the material in a digestible form and unearthing the details others have overlooked in their enthusiasm for certain heroes.
History is never settled either. Historians are naturally skeptical of any ‘fact’ and take great care to always begin their sentences with, “It is the job of the historian to say, ‘It was not as simple as that.'”
He who controls the pen controls the past.
Process is everywhere. Process and our logical, rational being are under ata k by the Left.
Truth seeking is a process. Science is a process, not a thing in need of defense.
Our legal system rests on Due Process, and the acceptance of that process by all sides including a judge. Even if it means occasionally allowing the guilty to walk free, that process protects the innocent from wrongful prosecution by the powers of the State.
When science is turned into a thing that must be defended, you can be sure you are facing someone with an agenda that does not want the truth to interfere.
When our legal syste’s Due Process is turned into a politcal weapon it ceases to be fair to the truth or the accused. To wit: the Mueller riad on Trump lawyer Cohen’s office. The Left is silent to this gross violation, because it serves an agenda that is dishonest at its core.
The mere fact that we need a Climate Red Team – Blue Team, that is a red team to present counter evidence to a Blue (consensus) team, is testament to fact that truth has lost, that science is being treated as a thing, and not a process. That the process of scientific inquiry having been perverted into a thing, rather than a process, has allowed it to become weaponized to promote a Marxist agenda. And Marxism cares not for Due Process or scientific inquiry.
indeed joel. when someone says science is a thing that must be defended you can be sure that what they want to defend isn’t science.
Been wanting to post this for a while. Seems reasonably appropriate here ; ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI6-Up6m4VU
Sara,
You forgot the /snark tag…
Great commentary Tim. When a lawyer admits their ignorance but is clearly convinced of CAGW ask them for the references that have made them form that opinion. Everyone has a basis of opinion. Most lawyers and pollies won’t be able to point you to a single reference apart from the IPCC reports which I am certain most have not read and which contain many references to uncertainty and factual difference from commonly held viewpoints, and failed predictions. IF they refer to 97% stuff then put them on the spot with a few questions about the two 97% papers which I am certain most of them have never read like “Did they actually ask the scientists?” or how rigorous was the survey [77 out of over 3000 responded]. My point is everyone, especially lawyers and pollies, must be able to quote some references otherwise they are expecting us just to rely on their self admittedly ignorant opinions. Pollies have to be able to quote very reliable references. The references must be the common basis for any discussion. Poor references can easily be made to look feeble. I believe most people, including (some) journalists, respond to simple facts and basic logic even if they cannot grasp more complex physical and mathematical issues.
From the article: “Senator James Inhofe, the only true champion of climate truths in US politics”
I think Senator Inhofe deserves a special award for holding the Climate Change Charlatan’s feet to the fire all these years. He knows the subject quite well.
Dr. Ball states:
There are many things we can do as a society to change and improve the knowledge and understanding of the people. One is to take back control of the education system, which is now more than ever a place of indoctrination. This will be difficult because politicians face a dilemma of needing an educated workforce but knowing when you educate people they start asking questions..
My observation of “public” education in the U.S.is that it has progressed steadily downhill ever since the Dept of education was established–1979 I believe. A progressively totalitarian government can not afford an educated public, and the entire goal since the feds took control of primary and secondary education is to dumb down the public. Thinking for one’s self in public school situations these days is a fast tract to “remedial” drug therapy. Never, ever think about anything–just accept what authority says. The results are obvious –just look at what has happened to our universities today where only “approved” speech is acceptable, and a good number of graduates have no job skills at all.
Almost everyone I know believes in homeopathy.
Tim, let go. We’re doomed.
🎶Don’t fear the reefer…🎶
The majority of the general public still think relativity and QM are speculative science ideas and science ignores them and moves along just fine. The problem with Climate Science is the introduction of politics and the scientists in the field getting involved in the politics.
This discussion seems to be trending toward philosophy or at least a philosophy of science and law. I tend to relegate the sciences on a scale from soft to hard. Philosophy being very soft and mathematics very hard, if you consider them sciences. Climate science is rather soft (maybe a three) while geology as a part of climate science is quite hard (9?.) Soft sciences deal with possibilities and probabilities while hard science deals with more certain conclusions. Pretty raw in my thinking here yet. Does anyone else have input or interest?
Thorny. Very very thorny.
One can — and people do — argue that mathematics is not a science, though it has some similarities (and some important differences).
