A lot of madness in the current public discussion comes from people reading too much biased news. Most of it is on the left but the right has a few juicy ones to keep the balance. What will happen if all of those are behind a paywall so there is not much inflammatory I mean investigative journalism to share and read for free?
As told by Michael Crichton during his MD training in his book Travels: -- Dr. Z was a seventy-eight-year-old physician who entered the hospital in a near coma, in end-stage cardiac and renal failure. His son was also a physician, but not on the staff of the hospital, so he could only visit like any other relative, and he had nothing to say about his father's care. He did, however, state that he wanted his father to die peacefully.
The old man was on the critical list for nearly a week. He had a cardiac arrest one night, but he was resuscitated. His son came in the next day and asked, with a certain delicacy, why the staff had resuscitated the old man. Nobody answered him.
Later that day, old Dr. Z suffered sudden massive congestive heart failure. The hospital staff was making rounds; they all rushed to his bedside. In a moment he was entirely surrounded by white-jacketed interns and residents, working on the old man, sticking needles and tubes into his body.
In the midst of all this, he somehow emerged from his coma, sat bolt upright in bed, and shouted clearly and distinctly, "I refuse this therapy! I refuse this therapy!"
The residents pushed him back down. He got the therapy anyway. I turned to the attending physician, and asked how such a thing was possible. This man was, after all, a physician, and he was unquestionably dying-if not today, then tomorrow or the next day. Why had the house staff contradicted his wishes, and those of his family? Why was he not being allowed to die?
There was no good answer.
Dr. Z finally died on the weekend, when hospital staffing was light.
Oh c'mon -- the "Republican Party", tens of millions of Americans in the great scheme of things incredibly similar in behavior, habits and values to tens of millions of the "Democratic Party" Americans -- certainly similar when compared to say Japanese, West Africans, Icelanders and in fact many Europeans and so on -- do not have "any respect for reality" and instead engage in "partisan denial". It's hard to devalue one's own statement more than that.
I think I would be right to assume you that you are not at all unintelligent or incapable of reasoning and are probably very educated, so I assume you make statements like these out of sheer habit, like a reflex, without really giving it much thought. We have to do better if we are to get anywhere, unless of course you really enjoy making statements like these, which I somehow don't think is the case.
This is a good counterexample, however I think the difference is airlines are always struggling, few are profitable so there's little room to pass the savings on to consumers. ISPs seem to be doing better and it's understandable -- far fewer moving parts, literally.
I'm sure you'd be laughing too all the way to the bank if two ISPs competing for your dollar force Google to pay and you get a lower rate. Seems to me rather than having big government protecting the largest corporations, why don't we just deregulate building infrastructure?
Also I've just read that the NN regulations was passed only in 2015 and 3 to 2 along party lines. Can we really expect that a recent strictly partisan wisdom be all that timeless?
I have no doubt that Google has studied Net Neutrality far more than you or I and that based on that careful study they decided to support NN.
As for Google being paid to fork over money for search, I would actually like to see that happen. Think about it: Google pays, so it's eating away from their profits, so their growth slows -- would you not say it's a good thing at this point? And second if Google pays handily for search priority it effectively subsidizes the service to a degree. I wouldn't hold my hopes up but the ISP might, just might, decide it can pass some of the savings on to you.
Same here. Cox has been fairly good so far I have to say but I know they, like everyone else, will create whatever hell they can get away with. But I feel the hell Google can get away with would be worse.
Why can't other companies build more infrastructure I wonder.
The alternative to that is to let the #1s stay #1s leaving #2s further behind. Take Google for example. Net Neutrality increases Google's profits. If a Google competitor wants to purchase premium transmission service to the consumer, then Google is forced to do so too to compete. By having to also purchase premium access Google is worse off than if no one was offered the premium service in the first place -- which is what NN dictates. By eating away Google's profits, lack of NN slows Google down.
