"If you think a whitewash of 5 reports makes all of this ok... [logical fallacy (ad hominem) omitted]"
I have seen the "skeptics" of climate change state that the independent investigations were, as you have said, "a whitewash" yet they've never provided a shred of credible evidence to support that statement. Prove it (let's just get this out of the way: blogs & op-eds do not count as evidence).
It is time for you to put-up or shut-up.
All I've seen so far is you "skeptics" complaining about getting exactly what you asked for (you asked for "an audit of climate science") but it didn't arrive at the conclusion you wanted (the conclusion you wanted "climate science is a hoax/fraud/scam")!
"Science is not supposed to be driven by consensus."
It isn't and nobody ever said it was. You're arguing against position that nobody believes.
Scientific consensus is only important as a signal to the general public. When a scientific consensus forms around a new theory it signals that the evidence for a theory is so strong that it has convinced a large majority of scientists in a field of study that the theory is accurate. It tells us "you can take the theory seriously now".
You say:
"You are supposed to design a theory that makes worthwhile predictions about some aspect of the real world and then test it in the real world to ensure it actually predicts stuff."
I'm not a Climatologist but I'm pretty sure that is exactly what they've been doing: Making predictions and testing them.
I suspect that the recently launched Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite is going to collect data that will be used to test some predictions climate science has made about the sources and sinks of carbon.
You know how Creationists like to repeat (over and over and over again) "it's just a theory!" about Evolution?
Personally I just roll my eyes at that argument because I can see that they're trying to conflate the scientific use of the word "theory" and the common use of the word "theory".
Your argument is no better.
You are trying to conflate the scientific use of the word "consensus" with the common use of the "consensus".
There is a difference.
"If what occurred at CRU is within normal bounds of science then science is in a sad state of affairs."
I've heard reports that the number of scientific papers being retracted is rising in all fields of study, so I have to ask:
How do you know that what occurred at the CRU is not "within normal bounds of science"? You can't actually know that unless we can read the work related emails of all scientists in all fields of study to objectively compare them... and that's where a sincere argument for greater scientific transparency begins:
A sincere argument for greater scientific transparency starts with new rules that apply generally to all scientists in all fields of study regardless of who pays for their research (public or private funding). That's how you raise the bar for scrutiny when you genuinely care about the quality of science.
The American Traditions Institute is not genuinely interested in greater scientific transparency, they're just interested in casting doubt on a specific scientist (and his specific field of study) because they have deemed his research "heresy" to their politics.
There were at least 5 independent investigations launched as a result of Climategate and none of them found any evidence of scientific malpractice. That is to say the emails didn't reveal anything about Climatology that isn't happening in every other branch of scientific research.
Say, but on the topic of scientific malpractice: Did you hear what happened to the climate change "skeptic" journal Pattern Recognition in Physics?
The nepotism and scientific malpractice became so rampant that the publisher actually had to shut the whole thing down (it was becoming an embarrassment)!
Creationists blame Christopher Hitchens for "polarizing the Evolution debate"... and I do not accept their argument.
The Creationists are wrong about that because:
(1) Hitchens (like Gore) is not a scientist. You can not draw any conclusions about the validity of a scientific theory on the basis of the statements of non-scientists.
(2) It doesn't matter how Hitchens said what he said. We are all responsible for deciding what we believe. Responsible people ignore the polarization and examine the arguments logically. Idiots blame their dismissal of science on "the other guy" for not being nice.
If I wouldn't accept the "that guy polarized the debate" argument from Creationists; why would I accept it from you?
Nope. Mann's work, just like every other scientist on the planet, should be judged on the basis of what he has published.
We all know why ATI wanted access to Mann's emails: So that they could cherry-pick some juicy out of context quote to smear Mann with.
The AC reply to your comment points out this study was conducted with people ranging in age from 18 to 77 (same results)... but isn't it interesting that you read the results of one study and you knee-jerk to complaining about "the kids these days"?
Since your core premise is wrong the rest of your comment reveals a lot about who you are:
It tells me (1) that you are very judgmental, and (2) that your misconceptions about the young are protected by a strong confirmation bias.
