Denialiism by Michael Specter
Francis A. Miniter
I just saw this review and I think it may be a book I want
to read.
I have been thinking on similar lines that Americans have
for some time been exhibiting a high degree of
anti-scientism. To me it appears that there are two reasons
for this.
First, pre-college education in the country has split in two
directions with the top students getting an excellent
grounding in science, while the rest of the students are
"managed" and passed along and out of the system without any
great learning. As a consequence, they lack the critical
thinking skills necessary to evaluate risks - or even to
recognize that there is a risk that is necessary to
evaluate. Lacking the critical thinking skills, they are
easy prey to superstition and suggestion. To them, then,
stories about past incidents of scientific error loom over
all current claims for scientific knowledge and create mistrust.
Second, science has in no small part become the property of
big business. The pharmaceutical industry is a good
example. No longer do universities do most of the research
in this area of medicine. And, even if they do some, it is
usually sponsored by (paid for by) a large pharmaceutical
company. And big business has lost the trust of the public.
A generation of movies where big corporations are the
center of evil has seen to that, even if it were not for a
parade of deceptions and failures to control quality that
have numbed the consuming public.
As a result of both of these factors, a large segment of
Americans are deeply afraid and lack the intellectual tools
to dispel the fear.
--
Francis A. Miniter
Oscuramente
libros, laminas, llaves
siguen mi suerte.
Jorge Luis Borges, La Cifra Haiku, 6
K Barrett
Oh, I don't know. This idea of pure science went out with the Victorian
Gentleman Scientist. If it existed at all. Someone always has to pay
the bills. Whether its Kew, pharmaceutical houses, universities,
pater's trust fund or what have you, people still gotta eat. Including
scientists.
As to the number of people who do not believe science, well, that's
always been true. No news there. So what's the author's point? That
he just woke up? The Matrix has slipped from his eyes? Sheesh. Rather
late to the party.
Speaking of which a better book to read may be 'The Windup Girl' by
Paolo Bacialupe. Science Fiction but worth it.
K Barrett
Wes Struebing
You missed one factor, though it is more blatant recently - and that
is science has become more politicised, and it corresponds with the
rise of political religious fundamentalism. (not that it hasn't been
down through the ages, but it seems more so in this country recently)
--
Wes Struebing
I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America,
and to the republic which it established, one nation from many peoples,
promising liberty and justice for all.
Homepage: www.carpedementem.org
linkedin profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/wesstruebing
barbara fister
>> You missed one factor, though it is more blatant recently - and that
>> is science has become more politicised, and it corresponds with the
>> rise of political religious fundamentalism. (not that it hasn't been
>> down through the ages, but it seems more so in this country recently)
>> --
> And here too - in the process jeopardising whatever tenuous claims its
> practitioners might have had to respect.
For example? Just curious.
barfly
Jr@Ease
and Weary, Over Many a Quaint and Curious Forgotten Post, s/he wrote:
--------------------------------------------------------------
>http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781594202308,00.html?Denialism_Michael_Specter
>
>I just saw this review and I think it may be a book I want
>to read.
>
>I have been thinking on similar lines that Americans have
>for some time been exhibiting a high degree of
>anti-scientism. To me it appears that there are two reasons
>for this.
A small, sort of topical anecdote.
I was at an event the other night in Harrisburg (Concert for Darwin)
in which biologist Ken Miller (who was an expert witness at the Dover
trial in 2005) spoke to the audience with a little powerpoint
presentation. He flashed up this graph on the screen:
As you can see from the graph, only Turkey, of the 34 countries, is
dumber than the US, by population. Or to be less pejorative, slightly
less anti-science than Turkey.
Miller told the story that when he was looking at this graph on his
computer, one of his grad students walked by, who happened to be from
Turkey. He called him in to show him the graph and an accompanying
article. After reading the article and the graph, he hung his head and
started moaning: "I can't believe it! This is terrible!" to which
Miller asked "What?".
He replied " I'm so ashamed for my country. We can't even beat the
United States!"