I'd rather have a handful of big ones be forced to duke it out than have all the top ones forever remain dominant, like Google vs. Bing, thanks to the government.
Hate to double post but here's what may be the answer to why Google wants net neutrality: "When premium transmission service is offered and at least one content site purchases the service, profits for content sites that do not purchase the premium service are lower than if the premium service had not been offered, all other things being equal."
In other words yes Google can strike a deal but it would eat away their profits and maybe considerably. What reduces Google's profits makes Google weaker.
South Korea won't allow military action, as they shouldn't. My speculation is that Trump is trying to provoke Kim Jong "Rocket Man" Un to do something rash -- like fire a not-so-test missile prematurely so it malfunctions -- so that the US has more options. Potentially though if provoked enough Kim may be so crazy to give an order his generals won't stomach so if they are all in agreement he'll disappear in a coup. One clue about the latter is Trump in his insults makes a clear distinction between Kim and North Koreans.
It's a dangerous game, but so is the alternative. Kim is unstable, undeserving of throne, and by all accounts unloved (Stalin and Hitler were loved by many of their people), so getting his own people to reject such "king" may be the least bloody strategy.
I admit I do not know the answer to your first question. Except that since Google lobbies hard *for* Net Neutrality, it stands to reason they stand to gain from it -- if they weren't, they would at least keep silent. But I would like to have a more specific answer.
Regarding the NN argument, it is essentially the question of local vs. global monopolies and I think the latter are worse. If I switch from Comcast to the other provider -- if available, I agree -- nothing ties me to Comcast. Whereas Facebook has a monopoly on my social media presence, such as it is, and Google has monopoly over search and an undue influence. It is harder to switch away from them. It seems to me that the answer is building more cable, perhaps even government-subsidized, rather than making sure Google has equal rights with everyone else.
I am not against regulation in principle, but a regulation cheered by the the biggest monopolies doesn't make me comfortable.
Google, FB, Netflix and the other big guys use most of what is common good. Imagine if Amazon had a giant fleet of biggest delivery trucks on Earth that used much of the road so that eventually most of what you saw were Amazon trucks, would it not be fair for cities to impose some sort of special fees for those, or would we favor "highway neutrality"?
I don't like depending on my ISPs but I like even less being at the mercy of ever stronger Google. (Who once said in their all hands meeting that that "the wrong candidate won the election.")
The last two Republican presidents both became president after losing the popular vote. At some point, it calls into question the "consent of the governed".
It is a fair point. But take for example a voter in Maine who voted for Clinton or Gore. Can we really assume that he would prefer presidents being chosen by popular vote and his state losing the sway it may have? If not then you again have only the big Democratic states -- who otherwise enjoy many benefits from being in the union -- being discontent, and in fact only the Democratic voters there.
I agree that gerrymandering and vote suppression are a problem -- which still need to be balanced against voter fraud, and there are counter examples such as the institution of the President being used to give advantage to the Democratic candidate in 2016, or that the mainstream press, though private, suppressed the views of the opposition thus working against the principles of democracy -- but to go from there to saying that will of the people does not matter sounds like a great leap to me.
There are different ways of knowing the will of the people. Popular vote by a simple majority is one, electoral college is another, there are countless others. Giving vote only to 18+ citizens is yet another, that overlaps with the others. The Constitution chooses one particular way. How can you be certain that a different way of interpreting that voice of the people would be better for the country?
I understand you don't like Trump but would you really honestly prefer that Clinton had won? With all her inability to see reality which resulted in her gross miscalculation in key states, with blaming everyone else from Putin to Obama, with her power grabbing the DNC so she could steer it toward her Precious presidency, with her not distancing herself from her top donor Weinstein for days (Trump has no such problem because he didn't run on the platform of social justice), and on and on and on?
well funded enemy states that are plotting our demise.
