Binford wrote:


Binford- those are good questions. You might want to take a look at the old forum, we've had extensive "discussions" related to these very questions.

Of course, in science, majorities don't mean anything. No one claims that the acceleration of gravity at sea level is 32ft/sec/sec because the majority of scientists think so. No one claims that the speed of light is a constant because the majority of physicists agree that this is true.

What constitutes science is a testable and repeatable hypothesis. I can test the acceleration of gravity. I can test the speed of light (with the right equipment!). So can everyone else. Every time anyone tests these values, they get the same results. If just one time someone could demonstrate a different result, and others could repeat this demonstration, well it's back to the drawing board. The number of scientists who believe the acceleration of gravity at sea level doesn't matter one bit of beans. The AGW theory is not science, it's politics. In politics, you vote on things. You don't vote on scientific proofs.

Not to mention that there are LOTS of degreed, published, environmental scientists who believe any claims to "know" that AGW is proven are complete nonsense. There numbers and vocal criticism are growing every day (not that this matters either).

In the end, it's a politically driven debate for those who think they can garner votes by being the greenest, and it's a religious debate for those who think all mankind and all corporations are evil and only the pure of heart can right the ship. I think we all need to settle down just a bit.

I think your right jdeere, a majority of this stuff has to do with politics and the mighty $.

The earth is always changing and evolving. I look at things like I mentioned in my earlier post about the polar ice melting, and another example the Middle East. We all have heard where scientists claim at one time it was a lush green oasis, thus the reason behind all the oil reserves. Look at it now, it is just a big sand box. Look at the earthquake that shook Japan. I have heard that is was powerful enough to change the axis of the earth and move Japan's coastline by 8 feet. Now I have no evidence to back that up, just something I heard on the news. We all know without being scientist's that if you change the earths axis your going to affect climate.

My point is that man probably does play a role in climate change, but in the big picture it is probably minor. I may be wrong, but the examples I have given above make me stop and think. What are the causes of earthquakes? Are they caused by man as well? (too much mining )Again, not trying to be ignorant, or arguementative, just trying to get people to stop and think.

jdeere5220 wrote:


Wrong, that is why most people claim it to be true. When was the last time you measured the speed of light?

Climate scientist don't subscribe to AGW theory because a majority of climatologists subscribe to it, that claim requires a peculiar circular logic. Rather, the vast majority of climatologist accept AGW theory for the same reason all successfull theories gain acceptance, because of the scientific evidence. As for Joe public, at least the educated Joes, most of them believe the speed of light is constant because that is what they were taught in school and they were taught that because it was the scientific consensus.

The scientific theories of the day are the theories of the day because they are accepted by the vast majority of experts in the field; the general confidence in those theories is directly proportional to the confidence the individual experts have in the theory and the number of experts that subscribe to it. The truth doesn't pop out of the thin air and scribe itself into text books, science is done by scientists and the texts are written by scientists. That is not contrary to the scientific method as you claim; when a scientific consensus happens, it happens because of the convincing acumulation of evidence, deductive and observational, that has emerged from application of the scientific method. The evidence does not need to inspire 100% confidence to gain acceptance - if it did there would be no theories.

As for the non-expert: Suppose you have some mild shortness of breath and went to see your doctor and he told you to quit smoking today because you are developing signs of early emphysema. You don't want to quit, so you get the opinion of a hundred doctors: 97 agree with your doctor and 3 do not. But the tobacco companies tell you that cigarrettes don't cause lung problems, and some political talk show host tells you these health risks are exagerated by liberal anti-smoking alarmists, and some anonymous guy on the internet tells you science is not about majorities, another poster tells you emphysema occurs naturally and was around in caveman days before anyone ever started smoking.

So which group is right and are you going to quit smoking or not? Your not a doctor, you don't have the education nor is it your job to do the science. Your job is it make a decision to continue smoking or to stop. There is no way to know with 100% confidence which group is correct, but as for your decision to smoke or not, there is only one smart choice. That choice is obvious to most people.

But, guess what. A surprising number will not stop smoking. Instead they will rationalize their habit: "doctors don't know everything, I know this guy down the street and he smoked two packs a day and lived to be 89, well everyone has to die of something, who wants to live to be old anyway, My cousin never smoked a day in his life and died at 39, oh I'll quit after tax season, if I quit smoking I'll gain weight and die of diabetes, if cigarrettes were that bad for you they wouldn't sell them".

Both of my parents were intelligent, educated and smokers; I lost both of them to emphysema many years ago.

Occam wrote:


fathersforlife.org/articles/gunter/Kyoto_7.htm

www.oism.org/pproject/

www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-vie...-still-be-wrong.html

I can find a lot of examples where the majority have been wrong in the past.

Binford wrote:



So, in my smoking example, you would continue to smoke because majorities are not alway right? If so I'll add it to the list of rationalizations.

Key phrase here is "majorities are not always right".

I guess I could ask you to explain why some people smoke all their lives and never get lung cancer and others that never picked up a cigarette do.

Binford wrote:


Yes, so? Are you implying the minority opinion is alway right?



