Slashdot Mirror
Is Scientific Consensus a Threat to Democracy?
chance_encounter writes "President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus has published an article in the Financial Times in which he seems to equate the current global warming debate with totalitarian thought control: 'The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced ... The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.' At the end of the article he proposes several suggestions to improve the global climate debate, including this point: 'Let us resist the politicization of science and oppose the term "scientific consensus," which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority.'"
Real? yes
Anthropomorphic? Lets wait until this sunspot cycle dies down to find out
Why not Kyoto? Maybe because China and India have no obligations under Kyoto
Dont care about the reset of the world? Ill put up us aid to poor regions against your rants any day
Al Gore Sane? Bwhahahaha
Be gone AC
"(for screwing them over because we chose to buy into the WRONG theory)"
You obviously have no idea what 'Scientific Theory' is, do you?
Clue:
Gravity is also a theory.
It is also a theory you will die someday.
1Do you know the estimate amount of CO2 put put by humans?
2DO you know how much CO2 vegitation displaces every year?
3Do you know that plants respire?
3 a. Do you know how much CO2 plants put back in the enviroment?
If you do not know the answer to those question, you shouldn't even BEGIN to form an opinion on the matter.
I get emotional about it because dumb shits like you have no idea about the facts, form some opinion based on subjective observation only.
You keep on going on looking stupid, while buildings collapses in Alaska because of the melting, and Greenland cracks apart. The evidence that this unprecedented global warming is being caused by man cuold fill a warehouse.
That's ok, you sit there and go on about how it's a theory, you fucking twit.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
* Nations weren't jockeying for power and economic supremacy over the outcome of his experiments
* Newton wasn't running around trying to scare people into thinking that humanity would likely get wiped out if Motion and Gravity were defined
* Things like Motion, Energy, and Gravity are explainable by mathematics, have precise definitions, and don't rely on faulty/incomplete computer modelling to prove/disprove (yet - at least until someone invents an anti-gravity machine or finds a way to stop entropy, etc etc)
* Newton didn't have grant money riding on the outcome.
* Newton didn't have to worry about a career-killing blackballing if his outcomes didn't match the consensus opinion.
* Al Gore wasn't born yet
* The UN didn't exist yet.
'zat help any?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
You're saying this to a slashdot crowd. Who is under the mistaken impression that we can force the entire world to comply with massive expensive investment that may or may not be futile (in fact the "scientific consensus" according to the U.N. is that we can't).
...
... plastics. It means redesigning EVERY plastic product. And I mean every last one.
And we're talking about China here. They're essentially reasonable people, they're a bit caught up in a disfunctional ideology, but at least they're reasonable.
Then you have Iran. And the oil nations (I'll be kind and not point to a certain religion that just really really seems to have something to do with what is happening there). They'll be real glad that we decide that their only export product is bad. They're known for being very cooperative with their own populations, so they'll listen to us, right ? Oh publicly beheading dissidents you say ? Euhm well I'm sure they'll be reasonable, after all our own religious nuts are reasonable, right ? Bombing abortion clinics you say ? Well euhm
Furthermore. Climate models currently have (at best) 20% error margin PER YEAR. That means that we can predict what global warming is going to do next year, but after that the error is bigger than the measurement. After 5 years there is no signal left.
Furthermore the cost of these adjustments. These costs are absent from all discussions and are non-trivial to say the least. Replacing all non-nuclear power plants (and all nuclear plants according to most "discussions" about this topic). Alternative fuels basically require us to replace every car, truck, and generator in the developed (and the developing) world. Dozens of power plants, mostly based upon unproven technology (and that's being nice), that has very non-trivial problems are to replace what is currently the backbone of power generation. And then there's the real petroleum industry
So, really
1) are we causing global warming ? Good question, we're not actually sure, and we don't understand the mechanism behind it (if so, please point to an accurate climate model, we can maybe tolerate 1% error margin, but certainly no more than that)
2) if we are causing it can we help it ? Provided our current (20% off per year) guess of the mechanism is correct, we can't stop it. We may be able to lower some of the very long term effects (although this can't be confirmed since we can't reliably predict what will happen in 5 years, so predictions about stuff happening in 100 years should be taken with an ocean of salt)
3) even if there is a method to stop it, what is the cost ? Probably it more than the economy produces in a single year, and that is, just too high, maybe by amortizing the costs over 20-30 years we can do this. But not faster than that, and even over 20-30 years it means taking big risks
Bring it, bitch...but before you do, you might want to remember who has the guns (us) and who doesn't (slimy little communist shitstain twinkle-toed cocksuckers like you).
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
...the single dumbest fucking argument in the world.
-- Cerebus
Hey I was in academia. This is one of the many reasons I left it. Theoretical physics? I'll give you super-string theory. Go look it up and see how many results they have and the amount of money spent on it. I'd count that as an intellectual fad.
A google search for "research grant" is just soooo scientific. Stop wasting time insulting me and go look up grants.gov and search "aids" and see how many results you get. Now try "herpes". Again try "climate change", now try "peak oil".
I'll be waiting for your apology, thank you.