What demise? The US is by far the most powerful and least threatened country, with *huge* geopolitical margin of error, and seems to be doing quite well. Compare to Russia (or, say, Israel) who have to walk a tight rope. Russia is looking to survive and, to the degree their plotting made a difference, the last thing they needed was Hawkish Hillary at the helm. As did we, in my opinion, for that matter.
As for the rest I agree, Google is a private company, and they are free to exercise their views what is right, including bias and censorship, in whichever way they please that is compatible with our laws.
If I can be forgiven a little trolling -- given how many different hardware platforms iOS runs on vs how many different platforms Windows runs on, it seems fair to say Microsoft is having fewer bugs per platform than Apple.
'Even some Obama administration veterans praised Trump’s action. “President Donald J. Trump was right to strike at the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using a weapon of mass destruction, the nerve agent sarin, against its own people,” Antony Blinken, a deputy secretary of state under Obama, wrote in The New York Times.' (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/opinion/after-the-missiles-we-need-smart-diplomacy.html)
Washington Post: "Continued bombing by Assad shows limits of single U.S. attack" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/continued-bombing-by-assad-shows-limits-of-single-us-attack/2017/04/08/1c70cb1a-1c83-11e7-bcc2-7d1a0973e7b2_story.html?utm_term=.918c02caa31b)
"Trump was also praised by prominent Democrats, like New York Senator Charles Schumer and California Representative Nancy Pelosi, who said Trump’s actions were “proportional” and “the right thing to do.”" -- http://www.washingtonexaminer....
"Hillary Clinton called for Donald Trump to 'take out' Assad airfields hours before air strikes" -- https://www.usnews.com/news/to...
She rebuked him for warning Russians beforehand (which quite likely reduced the casualties).
The problem is how do you tell who is racist. We've seen that term heavily abused last year as a political weapon. (It didn't work because voting is private.) The only way I can see making that decision is taking a person to court under the accusation of hate speech, and let the elected arbitrators in the society decide. Otherwise you are making a judgement call, and who is to say that your judgement is better than others'. Now granted if it is your company, you are free to silence someone, and if you want to influence the owner of the company to silence someone you are also free to do so. We just can't call that process free speech, it's merely one's personal preferences attempted to be imposed on others by means of technology, wealth, influence and so on.
I'll remember that thank you. I'm assuming from your references you may be a climate researcher yourself. FWIW I should let you know that my beef is not with your profession. I trust you do your work honestly and competently and as best you can. My distrust is with the people who are *not* climate researchers but who use a set of talking points about climate to either, as I see it, profit or get fame from it (Al Gore comes to mind), or to label their (usually conservative) opponents as dumb anti-science people, or merely to virtue signal, without doing anything whatsoever for the cause they profess to care. Whereas I for example drive very little, fly very little, and eat mostly vegetarian. I am convinced their smug scientism hurts your work more than it helps.
If I were a climate researcher I'd hang in there, history is full of people doing work that wasn't always appreciated but they knew it was the right thing to do it anyway, and maybe I'd try to find a way to make it all closer to the mind and heart of the common man.
I did a search regarding testability and found this from pro-AGW people who acknowledge that the theory is too complex and it cannot be falsified as a whole, only its individual components can. https://skepticalscience.com/a... (Pasting the best part below.)
This is fair, but I think it also shows that it is a natural block from people accepting it in order to make radically different decisions in life -- eat vegan, have fewer children -- based on such theory. Unless climate science can demonstrate almost prophetic powers like physics can, it will remain a partisan issue.
Post from the link:
falsifiability is a strange concept of limited use in science, despite its popularity. The reason is that when we test any hypothesis, we must make background assumptions both about other conditions, and about how our instruments work. These background assumptions then form auxilliary hypotheses which are tested alongside the hypothesis we actually desire to test. As a consequence, if our test gives a negative result, we do not falsify any individual hypothesis (including the one we wanted to test). Rather we falsify the conjunction of the hypotheses. We show that not all of them can be true together. This is known as the Duhem-Quine Thesis, after its two independent "discoverers".