As for soft sciences dealing with probabilities … remember, quantum mechanics is considered by many to be a hard science, yet it is based on resonances in probability distributions. So … hard or soft?
Without a grounding the mathematics…
it becomes handwavium.
There is nothing in the Standard Model and quantum physics that mathematics cannot explain or (so far) predict.
There is nothing in GR that mathematics canot explain or (so far) predict.
Be the person that mathematically brings them together and your name will be up there with Newton, Maxwell, Planck, Einstein, Schroedinger, Pauli, etc.
I’m chiseling my way through the Princeton Companion to Mathematics and really enjoying it.
Rather than labeling domains of inquiry as soft or hard sciences, it might be more accurate to apply those labels to how proponents and opponents within those domains deal with evidence, and particularly evidence that contradicts favorite hypotheses.
From this perspective, “science” is a complex of attitudes and behaviors. Science is a human trait.
Hmm, It might be better to label the evidence (or data) as soft or hard or as IPCC does with conclusions, label them as to the likelihood of being true or accurate. But doesn’t that make most scientific conclusions or theory into premises build on a series of opinions? In other words, almost all science is deeply subject to bias.
Haven’t I heard this someplace before?
Seems to apply quite well to climate science.
I would suggest that it’s not entire disciplines that are either “hard or soft” but rather most, if not all, disciplines have both “hard AND soft” parts based mostly on, IMO, reproducibility of experiment. Psychology is often cited as a “soft” science but some aspects, such as much of the strict behaviourist schools of thought are totally reproducible. Anybody who has ever trained a dog or horse can attest to the fact that Pavlov was mostly right and his science was highly reproducible, therefore “hard.” OTOH, Freud’s science is only partially and occasionally reproducible and can therefore be called “soft.” Physics is normally very hard, but has a few soft spots by this definition. Any statement that a science is “settled” should be considered strong evidence that the speaker is scientifically illiterate and probably rather dull. For example, in 1875 a young Max Planck was advised by Philipp von Jolly not to study physics, because “in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes.” The irony here, of course, is that this particular student went on to play a major role in developing the quantum physics revolution (and win a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918 for it) and lived to see Special Relativity and nuclear energy demonstrated by experiment and move from theory to engineering. The reproducibility crises we’ve been hearing about recently and the apparent lack of concern about it in the science community is a major problem.
In many universities, especially outside of the US, if you take a math major with no other ‘science’ courses you receive an Arts degree. Logic is taught in Philosophy faculties.
To Bill Murphy
“Any statement that a science is “settled” should be considered strong
evidence that the speaker is scientifically illiterate and probably rather dull”
I couldn’t have put it better.
Tim, rather than resist, sometimes the best approach in a battle is to go heavily with the flow of your opponent. It seems to me that what is needed is for a city or state/province to suffer the dire consequences of their actions very quickly and very dramatically. People will only realize the stupidity of directions they are voting for when they see it impacting their lives. If the impacts happen slowly they can go much further and longer before being rejected. A fast shift can be reversed quickly and also will have a dramatic impact on voters. States and Provinces/cities which do not want Fossil Fuels need to be cut off (e.g. BC and California). Those who push and promote anti fossil fuel policies need to be banned from purchasing them. No more oil/gas for any lawyer, politician, scientist, reporter or movie star that is anti fossil fuel. No more jet fuel deliveries to BC or LA. This is no longer a benign silly little game and pulling them quickly into their self inflicted disaster rather than resisting it for years may be a better approach to get the general public to understand fast and in time to reverse it.
rather than resist, sometimes the best approach in a battle is to go heavily with the flow
========
Agreed. I called this the Regan solution. Rather than argue with your opponent that he is heading for disaster, start pushing towards the cliff with all your might. One of two things will happen, both of which are in your favor.
The other approach, trying to convince your opponent of their error never works. They will resist and blame you for the disaster.
For example. If CO2 is truly the greatest threat to our ezistance as many in power claim, then we as citizens have the right to demand that all products that produce CO2 be outlawed .
We outlaw narcotics and many other things like lead and asbestos so why not CO2?
CO2 is reportedly worse than lead and asbestos, neither of which threaten our existence.
So if we really do want to end the global threat, make it illegal. There is not any shred of doubt in my mind that making the sales of CO2 illegal would very quickly expose the massive public misconception.
The problem is money. Governments want a carbon tax. Make CO2 illegal there is no carbon tax. Only very pissed off voters.
