I was wondering how long it would take for the climate change apologists to crawl out of their hole and use the Yasi cyclone and other weather events to tell how we must take urgent action to stop the unstoppable
Cyclone Yasi | Future cyclones could be more extreme: Garnaut

Last month we had Bob Brown, leader of the Greens, blaming the El Nina on climate change and now we have Garnaut, the Australian government adviser on Climate Change using Yasi as an excuse for fear tactics. Climate Change has been off the agenda in recent months and the government has moved to drop their cherished environmental initiatives in order to deal with something more immediate, the devistation of half the continent and the doom and gloom merchants are starting a fear campaign. I like the end of the video clip at least one commentator isn't taken in

Always remember people are important, more important than political agendas

The Goracle wrote on his blog site that the unusual snow pattern in NY was due to global warming .
Al's Journal : An Answer for Bill

What the Goracle forgets is that this same crowd of 'concensus
Scientists' (was there ever a more revealing oxymoron) used to predict that snow would disappear because of Global Warming .

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According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the
Climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East
Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare
and exciting event".
"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...re-now-just-a- thing-of-the-past-724017.html

Hmmmm East Anglia... where did I hear that before?? Oh yeah,
That's where the fraudsters disguised as climate scientists;who's
Emails about manipulating,witholding ,and corrupting the climate data, was leaked in 'Climategate' worked .

Simply stated ,if it doesn't snow it's due to global warming .
But if it does snow... you guessed it... global warming...

.. and my refrigerator is really an oven.

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Originally Posted by tomder55

What the Goracle forgets is that this same crowd of 'consensus
scientists' (was there ever a more revealing oxymoron) used to predict that snow would disapear because of Global Warming .

.

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Hi Tom,

Why is 'consensus science' an oxymoron?


Tut

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Originally Posted by TUT317

Hi Tom,

Why is 'consensus science' an oxymoron?


Tut

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Let me try this one Tom? Advances in science are rarely the result on consensus but from individual effort pushing the boundries and testing theories. When a consensus forms in science you have to ask what is it we have forgotten. There was once a consensus among surgeons (scientists) that washing before an operation and disgarding blood stained clothing and donning clean garments was unnecessary. There was once a consensus in medicine that blood letting improved a patients health. Now there is a consenus that CO2 is causing irreversable climate change and that because of this we should cease emitting CO2. However whilst extreme weather events may become more intense, there is so far no evidence they are caused by CO2 in the atmosphere. Climate change theory cannot be tested, but all we have is the result of flawed observations

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Originally Posted by paraclete

Let me try this one Tom? advances in science are rarely the result on consensus but from individual effort pushing the boundries and testing theories. When a consensus forms in science you have to ask what is it we have forgotten. There was once a consensus among surgeons (scientists) that washing before an operation and disgarding blood stained clothing and donning clean garments was unnecessary. There was once a consensus in medicine that blood letting improved a patients health. Now there is a consenus that CO2 is causing irreversable climate change and that because of this we should cease emitting CO2. However whilst extreme weather events may become more intense, there is so far no evidence they are caused by CO2 in the atmosphere. Climate change theory cannot be tested, but all we have is the result of flawed observations

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Hi Clete,

I pretty much agree with what you have said. But I don't see the term 'consensus' and 'science' being contradictory when placed together.

Tut

Modern science was developed to challenge consensus orthodoxy . The role of science has been to debunk the consensus ;not to build one .

It is also a completely irrelevant concept. All it takes is one scientist's research to disprove the consensus to debunk the collective opinion of the consensus science community. It's happened before.

Actually ,when you think about it... the greatest scientists have been the ones who broke with the consensus .

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Originally Posted by tomder55

modern science was developed to challenge consensus orthodoxy . The role of science has been to debunk the consensus ;not to build one .

It is also a completely irrelevent concept. All it takes is one scientist's research to disprove the consensus to debunk the collective opinion of the consensus science community. It's happened before.

Actually ,when you think about it....the greatest scientists have been the ones who broke with the concensus .

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Hi Tom,

Even if what you say is true this doesn't mean than 'consensus science' is an oxymoron. I also think there is a basic misunderstanding how science developed in recent history.I would argue that modern science didn't come about to debunk consensus. I would say that it largely came about as a reaction to logical positivism. In other words, for scientific knowledge to be valid it must conform to empirical observation.

As strange as it may seem the consensus ( right or wrong) is that scientific realism is the best way for scientific knowledge to grow in modern times. Without scientific realism String Theory would not be possible. When it comes to these types of theories there is nothing to observe in order to confirm or disprove the theory.

Because climate change (formally global warming) is only a theory evidence against it only serves to modify the theory. My guess is that climate change science is a form of scientific realism. I'm not saying this is a good thing. I am only saying this is the way science is done today.

Besides, I would doubt (even sixty years ago) that science actually worked by some type of 'debunking process'.

Tut

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Originally Posted by TUT317

Because climate change (formally global warming) is only a theory evidence against it only serves to modify the theory. My guess is that climate change science is a form of scientific realism.

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Hi Tut

The fact that climate change caused by CO2 emissions is only a theory doesn't move it into the area of realism. For centuries science held that the Earth was flat or that the Sun and stars revolved around the Earth. This was the consensus. We now know from observation that this consensus was absolute BUNK, mere wishfull thinking.

Climate science is really in its infantcy, with not much more than a hundred years of observations with which to establish a norm and a range of variability. Many of the predictions associated with climate change have already been demonstrated to be a long way off in various directions, because these predictions are based on computer generated models which may not have all the variables identified and be subject to erronous data.

