Science - does it matter?

[WATU2]

Couple of interesting articles about climate change (aka global warming). One if a recent editorial from the WSJ that Judith Curry. The headline "The Global Warming Statistical Meltdown...Mounting evidence suggests that basic assumptions about climate change are mistaken: The numbers don't add up." is a bit misleading. Curry accepts mankind is influencing climate change, but disputes how fast it is happening. http://online.wsj.com/articles/judith-curry-the-global-warming-statistical-meltdown-1412901060

The attached link from Scientific American discusses whether or how accepted science gets translated into government policy. Polls about who and how many believe in man influenced climate change were surprising, at least to me. See link

Does a scientific consensus matter?

 

[TUMe]

I see three interesting questions.

1. Is there global warming. That's simple enough. You simply take temperatures from all over the world, including land and sea at various depths and compare them with historic temperature. All you need is the temperature at a zillion place over the last several billion years. Okay, since we can't do that lets take the last 100 years and what places we have records for. Just for argument we will say there is global warming.

2. Is man the cause. Or is man a contributing factor. Man would have to be a contributing factor to rise or fall. Now sugar makes you fat and chewing gum contains sugar, but that doesn't make chewing gum the reason for obesity. Okay, silly example. Just about all the heat on this planet comes in one way or another from the Sun. [Excluding the heat at the core of the Earth which I am not ready to blame.] And the Greenhouse effect is based on that heat being retained by CO2 blocking radiation. To fully accept the global warming dire warnings you have to believe that the computer model used to predict the future makes the correct assumptions concerning everything that will effect temperature in the next 30-100 years. Man, the Sun, volcanoes, or whatever. Einstein's version of Occum's Razor says "Make everything as simple as you can, but not simpler." I submit that these models make things simpler than they are. Time for another leap of faith here. We assume man is the cause of global warming.

3. If anyone is still reading this, I have reached my final question. Based on what we know, should the United States Government force changes on our country when most of the world's population is governed by countries that will not make those changes unless there is a transfer of wealth from the haves to the have-not countries. I'll not explore that question but it is a huge question.

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This post was edited on 10/14 6:03 PM by TUMe

 

[old_goat_23]

To accept Global Warming and human cause of same, you also have to accept that "consensus" is somehow a substitute for the Scientific Method. Since consensus gave us a flat earth, a sun that orbited the earth and fun things like Piltdown Man (which was considered to be a valid ancestor of man for 40 years until scien) I'll leave consensus as science to others.

Thanks!

 

[aTUfan]

I've seen a lot of dead trees in my neighborhood. I don't think they are getting enough CO2.

 

[TUMe]

WATU's post is titled "Science-does it matter?" then [after dismissing Judith Curry's article as "a bit misleading" ] appears not to understand the difference between influencing and being the total cause of.

Let's look at some terms here. A theory in science is the entire body of work that describes a specific phenomenon, a hypothesis that has been verified through testing.

The Greenhouse Effect meets that standard. Nobody much denies it.

Global Warming is an observation. With enough data, it can be valid over a certain period.

If there is global warming then, of course, man as something on the globe can contribute to it [or take away from it.] He can do that by cutting rain forests, burning fossil fuels, domesticating bovine, etc. He can also effect the climate with projects like the Aswan Dam, cutting through swamp and marshlands, building large cities and a whole bunch of stuff that I haven't mentioned. Man influences global temperature. Let's use an up arrow [I'll call it a vector for short.] Vectors add and subtract. There should be a vector for the Sun. It has storms, sun spots, sun flares, and cycles. It has a very large vector which slight changes would be significant. There are variations in the Earth's angle and path of travel.

There have been snowball periods on Earth and periods much warmer than this, most before man existed.

Yet we are asked to believe than man is the only cause of recent changes in a climate with a long history of changes. We are also asked to believe that all of man's effect are from CO2. And if one admits that man has an up vector then one is admitting causation?

Let's talk about Science. Nothing was more settled and more of a consensus than the Law of Gravity [Law even trumps theory.]
Ah, but the Theory of General Relativity rewrote the book on gravity. It seems gravity deforms space! So did they just accept it because Albert Einstein said it? They tested it. Light from a star behind a massive star can be seen around it. Consensus on something as basic as gravity was rewritten as late as the 20th Century and proven wrong.

 

[WATU2]

Confusing public consensus with scientists using the scientific method isn't helpful. For example, Greek philosophers (aka scientists) had accurately figured out the circumference of the earth well before Christ. It was science that overcame theology in placing the sun in it's proper place, and yes, science than debunked the hoax of the Piltdown man. A consensus of scientific opinion derived from the scientific method is always a work in progress, but shouldn't be confused with the examples cited.

 

[TUMe]

Originally posted by WATU2:
Confusing public consensus with scientists using the scientific method isn't helpful. For example, Greek philosophers (aka scientists) had accurately figured out the circumference of the earth well before Christ. It was science that overcame theology in placing the sun in it's proper place, and yes, science than debunked the hoax of the Piltdown man. A consensus of scientific opinion derived from the scientific method is always a work in progress, but shouldn't be confused with the examples cited.

That's great that some things were debunked. I firmly agree that is the way that the scientific method is supposed to work. But there is always going to resistance by those who have staked their reputation on the current consensus. Those who believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe did just calmly agree. In those days disagreeing with theology could be a dangerous practice.