Lot’s of hot CO2 emitted from politics. Outlaw that and we would all live less stressfully.
Climate scientists seem to be another uncontrolled source.
Outlaw CO2?? No more beer or soda pop? Egad, man, that would be the end of the world!
..sadly most people who have been given a ‘liberal’ education have not been informed of this. They think we should rely on eyewitness accounts from people who have done it, unless of course they inadvertently sold a house to a Russian Mafia guy or once got a $5 tip from the Koch brothers. Otherwise its just ‘an opinion’
I fear the West is now as decadent as the Russians always said it was. The only thing wrong with the film ‘Idiocracy’ is that the electricity appeared to be still working – in reality the windmills would long ago have ceased to function.
“As a canon of the Catholic church, he knew their *LAW* and the dangers in even questioning it.” Oooh ! Scary link to pages of *LAW*. Cue the Inquisition and warm the charcoal! Um, the whole Copernicus/Galileo/Earth/Sun thing was a heck of a lot more complicated than the simplistic “Science” right “Religion” wrong trope. And after 400 + years that’s still the only “goto” argument to pretty much dismiss anything the Church might have to say on any matter at all. I didn’t fall for it.
I believe in data and evidence. Maybe there are vast gaps in the fossil record so much so that the theory of evolution may not be all there is to know about carbon based forms developing over the millenia but short of any other valid theory I will go for Darwin. I am an atheist cause you cant point me to where God has his throne. If you believe in a pink elephant you must prove it. I cant prove that a pink elephant doesnt exist. The same goes for the DARK ENERGY,DARK MATTER , ozone hole and CAGW nonsense.
Hard to have a positive proof of anything. For that, you need evidence and data that is unquestionably and totally accurate. There is always an element of doubt which renders almost all conclusions into an opinion with varying degrees of probability.
I agree that your list of concepts rate pretty low on a probability scale, but if they cannot be disproven out of hand, then it may be unwise to discount them in their entirety.
Worse, a little research would’ve shown canon law had nothing to do with it– he was sick of people making fun of him.
The rules against teaching theory as fact weren’t involved, HE was willing to make it clear he was pushing a theory.
Heckler’s veto: turns out it’s not new.
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown.html
(point #6 here)
just a thought. Here is a picture of the mediaeval view of the universe. So we know what we are talking about. It was based on Aristotle. They got their ideas from the past and cited authority
A picture is worth a thousand words
You really should click through and read at least the first several points in the article; you might enjoy it, and it will give you a better grasp of the situation.
For those interested, this photographer has both the above picture and many other icons, including when the art was in the process of being made.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/frted/sets/72157626232279900
Ron van Wegen wrote: the whole Copernicus/Galileo/Earth/Sun thing was a heck of a lot more complicated than the simplistic “Science” right “Religion” wrong trope.
actually, it’s not–it is simpler than that. Galileo’s undiplomatic personality rubbed too many people the wrong way and even when he was obviously in trouble managed to alienate his last powerful ally, the Society of Jesus, which agreed with his theory and initially offered to help him. After the trial, one of the bishops admitted the real target was not Galileo’s science but Galileo himself. Some prominent clergy had favored the heliocentric theory over the Ptolemaic theory since the 13th century. Although new theories always face criticism, even today, only Galileo was ever persecuted for championing the heliocentric theory, and although the book that was at the focus of his trial was prohibited, other writings that championed the theory were not, and the theory itself was not systematically suppressed. The Vatican even cut Galileo a little slack by permitting his sister, a Carmelite nun, to make the official retraction on his behalf. In spite of his personal conflicts with the hierarchy, Galileo died as a faithful Catholic. It seems to have been a rival religion, Deism, whose propagandists turned the Galileo incident into a story about unending conflict or intrinsic incompatibility between science and religion. It is unlikely that Galileo himself would have agreed with this interpretation of the event.
Dr. Ball, if you have never heard him, I strongly recommend you invest 13 minutes to listen to KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov discuss psychological warfare in the form of ideological subversion. It explains so clearly why we are witnessing the spectacular sunset of reason and sanity.
(I’ve posted this before, so please pardon my reposting it here.)
No models. Neither digital or mechanical. Just movies … dreams … drunken escapades … vomiting in alleys … passing out in a refuse bin. No models. Hau Hau.
Thank you Dr Ball for writing this piece. Before I read even half of it I had already begun to compile and list of people I needed to share it with.
