Pathological Science...
A nice essay on the pathological science of global warming...
Pathological science has erupted in fields like psychology and medicine, but not often in the hard sciences. In physics, Cold Fusion claims were discredited very quickly. Now, Global Warming is a fraud simply because climatology is not a hard science. That's what Freeman Dyson, who knows what physics can do, meant by saying that the models "do not begin to describe the real world that we live in."The climate is not "just basic physics," as some people claim. Basic physics is great for understanding CO2 in lab jars and planets in space, but it has no complete accounting for a wooden kitchen chair, because wood is far too complex a material. Nobody has a complete physical understanding of wood --- there are too many different cellular layers, molecules, and unknown interactions, all produced by a genetic code that is just beginning to be understood. We only know the genomes for a few plants, and we don't know how their genes are expressed in cells and proteins. So forget about applying basic physics and chemistry to kitchen chairs. Plants and trees are hypercomplex, like the climate.Modern science fraud seems to come from the Left, which makes it especially weird because the Left claims to be all in favor of science. Marxism itself was a scientific fraud, of course. In 1848 Marx and Engels claimed to have a "scientific" (wissenschaftlich) theory of history. They predicted that communism would first arise in England, because it was the most advanced capitalist nation. (Not) They predicted that centralized planning would work. (Not) They predicted that the peasants and workers would dedicate their lives to the Socialist State, and stop caring about themselves and their families. (Not). They predicted that sovietization would lead to greater economic performance. (Not). And then, when seventy years of Soviet, Chinese, Eastern European, and North Korean history showed Marx's predictions to be wrong, wrong and wrong again, they still claimed to be "scientific." That's pathological science --- fraud masquerading as science.(Current Marxists are more anti-scientific, because they've finally figured out that the facts don't support them, but they still haven't given up their fantasy life. Millenarian cults never give up, even when the facts go against them.)Scientists love to cite the historic "martyrs of science" --- like Galileo Galilei, a great genius who was forced late in life to recant his views on the solar system by Pope Leo X. Or Giordano Bruno, who was actually burned at the stake. But the scientific establishment itself can be easily seduced by power, just like the Church was in Galileo's time. Science is just done by human beings. So we get plainly political editorials in magazines like Scientific American and Science. They jumped on Global Warming superstition before the facts were in.Last year MIT Professor Richard Lindzen published an amazing expose in the Wall Street Journal editorial Page. It is called "Climate of Fear: Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence." Why are real scientists not speaking up enough against the Global Warming fraud? Well, some have been fired from their jobs, and others are keeping their heads down:"In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions."If scientists were totally honest, they would memorialize Trofimko Lysenko just like they celebrate Galileo. In some ways, Lysenko's name should be as well-known as Galileo, as a stern warning of what can so easily go wrong. There are wonderful scientists, who must be honest, or they will fail. And then there are some corrupt scientists who are not honest. It's really that simple. Scientists can be demagogues, too. We should not pretend that all are what they should be. They're not. Fortunately, healthy science has all kinds of built-in checks and balances. Pathological science circumvents those.Some scientists rationalize this corruption of their vocation by saying that people can lie for a good cause. The record shows otherwise. Fraudulent science and science journalism has led to AIDS going out of control; to DDT being banned and malaria gaining a new lease on life in Africa; to decades of famines in Russia; to children being badly mis-educated on such basics as reading and arithmetic; to end endless slew of unjustified health scares, like Mad Cow; and to a worldwide Leftist campaign cynically aiming to gain international power and enormous sums of money, based on a simple, unscientific fraud.When the truth-tellers in society begin to sell out and tell lies for some ideological goal, people end up dying.
posted by GayandRight @ 11:55 AM
4 Comments:
People like you are one of the greatest threats to the conservative movement. Society is divided into three groups: liberals, conservatives, and the more or less non-political. Since liberals rarely turn into conservatives, and conservatives rarely turn into liberals, its the educated non-political types that decide who governs.
There is nothing that makes educated persons butt pucker more than these sorts of "global warming fraud" conspiracy theories. This idea that scientists are really opposed the global warming but are afraid to speak out is bullshit.
The problem is not scientists are being bullied into supporting global warming, its that every time a theory opposing global warming has been proposed, its been debunked by the scientific community.
Just imagine the size of your supposed conspiracy. Look at all the scientific organizations that have formally accepted global warming. Are they all being intimidated by some giant liberal mafia. Look at all the money being spent over the fight for the arctic . Are all these governments fooled by liberals into thinking the arctic will melt ??
On the one side, you have every major scientific organization except the association of petroleum engineers. You have almost every major country that has taken a position (even Bush and Harper have now caved in).
Against them you have arrayed a tinny handful of scientists. Many of whom disagree with each other. Many of whom get lots of money from oil companies and many of whom have questionable academic credentials .
It is like the Toronto Maple Leafs loosing 25-1 and blaming the loss on a bad ref. You loose all credibility.
People like you are one of the greatest threats to the conservative movement. Society is divided into three groups: liberals, conservatives, and the more or less non-political. Since liberals rarely turn into conservatives, and conservatives rarely turn into liberals, its the educated non-political types that decide who governs.
There is nothing that makes educated persons butt pucker more than these sorts of "global warming fraud" conspiracy theories. This idea that scientists are really opposed the global warming but are afraid to speak out is bullshit.
The problem is not scientists are being bullied into supporting global warming, its that every time a theory opposing global warming has been proposed, its been debunked by the scientific community.
Just imagine the size of your supposed conspiracy. Look at all the scientific organizations that have formally accepted global warming. Are they all being intimidated by some giant liberal mafia. Look at all the money being spent over the fight for the arctic . Are all these governments fooled by liberals into thinking the arctic will melt ??
On the one side, you have every major scientific organization except the association of petroleum engineers. You have almost every major country that has taken a position (even Bush and Harper have now caved in).
Against them you have arrayed a tinny handful of scientists. Many of whom disagree with each other. Many of whom get lots of money from oil companies and many of whom have questionable academic credentials .
It is like the Toronto Maple Leafs loosing 25-1 and blaming the loss on a bad ref. You loose all credibility.
Man kind has enough trouble correctly mapping the human body let alone understanding the ecosystem of the whole planet and how it reacts under ceartin criteria. Hell the O-zone layer is repairing itself, and I doubt it has anything to do with someone that mankind has done to help it. If you think of the planet as an organism in a way it's naturally going to adapt to ceartin situations don't you think? Either way were nothing more then a cancerous sore on the planet.
what's it like being profoundly ignorant? is the weather different? does your sunny outlook on the matter of global warming afford you a kind of solace not available elsewhere in your life? I sincerely hope you have no progeny, and if you do, I can only imagine how comical this viewpoint will appear decades hence. "grandpa was a flat-earther" they'll say, and that will be one of the principle traits by which you'll be remembered.
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