How about you start with a statement as to what global CO2/global average temperature levels are clearly excluded by the hypothesis of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming? Are there *any* observations that could be made next year that would falsify your hypothesis, or is it simply "heads I win, tails you lose"?
Seriously, this hit piece on Lindzen is embarrassing in its mendacity. The fact is that natural climate change has always happened, and always will happen, and whatever the anthropogenic influence is on it, on any time scale, is well open for debate.
Yes, we have an effect. Every life form has an effect.
No, this effect isn't distinguishable from background noise.
NYT has once again taken its position as the leader of the charge of the Church of Global Warming. For those people interested in actually doing science, instead of making vague appeals to authority, start with the scientific method, and state your clearly necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
I never claimed it was right because the authority said so, thus, it is not an appeal to authority.
Yes, you did. Let's review:
"If it's so wrong, then it would never be certified by some agency."
You can rewrite this as "anything certified by some agency is right". You are appealing to the authority of some certifying agency.
Your argument is that because "appeal to authority fallacy" exists, that all consensuses are wrong by definition.
No, my argument is that you are making an appeal to authority fallacy, and that the consensus on diet and nutrition is wrong because it is *provably* wrong, not simply because it is a consensus view.
Unfortunately, there is no option for correcting the agency in question.
Which, is my point. The authority you would have us believe (the "certifying agency" as it were), is wrong. Because of that, they wish to keep the truth out of the marketplace of ideas. Should we be happy that someone with the truth is being oppressed by the ministers of truth?
If it's so wrong, then it would never be certified by some agency.
Again, the appeal to authority fallacy. There are *plenty* of wrong things that are certified by agencies all over the place, not the least of which is the high-carbohydrate, high-grain, low-fat dogma pushed on us by Ancel Keys and his followers.
That advice has been certified by some official agency doesn't make it right - and conversely, the fact that advice has *not* been certified by some officially agency doesn't make it wrong.
The scientific fact of the matter, which no amount of appeal to authority can refute, is that chronically elevated insulin levels cause all sorts of diseases, including diabetes, heart disease and obesity, and that chronically elevated insulin levels are caused by chronically elevated blood sugar levels, and that the only food type that significantly raises blood sugar levels is carbohydrate.
The real question, is what do you do when an authority body of dietitians has been pushing provably wrong advice and offering provably incorrect certifications? How do you get the crackpots out of the position of authority?
The problem is that if your body doesn't have the same hormonal problem with insulin resistance, you can't possibly expect your lifestyle to help people who are obese. It would be like thinking that your diet and exercise plan could keep a child with an overactive pituitary from growing...or that you could get a child with an under active pituitary to be as tall as you are. No amount of diet and exercise is going to alter how much growth hormone affects your body, and the only diet that affects insulin levels in your body is one that eschews blood sugar raising carbohydrates.
Were you ever fat? Did you ever actually *lose* weight? Or were you just always skinny, with bad triglycerides and HDL?
1) obesity will depend on your insulin resistance. Obviously, you're insulin sensitive, if you're able to power down carbohydrates without gaining weight. Congratulations!
2) "low cholesterol" isn't a marker of health if you're just counting overall cholesterol - triglycerides and HDL are what count. How are you on those markers?
The fact of the matter is that some people aren't as visibly affected by carbohydrate intake as others. However, all those people who *are* visibly affected share the same root cause - chronically elevated insulin levels. You cannot expect someone who has insulin resistance to eat the way you do, and get the same results as you do.
Actually, he selected works that *disproved* the hypothesis of Ancel Keys, and that's a good thing. Discarding evidence that was consistent with Ancel Keys' hypothesis was perfectly reasonable, since we were looking for falsification, not blind confirmation.
Now, as to the alternate hypothesis he puts forth, regarding the carbohydrate origins of chronic disease, thus far, I haven't seen anyone who has found a falsification.
I highly doubt he properly analyzed the literature.
Well, I'd be interested if you have any specific critique. Frankly, most of the basics are generally not contested (insulin promotes fat deposition, blood sugar drives insulin levels, and carbohydrate intake drives blood sugar levels).