Bayes theorem and Boolean algebra are attempts since the 18th and 19th centuries to apply mathematical logic in human thought and decision making. Unfortunately only mathematicians understand them. Just wait until we invent smart AI. After we replaced welders in factories with robots, we’ll replace policy makers with AI’s.
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs150/sp98/lectures/week4_1/img010.GIF
In the future, policy debates will look like this. The two humans are just props to make the TV screen look symmetrical
Love Baye’s Theorem.
A now fundamental aspect of signal theory.
Yay for Bayes’ theorem!!!
If you ever get results back from an important medical test, make sure you understand Bayes’ theorem before you freak out.
Example:
A patient goes to see a doctor. The doctor performs a test with 99 percent reliability — that is, 99 percent of people who are sick test positive and 99 percent of the healthy people test negative. The doctor knows that only 1 percent of the people in the country are sick. Now the question is: if the patient tests positive, what are the chances the patient is sick?
The intuitive answer is 99 percent.
The correct answer is 50 percent.
The siamese twins of fuzzy thinking, law and politics should be the triumverate of fog with the inclusion of their third sibling, the mainstream media. People believe all sorts nonsense because they read it in the MSM. The list is very long but, for example, fat is bad for you, you need X cups of water per day, salt is bad for you, vitamin supplements are good for you, all German cars are well made, all movie and music stars are experts on health/environment/mental health/diet etc., CO2 is a pollutant, polar bears are dying, etc. My wife has a BSc and a degree in journalism. Journalism students in her cohort were required to take a very rudimentary math course which they hated because they didn’t have the attention span to master fractions and they argued correctly that they would never need to do fractions in their chosen professions. In a better world, journalists would expose and ridicule the muddle headed thinking of politicians and lawyers (and of AGW promoters). Sadly they are not nearly up to the task and recently politicians have discovered that they can say pretty much anything to almost all reporters without being challenged.
How to defeat AI:
AI will work in scenarios it has seen before and the state estimations are known and accurate.
AI will not be able to reliably extrapolate to the new, where only partial information is available.
And if deception or stealth/camoflage is then employed in the extrapolation scenario by the adversary, the AI agent will always lose.
Deep Blue can extrapolate forward and calculate the potential moves of Kasparov. Each chess game is new and partial information available since it has never played that game before. It has not calculated all possible moves from beginning to end of that game. It decides based on partial information and incomplete scenarios.
However, chess has a clearly defined and unalterable ruleset from which an AI can extrapolate. real life human-interactions don’t.
While I agree with the general sentiment presented here – that people should learn more about science – I feel that the point is badly argued, and the proposed cure of bringing scientific theory into law would make matters much worse. Science is a process for arriving at a better truth – it is not THE truth. Science can be, and frequently is, completely incorrect.
Law is a process for settling disputes, and, strictly, has nothing to do with ‘the truth’. Though, obviously, determining an ‘accepted truth’ between parties is a good way to settle a dispute.
Incidentally To my knowledge, Cuccinelli did not argue that a fundamental test in the practice of science is ‘reproducible results,” which can only occur if data and methods are disclosed. The judge, knowing this, would not have ruled that the data and methods were Mann’s intellectual property seems completely wrong at law to me. The issue was one of ‘who owns the data’. If it were owned by Mann, he would be perfectly at liberty not to disclose it, or to destroy it if he wants. That may not be ‘good science’ – but the law does not force people to think or behave ‘scientifically’….
Science historians say the Scientific Revolution began with Copernicus when he proposed the heliocentric system that the Earth orbits the Sun. I used to think it was not worth discussing because one in four Americans and one in three Russians think the opposite, namely the Ptolemaic view that it is an earth-centered, geocentric system.
And as the post shows 90% of scientists don’t understand that there is no absolute coordinate system* anyway, so neither, or both, views are correct depending on your point of view.
Scientific facts are, like any other facts, relative to a belief system. One cannot argue that the belief system is correct, only that it is internally consistent and works well, as a model.
The argument against the alarmists is not that they have a different belief system, but that they attempt to justify their conclusions using the scientific model, which does not share the same assumptions.
This cannot be done.
*Though for rotation, its probably true that the average of all the mass in the universe defines the absolute rotation of an element with mass, inside it.
The spacetime curvature around the sun is greater than around the Earth. That’s not relative to the motion of inertial frames. If you try to negate sun’s gravity by measuring it from an accelerating frame, Einstein’s equivalence principle states that gravitational field is equivalent to acceleration. So you need greater acceleration around the sun than around Earth. The difference is still measurable.