John P
Francis A. Miniter
That chart is truly humiliating. We need a solution to this
situation. Education must be part of it, but is it enough?
Jr@Ease
and Weary, Over Many a Quaint and Curious Forgotten Post, s/he wrote:
--------------------------------------------------------------
>
>>
>> I was at an event the other night in Harrisburg (Concert for Darwin)
>> in which biologist Ken Miller (who was an expert witness at the Dover
>> trial in 2005) spoke to the audience with a little powerpoint
>> presentation. He flashed up this graph on the screen:
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/ydcl7jb
>>
>> As you can see from the graph, only Turkey, of the 34 countries, is
>> dumber than the US, by population. Or to be less pejorative, slightly
>> less anti-science than Turkey.
>>
>> Miller told the story that when he was looking at this graph on his
>> computer, one of his grad students walked by, who happened to be from
>> Turkey. He called him in to show him the graph and an accompanying
>> article. After reading the article and the graph, he hung his head and
>> started moaning: "I can't believe it! This is terrible!" to which
>> Miller asked "What?".
>>
>> He replied " I'm so ashamed for my country. We can't even beat the
>> United States!"
>>
>> John P
>
>
>That chart is truly humiliating. We need a solution to this
>situation. Education must be part of it, but is it enough?
Outlaw the Discovery Institute? They actually have a budget to spread
disinformation about science to the world, including Turkey.
John P
Francis A. Miniter
> On Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:19:44 +1100, Mike Burke <mbu...@pcug.org.au>
> wrote:
>>
> Further to the above. Says it better than I can.
>
> http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7684/
>
> Mique
Mique,
I have been trying hard to understand what you are saying in
these last few posts. I am having trouble. Are you saying
that there is a general wrong impression that science is
just another belief system, or are you saying that science
is just another belief system, or are you saying something
else altogether?
K Barrett
No its not enough. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it
drink.
K Barrett
Francis A. Miniter
> that is science has become more politicised, and it corresponds with
> the rise of political religious fundamentalism".
>
> (birthright, if you will) for a mess of pottage. For example, the
> second-hand tobacco hysteria is one famous recent example. The
> various global cooling/warming panics are another.
I did not think there was any dispute on the subject of
second-hand smoke:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Tobacco/ETS
As to global climate change, thousands of climate scientists
have endorsed the view that we have already entered a period
of global warming and that it has been caused in part, at
least, by much increased human consumption of energy. Now,
science operates best when it looks backward and accounts
for facts that have already happened. Modeling for future
events requires the specification of certain assumptions.
The question is always whether the modeling has picked up
all the relevant factors and excluded all irrelevant
factors.
>
> Whether we agree or not with any particular view, it's undeniable that
> scientist have become more political than before and that scientific
> funding is directed to the "politically correct" in preference to the
> skeptics. Stay in line or perish is the message.
I have not seen this. What I have seen that is do not like
at all are the publication of "research" conducted by
scientists in the pay of big business. All too often the
results so obtained favor the political position of the
business which paid for the research. This was highly
noticeable during the Bush II presidency, when conservative
based think tanks published reports that there was no global
warming at all (please don't look at the places where
glaciers used to exist in Alaska and B.C., or the former ice
shelf in Antarctica and especially do not look at the
navigable Arctic Ocean).
>
> This is why I say that scientists (and inevitably science itself) must
> be accountable politically for their errors as they are are rewarded
> for their successess. When they trade in the GIGO marketplace, as
> they have been doing, they lose any credibility they might once have
> had.
The problem is that I see no way of getting big business out
of research. And to be fair, big business does do a lot of
good research. Drug testing in America these days is highly
structured to produce honest results. Drug companies have
many a time conducted safety clinical trials followed by
efficacy trials only to learn after a couple years of these
trials that the drug does not work. Now at least, they have
to report that result to the FDA as well.
>
> One interesting conclusion drawn by pollsters from surveys in this
> country was that those who were global warming skeptics were
> predominantly older people, aged 50+ if I remember correctly. The
> conclusion was that as we were older, we were likely to be less well
> educated, even stupider, than the younger generations who
> overwhelmingly believed in the current dominant paradigm.