Of course his book doesn't prove anything - what it does is cite a whole host of literature and experimental science that *does*. I'm not saying that Taubes did original research, and did so without any sort of medical training himself - what he did was, for the first time ever, rigorously go through the body of research, and the history of the science of diet and obesity and chronic disease, and thoroughly repudiated the common wisdom given to us by government, thanks to a misguided Ancel Keys who took hold of the "fat is dangerous" meme and forced it upon us by sheer will.
Gary Taubes didn't do the research he cites, people with training in medicine and biology did the research he cites. What Gary Taubes is is a journalist, writer, and scientist who has been able to properly research, cite and present a whole host of data and work that others have done - he stands on the shoulders of giants, even if he isn't one.
If you haven't read his work (compiled from the work of others, of course), you should.
If you have read his work, and simply dismiss it because he isn't an MD, go ahead and check out Dr. Eades (http://proteinpower.com/), or Dr. Lustig.
The sad part is that the ADA advice is not only *obviously* dangerous, it is *demonstrably* dangerous.
Gary Taubes tore apart the pseudo-science of nutrition with his original "Good Calories, Bad Calories", and followed up with a book more targeted towards laymen called "Why We Get Fat". Read one, or both, and come back with impressions.
Hear, hear. I began my crawl back to health in 2007 with the release of Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories", lost 50 lbs., improved cholesterol profile, improved blood pressure, and most likely avoided the heart attack that was coming.
People with diabetes are going to be a lot worse off because this guy is pretending to be an expert.
Except in this case, the government "experts" that have been pushing the low-fat/low-calorie/high-exercise diet for the past 40 years are the ones who have caused the epidemics of diabetes, obesity, heart disease and other chronic diseases.
If you want the low down on the real science of nutrition, and just how badly all of these licensed nutritionists have gotten it, check out any of Gary Taubes' lectures: http://garytaubes.com/lectures/
Type 2 diabetes is caused by excessive carbohydrate intake. Paleo regimes greatly restrict carbohydrates. If every diabetic listened to this man, they'd get *better*.
This is a rather poor choice to make your argument, since we know carbon dioxide is causing global average temperature increases
If you want to make the argument, you'll have to start off with a falsifiable hypothesis.
Arguing that when CO2 leads global average temperature changes, it's a verification, and when CO2 lags global average temperature changes, it's a verification, is an anemic response to the falsification challenge. Looking at the data that contradicts the basic conceit (that CO2 drives global average temperature changes), and then asserting that it is some "known mechanism" that accounts for the discrepancy is an ad hoc special pleading.
How many times will you assert a "known mechanism", and how many times will you ignore other mechanisms that may have altered the data you feel supports your hypothesis?
There is essentially no way to expect a relationship between measurable factors without an implicit falsifiability being present.
Actually, any two variables monotonically increasing/decreasing will have a relationship - correlation does *not* necessarily give us falsifiability, although I agree, it is often assumed (such as say, CO2 emissions and global average temperature increase).
I'd be asking for *explicit* falsifiability before admitting testimony in court as "scientific".
"Thus flat Earthers, biblical creationists, proponents of laetrile or orgone boxes, Uri Geller devotees, Bermuda Triangulators, circle squarers, Lysenkoists, charioteers of the gods, perpetuum mobile builders, Big Foot searchers, Loch Nessians, faith healers, polywater dabblers, Rosicrucians, the-world-is-about-to-enders, primal screamers, water diviners, magicians, and astrologers all turn out to be scientific on Popper's criterion - just so long as they are prepared to indicate some observation, however improbable, which (if it came to pass) would cause them to change their minds."
What Laudan fails to understand here is that falsifications must imply the truth of the hypothesis by their lack. That is to say, I could say "Creationism is falsifiable if you see a monkey with three tails, five wings, eating custard in a French cafe on January 12, 1892", but it doesn't logically follow that the *lack* of such an observation would imply creationism is true.
This guide, following Laudan's poor straw man against Popper, is only going to open the floodgates to more pseudoscience in the courtrooms.
Scientifically, something is proven if it's effectively demonstrated repeatedly, with no unexpected effects from independent variables.
With the following caveat - the hypothesis to be proven must be falsifiable. Continually appealing to ad hoc special pleadings, in order to preserve the central conceit of a hypothesis, is the hallmark of pseudo-science.
The dismissal of Popper in the document is frankly, abhorrent.