To illustrate this, consider Dikran Marsupial's test of "global climate change theories" from 2 above. He claims that a centenial negative trend in temperatures would falsify the theory. Of course, if that centenial trend coincided with a 50% reduction of solar physics, the theory would not be falsified. Dikran is quite aware of this, and covered himself with the auxilliary clause that the trend occured "in the absence of any other change in the forcings that could explain it".
In very simple theories, we can radically reduce the number of auxilliary hypotheses making the particular hypothesis of interest more amenable to falsification in a "crucial test". We can also vary our experimental methods so that we are testing the theory with different auxilliary hypotheses. Thus, for very simple hypotheses, we can reduce the impact of the Duhem-Quine Thesis, but we can never entirely avoid it.
Because AGW is a complex theory with many auxilliary hypotheses, it is difficult to develop "crucial tests", ie, any individual test that will show it to be false. In fact, in the very short term it is impossible. What we can do is develop "crucial tests" for important elements of the theory, but not for the whole theory at once. We can also measure relative likilihood with respect to competing theories. Doing so, we can show that AGW easilly is a superior theory to its competitors. But we cannot pick a single experiment to falsify the theory, so you will not find much discussion of falsification with respect to AGW.
When you do, it is often for critics of AGW who take a farcically simplistic view of falsification to declare that "AGW is falsified". Spencer and Christy played this game for a while, declaring the UAH satellite temperature index falsified AGW. Then (on several occasions) they were embarrassed when it was shown that their auxilliary hypothesis that they had eliminated all significant errors from their temperature record was what was false, and that UAH tends to confirm rather than falsify AGW.
Lucia Liljegren has played a similar game, several times declaring that the recent temperature record falsifies IPCC predictions. She has neglected, however, the IPCC auxilliary hypothesis of neutral ENSO conditions*. She has merely falsified the conjunction of hypotheses that (CO2 forcing is increasing & climate sensitivity is in the IPCC range & ENSO fluctuations do not effect global temperatures &....). As her third, tacit, auxilliary hypothesis is known to be false, her results are massively uninteresting. (She also uses a very simplistic definition of falsification in which events with a 1in 20 probabi
I think that's an overstatement, surely you'd agree that the Newtonian physics is the most well validated theory in the history of science -- it got the most mileage.
But that aside, and I don't doubt the huge amount of work involved, this is an opportunity to educate a layman: can you tell me what testable predictions does the theory make? Are any of those predictions (experiments really) simple enough for a lay person to follow?
This is good work, and I will take a look at this in detail. Without going outside of your post let me point out some of the turtles:
- The number of papers expressing support for AGW is 97%, but that is not necessarily the same as the number of actual scientists. Pro-AGW scientists may be more prolific. - More importantly, whether each of these papers is pro-AGW, strongly pro-AGW, neutral, or against, is the researcher's judgement call. Sometimes/often papers tend to be reserved in making forceful conclusions unless the climate is favorable for it. Can you verify each one of the aggregate researcher's judgement calls? If you do, how can the rest of us be sure that your judgement calls are valid? - The research including a survey still suffers from all the problems that plague research with surveys.
I am not saying that the AGW claim is necessarily false, I am not even saying that the 97% claim is necessarily false, all I'm doing is pointing out to the chain of uncertainties to show that we acquire knowledge statistically and not by being enlightened.
What is the utility of my claim then? It is to say that we would do well to not take at face value those scientific claims that do not seem to be backed by significant statistical processes, for the lack of a better word, and to not be swayed by the apparent simplicity of their models. Quantum physics is blessed with easy repeatability (which is why it's so successful), others are not so lucky. (Even if it has an ugly model.) I am not saying we should ignore those claims, but rather use them as a hint to do more repetitions until we establish those claims as likely true or likely not.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of madness in the current public discussion comes from people reading too much biased news. Most of it is on the left but the right has a few juicy ones to keep the balance. What will happen if all of those are behind a paywall so there is not much inflammatory I mean investigative journalism to share and read for free?