>
> It seemed never occurred to these mental that we auld phartz have seen
> all this before, many times, and have a healthy skepticism borne of
> bitter experience.
>
Uh, Mique, how old are you that you have seen a cycle of
global warming before? 24,000 years or so?
Lynn Allen
> That is why I have always insisted that we need to get a tighter hold
> on our "experts" in case they stampede our politicians into even
> sillier and even more dangerous stunts like the coming Copenhagen
> circle jerk promises to be.
I personally am looking forward to some scientist explaining how our
dependence on fossil fuels has been influencing the current global
warming trend....on Mars.
Yes, that's right. Our neighbor one planet out is currently in a
warming cycle. Perhaps it's the sun we share. Ya think?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1720024.ece
--
--
Lymaree
Francis A. Miniter
Not if the following from Wikipedia is accurate:
-----------------------
The Sun is presently behaving unexpectedly in a number of
ways.[117][118]
* It is in the midst of an unusual sunspot minimum,
lasting far longer and with a higher percentage of spotless
days than normal; since May 2008, predictions of an imminent
rise in activity have been regularly made and as regularly
confuted.
* It is measurably dimming; its output has dropped
0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at EUV wavelengths in
comparison with the levels at the last solar minimum.[119]
* Over the last two decades, the solar wind's speed has
dropped 3%, its temperature 13%, and its density 20%.
* Its magnetic field is at less than half strength
compared to the minimum of 22 years ago. The entire
heliosphere, which fills the Solar System, has shrunk as a
result, resulting in an increase in the level of cosmic
radiation striking the Earth and its atmosphere.
------------------------
Francis A. Miniter
> On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:01:27 -0500, "Francis A. Miniter"
> adverse effects of smoking on smokers, although religious zealotry has
> trumped reason even there. But there are heaps of contrary opinions
> on second hand smoke the alleged dangers of which were trumpetted as
> justification for official persecution and prosecution of smokers
> throughout the English-speaking world.
>
> I've detailed here before my own personal experience with official
> medical professional advice to RAAF policy makers that the dangers of
> second hand smoke were insignificant except _possibly_ in the case of
> pregnant women in the first trimester when the risk was in the order
> of something slightly less than 2 percent, ie well within the
> statistical ground clutter and, thus also statistically insignificant.
> Jane has researched the subject in detail and has concluded that there
> are _no_ credible studies in support of the proposition. If I
> remember her argument, she found that all such studies are exercises
> in assuming the conclusion - situating the appreciation as we used to
> call it in the military.
>
> A very forthright article on the process is here:
>
> http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7626/
>> As to global climate change, thousands of climate scientists
>> have endorsed the view that we have already entered a period
>> of global warming and that it has been caused in part, at
>> least, by much increased human consumption of energy. Now,
>> science operates best when it looks backward and accounts
>> for facts that have already happened. Modeling for future
>> events requires the specification of certain assumptions.
>> The question is always whether the modeling has picked up
>> all the relevant factors and excluded all irrelevant
>> factors.
>>
> It's been shown conclusively by the leading skeptics that these
> "thousands" are really only a relatively tiny clique whose work has
> been criticised by equally prominent "experts" - mostly retired, and
> therefore "fireproof" scientists - as highly suspect. The IPCC
> "Report" was the work of fewer than 50 people, most of whom were not
> scientists at all, who actively suppressed data and conclusions
> contrary to their political view.
>
> The classic is the destruction of the credibility of the Mann Hockey
> Stick - on which the whole anthropogenic global warming scare is
> largely based - by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKittrick. If you really
> want to see the depths to which the so-called Hockey Team is prepared
> to stoop, go to www.climateaudit.org and do some extensive reading.
> Not only did McIntyre and McKittrick destroy the Hockey stick by
> demonstrating that Mann et ors had misused and abused statistical
> methodology to produce the stick effect - and showed that their
> methodology and algorythms would produce a hockey stick virtually out
> of any data fed into it, even random numbers, but also they have since
> shown that the core data used was unsuitable for the purpose.
