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Climate Change and the Integrity of Science
blau tips news of an open letter from 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences, including 11 Nobel laureates, decrying the "recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular." The letter lays out the basics of the scientific method, and explains how certainly highly-regarded theories — such as the big bang, evolution, and Earth's origin — are commonly accepted due to the strength of the evidence supporting them, though "fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong." It goes on to "call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them." According to the Guardian, the letter "originated with a number of NAS members who were frustrated at the misinformation being spread by climate deniers and the assaults on scientists by some policy-makers who hope to delay or avoid making policy decisions and are hiding behind the recent controversy around emails and minor errors in the IPCC."
Wouldn't have been so easy if D2 weren't fucked :p Someone fix that already!
which is totally what she said
climate deniers
Wow, is that what they're called?
Freeman Dyson is none of those things, and he's expressed skepticism about the whole climate change panic.
How do you refute him, when none of your ad-hominims apply to him? Or do you just come up with another ad-hominim?
Actually that would defineately be the pro-agw camp.
Besides, science in the "general public" is always vastly different from actual theory. The media has always been firmly in the general public "mythical science" camp:
* the big bang, in physics departments, is no longer regarded as a good explanation of the actual creation of the cosmos. From the moment the process of inflation ended onwards, it fits all data extremely well**, but not before (nor does it explain inflation very well). So while the big bang theory still exists, it's no longer the creation theory. Well, it sort of is, until a good replacement is found. However it's a bit like newtonian physics in 1904 : everyone knows perfectly well the "scientific consensus" is horribly wrong, it's just that no-one knows how to fix it.
( ** with one big exception : how is it, unless earth is really, really special, that the earth appears exactly in the middle of the universe ? The current theory is that the universe is bigger than the big bang theory would make possible : that there is no "edge" of the universe at 14.6 billion lightyears, but it simply continues. We measure the earth in the exact center, because all our instruments can only "scan" at lightspeed, and thus they all dropoff at the exact same point : the edge of our light-cone in the universe, which gives us the idea that the universe is a sphere with the earth in the exact center. That brings up the question how those stars got there, as they'd need to have flown there faster than light. And if the universe is bigger than theoretically possible, just how big is it ? Is it infinite ? )
For the "general public", obviously, the big bang theory is the new creation myth. It "explains everything", but nobody knows about the rather fundamental problems with the theory, and the moment one suggests that a better explanation is needed, you're charged with attacking gays
* evolution, depending on where you look (computer science, economics, or biology) is some variation of a three-step process :
1) copy inaccurately
2) kill a good number of them, with a tendency to kill the "less fit" first (where "kill" means "make them die childless", and while killing obviously satisfies this, robbing of food does to, or simply not giving sufficient food. So "kill" can be active, passive, just about everything. It does, however, involve childless death)
3) goto 1
In the public image, neither the effects of step 1 (a great many very undesirable mutations, most of which will always remain unfixable), nor any part of step 2 forms any part of evolution theory. And especially forbidden is discussing the consequences of attempting to stop step "2" from happening (this will exhaust any and all resources, no matter how large, and thereby make a small disaster (a few people starving now) into a huge disaster (>99% of the population starving a bit later. Worse, this sort of disaster has been observed very often in nature, it has even been observed to cause the total extinction of a species).
And God forbid anyone mention that if all of nature works by copying existing working principles, that human minds might work in the same way ... That humans are inherently irrational, and that that's a good thing (since rational decision making has hit a tiny mathematical snag : it doesn't actually exist). That this observation indirectly also means that there is NO rational viewpoint, and that worldly success is the only real measure of a theories usefullness (and that research indicates that in the "worldly success" category the battle between religion and science is not yet clearly fought out, or, God forbid, that there might be indications that religion, not science, is winning that battle ...)
Sensible discussion...on MY Slashdot!?
This is the first time I've seen sensible moderation on this subject on Slashdot. I've been labelled a troll so many times, I gave up trying.
Is Michael Mann the exclusive moderator of this thread?