Maybe it will be peace across the land again.
As told by Michael Crichton during his MD training in his book Travels:
--
Dr. Z was a seventy-eight-year-old physician who entered the hospital in a near coma, in end-stage cardiac and renal failure. His son was also a physician, but not on the staff of the hospital, so he could only visit like any other relative, and he had nothing to say about his father's care. He did, however, state that he wanted his father to die peacefully.
The old man was on the critical list for nearly a week. He had a cardiac arrest one night, but he was resuscitated. His son came in the next day and asked, with a certain delicacy, why the staff had resuscitated the old man. Nobody answered him.
Later that day, old Dr. Z suffered sudden massive congestive heart failure. The hospital staff was making rounds; they all rushed to his bedside. In a moment he was entirely surrounded by white-jacketed interns and residents, working on the old man, sticking needles and tubes into his body.
In the midst of all this, he somehow emerged from his coma, sat bolt upright in bed, and shouted clearly and distinctly, "I refuse this therapy! I refuse this therapy!"
The residents pushed him back down. He got the therapy anyway. I turned to the attending physician, and asked how such a thing was possible. This man was, after all, a physician, and he was unquestionably dying-if not today, then tomorrow or the next day. Why had the house staff contradicted his wishes, and those of his family? Why was he not being allowed to die?
There was no good answer.
Dr. Z finally died on the weekend, when hospital staffing was light.
Let's go back to the rock and see it at 440. Hey I welcome any news stories that remind me of fun books.
Oh c'mon -- the "Republican Party", tens of millions of Americans in the great scheme of things incredibly similar in behavior, habits and values to tens of millions of the "Democratic Party" Americans -- certainly similar when compared to say Japanese, West Africans, Icelanders and in fact many Europeans and so on -- do not have "any respect for reality" and instead engage in "partisan denial". It's hard to devalue one's own statement more than that.
I think I would be right to assume you that you are not at all unintelligent or incapable of reasoning and are probably very educated, so I assume you make statements like these out of sheer habit, like a reflex, without really giving it much thought. We have to do better if we are to get anywhere, unless of course you really enjoy making statements like these, which I somehow don't think is the case.
This is a good counterexample, however I think the difference is airlines are always struggling, few are profitable so there's little room to pass the savings on to consumers. ISPs seem to be doing better and it's understandable -- far fewer moving parts, literally.
I'm sure you'd be laughing too all the way to the bank if two ISPs competing for your dollar force Google to pay and you get a lower rate. Seems to me rather than having big government protecting the largest corporations, why don't we just deregulate building infrastructure?
Also I've just read that the NN regulations was passed only in 2015 and 3 to 2 along party lines. Can we really expect that a recent strictly partisan wisdom be all that timeless?
I have no doubt that Google has studied Net Neutrality far more than you or I and that based on that careful study they decided to support NN.
As for Google being paid to fork over money for search, I would actually like to see that happen. Think about it: Google pays, so it's eating away from their profits, so their growth slows -- would you not say it's a good thing at this point? And second if Google pays handily for search priority it effectively subsidizes the service to a degree. I wouldn't hold my hopes up but the ISP might, just might, decide it can pass some of the savings on to you.
The difference between my speculation and yours is that mine explains everything he's said and done and yours... well, yours doesn't.
The only thing your speculation does not explain is that he became president!
Same here. Cox has been fairly good so far I have to say but I know they, like everyone else, will create whatever hell they can get away with. But I feel the hell Google can get away with would be worse.
Why can't other companies build more infrastructure I wonder.
The alternative to that is to let the #1s stay #1s leaving #2s further behind. Take Google for example. Net Neutrality increases Google's profits. If a Google competitor wants to purchase premium transmission service to the consumer, then Google is forced to do so too to compete. By having to also purchase premium access Google is worse off than if no one was offered the premium service in the first place -- which is what NN dictates. By eating away Google's profits, lack of NN slows Google down.