>
>>> Whether we agree or not with any particular view, it's undeniable that
>>> scientist have become more political than before and that scientific
>>> funding is directed to the "politically correct" in preference to the
>>> skeptics. Stay in line or perish is the message.
>> I have not seen this. What I have seen that is do not like
>> at all are the publication of "research" conducted by
>> scientists in the pay of big business. All too often the
>> results so obtained favor the political position of the
>> business which paid for the research. This was highly
>> noticeable during the Bush II presidency, when conservative
>> based think tanks published reports that there was no global
>> warming at all (please don't look at the places where
>> glaciers used to exist in Alaska and B.C., or the former ice
>> shelf in Antarctica and especially do not look at the
>> navigable Arctic Ocean).
>
> anthropogenic and it is simply nonsense to claim that there is.
And if there is evidence, you will deny it anyways. Have
you read the IPCC Fourth Assessment Reports (2007)? It came
in three parts.
> The
> glaciers have been melting for centuries.
Rate of melt has drastically changed. And as my
brother-in-law David Holland (who hold the title (among
others) of Director of CAOS) has been finding, in Greenland,
the glaciers are now melting from below as well as from
above. See
http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2008/10/david-holland-et-al-thinning-of.html
> The Arctic Ocean has been
> navigable at various times in the recent past.
Oh? Care to be specific?
Or will you concede this:
http://eng.mediaport.ua/news/eworld/4890
> Crops used to be grown
> in the Faeroes and on Greenland. Al Gore aside, nobody is seriously
> claiming that the "former" ice shelf in Antarctica is even
> significant.
It was 160 square miles of ice - the size of Jamaica. See
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/huge-chunk-of-a/
In any case, the point is that if Antarctica melts, you had
better be on high ground.
On that one relatively tiny peninsular there is less ice
> than there has been in the recent past. On the rest of Antarctica the
> ice mass has increased significantly.
>>> This is why I say that scientists (and inevitably science itself) must
>>> be accountable politically for their errors as they are are rewarded
>>> for their successess. When they trade in the GIGO marketplace, as
>>> they have been doing, they lose any credibility they might once have
>>> had.
>> The problem is that I see no way of getting big business out
>> of research. And to be fair, big business does do a lot of
>> good research. Drug testing in America these days is highly
>> structured to produce honest results. Drug companies have
>> many a time conducted safety clinical trials followed by
>> efficacy trials only to learn after a couple years of these
>> trials that the drug does not work. Now at least, they have
>> to report that result to the FDA as well.
>
> It's nice of you to concede that big business does a lot of good
> research. In fact it's probably true that the overwhelming majority
> of good research is done by or on behalf of big business and that the
> rogues represent a small minority. The only instances of good
> research initiated and conducted by government authorities (outside
> the Warsaw Pact) were those instigated organisations like the old
> Australian CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industial Organisation),
> which did good stuff for the wool and textile industries, and with
> other agricultural research. Another was the Australian Serum
> Laboratories, also a government instrumentality, which did much
> pioneering work in anti-venoms. A third is a military scientific
> research organisation here which has often been at the forefront of
> weapons research but consistently constrained by successive Oz
> governments from marketing their technological breakthroughs.
>>> One interesting conclusion drawn by pollsters from surveys in this
>>> country was that those who were global warming skeptics were
>>> predominantly older people, aged 50+ if I remember correctly. The
>>> conclusion was that as we were older, we were likely to be less well
>>> educated, even stupider, than the younger generations who
>>> overwhelmingly believed in the current dominant paradigm.
>>>
>>> It seemed never occurred to these mental that we auld phartz have seen
>>> all this before, many times, and have a healthy skepticism borne of
>>> bitter experience.
>>>
>> Uh, Mique, how old are you that you have seen a cycle of
>> global warming before? 24,000 years or so?