How else could you fail to notice that this wasn't just about young people?
geekoid's comments are usually quite good; insightful and frequently accompanied with evidence & sources.
It looks like geekoid just misread the comment that he/she is replying to. Happens to the best of us.
"... they are convinced that government funding of scientific research is one of the factors contributing to their tax liability."
The people who say that are just making up excuses to dismiss the conclusions of scientific research.
In that way they're no different than Creationists who claim that Evolution is "just some secular hoax to fool the faithful".
... And they don't even consistently apply their "government money" argument: You never hear them make those sorts of complaints about the results from the LHC (that costed about ~$9billion split across many nations).
We are told "Do not feed the trolls." But some cannot resist. Why are some incapable of letting the troll starve and vanish?
... because we are also told "the cure for bad speech is more speech".
When a troll posts misinformation (especially those long debunked arguments) I think the people who reply are not attempting to convince the troll (trolls can't be convinced):
They're trying to persuade the reasonable readers with facts and better information.
Agreed.
Here's what happens to me occasionally when doing a "fetch quest" in a video game: I can't find the last item needed to complete the quest. I got all the others, but the last one is hidden away somewhere and I can't move the game forward a single inch until I find that very last one.
So I ask myself "What rooms haven't I been in?", "What doors haven't I opened?", "What box/crate/container haven't I looked in?" etc. ... and off I go exhaustively searching for that very. last. one.
I would hate to have to go searching through hundreds of mundane "template rooms" & closets that contain nothing of interest.
"I would love to round up all these people and force them into "first amendment zones" where we can control their speech, like the government tried to do in Nevada."
Your gleeful fantasy of oppressing the supporters of gun control is sickening to anyone with a functional moral compass.
She should just call herself a vaccine "skeptic".
Suddenly her reputation will go from anti-science loon, to hero of "free-thinkers" (aka conspiracy nutjobs) for challenging the scientific consensus about vaccines!
It totally makes sense that the placebo effect would work on people that don't know what "inter substance" means... but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
The following is a quote from the study leader: "Not only did we make it absolutely clear that these pills had no active ingredient and were made from inert substances, but we actually had 'placebo' printed on the bottle," said Kaptchuk. "We told the patients that they didn't have to even believe in the placebo effect. Just take the pills."
But won't telling the patient "the facts" diminish the placebo effect?
"Placebo effect works even if patients know they're getting a sham drug
Study suggests patients benefit from the placebo effect even when told explicitly that they're taking an 'inert substance'" http://www.theguardian.com/sci...
By asking "Which is it?" you make it sound like those two beliefs are contradictory and I don't believe that they are.
So long as feminists acknowledge that men are also capable of "bringing unique abilities and perspectives to the table" then it is not hypocritical.
To be quite blunt: I'm just a layman and I'm really not interested in ever seeing revived mammoths released in to the wild.
I'm more interested in seeing mammoths used as safe scientific test subjects for experimenting with the technology to revive extinct species.
Once the process of reviving extinct species is understood well enough that it can be done safely: Species that I would like to see revived (and released into the wild) are ones that were recently driven to extinction by human activity (by over hunting & habitat destruction)... but I think that is a long way off.
I was going to make a very similar comment to yours, but the more I thought about it the more the mammoth seems like a good test case.
It seems to me that we're just starting the testing & experimentation phase of resurrection technology. To be cautious I think we should start testing this new technology on extinct species that meet both of the following conditions:
(1) Are unlikely to escape captivity (ideally test species should be unable to survive outside specially designed enclosures).
(2) Are big, lumbering, and slow breeding. Even if such a species somehow escapes captivity (and manages to survive in the wild) we can still hunt them down and eliminate them.
So far as I know mammoths meet both of these conditions making them good test subjects for resurrection technology. "... bringing [the mammoth] into an environment that it was not evolved to handle" - That's a feature, not a bug!
Slashdot Mirror
"If you think a whitewash of 5 reports makes all of this ok ... [logical fallacy (ad hominem) omitted]"
I have seen the "skeptics" of climate change state that the independent investigations were, as you have said, "a whitewash" yet they've never provided a shred of credible evidence to support that statement. Prove it (let's just get this out of the way: blogs & op-eds do not count as evidence).