What we have seen is a rush to contribute to this new science because it is a source of funding. More than anything research scientists need funding. While the theory remains contraversial funding will be poured into it, but once the theory is proven, the funding will evaporate. It is like Moon exploration, very exciting until you have been there, but dead in the water once we really know it is not made of cheese. In fact this whole debate could be overturned if we turned our efforts in finding ways of exploiting the energy source we found on the Moon.

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Originally Posted by paraclete

Hi Tut

The fact that climate change caused by CO2 emissions is only a theory doesn't move it into the area of realism. For centuries science held that the Earth was flat or that the Sun and stars revolved around the Earth. This was the consensus. We now know from observation that this consensus was absolute BUNK, mere wishfull thinking.

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Hi Clete,

Sorry, I should have provided a better explanation of 'scientific realism' It doesn't really pertain to anything that is 'real', i.e tangible things. Roughly speaking you could view it as having the opposite meaning. It actually means that observations at best are only an approximation.
The reason for this is probably because the term has been borrowed from philosophy.

Probably a bit misleading the way I expressed it.

Tut

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Originally Posted by TUT317

Hi Clete,

Sorry, I should have provided a better explanation of 'scientific realism' It doesn't really pertain to anything that is 'real', i.e tangible things. Roughly speaking you could view it as having the opposite meaning. It actually means that observations at best are only an approximation.
The reason for this is probably because the term has been borrowed from philosophy.

Probably a bit misleading the way I expressed it.

Tut

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Tut I understand the outworking of it something like in the absence of any other explanation the observations point to the truth

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Originally Posted by paraclete

Tut I understand the outworking of it something like in the absence of any other explanation the observations point to the truth

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Hi Clete,

You probably know a lot of this stuff but I will give a rough synopsis.

Observation doesn't actually point to the truth. Observations are always contingent. In other words, we can make use of any number of observations that 'prove' the earth goes around the sun but in the end it is possible (but extraordinarily unlikely) that one day the sun will go around the earth. This has for a long time been known as Hume's empirical skepticism.

Popper has pointed out that while it is not possible to prove empirical science with any type of certainty it is possible to disprove a scientific theory with one counter example. This one counter example should serve to bring the whole theory down (according to Popper anyway).

When you and Tom refer to science as not being of a consensus type but rather is an individual who pushes the boundary in order to prove a theory wrong is probably not how science works in reality.Popper also though this but he was reacting to logical positivism( my previous post).

As far as global warming is concerned all these examples, whereby it seems as though the earth is getting colder rather than warmer is not a deterrent to scientific realism. This is probably because observations are only regarded as an approximation to the 'truth' On this basis observations, 'don't cut the mustard'. There is probably an argument for saying that scientific realism is an attempt to 'get round' Hume's problem.

My guess is that when it comes to modern science 'realism' is the trend. Again, I am not saying this is a good thing. The best example I can think of to explain scientific realism is String Theory. When it comes to strings no observations are possible (too tiny). The theory is based on mathematical constructs. If we are looking for the 'truth' then String Theory provides, 'the truth'. Mathematics doesn't lie. String theorists have worked long and hard to build up a mathematical system which explains the underlying structure of the universe.There is however one small problem. The theory may have absolutely nothing to do with the underlying structure of the universe. This is because there are no observations to confirm or deny.

As I said before my guess is that climate science makes use of a similar idea, but not to the same extent. From my point of view climate change scientists probably make us of abductive reasoning (if you want to Google this) This is related to my earlier claim that observations are only regarded as, 'an approximation'.


Regards

Tut

Thanks Tut getting back to climate science what we have is statistical analysis which is severely flawed because the data used is both the result of flawed observations and extrapolation. What this leads to is widely differing conclusions depending upon the disciple of the scientist doing the analysis and a political approach which at best says we cannot disprove this so it must be true and we must act or we will be judged by posterity. This is the chicken little syndrome

So put me in the skeptic category, data I have seen places what is happening within the scale of variability when viewed from a paleologiocal viewpoint, a view point which has been widely ignored

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because the data used is both the result of flawed observations and extrapolation

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And manipulation to reinforce a preconceived result .

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Originally Posted by paraclete

Thanks Tut getting back to climate science what we have is statistical analysis which is severly flawed because the data used is both the result of flawed observations and extrapolation. What this leads to is widely differing conclusions depending upon the disciple of the scientist doing the analysis and a political approach which at best says we cannot disprove this so it must be true and we must act or we will be judged by posterity. This is the chicken little syndrome

So put me in the skeptic category, data I have seen places what is happening within the scale of variability when viewed from a paleologiocal viewpoint, a view point which has been widely ignored

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Hi Clete,

We could put you in the skeptic category. In terms of science I guess we could put you in the scientific anti -realist category.

Regards

Tut

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Originally Posted by tomder55

and manipulation to reinforce a preconceived result .

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Hi Tom,

I'd go a bit stronger than that and say that some scientists were unprofessional and grossly dishonest. But like most of these types of activities you eventually get 'found out'

Regards

Tut

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Originally Posted by TUT317

Hi Clete,

We could put you in the skeptic category. In terms of science I guess we could put you in the scientific anti -realist category.

Regards

Tut

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Thanks Tut my training is in the social sciences, which means I must closely observe and question before drawing conclusions and it also trains me that mathematical projections are only that, mathematical projections, scenarios, they are not reality.

What we have in the climate sciences is the pecular idea that mathematical projections are reality

How does the Goracle explain the Blizzard of 1888 ?blizzard of 1888 - Google Search

Great Blizzard of 1888 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Originally Posted by tomder55

how does the Goracle explain the Blizzard of 1888 ?blizzard of 1888 - Google Search

Great Blizzard of 1888 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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SH*T happens?