>
> Oh, dear. No, Francis, but certainly old enough to remember that
> Hurricane Katrina was not an unusually severe - or increasingly
> frequent event - and that far from being unprecedented as many
> climate "experts" claimed, the longish droughts that Australia has
> just started to come out of were just the latest in a series that have
> occurred at least three times in my lifetime and several more times in
> the life-span of my 94 year old mother.
>
> But it's nice to see you concede that this current global warming
> event might simply be cyclical rather than anthropogenic as many
> respectable scientists have been insisting to little or no effect in
> the face of Gore-inspired global hysteria for years.
>
> Forgive me if I say that it helps to gain a bit of perspective in
> these things when you have spent years rather than as many weeks or
> months actually living in tropical places where people survive more
> than adequately in average _daily_ let alone annual temperatures that
> are many times higher than the worst computer scenario in the
> foreseeable future.
>
> There are several upsides to global warming even if it does exist that
> far outweigh the potential downsides.
>
> That is why I have always insisted that we need to get a tighter hold
> on our "experts" in case they stampede our politicians into even
> sillier and even more dangerous stunts like the coming Copenhagen
> circle jerk promises to be.
>
> Mique
Denialism personified.
Wes Struebing
Not sure that wiki in this case is accurate, Francis. Check out some
of @BadAstronomer's columns in "Discovery" onlne. One of his recent
columns addresses the sunspot issue, at least, and the reputed warming
up of the sun, as well.
Problem with the crap (on all sides of this debate) that one reads on
line and in the press is that almost every article has some blatant
political agenda. The anthropomorphic global warmers (of which I
currently buy into, since their evidence seems more compelling to me)
seem to end their articles with, "so there! You neocon
knuckle-dragging philistines!"" And the deniers seem to end their
articles with "Take that! Neener,neener! You wingnut liberal idiotic
tree-huggers!"
Hard to have serious opinion when both sides engage in character
assassination, or to find the forest due to the political trees.
Francis A. Miniter
I found the Bad Astronomer, but not what he says about
sunspots. On the other hand, he has an excellent article on
the new Hubble image of the center of the Milky Way. The
NASA Hubble site has good wallpaper of the image, which is
now the background on my computer.
I did find this site which gives a good chart of sunspot
activity: http://spaceweather.com/java/sunspot.html
It does look like we are in quite a minimum, but one that
started about 2001 or 2002.
While I have found measurements of the sun's temperature
(ranging from 5780 to 5840 degrees Kelvin), I have not found
anything about changes in the sun's temperature.
>
> Problem with the crap (on all sides of this debate) that one reads on
> line and in the press is that almost every article has some blatant
> political agenda. The anthropomorphic global warmers (of which I
> currently buy into, since their evidence seems more compelling to me)
> seem to end their articles with, "so there! You neocon
> knuckle-dragging philistines!"" And the deniers seem to end their
> articles with "Take that! Neener,neener! You wingnut liberal idiotic
> tree-huggers!"
>
> Hard to have serious opinion when both sides engage in character
> assassination, or to find the forest due to the political trees.
> --
>
> Wes Struebing
Francis A. Miniter
> On Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:05:28 -0500, "Francis A. Miniter"
>
> Now I know you haven't even glanced at Climate Audit, because if you
> had you'd understand why the IPPC's love affair with the Hockey Stick
> destroyed any tiny vestige of credibility it might have had.
I did. The article to which you directed me was about
homogeneous populations.
>
> And no, I don't deny evidence. I deny speculation. I misspoke above.
> There is evidence of some anthropogenic warming, but nobody knows how
> much is caused by human action, or which agent, eg CO2 or whatever.
> It's also not clear whether the rise in CO2 causes global warming or
> whether it is, itself, caused by global warming. IE, correlation
> isn't causation. If it were CO2, its constant increase would be
> reflected in constant temperature rise. Yet, so far, according to
> authorities every bit as eminent as Mann and Co, despite the ceaseless
> ad hominem sliming they receive in the media and from so-called
> scientists, there is insufficient evidence to justify any sort of
> drastic action let alone the sorts of actions proposed that will
> bankrupt nations and impoverish whole generations of people to satisfy
> the political ambitions of left wing extremists - which is what this
> is all about. It's certainly not about science.