It is time for you to put-up or shut-up.
All I've seen so far is you "skeptics" complaining about getting exactly what you asked for (you asked for "an audit of climate science") but it didn't arrive at the conclusion you wanted (the conclusion you wanted "climate science is a hoax/fraud/scam")!
"Science is not supposed to be driven by consensus."
It isn't and nobody ever said it was. You're arguing against position that nobody believes.
Scientific consensus is only important as a signal to the general public. When a scientific consensus forms around a new theory it signals that the evidence for a theory is so strong that it has convinced a large majority of scientists in a field of study that the theory is accurate. It tells us "you can take the theory seriously now".
You say:
"You are supposed to design a theory that makes worthwhile predictions about some aspect of the real world and then test it in the real world to ensure it actually predicts stuff."
I'm not a Climatologist but I'm pretty sure that is exactly what they've been doing: Making predictions and testing them.
I suspect that the recently launched Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite is going to collect data that will be used to test some predictions climate science has made about the sources and sinks of carbon.
You know how Creationists like to repeat (over and over and over again) "it's just a theory!" about Evolution?
Personally I just roll my eyes at that argument because I can see that they're trying to conflate the scientific use of the word "theory" and the common use of the word "theory".
Your argument is no better.
You are trying to conflate the scientific use of the word "consensus" with the common use of the "consensus".
There is a difference.
"If what occurred at CRU is within normal bounds of science then science is in a sad state of affairs."
I've heard reports that the number of scientific papers being retracted is rising in all fields of study, so I have to ask:
How do you know that what occurred at the CRU is not "within normal bounds of science"? You can't actually know that unless we can read the work related emails of all scientists in all fields of study to objectively compare them... and that's where a sincere argument for greater scientific transparency begins:
A sincere argument for greater scientific transparency starts with new rules that apply generally to all scientists in all fields of study regardless of who pays for their research (public or private funding). That's how you raise the bar for scrutiny when you genuinely care about the quality of science.
The American Traditions Institute is not genuinely interested in greater scientific transparency, they're just interested in casting doubt on a specific scientist (and his specific field of study) because they have deemed his research "heresy" to their politics.
There were at least 5 independent investigations launched as a result of Climategate and none of them found any evidence of scientific malpractice. That is to say the emails didn't reveal anything about Climatology that isn't happening in every other branch of scientific research.
Say, but on the topic of scientific malpractice: Did you hear what happened to the climate change "skeptic" journal Pattern Recognition in Physics?
The nepotism and scientific malpractice became so rampant that the publisher actually had to shut the whole thing down (it was becoming an embarrassment)!
Creationists blame Christopher Hitchens for "polarizing the Evolution debate"... and I do not accept their argument.
The Creationists are wrong about that because:
(1) Hitchens (like Gore) is not a scientist. You can not draw any conclusions about the validity of a scientific theory on the basis of the statements of non-scientists.
(2) It doesn't matter how Hitchens said what he said. We are all responsible for deciding what we believe. Responsible people ignore the polarization and examine the arguments logically. Idiots blame their dismissal of science on "the other guy" for not being nice.
If I wouldn't accept the "that guy polarized the debate" argument from Creationists; why would I accept it from you?
Nope. Mann's work, just like every other scientist on the planet, should be judged on the basis of what he has published.
We all know why ATI wanted access to Mann's emails: So that they could cherry-pick some juicy out of context quote to smear Mann with.
The AC reply to your comment points out this study was conducted with people ranging in age from 18 to 77 (same results) ... but isn't it interesting that you read the results of one study and you knee-jerk to complaining about "the kids these days"?
Since your core premise is wrong the rest of your comment reveals a lot about who you are:
It tells me (1) that you are very judgmental, and (2) that your misconceptions about the young are protected by a strong confirmation bias.
How else could you fail to notice that this wasn't just about young people?
geekoid's comments are usually quite good; insightful and frequently accompanied with evidence & sources.