Moving bodies follow the geodesic in the curved spacetime. The geodesic is the orbital paths. Since the sun gives the greatest curvature, we know the planets orbit the sun, not the other way around.
Kepler noticed all 3 models, Copernicus,Ptolemy,Brahe, agreed to with an error as small as one wanted. But all 3 could not be right. A persistent tiny anomaly could not be curve-fitted away, he alone noticed. What was the error of all 3 opinions? What did they all agree on – the equipolent problem. It was a huge breakthrough to first see outside all geometric efforts – a physical principle was at work. Science is not curve fitting models. A real physical principle , universal gravitation, would never spontaneously sprout out of the geometric-algebraic molasses as in alchemy! Science is making that discovery. Nowhere in the data itself resides universal gravitation. Nowhere in the curve data of a catenary resides the principle of least action, nor kinetic energy in Decartes absurd laws of motion.
Einstein put spacetime geometry, not the old stuff , back as a physical principle from the stress-energy density continuing Kepler’s discovery. Universal gravitation, kinetic energy, least action, stress-energy tensors are not beliefs. What is relative, motion, is not what is real.
This process of discovery is not for a law – it is lawfull itself, from natural law. And even lawyers can demand discovery.
Your comments are hightly relevant to an interpretation of the work of Nikolov and Zeller.
We are grateful for the importance of the Paris Convention, while this convention has long been insufficient. Brutal geoengineering should be introduced immediately with the acceleration of fusion and LENR developments.
I think the jjudge in your case nailed you perfectly
““the Article is poorly written and does not advance credible arguments in favour of Dr. Ball’s theory about the corruption of climate science. Simply put, a reasonably thoughtful and informed person who reads the Article is unlikely to place any stock in Dr. Ball’s views, including his views of Dr. Weaver as a supporter of conventional climate science.”
Here is the thing. You haven’t actually done any science to speak of.
But go ahead amuse us by posting the data and code of any reproducible science you have done.
code and data.
Stephen Mosher: you expressed rather concisely what I would ask of you:
“Here is the thing. You haven’t actually done any science to speak of.
But go ahead amuse us by posting the data and code of any reproducible science you have done.
code and data.”
The theory of CAGW has not produced any laws, theorems, postulates, axioms, nor formulae. The ‘greenhouse gas’ property has not been measured in any meaningful way. We can’t measure it in Miami, we can’t measure it in Denver, we can’t even measure it on Mars with a 95% CO2 atmosphere.
well said Thomas.
I’m confused, this is not the forum to reach Dr. Mann…
You missed the point entirely because of your bias. Data and code do not equal science when dealing with real, physical properties. At best, data and code let you propose a theory or hypothesis. At some point, science needs to concentrate on developing methods and procedures of an experiment that will prove what happens physically when conditions such as CO2 concentrations change. Working on models prove nothing, otherwise we wouldn’t need to test airplanes, we would simply move from design to build and deployment! Even Einstein’s theories remained only theories until scientists were able to physically begin testing them, and he had all the math in the world backing him up.
The way of Science is a narrow path. It was Kepler who showed Ptolemy,Copernicus,Tycho Brahe all shared the same error – geometry. Kepler showed universal gravity was outside all their geometries, as such the first astrophysicist. Galileo wrote he could not understand 1 word of Kepler’s books. And as Bishop Berkley locked up Newton’s works for 100 years, it took Keynes to admit Newton was the last alchemist.
So when scientists are so utterly confused and radicalised, any self-respecting lawyer does’nt need rocket science to avoid it like the plague. And when that Robespierre of the human mind, Kant (Edgar Allan Poe’s “Can’t”) is adored by faculty, run! Kan’t is so bad even Einstein was tarred as a follower – his reply : Chacun a son Quant-a-soi – relativity at its very best!
+1^10
Might I suggest that the words ‘skeptic’ and ‘skepticism’ may not be the best words in the language for expressing the concept?
Give ‘RATIONALIST’ and ‘RATIONALISM’ a go as being as being words that have a better fit for the purpose at hand.: ‘RATIONALIST’ — A person who bases their opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response: — (And I would add: On political leaning.”
I have always found it deeply irrational to describe oneself as Republican, Democrat, Conservative or Liberal. How is it possible to agree with all the principles all the time of any political party. After all, they change them constantly in an effort to match the voters’ mood.