>> > The
>>> glaciers have been melting for centuries.
>> Rate of melt has drastically changed. And as my
>> brother-in-law David Holland (who hold the title (among
>> others) of Director of CAOS) has been finding, in Greenland,
>> the glaciers are now melting from below as well as from
>> above. See
>> http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2008/10/david-holland-et-al-thinning-of.html
>
> So what? Once again, show us your evidence that any of this is caused
> by human activity. It's only in the last 20,000 years that there has
> been any ice on earth at all.
Dead wrong. The first ice age, known as the Huronian, goes
back to about 2.5 billion years ago. There have been
periodic ice ages since then. The Cryogenian (630 million
years ago) was a major one. Then there was the
Andean-Saharan of 430 million years ago. The Quarternary
started only 2.6 million years ago - that is the current ice
age in which we still live. Since then, periods of
glaciation come and go about every 40,000 to 100,000 years.
A lot of information has been derived from the drawing of
deep ice cores. Of course, in a few decades such research
may become impossible evermore.
>>> The Arctic Ocean has been
>>> navigable at various times in the recent past.
>> Oh? Care to be specific?
>> Or will you concede this:
>> http://eng.mediaport.ua/news/eworld/4890
>
> No, I won't concede that, because that particular expedition has been
> a laughing stock, and not merely from the right. It had to be rescued
The main question, which you evaded, was can you be specific
as to periods in recent history when the Arctic Ocean has
been navigable by humans.
> from the ice they thought wasn't there.
>>> Crops used to be grown
>>> in the Faeroes and on Greenland. Al Gore aside, nobody is seriously
>>> claiming that the "former" ice shelf in Antarctica is even
>>> significant.
>> It was 160 square miles of ice - the size of Jamaica. See
>> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/huge-chunk-of-a/
>
> Again, so what? This shelf has been calving icebergs all my life and
> long before.
>> In any case, the point is that if Antarctica melts, you had
>> better be on high ground.
>
Not according to those who are studying the Antarctica.
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2009/04/29/antarctic-ice-shelf-collapse.html
http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2008/01/22/ice-shrinking-or-growing/
> Nobody is suggesting that Antarctica is melting at any sort of
> catastrophic rate - other than Al Gore and his disciples who have zero
> credibility. It will no doubt continue to melt at a rate that would
> see it icefree in a few thousand years, which will simply return it to
> the status quo ante. There's simply nothing practical that we can do
> to stop it, and any suggestion that we should de-industrialise
> ourselves to try is simply insane.
Nothing like a good ad hominem rant to clear the spleen.
> And your attitude is? What? Blind faith in a totally corrupt UN
> organisation?
I had thought (mistakenly?) that we were discussing science.
Confidence in "experts" who have failed to maintain a
> professional detachment but who have allowed themselves be corrupted
> by the easy money being poured into their pockets by self-interested
> politicians and hucksters like Al Gore who is, not incidentally,
> making billions putting his mouth where his money is?
More ad hominem. You have mentioned Gore four times now.
>
> All I can hear from the average "warmist" is "BAAAAAAAAAA".
>
> Gimme a break.
>
> Mique
One examines the research. The techniques used, the actual
measurements taken, the comparison to historical
measurements, the assumptions used for any modeling, the
evidence to support the assumptions. Having done all that,
one evaluates the research. Then one compares it to other
research on and on until it becomes clear which is reliable
and which is not.
K Barrett
> On Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:05:28 -0500, "Francis A. Miniter"
> <fami...@comcast.net> wrote:
[snip]
>>
>> Denialism personified.
>
> And your attitude is? What? Blind faith in a totally corrupt UN
> professional detachment but who have allowed themselves be corrupted
> by the easy money being poured into their pockets by self-interested
> politicians and hucksters like Al Gore who is, not incidentally,
> making billions putting his mouth where his money is?