It looks like geekoid just misread the comment that he/she is replying to. Happens to the best of us.
"... they are convinced that government funding of scientific research is one of the factors contributing to their tax liability."
The people who say that are just making up excuses to dismiss the conclusions of scientific research.
... And they don't even consistently apply their "government money" argument: You never hear them make those sorts of complaints about the results from the LHC (that costed about ~$9billion split across many nations).
In that way they're no different than Creationists who claim that Evolution is "just some secular hoax to fool the faithful".
What's wrong with funding for programs that teach girls how to code? Do you read what you write before you press submit?
I read the headline and knew right then that somebody would find a way to turn this good news into something to complain about.
Replying to undo accidental mod.
We are told "Do not feed the trolls." But some cannot resist. Why are some incapable of letting the troll starve and vanish?
When a troll posts misinformation (especially those long debunked arguments) I think the people who reply are not attempting to convince the troll (trolls can't be convinced):
They're trying to persuade the reasonable readers with facts and better information.
Agreed.
... and off I go exhaustively searching for that very. last. one.
Here's what happens to me occasionally when doing a "fetch quest" in a video game: I can't find the last item needed to complete the quest. I got all the others, but the last one is hidden away somewhere and I can't move the game forward a single inch until I find that very last one.
So I ask myself "What rooms haven't I been in?", "What doors haven't I opened?", "What box/crate/container haven't I looked in?" etc.
I would hate to have to go searching through hundreds of mundane "template rooms" & closets that contain nothing of interest.
"I would love to round up all these people and force them into "first amendment zones" where we can control their speech, like the government tried to do in Nevada."
Your gleeful fantasy of oppressing the supporters of gun control is sickening to anyone with a functional moral compass.
She should just call herself a vaccine "skeptic".
Suddenly her reputation will go from anti-science loon, to hero of "free-thinkers" (aka conspiracy nutjobs) for challenging the scientific consensus about vaccines!
It totally makes sense that the placebo effect would work on people that don't know what "inter substance" means... but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
The following is a quote from the study leader:
"Not only did we make it absolutely clear that these pills had no active ingredient and were made from inert substances, but we actually had 'placebo' printed on the bottle," said Kaptchuk. "We told the patients that they didn't have to even believe in the placebo effect. Just take the pills."
But won't telling the patient "the facts" diminish the placebo effect?
"Placebo effect works even if patients know they're getting a sham drug
Study suggests patients benefit from the placebo effect even when told explicitly that they're taking an 'inert substance'"
http://www.theguardian.com/sci...
Or believing scientific researchers are always in a underpants-gnome style conspiracy.
By asking "Which is it?" you make it sound like those two beliefs are contradictory and I don't believe that they are.
So long as feminists acknowledge that men are also capable of "bringing unique abilities and perspectives to the table" then it is not hypocritical.
The final fantasy!
... Actually, that might be pretty amazing on a VR headset.
To be quite blunt: I'm just a layman and I'm really not interested in ever seeing revived mammoths released in to the wild.
I'm more interested in seeing mammoths used as safe scientific test subjects for experimenting with the technology to revive extinct species.
Once the process of reviving extinct species is understood well enough that it can be done safely: Species that I would like to see revived (and released into the wild) are ones that were recently driven to extinction by human activity (by over hunting & habitat destruction)... but I think that is a long way off.
I was going to make a very similar comment to yours, but the more I thought about it the more the mammoth seems like a good test case.
It seems to me that we're just starting the testing & experimentation phase of resurrection technology. To be cautious I think we should start testing this new technology on extinct species that meet both of the following conditions:
(1) Are unlikely to escape captivity (ideally test species should be unable to survive outside specially designed enclosures).
(2) Are big, lumbering, and slow breeding. Even if such a species somehow escapes captivity (and manages to survive in the wild) we can still hunt them down and eliminate them.
So far as I know mammoths meet both of these conditions making them good test subjects for resurrection technology.
"... bringing [the mammoth] into an environment that it was not evolved to handle" - That's a feature, not a bug!
Oh look and he's a Republican. How completely unsurprising.