Knowledge systems from science to religion Climate religion

RabidAlpaca said:

The science is considered "settled" because of the mountain of supporting evidence, decades of scientific debate and research, and near unanimous conclusion of the scientific community. Making up complete bull**** because climate change doesn't mesh with your political world view is the antithesis of science and bears many similarities to a religion. If you believe you're right, publish your evidence, have it peer reviewed, change the world, and collect your Nobel prize. That's how science actually works.

Whining on debate forums like you're an expert on something you know nothing about makes you feel better though right? Now, tell us about how it's all an international liberal conspiracy.

Click to expand...

WCH said:

Thought you didn't care for globalist pigs.

http://modernhistoryproject.org/mhp?Article=FinalWarning

Click to expand...

RabidAlpaca said:

The science is considered "settled" because of the mountain of supporting evidence, decades of scientific debate and research, and near unanimous conclusion of the scientific community. Making up complete bull**** because climate change doesn't mesh with your political world view is the antithesis of science and bears many similarities to a religion. If you believe you're right, publish your evidence, have it peer reviewed, change the world, and collect your Nobel prize. That's how science actually works.

Whining on debate forums like you're an expert on something you know nothing about makes you feel better though right? Now, tell us about how it's all an international liberal conspiracy.

Click to expand...

Tim the plumber said:

......and religion inside science....

The idea that what we know is independant of what is real/correct takes a little time to think about. The sailors in Christopher Columbus's ships tried to mutiny because they knew that the earth was flat and they would fall of the edge if they went to far. Recently half of the world's top vulcanologist died when the volcanoe they were in blew up even though one of their collegues had warned them of the precise time it would errupt but they knew he was wrong in his model.

Knowing and being right are different things.

We all need to know. To have confidence in our understanding of the world.

Into this all the religions with their stories of how the world has come about and how to live and interact with other people around you have come. And been sucessful in providing the fabric that has allowed human society to work with large groups of people knowing the rules of how they must live.

That science is also a knowledge system is clear. And that it is often wrong. The acknowledgement of the wrong bit is what makes science so much better than religion. It allows us to advance and to change with new information. It is inherently disturbing and may well be less emotionally fulfilling than the religious approach to the world where all significant questions have been answered in the Koran/Bible/Whatever. In those the knowledge is settled. Doubt is scary.

I generally inhabit the AGW debate. It should be a scientific debate. It should involve the focus on the mechanisms involved. It should look at the degree of impact on humanity of any changes. It does not. It is the same as debating with the religious. The same tactics are used by those arguing for action. Some on the Skeptic side do the same.

The whole "Science is settled" is the opposite of science. It is the same as a religious thought process.

I have concluded that the doom cult of CAGW is not going to be killed off by any evidence. That rationalism is not what it is about. How do I change this?

The reason it is so inportant is that many millions of people in the world are dying unnecessarily due to this. The use of food as fuel has increased the price of basic fod stuff by 30% to 70%. Changes in US biofuel policy have sparked the Arab spring and the Syrian civil war. The flood of Africans trying to get across the Med and dying in the attempt is a factor in there not being enough to eat at home. The effect of making the world's poor pay $150 a year more for their food than they should be is to depress the growth of the economy of the poor greatly and exasperate the difference between rich and poor.

It is inportant.

Click to expand...

Nilly said:

Out of interest, what scientific background do you have?

Also, have you heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes_theorem or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference

Click to expand...

Tim the plumber said:

I have "A" levels in maths and physics, examinations taken at age 17/18 the entry tests for university.

What has stastical probability got to do with this thread?

Click to expand...

• Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as evidenced by increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, the widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.
• Most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to human activities.
• Benefits and costs of climate change for [human] society will vary widely by location and scale. Some of the effects in temperate and polar regions will be positive and others elsewhere will be negative.[8] Overall, net effects are more likely to be strongly negative with larger or more rapid warming.
• The range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time.
• The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g. flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification) and other global change drivers (e.g. land-use change, pollution, fragmentation of natural systems, over-exploitation of resources).

Click to expand...

Tim the plumber said:

Well, it is not for me to support the claim that we need to act to reduce CO2 emmissions that is for you.

Please state a prima facia case for such action. Your reply must have the following;

1, Choose a single bad thing that is a result of a slightly warmer world.

2, Then explain, in your own words, the mechanism for this to happen. Not the warming but the bit between the warming and the bad thing.

3, Then cite some supporting science that shows this mechanism. You will be expected to quote from it where it shows the mechanism. To show that you are not palming me off with a too long to read laod of drivel.

4, Then we can look at it and see if it is at all credible and to what extent it is bad. If it is less costly for each and any local council that has traffic lights to sort out then I will count it as insignificant.

Given that you clearly are 100% absolutely sure about this you should have no trouble with this challenge if it is based on scientific understanding of the issue. If your stance is due to faith then you will be unable to do anything other than shout.

Click to expand...

Tim the plumber said:

Well, it is not for me to support the claim that we need to act to reduce CO2 emmissions that is for you.

