The other day, I was in a conversation related to the climate science, and I was trying to explain the scientific method, I was looking for a flowchart of steps, and found one. I also found one that compared the scientific method with the “science worshiper” method. While not exactly right, it struck me as being a good representation of climate science.
I’ve updated and enhanced the flowchart to accommodate the Popper Mannian method of climate science.
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Now, where did you get that idea? 🙂
I probably am an atheist, but I am prepared to accept that all kinds of people of all types of political beliefs need to be part of something bigger themselves. To me ,Christianity stands out because of its excellent value system that is based on consideration of others. When compared to militant unionism, antifa, ku klux clan, political greens or any other belief in a deity, the benefit seems to outweigh the harm.
“…excellent value system that is based on consideration of others. ”
Other Christians.
Non-Christians not so much.
A major problem in all of this is the issue of: to what types of situations can science be applied?
Science is a method for ascertaining knowledge of the physical world. By “physical,” I include energy and matter; I guess I also include “space” as well. That covers all of everything except for time and the spiritual/supernatural. Time gets wrapped up in this as well, in an interesting way.
Science applies to regular cause and effect relations in the physical world. A classic example is how so many of us have repeated the exact same chemistry “labs” and had the same results.
In high school, we did a “lab” where we combined this chemical and that chemical in certain way, and produced “esters:” chemical compounds that often imbue “scents;” fragrances or smells.
As each of several lab groups, at slightly differing paces, gets to the point where the esters are created, the scent wafts up across the room.
when we did this, we knew we were to produce “esters” but we did not know a fragrance would result.
The first group gets to the scent stage, and all of us are pleasantly surprised. The second group produces the scent, and we are all convinced that the chemistry stuff is true; is reliable. Cause and effect: given the atomic theory, and what is known about chemical interactions, when you do this, you get that fragrance.
Over and over and over. A hundred classes year after year. A hundred years in the future, the scent will be the same, if the same steps are followed with the same materials.
This is the limit of science. Cause and effect in the natural, physical domain of our universe.
The Climate issue is a matter of projection. Projecting what will happen in the future can build on science knowledge, such as gas laws and laws of radiation, but it is more – it involves taking what might be “known” per science, about what reliably causes what in the known physical world, and builds something that is far beyond that – it builds a projection.
A projection is something entirely different from any piece of “science.”
We can quibble about the semantics of “projection,” “forecast,” “model,” “prediction,” and so on, but they ALL are something beyond science.
Therefore, we can never rely on the “B” assumed to follow the “A” of a projection to be the same type of “B” we can assume will follow “A” in the known, physical world, year by year for each successive chemistry class.
The science type A – > B is timeless, in a sense. It is not dependent on time-based conditions.
A projection always is sensitive to time based circumstances.
The best we can do is to form hypotheticals:
“in a hypothetical world with these initial values, a reduction in sunspots would reliably always lead to [projection: warmer planet, colder planet, etc.]”
Therefore, scoence cannot tell us what the climate will be in 50 years if we continue to use fossil fules as we do;
science can help us develop a projection that is better than a WAG (wild-assed guess).
The problem, I think, is that climate science is producing in effect a product, like engineering does; a product we all need but one with massive implications for us all if it’s right or wrong so I think a different approach is needed and we should be asking: Why should we believe the data, analysis, conclusions and implement the recommended actions if climate science was done with climate science methodology vs same question for engineering methodology?
Climate science answer? Peer review, consensus of a large number of experts, data and facts, numerous lines of evidence all pointing to same conclusion, logical explanation (in our view), no other explanation (in our view). Precautionary principle. Today’s vehicle reliability shows how good we are at getting science right.
Engineering’s answer? Lessons learned from failures (e.g. air crash investigations) leading to; procedures, independent audit, certifications, structured approaches like failure modes and effects analysis, concerns logs, many other groups with different perspectives and motivations checking our design, methods, product, covering our data (measurement systems etc), analysis, conclusions.
Questions:
What does climate science do that engineering does to improve validation of its output if some people are claiming vehicle reliability as an indication how science is now so good at getting it right?
If done under engineering procedures would it be allowed to get away with not auditing its major measurement systems like the surface temperature network?
Have we done a proper analysis before putting faith in the precautionary principle? e.g. if it’s wrong doesn’t that mean we have failed to understand longrange weather/climate and there may be a very different change underway we fail to forecast with disastrous consequences, we have dangerously weakened our ability to survive that having taken wrong actions and wouldn’t reducing CO2 in that case have little impact on extinction?
Peer reviewed papers – What drives what work gets done and then included or not to ensure balance when forming conclusions from reviewing the peer reviewed literature in climate science?
Experts – don’t we say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; so what if it turns out that even if our experts are brilliant, know a lot it’s still too little? In engineering failures (e.g. air crash investigations) I presume we are learning that failures will happen the consensus of experts said could not happen; we change the system, does climate science have same learning and improvement process?