Keep in mind also, that science works best at discovering the way things are and have been in the past. It does not, in general, do so well in predicting the future. I believe in evolution and Darwin did a good job along with archeologists of telling us where we have been. You don't hear many predictions as to how we will evolve long term. Take our Universe [please] while the main theory is that it is ever expanding, there are still those who believe there is enough dark matter to bring about a collapse and rebirth. I don't have a dog in that fight.

Science relies on data. There is no data for the future. So the future of our climate is not a theory. It can't be tested. The predictions are derived from computer simulations. You can run these models 10,000 times but they are still based on variables that will not be determined for decades. And while you can run simulations many times the future will only happen once, at least in this Universe.

People tell you that they accept the projections as viable, but everyday more high rises spring up on the beach at Miami, more casinos are built on the gulf coast and more people buy time shares in Panama City. And the US Government underwrites flood insurance for beach houses.



Finally, the changes that are desired are not without consequences. Those consequences fall not just on companies but also cities, states, and individuals. The war on coal is hurting individuals and communities in several states because a computer model says the ocean will rise X feet by the end of the century. Yet we are not seeing rises nearly as fast as predicted now. There is a "pause." So a coal miner loses his job today over a prediction of a computer for the end of the century.
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This post was edited on 10/15 10:55 PM by TUMe

 

[WATU2]

This back and forth is an example of the broader question: When should or how does scientific evidence drive societal policy? Clearly the concept that human actions are effecting climate change is unwelcome news because it raises a host of difficult questions and implies changes that hurt important economic and social interests.

And the nature of science is that it is an evolving process so there is never 100% certainty; just look at the Creationists ongoing fight against evolution using what they claim to be 'scientific evidence'. The scientific consensus is in favor of evolution, but there are still those claiming the science is inadequate for flawed.

More recently economic interests and beliefs seem to have replaced theology as the opposing force to science. One example of would be the tobacco industry's ability to suppress and offer distorted research connecting tobacco use with cancer and other health issues. A lot of people were hurt by the tobacco companies efforts to protect themselves from the scientific consensus, but eventually societal attitudes and policy changed.

Some claim that the scientific establishment has been bought off by funding sources which demand a particular outcome. That claim doesn't stand up to examination, as the funding available from established economic interests hurt by climate change implications (all carbon based industries, particularly large energy companies) have economic interests and funding capabilities that far exceed what is available through grants from the National Science Foundation or similar groups. Those same economic interests also have far greater motivation.

Anyway, an interesting question. We seem to trust science in about every area of our lives except in the few cases when the news might hurt our pocket books in the short term. A conundrum.

 

[TUMe]

Originally posted by WATU2:
This back and forth is an example of the broader question: When should or how does scientific evidence drive societal policy? Clearly the concept that human actions are effecting climate change is unwelcome news because it raises a host of difficult questions and implies changes that hurt important economic and social interests.

And the nature of science is that it is an evolving process so there is never 100% certainty; just look at the Creationists ongoing fight against evolution using what they claim to be 'scientific evidence'. The scientific consensus is in favor of evolution, but there are still those claiming the science is inadequate for flawed.

More recently economic interests and beliefs seem to have replaced theology as the opposing force to science. One example of would be the tobacco industry's ability to suppress and offer distorted research connecting tobacco use with cancer and other health issues. A lot of people were hurt by the tobacco companies efforts to protect themselves from the scientific consensus, but eventually societal attitudes and policy changed.

Some claim that the scientific establishment has been bought off by funding sources which demand a particular outcome. That claim doesn't stand up to examination, as the funding available from established economic interests hurt by climate change implications (all carbon based industries, particularly large energy companies) have economic interests and funding capabilities that far exceed what is available through grants from the National Science Foundation or similar groups. Those same economic interests also have far greater motivation.

Anyway, an interesting question. We seem to trust science in about every area of our lives except in the few cases when the news might hurt our pocket books in the short term. A conundrum.

First "our pocketbooks" is actually the destruction of one of the main economic forces is in states like Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Wyoming. Our government has required massive investments to reduce pollution in fossil fuels industries. These industries have made those investments only to be rewarded by targeting to be eliminated.

This is based on predictions being made by the same people who 8 years ago predicted that the artic ice cap would be gone in five years and who now scramble to explain the "pause" in Global Warming. They use the tried and true method with their predictions don't come true. Global Warming is renamed Climate Change. At one point you give examples of how the Scientific Method has debunked past incorrect consensus but then trivialize those who provide alternatives to current consensus.

Tobacco and cancer is one of my pet targets. We all have lost friends and family to tobacco related cancer. It is going on today. Yet today the Artic Ice Cap is for the second straight year well above the 2012 level, ocean levels are rising but much slower than predicted and there is no drought that compares to one 80 years ago in 1934.

People are asking huge changes of the way people live based on predictions that are not coming true. China, one of the most polluted countries in the world [not only with CO2 but with other pollutants that we have made huge progress on] announced recently that it would not make CO2 reductions without financial transfers.

Conservation is great. Like others I now drive vehicles that get greatly improved mileage from what the ones I had 10 years ago. But conservation by the 300+ million people in the US won't replace additions by the 7.2 billion people in the world.

Carbon based fuels have not be replaced as the primary source of energy. Some progress has been made but not enough to keep up with a world that does not want to become Amish or remain third world. There are a few glimmers of hope from cold fusion. That needs to be worked on along with other sources. But you can't quit your day job and head of to Nashville with a guitar.

Simply put, you can't stop using the main source of man generated energy on the planet based on computer projections of conditions at the end of the century.