Please state a prima facia case for such action. Your reply must have the following;

1, Choose a single bad thing that is a result of a slightly warmer world.

2, Then explain, in your own words, the mechanism for this to happen. Not the warming but the bit between the warming and the bad thing.

3, Then cite some supporting science that shows this mechanism. You will be expected to quote from it where it shows the mechanism. To show that you are not palming me off with a too long to read laod of drivel.

4, Then we can look at it and see if it is at all credible and to what extent it is bad. If it is less costly for each and any local council that has traffic lights to sort out then I will count it as insignificant.

Given that you clearly are 100% absolutely sure about this you should have no trouble with this challenge if it is based on scientific understanding of the issue. If your stance is due to faith then you will be unable to do anything other than shout.

Click to expand...

RabidAlpaca said:

I'll make you a similarly appealing offer:

I don't believe in electrons, germs, or heliocentrism. Write me up an essay, with sources and full explanations as to why these things are real, so that I can promptly say "Nah, liberal shill" and ignore it. When you do that I'll explain basic, settled science to you as well.

Click to expand...

Tim the plumber said:

......and religion inside science....

The idea that what we know is independant of what is real/correct takes a little time to think about. The sailors in Christopher Columbus's ships tried to mutiny because they knew that the earth was flat and they would fall of the edge if they went to far. Recently half of the world's top vulcanologist died when the volcanoe they were in blew up even though one of their collegues had warned them of the precise time it would errupt but they knew he was wrong in his model.

Knowing and being right are different things.

We all need to know. To have confidence in our understanding of the world.

Into this all the religions with their stories of how the world has come about and how to live and interact with other people around you have come. And been sucessful in providing the fabric that has allowed human society to work with large groups of people knowing the rules of how they must live.

That science is also a knowledge system is clear. And that it is often wrong. The acknowledgement of the wrong bit is what makes science so much better than religion. It allows us to advance and to change with new information. It is inherently disturbing and may well be less emotionally fulfilling than the religious approach to the world where all significant questions have been answered in the Koran/Bible/Whatever. In those the knowledge is settled. Doubt is scary.

I generally inhabit the AGW debate. It should be a scientific debate. It should involve the focus on the mechanisms involved. It should look at the degree of impact on humanity of any changes. It does not. It is the same as debating with the religious. The same tactics are used by those arguing for action. Some on the Skeptic side do the same.

The whole "Science is settled" is the opposite of science. It is the same as a religious thought process.

I have concluded that the doom cult of CAGW is not going to be killed off by any evidence. That rationalism is not what it is about. How do I change this?

The reason it is so inportant is that many millions of people in the world are dying unnecessarily due to this. The use of food as fuel has increased the price of basic fod stuff by 30% to 70%. Changes in US biofuel policy have sparked the Arab spring and the Syrian civil war. The flood of Africans trying to get across the Med and dying in the attempt is a factor in there not being enough to eat at home. The effect of making the world's poor pay $150 a year more for their food than they should be is to depress the growth of the economy of the poor greatly and exasperate the difference between rich and poor.

It is inportant.

Click to expand...

Nilly said:

I'm from England so I'm familiar with them. Not sure when you did them but I'm pretty sure Bayes Theorem is covered in S2. To any American's reading it's basically just HS math plus a few freshman math course concepts.

In any case, your post kind of illustrates my point. Bayes theorem and inference are a method by which we make predictions based on a combination of 'prior odds' and new information. It is a pretty universal theory in that it has applications in most areas you can think of. It applies twice here, firstly in the 'progress' of scientific knowledge and research in general, and secondly in the development of climate models. In fact, Bayesian modeling is a key concept in modeling of pretty much any system. See here slides from a University of Cambridge lecture ( http://mlg.eng.cam.ac.uk/zoubin/talks/lect1bayes.pdf). On slide 8 you'll see it talk about 'priors' when modeling complex systems.

Essentially, when we come across new information (in this case, regarding climate change) that new information is not considered in a vacuum. Instead, we use bayesian inference to take the evidence, apply it to our priors (i.e. what we already know) and update our understanding based on what we used to know and what we now know. The literature on climate change is well sourced and robust. Barring some paradigm shift in thinking (these shifts are rare - e.g. the earth is round, quantum mechanics is real) new evidence does not completely up-end existing climate change theory. When you talk about climate change research not being 'settled' you're either saying that there are uncertainties that still need to be resolved (and everyone would agree with you) or you're betting on a paradigm shift of such scale and scope that it renders prior work entirely worthless. This doesn't really happen. Even when paradigm shift occurred in the past (e.g. the discovery of relativity and the cosmic speed limit) it didn't invalidate the prior works of Newton and his laws of motion. It just pointed out inaccuracies (particularly at high speeds and long distances) and improved on it.

Essentially, you're entirely mis-using the term 'the science is settled'. No, science is never fully settled, there is always something to learn and improve on. But that does not mean that decades of scientific literature are just going to be overturned at the snap of the finger.