I'd rather have a handful of big ones be forced to duke it out than have all the top ones forever remain dominant, like Google vs. Bing, thanks to the government.
Hate to double post but here's what may be the answer to why Google wants net neutrality: "When premium transmission service is offered and at least one content site purchases the service, profits for content sites that do not purchase the premium service are lower than if the premium service had not been offered, all other things being equal."
In other words yes Google can strike a deal but it would eat away their profits and maybe considerably. What reduces Google's profits makes Google weaker.
South Korea won't allow military action, as they shouldn't. My speculation is that Trump is trying to provoke Kim Jong "Rocket Man" Un to do something rash -- like fire a not-so-test missile prematurely so it malfunctions -- so that the US has more options. Potentially though if provoked enough Kim may be so crazy to give an order his generals won't stomach so if they are all in agreement he'll disappear in a coup. One clue about the latter is Trump in his insults makes a clear distinction between Kim and North Koreans.
It's a dangerous game, but so is the alternative. Kim is unstable, undeserving of throne, and by all accounts unloved (Stalin and Hitler were loved by many of their people), so getting his own people to reject such "king" may be the least bloody strategy.
I admit I do not know the answer to your first question. Except that since Google lobbies hard *for* Net Neutrality, it stands to reason they stand to gain from it -- if they weren't, they would at least keep silent. But I would like to have a more specific answer.
Regarding the NN argument, it is essentially the question of local vs. global monopolies and I think the latter are worse. If I switch from Comcast to the other provider -- if available, I agree -- nothing ties me to Comcast. Whereas Facebook has a monopoly on my social media presence, such as it is, and Google has monopoly over search and an undue influence. It is harder to switch away from them. It seems to me that the answer is building more cable, perhaps even government-subsidized, rather than making sure Google has equal rights with everyone else.
I am not against regulation in principle, but a regulation cheered by the the biggest monopolies doesn't make me comfortable.
Google, FB, Netflix and the other big guys use most of what is common good. Imagine if Amazon had a giant fleet of biggest delivery trucks on Earth that used much of the road so that eventually most of what you saw were Amazon trucks, would it not be fair for cities to impose some sort of special fees for those, or would we favor "highway neutrality"?
I don't like depending on my ISPs but I like even less being at the mercy of ever stronger Google. (Who once said in their all hands meeting that that "the wrong candidate won the election.")
The last two Republican presidents both became president after losing the popular vote. At some point, it calls into question the "consent of the governed".
It is a fair point. But take for example a voter in Maine who voted for Clinton or Gore. Can we really assume that he would prefer presidents being chosen by popular vote and his state losing the sway it may have? If not then you again have only the big Democratic states -- who otherwise enjoy many benefits from being in the union -- being discontent, and in fact only the Democratic voters there.
I agree that gerrymandering and vote suppression are a problem -- which still need to be balanced against voter fraud, and there are counter examples such as the institution of the President being used to give advantage to the Democratic candidate in 2016, or that the mainstream press, though private, suppressed the views of the opposition thus working against the principles of democracy -- but to go from there to saying that will of the people does not matter sounds like a great leap to me.
There are different ways of knowing the will of the people. Popular vote by a simple majority is one, electoral college is another, there are countless others. Giving vote only to 18+ citizens is yet another, that overlaps with the others. The Constitution chooses one particular way. How can you be certain that a different way of interpreting that voice of the people would be better for the country?
I understand you don't like Trump but would you really honestly prefer that Clinton had won? With all her inability to see reality which resulted in her gross miscalculation in key states, with blaming everyone else from Putin to Obama, with her power grabbing the DNC so she could steer it toward her Precious presidency, with her not distancing herself from her top donor Weinstein for days (Trump has no such problem because he didn't run on the platform of social justice), and on and on and on?
well funded enemy states that are plotting our demise.