In politics, it’s a best fit situation not a 100% fit situation. Hence why some people, over time, move from one to the labels/parties to another as the old one ceases to be a good fit whereas one of the others becomes a better fit.
Science runs in fads. A lot of science is pockets of facts infilled with cliche thinking and buzzwords purporting to be knowledge. Science advances on the backs of stubborn people. Science institutions are designed to make small changes. Big changes come hard.
“How far have we come in the intervening 475 years?”
Kepler made strides with seasonal weather forecasts based on heliocentric planetary positions, but church and state have kept most of us in Plato’s cave ever since.
Unfortunately the dearth of politicians with a science education is true in most countries. The one with a Cambridge degree in Natural Science (Physics) in the UK is probably the biggest sceptic of CAGW in Parliament, Peter Lilley.
Peter Lilley was dispised by elements of the civil service as a minister and has rarely been allowed to present his position independent of government since.
despised
“she promotes the IPCC deception fed to her”
No, she promotes facts. Apologies if that upsets you.
Drowning in irony.
not just irony but a colossal lack of self awareness.
EPA Chief, lawyer Scott Pruitt’s Red and Blue Teams ist the way to go, to cut through the swamp. He knows it is not about even the “secret” science, rather about jobs, regulatory purgatory and politics and massive money.
Dr Tim Ball,
” …The AGW deception is the biggest in history and occurred because a majority of people, especially in the critical areas of politics and the law, were uneducated in science and the scientific methods. …”
—-
You need to rethink that bit.
I knew a Brit doc of marine geology in the early 1990s who fell for the IPCC greenhouse scare. It was absurd, and I was disgusted that he was taking it seriously at all. But there are gullible doctorate holders who should know much better, who fell for the IPCC slop, so we can’t be surprised if partially trained non-scientists routinely do too.
They fall for it because they simply accept what the IPCC says without checking it. Most can’t believe other scientists would practice bad science. This is why on my book I put the quote from Klaus-Eckart Puls on the cover.
“Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data – first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first checking it.”
I think many simply accepted the media presentations of IPCC presentations. Anyone who read the reports would have to recognize it as very poor science. Did I just use a Tumpism?
Science only advances one funeral at a time. All our high technology and complex thinking can’t seem to affect that.
Well the Hawkthing robot seems to have been scrapped so we await a useful step up.
I see what you did there.
Thank you.
Real Science only needs one example where the current model can’t explain. That is why you reject a null, you never accept it. This is my attempt to demonstrate that that one experiment exists in plain sight, and everyone is ignoring it, or they don’t understand its importance. Sorry for the links, it is the only way to convey the message.
Isolating the Contribution of CO2 on Atmospheric Temperature
In any serious scientific experiment, efforts are made to “control” for as many exogenous factors as possible. The whole purpose is to isolate the impact of the independent variable on the dependent variable. ΔWeightloss = ΔCaloric Intake + ΔExercise + ΔBase Metabolism + error. To minimize the error of the model (maximize explanatory power), variables outside … Continue reading
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/02/14/isolating-the-contribution-of-co2-on-atmospheric-co2/
Isolating the Impact of CO2 on Temperature Reveals No Warming over the Past 100 Years
Here are CO2isLife, we pride ourselves in not being Climate “Scientists” who have had our minds polluted by the Man Made Climate Change Echo Chamber. We view our lack of formal Climate Education as a positive, not a negative. It allows us to look at the data, results, and research in a totally impartial and disinterested … Continue reading
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/05/08/isolating-the-impact-of-co2-on-temperature-reveals-no-warming-over-the-past-100-years/
Funny how Wikipedia is again a centre of controversy through editing: we had -and still have- the grave digging William Connolley for climate entries and it looks like anti-war activists got their own version of a motivated editor https://www.rt.com/uk/426679-cross-galloway-clark-wikipedia-troll/
Regardless on which side of the issue one may stand, it is the similarity in approaches that demonstrates how the climate issue is intimately tied with the globalist warmongering agenda.
I work as a scientific theorist, specializing in the causes of and effects from methodological error. Over the past decade I have worked part time in global warming ciimatology. Findings from my research give me a perspective that differs from the perspective of Dr. Ball and suggest remedies for methodological error that differ from Ball’s.