"If it becomes widely accepted (and to some extent it has) that falsifiable predictions are the signature of real science, then pretenders to the throne of science will make falsifiable predictions too."
They cite "Larry Laudan, Beyond Positivism and Relativism 219 (1996)" - if someone has the list of hypotheses that Lauden claims are falsifiable but not scientific, I'd be interested to see them.
What if we challenge the assumption that more money == more scientific progress? It's quite possible (nay, quite common) to spend vast amounts of money and make little or no progress, even if measured by "useful failures".
Does anyone really believe that if we dedicated 100% of the earth's GDP for 5 years, we'd cure all cancers? End aging? Cure Jerry's Kids? When we imagine that science is simply determined by the amount of resources we're willing to throw at it, we're making a fatal error.
At a certain point, scientific breakthrough is a combination of creativity, genius and luck, and you simply can't *buy* that.
I'm guessing that one is of the contemporary period and the other coincides with the last Dalton minimum that was aggravated by several notable volcanic eruptions. Yes, no? Good guesses or bad?
Any guess is a good guess, but in this case, it's a wrong guess. Lindzen presented this to parliament:
And truly, therein lies the problem - nature is perfectly capable of changing climate on its own, at the same rates we've observed in the modern CO2 spouting era. I've no doubt we humans have some effect, but the evidence is that this effect is minor, if measurable at all. The earth is simply not a fragile little teacup - it is a resilient beast that, much like your own body, maintains a form of homeostasis. In the same way that taking a warm shower won't give you a fever just because it's heating your body, our trivial contribution to a gas measured in parts per million, subject to all kinds of biological processing, is not going to show up in any sort of significant or catastrophic heating.
Slashdot Mirror
"Trustworthy science"?
How about "trust but verify"?
Oops...lost that data, didn't we :)
How about you start with a statement as to what global CO2/global average temperature levels are clearly excluded by the hypothesis of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming? Are there *any* observations that could be made next year that would falsify your hypothesis, or is it simply "heads I win, tails you lose"?
...the last bastion of climate alarmists :)
Seriously, this hit piece on Lindzen is embarrassing in its mendacity. The fact is that natural climate change has always happened, and always will happen, and whatever the anthropogenic influence is on it, on any time scale, is well open for debate.
Yes, we have an effect. Every life form has an effect.
No, this effect isn't distinguishable from background noise.
NYT has once again taken its position as the leader of the charge of the Church of Global Warming. For those people interested in actually doing science, instead of making vague appeals to authority, start with the scientific method, and state your clearly necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
Yes, you did. Let's review:
"If it's so wrong, then it would never be certified by some agency."
You can rewrite this as "anything certified by some agency is right". You are appealing to the authority of some certifying agency.
No, my argument is that you are making an appeal to authority fallacy, and that the consensus on diet and nutrition is wrong because it is *provably* wrong, not simply because it is a consensus view.
Which, is my point. The authority you would have us believe (the "certifying agency" as it were), is wrong. Because of that, they wish to keep the truth out of the marketplace of ideas. Should we be happy that someone with the truth is being oppressed by the ministers of truth?
Again, the appeal to authority fallacy. There are *plenty* of wrong things that are certified by agencies all over the place, not the least of which is the high-carbohydrate, high-grain, low-fat dogma pushed on us by Ancel Keys and his followers.
That advice has been certified by some official agency doesn't make it right - and conversely, the fact that advice has *not* been certified by some officially agency doesn't make it wrong.
The scientific fact of the matter, which no amount of appeal to authority can refute, is that chronically elevated insulin levels cause all sorts of diseases, including diabetes, heart disease and obesity, and that chronically elevated insulin levels are caused by chronically elevated blood sugar levels, and that the only food type that significantly raises blood sugar levels is carbohydrate.
The real question, is what do you do when an authority body of dietitians has been pushing provably wrong advice and offering provably incorrect certifications? How do you get the crackpots out of the position of authority?
No, official validation of your proposition, or even education on a topic doesn't make it true.
The problem with your position is that is is categorically *wrong*, not that it isn't properly certified by some agency.