>
>
> Gimme a break.
>
> Mique
Mique, you are doing a yeoman's work standing up for the first
scientific principle: reproduction of results. Results should always be
scrutinized, and often are not. It was interesting to see the
Einstein's Theory of Relativity discussed in light of new evidence taken
from space telescopes. What was interesting (to me at least) was the
fact that people still question results, even someone like Einstein.
In my world, taxonomists categorize species interrelationships based on
DNA sequencing, before any consensus on the technique has been obtained.
Yet the work goes forward, and often gets taken back resulting in
confusion. Perhaps I'm naively undergraduate in thinking that science
can ever obtain a consensus. But the more you know the more you realize
that everything is 'opinion'.
Question authority
K Barrett
Francis A. Miniter
In principle, that is very nice. But reality imposes a lot
of limitations. For instance, how many expeditions are
going to get funded to send teams of people to Greenland to
measure the rate of melt along various parts of the glaciers
for a five year period? Or, how many expeditions to
Antarctica are going to be funded so that temperatures under
an ice shelf (in the frigid waters) can be measured along
with speed of flow of the water down there?
Measurements like these are difficult and costly, not to
mention dangerous, to obtain. When performed by scientists
whose methods are known and carefully described, the data so
received is accepted as accurate. Even if an environmental
study could be done the following year, it cannot exactly
replicate the study data from the previous year. Conditions
have changed.
How does one question measurements on one-time astronomical
events? For instance, a star is perceived as going
supernova by the sudden and brief increase in elementary
particles observed going through an underground body of
heavy water. That observation is incapable of reproduction.
Do you just throw away those results because they are
forever incapable of reproduction?
Mike is not standing up for reproduction of results. He is
maintaining that almost all scientific inquiry is marred by
association with political interests. His is a position of
extreme denial of evidence. The IPCC reports, which he
rejects, came to their conclusions on the basis of thousands
of results obtained by scientists around the world.
Reproduced and/or consistent findings. Does Mique accept
that? He proclaimed in this thread that he did not. What
then could convince Mique if the examination of so many
tests is not enough? Nothing, I think. He has made up his
mind, evidence or no evidence, and that is that. The earth
is not warming; secondhand smoke will not hurt you.
Evidence to the contrary has to be wrong.
Pogonip
> Mike is not standing up for reproduction of results. He is maintaining
> that almost all scientific inquiry is marred by association with
> political interests. His is a position of extreme denial of evidence.
> The IPCC reports, which he rejects, came to their conclusions on the
> basis of thousands of results obtained by scientists around the world.
> Reproduced and/or consistent findings. Does Mique accept that? He
> proclaimed in this thread that he did not. What then could convince
> Mique if the examination of so many tests is not enough? Nothing, I
> think. He has made up his mind, evidence or no evidence, and that is
> that. The earth is not warming; secondhand smoke will not hurt you.
> Evidence to the contrary has to be wrong.
>
It was my impression that "global warming" was accepted now by those who
discredited it earlier. The question is what is causing it, and can
anything humans do make a change. Is it being caused by human
activity, or is it a natural phenomenon?
--
Joanne
stitches @ singerlady.reno.nv.us.earth.milky-way.com
http://members.tripod.com/~bernardschopen/
K Barrett
Well, in principle this is very nice. But if a confirmatory expeditions
to Antarctica can't be funded because the people doling out the money
have already made up their minds then that's a political decision. And
as to being unswayed by evidence to the contrary, I don't see you
budging either, LOL!
K Barrett
ell...@webtv.net
You missed one factor, though it is more blatant recently - and that is
science has become more politicised, and it corresponds with the rise of
political religious fundamentalism. (not that it hasn't been down
through the ages, but it seems more so in this country recently)
>>
practitioners might have had to respect.
<<For example? Just curious.
barfly>>
I'm not sure if you meant here, or Oz, but here it's disgraceful. Stem
cell research, global warming, abortion/birth control education and
research.