I guess I could be coy and say it is because they die of heart disease or emphysema before they get cancer. But obviously smoking is not the only factor that determines onset of lung cancer. There are two likely reasons. One, for whatever reason, the victim was born genetically predisposed to getting cancer and is therefore sensitive to yet poorly understood environmental factors - one of which may be second hand smoke. The other is Radon which is the second leading risk factor for lung cancer in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society. Likewise certain individuals are geneticialy more resistant to cancer and or just get lucky because these cellular processes involve a certain degree of chance.

But smoking is by far the number one risk factor. Four out of Five people who have lung cancer were smokers.

Ok, so are you going to answer my question?

Never implied that the minority was always right. In reading your responses in past postings your set on man and his "greenhouses gases" as the major cause of global warming. Because a majority of scientists as you put it, (Phrasing may not be exact, but you and everybody else reading this know what I'am trying to say) say so.

I cut and paste the below statement from this article.

www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-vie...-still-be-wrong.html

"To shut down debate is unscientific. Science progresses by observation and deduction, by setting up hypotheses and testing them. Allowing one view to be pushed forward with no dissent sets a precedent that will stifle innovative thinking. Whatever Al Gore may believe, there is an even more inconvenient truth: he could be wrong."

If this isn't the question your wanting me to answer, be more direct and I will be more than happy to.

Binford wrote:


Debate is not shut down and Al Gore is not part of the scientific debate, he is a politician. The exchange of ideas within the science community is continuous, lively and often contentious. That is how science has always been done. Its not like school where everything is layed out nice and neat and clinical in a text book. Scientist are often passionate about ideas. But those ideas have to run the gauntlet of skepticism from their piers and the good ideas eventually rise to the top and the bad ones sink. AGW rose to the top and the basic tenets of AGW are well accepted now, most of the work is in the related details. Nothing has emerged to cast doubt on the basic theory. It is in the political sphere where the AGW is hottly contested, not within the science community. It's just like the debate around smoking all over again.


Binford wrote:


This was my question

Occam wrote:

In reference to your question. I almost never believe anything that is told to me at face value. I always do my own research and make an educated decision. I will ask 10 people the same question different ways and see what kind of answer I get. On top of reading many different books and researching the internet.

In your question you make reference to "political talk show host, liberal anti-smoking alarmist, the internet, or another poster and Dr.'s", (I don't always believe Dr.'s either) and question which one is going to believable. I would have to say that the only one that you list that I would even consider would be the internet. And you and everybody else knows why. I would also take the advice of a Dr. or two after investigating their history. I guess I could ask you where it is that you get your information and all those fancy graphs that you post to try and prove your point. And you can't say the internet. But I guess the internet is only right when it comes to majorities.

"The vast majority of scientists used to believe the Sun revolved around the Earth; that didn't make it so. Nor did the Earth begin revolving around the Sun only after Copernicus convinced his colleagues to switch their votes at some Renaissance science symposium. Aristarchus, the Greek astronomer who first postulated in the Third Century BC that the Earth revolves around the Sun, wasn't wrong for nearly two millennia just because the main body of scientists mistakenly chose to believe Ptolemy's geocentric theory of the universe."

fathersforlife.org/articles/gunter/Kyoto_7.htm

I don't necessarily believe everything I read on the internet either, but I still question what caused the polar ice to expand and then recede, thousands of years ago? Why was the Middle East a lush green oasis, and now a sand box today? These things happened long before man had influence over much of anything in the world.

"The rise in temperature has been far from smooth. The early decades of the 20th century showed a distinct warming trend, peaking in the 1930s. However, from the 1940s through to the early 1970s, temperatures fell - sufficiently for commentators to raise the spectre of global cooling as we slid into the next ice age. A sudden jump in the mid-1970s heralded the return of a warming trend and led to the current concern about global warming.

But peak temperatures were recorded in 1998; since then, we have had eight years with no warming. In the meantime, CO2 levels have risen inexorably.

Since we cannot experiment to test the effect of this on climate, scientists rely on observation and, in parallel, produce mathematical models of how the climate system operates. These models - fed with a range of assumptions about how population and energy use may change - are run on the world's most powerful supercomputers to give projections for future climate changes. It is these on which tales of future catastrophe are based.

But the climate over the past century has not behaved as simple models predict. Scientists have tweaked the models to reproduce the stop/start pattern, by adding in the effect of volcanic eruptions and man-made sulphate aerosols. Because they can be made to simulate the actual pattern of 20th-century temperature change, the assumption is that they provide a good model of future changes.

What the modellers do not explain are documented changes to the climate during recorded history. During the Roman Warm Period, England was a significant wine producer, a thousand years later Greenland was settled and farmed during the Medieval Warm Period, and harvests failed and ice fairs were held on the frozen Thames in the Little Ice Age of the 17th and 18th centuries. None of it was a result of man-made CO2 emissions.

The answer may lie in the ultimate source of warmth and life on Earth: the sun. Solar activity varies in a cyclic way, with sunspots being an obvious sign of changes. The more spots, the more active the sun. On a simple level, we know that the Little Ice Age coincided with a very low level of solar activity. We also know that the sun is currently in a particularly active phase."

www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-vie...-still-be-wrong.html

www.c3headlines.com/greehouse-gases-atmo...2methanewater-vapor/



Like jdeere said I would have to say that the issue is more political than you think. I personally think that it is highly political. What isn't in this country, or any other country for that matter?