The problem is that if your body doesn't have the same hormonal problem with insulin resistance, you can't possibly expect your lifestyle to help people who are obese. It would be like thinking that your diet and exercise plan could keep a child with an overactive pituitary from growing...or that you could get a child with an under active pituitary to be as tall as you are. No amount of diet and exercise is going to alter how much growth hormone affects your body, and the only diet that affects insulin levels in your body is one that eschews blood sugar raising carbohydrates.
Were you ever fat? Did you ever actually *lose* weight? Or were you just always skinny, with bad triglycerides and HDL?
Well, a few things:
1) obesity will depend on your insulin resistance. Obviously, you're insulin sensitive, if you're able to power down carbohydrates without gaining weight. Congratulations!
2) "low cholesterol" isn't a marker of health if you're just counting overall cholesterol - triglycerides and HDL are what count. How are you on those markers?
The fact of the matter is that some people aren't as visibly affected by carbohydrate intake as others. However, all those people who *are* visibly affected share the same root cause - chronically elevated insulin levels. You cannot expect someone who has insulin resistance to eat the way you do, and get the same results as you do.
Actually, he selected works that *disproved* the hypothesis of Ancel Keys, and that's a good thing. Discarding evidence that was consistent with Ancel Keys' hypothesis was perfectly reasonable, since we were looking for falsification, not blind confirmation.
Now, as to the alternate hypothesis he puts forth, regarding the carbohydrate origins of chronic disease, thus far, I haven't seen anyone who has found a falsification.
Oh noes! Human CO2 causes supernovas!!! I'm super cereal!
(yes, yes, mod me troll/flamebait)
Okay, so do you disagree with any of the following:
1) insulin promotes fat accumulation
2) high blood sugar levels drive insulin production
3) carbohydrate intake increases blood sugar levels
You've offered yourself up as an authority, do you actually have any *substance* to your argument?
Well, I'd be interested if you have any specific critique. Frankly, most of the basics are generally not contested (insulin promotes fat deposition, blood sugar drives insulin levels, and carbohydrate intake drives blood sugar levels).
Have you read any of his work?
Have you read his book? Maybe listened to his free lectures online? Is there anything about the science he cites that you disagree with?
Do you know the name "Ancel Keys", and his contribution to the poor dietary guidelines we live with today?
Of course his book doesn't prove anything - what it does is cite a whole host of literature and experimental science that *does*. I'm not saying that Taubes did original research, and did so without any sort of medical training himself - what he did was, for the first time ever, rigorously go through the body of research, and the history of the science of diet and obesity and chronic disease, and thoroughly repudiated the common wisdom given to us by government, thanks to a misguided Ancel Keys who took hold of the "fat is dangerous" meme and forced it upon us by sheer will.
Gary Taubes didn't do the research he cites, people with training in medicine and biology did the research he cites. What Gary Taubes is is a journalist, writer, and scientist who has been able to properly research, cite and present a whole host of data and work that others have done - he stands on the shoulders of giants, even if he isn't one.
If you haven't read his work (compiled from the work of others, of course), you should.
If you have read his work, and simply dismiss it because he isn't an MD, go ahead and check out Dr. Eades (http://proteinpower.com/), or Dr. Lustig.
The sad part is that the ADA advice is not only *obviously* dangerous, it is *demonstrably* dangerous.
Gary Taubes tore apart the pseudo-science of nutrition with his original "Good Calories, Bad Calories", and followed up with a book more targeted towards laymen called "Why We Get Fat". Read one, or both, and come back with impressions.
Hear, hear. I began my crawl back to health in 2007 with the release of Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories", lost 50 lbs., improved cholesterol profile, improved blood pressure, and most likely avoided the heart attack that was coming.
Mod parent up.
Except in this case, the government "experts" that have been pushing the low-fat/low-calorie/high-exercise diet for the past 40 years are the ones who have caused the epidemics of diabetes, obesity, heart disease and other chronic diseases.
If you want the low down on the real science of nutrition, and just how badly all of these licensed nutritionists have gotten it, check out any of Gary Taubes' lectures: http://garytaubes.com/lectures/
Type 2 diabetes is caused by excessive carbohydrate intake. Paleo regimes greatly restrict carbohydrates. If every diabetic listened to this man, they'd get *better*.
If you want to make the argument, you'll have to start off with a falsifiable hypothesis.