Anti-scientific appointees to scientific research panels, and the
rejection of any findings that challnge or frighten the religious right,
of G. Bush's and friends' oil interests.
ell...@webtv.net
Education must be part of it, but is it enough?
--
Francis A. Miniter>>
No, not when you have significant numbers of parents who home- school
their children so they won't be exposed to science. Or other evil
influences, like "Heather Has two Mommies,," and normal kids.
Ellen
ell...@webtv.net
ways.[117][118]
* It is in the midst of an unusual sunspot
minimum, lasting far longer and with a higher percentage of spotless
days than normal; since May 2008, predictions of an imminent rise in
activity have been regularly made and as regularly confuted.>>
Hellppp! We're doomed! We're all going to die!
Or not.
Ellen
Francis A. Miniter
Yep. In 3 Billion years the sun becomes a Red Giant and
toasts us.
Bud
Bud
><<The Sun is presently behaving unexpectedly in a number of
> ways.[117][118]
> ����������* It is in the midst of an unusual sunspot
> minimum, lasting far longer and with a higher percentage of spotless
> days than normal; since May 2008, predictions of an imminent rise in
> activity have been regularly made and as regularly confuted.>>
Oh dear, another Maunder Minimun?
> Hellppp! We're doomed! We're all going to die!
>
> Or not.
>
> Ellen
Now you have seen the movie _2012_ . Those damn Aztects!
--
Bud
Wes Struebing
<fami...@comcast.net> wrote:
>ell...@webtv.net wrote:
>> <<The Sun is presently behaving unexpectedly in a number of
>> ways.[117][118]
>> ??????????* It is in the midst of an unusual sunspot
>> minimum, lasting far longer and with a higher percentage of spotless
>> days than normal; since May 2008, predictions of an imminent rise in
>> activity have been regularly made and as regularly confuted.>>
>>
>> Hellppp! We're doomed! We're all going to die!
>>
>> Or not.
>>
>> Ellen
>>
>>
>
>Yep. In 3 Billion years the sun becomes a Red Giant and
>toasts us.
I'll start moving my abode, now.
;-)
Wes Struebing
Actually, Mayans...<G>
(the Aztec calendar "ends" in something like 2027...)
Rik Shepherd
> Actually, Mayans...<G>
>
> (the Aztec calendar "ends" in something like 2027...)
And the Unix calendar ends in 2037 and a bit.
Wes Struebing
ISTR the TPF calendar ends around that time, too. (or it would
already have ended, except they increased the size of the counter...)
Bud
> Wes Struebing wrote
>
>> Actually, Mayans...<G>
>>
>> (the Aztec calendar "ends" in something like 2027...)
Well, whatever!
> And the Unix calendar ends in 2037 and a bit.
Lessee what the Slackware calendar says for today...
Today is Pungenday, the 26th day of The Aftermath in the YOLD 3175
Oooo, goes past that date.
--
Bud
ell...@webtv.net
<<Actually, Mayans...<G>
(the Aztec calendar "ends" in something like 2027...)>>
did they know what year it started? And are the calculations figured
from BCE,[which would make sense, even if they didn't rezlize it,or AD?
Or did they maybe just run out of wall space?
Ellen
Pogonip
IIRC, they didn't even start with the arrival of Quetzalcoatl.
Francis A. Miniter
The first day in the Maya calendar Long Count appears to
have been 13.0.0.0.0 [the next day being 0.0.0.0.1], which
is equivalent to 6 Sep 3114 BC (Julian) or 11 Aug 3114 BC
(Gregorian). Now some disagree with this and put it as
early as 11 November 3374 BC.
The Maya calendar does not predict the end of the world.
Like any good calendar system, it is perpetual in nature.
What it does have happening on 12 Dec 2012 is the end of a
Long Count cycle of 5,126 years - and perhaps the concurrent
end of lesser cycles (rather like a triple witching Friday
in the financial markets). The Mayans did believe that
major changes in the world take place at these times. For
instance, the arrival of Cortez in the first year (One Reed)
of a 52 year cycle after 9 of these cycles had passed since
the departure of Quetzycoatl.