What demise? The US is by far the most powerful and least threatened country, with *huge* geopolitical margin of error, and seems to be doing quite well. Compare to Russia (or, say, Israel) who have to walk a tight rope. Russia is looking to survive and, to the degree their plotting made a difference, the last thing they needed was Hawkish Hillary at the helm. As did we, in my opinion, for that matter.
As for the rest I agree, Google is a private company, and they are free to exercise their views what is right, including bias and censorship, in whichever way they please that is compatible with our laws.
If I can be forgiven a little trolling -- given how many different hardware platforms iOS runs on vs how many different platforms Windows runs on, it seems fair to say Microsoft is having fewer bugs per platform than Apple.
These Democrats:
'Even some Obama administration veterans praised Trump’s action. “President Donald J. Trump was right to strike at the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using a weapon of mass destruction, the nerve agent sarin, against its own people,” Antony Blinken, a deputy secretary of state under Obama, wrote in The New York Times.' (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/opinion/after-the-missiles-we-need-smart-diplomacy.html)
Washington Post: "Continued bombing by Assad shows limits of single U.S. attack" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/continued-bombing-by-assad-shows-limits-of-single-us-attack/2017/04/08/1c70cb1a-1c83-11e7-bcc2-7d1a0973e7b2_story.html?utm_term=.918c02caa31b)
"Trump was also praised by prominent Democrats, like New York Senator Charles Schumer and California Representative Nancy Pelosi, who said Trump’s actions were “proportional” and “the right thing to do.”" -- http://www.washingtonexaminer....
"Hillary Clinton called for Donald Trump to 'take out' Assad airfields hours before air strikes" -- https://www.usnews.com/news/to...
She rebuked him for warning Russians beforehand (which quite likely reduced the casualties).
Honest question, did you really not know this?
The problem is how do you tell who is racist. We've seen that term heavily abused last year as a political weapon. (It didn't work because voting is private.) The only way I can see making that decision is taking a person to court under the accusation of hate speech, and let the elected arbitrators in the society decide. Otherwise you are making a judgement call, and who is to say that your judgement is better than others'. Now granted if it is your company, you are free to silence someone, and if you want to influence the owner of the company to silence someone you are also free to do so. We just can't call that process free speech, it's merely one's personal preferences attempted to be imposed on others by means of technology, wealth, influence and so on.
I'll remember that thank you. I'm assuming from your references you may be a climate researcher yourself. FWIW I should let you know that my beef is not with your profession. I trust you do your work honestly and competently and as best you can. My distrust is with the people who are *not* climate researchers but who use a set of talking points about climate to either, as I see it, profit or get fame from it (Al Gore comes to mind), or to label their (usually conservative) opponents as dumb anti-science people, or merely to virtue signal, without doing anything whatsoever for the cause they profess to care. Whereas I for example drive very little, fly very little, and eat mostly vegetarian. I am convinced their smug scientism hurts your work more than it helps.
If I were a climate researcher I'd hang in there, history is full of people doing work that wasn't always appreciated but they knew it was the right thing to do it anyway, and maybe I'd try to find a way to make it all closer to the mind and heart of the common man.
I did a search regarding testability and found this from pro-AGW people who acknowledge that the theory is too complex and it cannot be falsified as a whole, only its individual components can. https://skepticalscience.com/a... (Pasting the best part below.)
This is fair, but I think it also shows that it is a natural block from people accepting it in order to make radically different decisions in life -- eat vegan, have fewer children -- based on such theory. Unless climate science can demonstrate almost prophetic powers like physics can, it will remain a partisan issue.
Post from the link:
falsifiability is a strange concept of limited use in science, despite its popularity. The reason is that when we test any hypothesis, we must make background assumptions both about other conditions, and about how our instruments work. These background assumptions then form auxilliary hypotheses which are tested alongside the hypothesis we actually desire to test. As a consequence, if our test gives a negative result, we do not falsify any individual hypothesis (including the one we wanted to test). Rather we falsify the conjunction of the hypotheses. We show that not all of them can be true together. This is known as the Duhem-Quine Thesis, after its two independent "discoverers".