Arguing that when CO2 leads global average temperature changes, it's a verification, and when CO2 lags global average temperature changes, it's a verification, is an anemic response to the falsification challenge. Looking at the data that contradicts the basic conceit (that CO2 drives global average temperature changes), and then asserting that it is some "known mechanism" that accounts for the discrepancy is an ad hoc special pleading.
How many times will you assert a "known mechanism", and how many times will you ignore other mechanisms that may have altered the data you feel supports your hypothesis?
Actually, any two variables monotonically increasing/decreasing will have a relationship - correlation does *not* necessarily give us falsifiability, although I agree, it is often assumed (such as say, CO2 emissions and global average temperature increase).
I'd be asking for *explicit* falsifiability before admitting testimony in court as "scientific".
I think I found Laudan's list:
"Thus flat Earthers, biblical creationists, proponents of laetrile or orgone boxes, Uri Geller devotees, Bermuda Triangulators, circle squarers, Lysenkoists, charioteers of the gods, perpetuum mobile builders, Big Foot searchers, Loch Nessians, faith healers, polywater dabblers, Rosicrucians, the-world-is-about-to-enders, primal screamers, water diviners, magicians, and astrologers all turn out to be scientific on Popper's criterion - just so long as they are prepared to indicate some observation, however improbable, which (if it came to pass) would cause them to change their minds."
What Laudan fails to understand here is that falsifications must imply the truth of the hypothesis by their lack. That is to say, I could say "Creationism is falsifiable if you see a monkey with three tails, five wings, eating custard in a French cafe on January 12, 1892", but it doesn't logically follow that the *lack* of such an observation would imply creationism is true.
This guide, following Laudan's poor straw man against Popper, is only going to open the floodgates to more pseudoscience in the courtrooms.
With the following caveat - the hypothesis to be proven must be falsifiable. Continually appealing to ad hoc special pleadings, in order to preserve the central conceit of a hypothesis, is the hallmark of pseudo-science.
The dismissal of Popper in the document is frankly, abhorrent.
"If it becomes widely accepted (and to some extent it has) that falsifiable predictions are the signature of real science, then pretenders to the throne of science will make falsifiable predictions too."
They cite "Larry Laudan, Beyond Positivism and Relativism 219 (1996)" - if someone has the list of hypotheses that Lauden claims are falsifiable but not scientific, I'd be interested to see them.
What if we challenge the assumption that more money == more scientific progress? It's quite possible (nay, quite common) to spend vast amounts of money and make little or no progress, even if measured by "useful failures".
Does anyone really believe that if we dedicated 100% of the earth's GDP for 5 years, we'd cure all cancers? End aging? Cure Jerry's Kids? When we imagine that science is simply determined by the amount of resources we're willing to throw at it, we're making a fatal error.
At a certain point, scientific breakthrough is a combination of creativity, genius and luck, and you simply can't *buy* that.
...are by definition below average intelligence.
Why would we think that 100% of people would be able to use the internet on their own? Or get a higher education for that matter?
Or, one could posit that the other temp reconstructions are on as shaky ground as Mann: http://climateaudit.org/2009/10/29/upside-down-proxies-baffle-the-team/ :)
You're right, they weren't cursory glances - they didn't even *glance* at the emails.
Here, check out the details: http://thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/Climategate-Inquiries.pdf
Any guess is a good guess, but in this case, it's a wrong guess. Lindzen presented this to parliament:
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02148/RSL-HouseOfCommons_2148505a.pdf
Page 16. One is 1895-1946 the other is 1957-2008.
And truly, therein lies the problem - nature is perfectly capable of changing climate on its own, at the same rates we've observed in the modern CO2 spouting era. I've no doubt we humans have some effect, but the evidence is that this effect is minor, if measurable at all. The earth is simply not a fragile little teacup - it is a resilient beast that, much like your own body, maintains a form of homeostasis. In the same way that taking a warm shower won't give you a fever just because it's heating your body, our trivial contribution to a gas measured in parts per million, subject to all kinds of biological processing, is not going to show up in any sort of significant or catastrophic heating.
We may know something, but we don't know everything, and arguably, we don't know a very high proportion of everything either.
Again, you still haven't gotten to the point where any observation, past present or future, could falsify your central conceit - just like astrology :)