Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Resigns Over Global Warming
POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Monday, September 19, 2011 18:34
VIEWED: 4620
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"Do you want to hang your skepticism on that?"
Hello,
My skepticism? We are talking about the word incontrovertible.
Which is, as I understand it, meaningless in the scientific realm where possibilities abound like faerie folk in an Irish glade.
Why ruin something so beautiful as infinite possibility?
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner
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"There's no other way to do it, if you're going to do science."
"Why ruin something so beautiful as infinite possibility?"
Then why take measurements at all? Why create and test theories? Why do science, if the universe is subject to your big mental 'whatEVER it's all MEANINGLESS' shrug?
If you claim to be interested in science, at a certain point the possibilities must yield to observation and measurement, to prediction and testing, to old theories and new revolutionary ideas. But simply dismissing all measurement, all observation, all data as meaningless is not scientific skepticism. And it's really, REALLY childish and kind of stupid.
Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
Yeah, me neither....
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"There's no other way to do it, if you're going to do science."
"Why ruin something so beautiful as infinite possibility?"
Then why take measurements at all? Why create and test theories? Why do science, if the universe is subject to your big mental 'whatEVER it's all MEANINGLESS' shrug?
If you claim to be interested in science, at a certain point the possibilities must yield to observation and measurement, to prediction and testing, to old theories and new revolutionary ideas. But simply dismissing all measurement, all observation, all data as meaningless is not scientific skepticism. And it's really, REALLY childish and kind of stupid.
Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
Yeah, me neither....
Hello,
How silly. We must take actions based on the best information available to us at any given time.
Leaving oneself open is not akin to disbelieving the totality of existence.
It is merely akin to acknowledging that you may not know the totality of existence.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner
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"My skepticism? We are talking about the word incontrovertible.
Which is, as I understand it, meaningless in the scientific realm where possibilities abound like faerie folk in an Irish glade.
Why ruin something so beautiful as infinite possibility?"
We can ALWAYS debate the nature of reality. Do I exist? Does the world? Or is this my dream, or yours? Or someone else's? Is there such a thing as cause and effect or merely the appearance of before and after? Is nature probabilistic or mechanistic?
But to do science - REAL science, not your faerie version - we have to assume that we can derive meaningful information from the world. That if we measure something often enough and get the same result, it reflects a property of the world.
Unless you want to dismiss the entire notion of reality and the process of science, then yes, it is incontrovertible that the earth is warmer.
Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
Yeah, me neither....
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Quote:
Unless you want to dismiss the entire notion of reality and the process of science, then yes, it is incontrovertible that the earth is warmer.
That the Earth warms and cools over it's 4. something billion yr old history, isn't being dismissed by anyone.
" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "
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Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"It's poor science, and he's absolutely right."
Except he's a proponent of equally poor science in the other direction. Do you dismiss HIS poor science as well, based on it being poor science?
He has no 'poor science', in the least. He's absolutely right. You not liking to hear the truth does not make it any less valid.
Deal w/ it.
" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "
Would you say his "facts" are "incontrovertible"?
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill
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"But to do science - REAL science, not your faerie version"
Hello,
In Real Science, Nothing is incontrovertible. Scientists simply make the best decisions they can based on the best information available. But someday, some radical discovery may always come to the fore that proves the best information available to have been incorrect or incorrectly interpreted.
"Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."
-Shel Silverstein
That is the wonder of science. Not magic, nor even faeries, really. For a belief based in faith can never be proven wrong, but a belief based in science can be. Always. All you need is new, better data- or a better way of interpreting it.
Is it my fault if I find that to be poetic and beautiful?
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner
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Actually, there is a part of science that is incontrovertible and that are definitions.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Actually, there is a part of science that is incontrovertible and that are definitions.
Hello,
Tell us about it.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner
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Damn - there's a word for that and I don't remember it. But it's what SignyM is referring to ...
"Scientists simply make the best decisions they can based on the best information available."
You are talking about theories. I am talking about data.
Temperature is a number you get when performing a measurement by surrogate property - expanding volume (liquid in glass thermometer), current (thermocouple), radiation (infrared), and several other techniques, using defined procedures and calibrated against defined setpoints based on physical constants and given arbitrary numbers (scale). As such, it is - by definition - a definition. It's one of those things you can't debate unless you want to debate known physical constants and the nature of reality ... You really can't go back and say - nuhh unnhhh! - MY temperature measurement is different from YOUR temperature measurement and YOURS is wrong! So I'M going to say YOUR numbers might change!
The same is true of observational data - trees dying, glaciers melting, new species moving in while old species disappear etc. Unless you want to debate the nature of reality ... this may be all a dream and therefore not real and the reality you see might not be the reality I see or the reality that will exist tomorrow (or some other argument) - you can't argue away the fact of observation.
These are data. The DATA IS INCONTROVERTIBLE - THE EARTH IS WARMER.
Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
Yeah, me neither....
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