In reviewing the methods that are used by global warming climatologists in the performance of their research I find absence of the statistical population underlying that climate model which is slated for use in guiding regulation of Earth’s climate system. This is a methodological error for which the penalty is for the model to generate no predictive information about the outcomes of events, making regulation of the climate system physically impossible. This finding leads me to prefer retraining of global warming climatologists over retraining of lawyers and politicians as a remedy for the uselessness of present day global warming research. Each such climatologist should be retrained to place a statistical population under that climate model which is slated for use in regulation of Earth’s climate system. For this remedy to be applied is necessary but not sufficient for Earth’s climate system to become susceptible to regulation.
Gobbledygook, Terry.
Dave:
“Gobbledygook” is an assertion but not an argument. Do you have an argument to make? If so, what is it?
Terry
Terry, I suspect most of the activist climatologists would resist retraining to the bitter end.
For it is hard to convince a man of something his paycheck depends on not seeing.
Tim Ball is right, this current mass hysteria is manufactured by our bureaucrats, successfully, because of the scientific illiteracy of our age.
I have argued the validity of CAGW with many “educated” Canadians, most demonstrate an intellectual laziness, trust in authority and faith .
Very few have bothered to read even one of the IPCC reports.
Propaganda by headlines,constant repetition…everybody knows.
John:
Well said. I’ve found abundant evidence that training of our students in logic and critical thinking skills need beefing up.
Terry
Terry,
I found the only worth of higher-education was to learn how to research and teach yourself, plus how to discipline austere thought, to something that deals just with the observations (as opposed to the theoretical interpretations of observational data, that always gets published, and ‘taught’ the mostest, into sci-myths).
I observed that most of the people who went through the same courses as me did not learn this. The necessary foundation was never set within them.
And I found also that even the most careful thought still produced falsehood and unsuspected self delusions, until discovered, and it shocks you that it occurred to you too.
Then I further discovered that no matter how much higher and finer your education is if you personally don’t have the spine to apply data and thought honestly, or appropriately, then that eduation is totally wasted on its recipients, anyway.
Higher education’s effectiveness is much more about the individual than the system, or the ciriculum.
And mostly it fails to take.
Hence I do not respect people with a trove of alphabet salad after their name, on their business card. I assess them on their clarity about observation, and unadorned thinking, and not on their application of theories, or interpretations. And on their personal acceptance of the false, and of what they don’t know—i.e. no take and no SPINE.
i.e. higher education often fails, and its failure is generally is not recognised, nor accepted.
Hence we get higher educated people, like Kirsty in here who actually advocate for AGW belief, while condemning skeptical individual inquiry, and conservative reservation, while herself parroting as the tuth that which is unknown, or unknowable.
Delusion reins supreme despite her success in educational endeavor.
So I doubt re-education is a panacea here, it’s more personal, genetic, psychological and self-selection dominated.
Terry,
Part II
I decided to add to the comment above, as there’s an identifiable reason for the difference I noted, namely, why it’s so?
The difference in personal emphasis was puzzeling at first so I eventually asked myself why I’d responded diferently, to the very same courses, as those who’d failed to get their foundation set, and to learn how to learn, and learn how to think, and to stick to observarions themselves, and have the in-built spine there, to do so.
The difference between us reduced down to just one factor.
MOTIVE.
I had presumed the other students wanted the same things I did, to understand the Earth, but this was wrong, but not obvious, at first.
I found they only wanted a career and an employer in a profession, as a means to an end. They learned theory and interpretation to a level that complied with more narrow professional standards of paradigm group-thinking and comprehending.
It was clear to fellow students that I understood the Discipline far better than they did. They knew it and my Profs knew it too.
But why? I wasn’t smarter. It’s just that in order to actually try to understand observstions I needed to review the observations, and data, and sift all of the options myself, and research them, to more fully understand.
My fellow students didn’t have to do any of that to achieve their more narrow goals—so they just didn’t. They ouly had to pass the assessment criteria at each part of the coarse to become attractive graduates to an industry employer.
So the other students were oriented toward conformity to interpretations of paradigm, thus to become a dependent of an employer’s good graces, to be happy with the trained ‘product’—them.
Whereas I had to do all that they did and then put all ofvthat aside, to teach myself how to actually think and undetstand the obsetvations, and evaluate them for myself as to what they indicated. One of the fastest ways to do that was to examine non-conformist, non-consensus ideas, and controversy, plus new observations, or new interps of old observations, and to examine heretical notions, as well.