To illustrate this, consider Dikran Marsupial's test of "global climate change theories" from 2 above. He claims that a centenial negative trend in temperatures would falsify the theory. Of course, if that centenial trend coincided with a 50% reduction of solar physics, the theory would not be falsified. Dikran is quite aware of this, and covered himself with the auxilliary clause that the trend occured "in the absence of any other change in the forcings that could explain it".
In very simple theories, we can radically reduce the number of auxilliary hypotheses making the particular hypothesis of interest more amenable to falsification in a "crucial test". We can also vary our experimental methods so that we are testing the theory with different auxilliary hypotheses. Thus, for very simple hypotheses, we can reduce the impact of the Duhem-Quine Thesis, but we can never entirely avoid it.
Because AGW is a complex theory with many auxilliary hypotheses, it is difficult to develop "crucial tests", ie, any individual test that will show it to be false. In fact, in the very short term it is impossible. What we can do is develop "crucial tests" for important elements of the theory, but not for the whole theory at once. We can also measure relative likilihood with respect to competing theories. Doing so, we can show that AGW easilly is a superior theory to its competitors. But we cannot pick a single experiment to falsify the theory, so you will not find much discussion of falsification with respect to AGW.
When you do, it is often for critics of AGW who take a farcically simplistic view of falsification to declare that "AGW is falsified". Spencer and Christy played this game for a while, declaring the UAH satellite temperature index falsified AGW. Then (on several occasions) they were embarrassed when it was shown that their auxilliary hypothesis that they had eliminated all significant errors from their temperature record was what was false, and that UAH tends to confirm rather than falsify AGW.
Lucia Liljegren has played a similar game, several times declaring that the recent temperature record falsifies IPCC predictions. She has neglected, however, the IPCC auxilliary hypothesis of neutral ENSO conditions*. She has merely falsified the conjunction of hypotheses that (CO2 forcing is increasing & climate sensitivity is in the IPCC range & ENSO fluctuations do not effect global temperatures & ....). As her third, tacit, auxilliary hypothesis is known to be false, her results are massively uninteresting. (She also uses a very simplistic definition of falsification in which events with a 1in 20 probabi
I think that's an overstatement, surely you'd agree that the Newtonian physics is the most well validated theory in the history of science -- it got the most mileage.
But that aside, and I don't doubt the huge amount of work involved, this is an opportunity to educate a layman: can you tell me what testable predictions does the theory make? Are any of those predictions (experiments really) simple enough for a lay person to follow?
This is good work, and I will take a look at this in detail. Without going outside of your post let me point out some of the turtles:
- The number of papers expressing support for AGW is 97%, but that is not necessarily the same as the number of actual scientists. Pro-AGW scientists may be more prolific.
- More importantly, whether each of these papers is pro-AGW, strongly pro-AGW, neutral, or against, is the researcher's judgement call. Sometimes/often papers tend to be reserved in making forceful conclusions unless the climate is favorable for it. Can you verify each one of the aggregate researcher's judgement calls? If you do, how can the rest of us be sure that your judgement calls are valid?
- The research including a survey still suffers from all the problems that plague research with surveys.
I am not saying that the AGW claim is necessarily false, I am not even saying that the 97% claim is necessarily false, all I'm doing is pointing out to the chain of uncertainties to show that we acquire knowledge statistically and not by being enlightened.
What is the utility of my claim then? It is to say that we would do well to not take at face value those scientific claims that do not seem to be backed by significant statistical processes, for the lack of a better word, and to not be swayed by the apparent simplicity of their models. Quantum physics is blessed with easy repeatability (which is why it's so successful), others are not so lucky. (Even if it has an ugly model.) I am not saying we should ignore those claims, but rather use them as a hint to do more repetitions until we establish those claims as likely true or likely not.