The implication was that I learned much faster and in much greater depth than the other students, and never felt satisfied or content with accepted paradigm views, concepts and bagage.
I was not necessarily a good standard institutional ‘product’. This product was going to challenge and non-conform. This was going to be an independent mind, who was not looking to be ‘subject’ to an employer ‘King’. This person would start his own business and employ himself instead, and never have to compromise mind and understanding in order to make money.
My motivation was alien to the govt institutionalised career slaves.
A ‘consultant’ was considered to be a bit of a wisened experienced old guy, to the students. But if you study to understand instead of to be slavish, and a resonator if the so-called ‘known’, you would never know enough to become the business owner, the employer, the boss.
The slavish career conformist could only aspire to become a tenured thus ‘independent’ ‘boss’ within a govt institution, i.e. not an independent boss at all.
But when a ‘professional product’ is al that you produce, rather than an emphasis on understanding, you seek to eliminate non-conformity, so you end up with a conformist CULTure, within the Department and wider Discipline, where the unthinking institutional rise of theoretical non-sense like AGW then can come about with little difficulty, which thus becomes a proxy-belief system for the thus politicised and govt institutionalised.
The independent ‘understander’ aspirant will never just accept such theoretical ideas and claims, they will be skeptical, as they are with everything else, which is essential to even begin to learn anything new, so will quickly debunk then toss it aside AGW, then be astonished to find that the ‘Discipline’ becomes adhereants, to such obvious bunk and junk-science.
The institutionalised and slavish dependents dud not learn to learn, nor learn how to think outside of the accepted interpretive paradigm, and they know not to diverge from slavishness, or lose their career and standing.
The independent non-conformist realises most of the professionals are thus just delusional or dishonest, doesn’t care much that they are, either, as his money supply is not dependent on being slavish, nor an intellectual chamellion, to blend in.
So motive determines your level of career institutionalisation, or alternatively, you cognitive freedom and lack of interest in proxy-beliefs like AGW, and instead an emphasis on observations alone, as opposed to theoretical paradigm’s interpretations of observations.
CAGW, in accademia, is just the result of a neurotic level of dependency and its slavish c
onformity to proxy-beliefs to secure an employer who will pay for a sychophantic vocational, and sadly, political product.
i.e. NO SPINE.
Their higher education had totally failed to take.
Re-education is not going to change that dynamic.
Making them independent will though.
Change pre decisions, prior to the emergence of the motive. Make them want to UNDERSTAND, the earth, and the result will be actual independent science inquiry.
We accepted free-speech as a core modern western value, a long time ago, because we realised it can produce highly productive independence of minds, that leads to freedom and understanding, and better outcomes.
97% consensus? … phft!
That’s 97% lack of understanding, freedom and independence.
WxCycles:
My experience is similar to yours. To be a real scientist one must have a moral compass.
Terry
dear Foxfier I don’t see why a picture of what mediaeval people believed is something to argue about. It is just a clarification in picture form.
They thought of the creator as outside space and time ( so there is the Creator outside the Cosmos) and they thought that the Earth was a globe surrounded by spheres containing the Sun and Moon and stars in their respective spheres. That was their scientific thinking. Anyone who said otherwise was heterodox . I don’t think this way myself but that was the scientific position at the time of the debates on the Sun going round the Earth. it was obvious , they thought.
That’s all that my post was about. Icons are used a great deal these days to convey information. A running figure on a notice tells you where the emergency exit is. and an envelope on a computer screen tells us where the mail program is. They are just picture which convey information.
so yet another “expert” wants to lecture the holi poli on our ignorance … pass … I think you’ll find when the crutch of citing “experts” are taken away from the average person they are perfectly capable to figuring things out for themselves … most people don’t care about it and the few that do don’t think for themselves enough … they are capable of it they just need the “experts” to be shown to be frauds …
The great biologist, George Gaylord Simpson observed “It is an aphorism that no one knows everything about anything….When you don’t know something, seek an expert.” (roughly what I remember). I still remember that advice from his circa 1958 textbook on biology. The problem is that bringing the masses up to the level of understanding of a complex scientific issue to be capable of making considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions on their own is simply not achievable. To rely on experts, the masses must be able to distinguish between experts who are bs artists and experts who are legit. Big problem.
Right. Fortunately, the masses only need to know one readily understandable principle to distinguish the bs artists from the scientists. This principle is the falsifiability of claims. Unfortunately the masses don’t know this principle now.