In the future we may improve on the theories of quantum mechanics or gravity, we may grow to understand the underlying mechanics behind them and our measurements and understanding of them will improve. But they're never going to be proven wrong. The inverse square law will still hold true even if we find a carrier particle for gravity. Likewise, the basic tenets behind climate change theory (that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that greenhouse gas emissions warm the planet, that we emit a hell of a lot of CO2, that the world is warming) are not suddenly going to become untrue today in some 'aha!' moment, which is what climate change deniers seem to think.

Where I will say there is the most potential for reversal is with the impact the change has on human civilization and the response we have to it. The agreed tenets of climate change are pretty clear. As per the IPCC:



Whether this will doom human life is pure speculation, it's impossible to predict the human response to this. But no scientific body of national or international standing maintains a formal opinion dissenting from any of these main points.

Believe it or not, scientists actually do have a clue about how science works.

Click to expand...

vegas giants said:

All that work has been done for you on the NASA AGW pages

Click to expand...

RabidAlpaca said:

I'll make you a similarly appealing offer:

I don't believe in electrons, germs, or heliocentrism. Write me up an essay, with sources and full explanations as to why these things are real, so that I can promptly say "Nah, liberal shill" and ignore it. When you do that I'll explain basic, settled science to you as well.

Click to expand...

fredmertzz said:

If you're going to go down the line of Descartes to define knowledge, then of course we cannot know anything (except, according to Descartes, that we exist) and would simply throw our arms in the air.


But please be reasonable. If you have overwhelming evidence that a causal relationship exists and the effect of the cause will have devastating consequences, what's the more reasonable response: 1) Try to prevent the cause, in order to prevent the effect? or 2) Accept that we cannot "know" anything, embrace that the possibility exists that we may be wrong despite the evidence and choose to do nothing.

If you choose option 2 consistently in life, it would be a very short life.

If you want to argue the premises of the cause & effect, that's a different conversation. But in the philosophical conversation that you are trying to have: choosing to act in a way that goes against what you believe to be true is not a healthy way to approach life.

Now the question becomes: Is our belief of knowledge of doom and gloom confident enough to warrant the effects of trying to stop it (namely, what you addressed above). Is there a more efficient way? I won't pretend to know the answer, but I believe it's a question worth asking. And a question that is constantly being tackled in the efforts to create renewable energy.

Click to expand...

Tim the plumber said:

But, appart from being able to sound good you don't.

I have posted the challenge to show that there is a prima facia case for action to reduce CO2 and you have squarely not answered it all save an appeal to authority.

This is dogma and faith on show.

Click to expand...

Nilly said:

No you asked me what statistical probability has to do with this thread and I answered you, in detail, and have described it's relevance. If you still don't get it I'd consider re-doing those A levels you're so proud of.

Not to mention, if you don't understand things like the bayesian framework behind many models how do you expect to understand a well written answer to your question.

Click to expand...

Nilly said:

Essentially, when we come across new information (in this case, regarding climate change) that new information is not considered in a vacuum. Instead, we use bayesian inference to take the evidence, apply it to our priors (i.e. what we already know) and update our understanding based on what we used to know and what we now know. The literature on climate change is well sourced and robust. Barring some paradigm shift in thinking (these shifts are rare - e.g. the earth is round, quantum mechanics is real) new evidence does not completely up-end existing climate change theory. When you talk about climate change research not being 'settled' you're either saying that there are uncertainties that still need to be resolved (and everyone would agree with you) or you're betting on a paradigm shift of such scale and scope that it renders prior work entirely worthless. This doesn't really happen. Even when paradigm shift occurred in the past (e.g. the discovery of relativity and the cosmic speed limit) it didn't invalidate the prior works of Newton and his laws of motion. It just pointed out inaccuracies (particularly at high speeds and long distances) and improved on it.

Essentially, you're entirely mis-using the term 'the science is settled'. No, science is never fully settled, there is always something to learn and improve on. But that does not mean that decades of scientific literature are just going to be overturned at the snap of the finger.

In the future we may improve on the theories of quantum mechanics or gravity, we may grow to understand the underlying mechanics behind them and our measurements and understanding of them will improve. But they're never going to be proven wrong. The inverse square law will still hold true even if we find a carrier particle for gravity. Likewise, the basic tenets behind climate change theory (that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that greenhouse gas emissions warm the planet, that we emit a hell of a lot of CO2, that the world is warming) are not suddenly going to become untrue today in some 'aha!' moment, which is what climate change deniers seem to think.

Click to expand...

Tim the plumber said:

Can you attempt to find a single bad thing that is likely to happen due to a slightly warmer world?

Click to expand...

Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted and trees are flowering sooner.

Effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves. Taken as a whole, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time...

Hurricane-associated storm intensity and rainfall rates are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm. Projections of future climate over the U.S. suggest that the recent trend towards increased heavy and economically damaging precipitation events will continue. This trend is projected to occur even in regions where total precipitation is expected to decrease, such as the Southwest.

Sea level will rise 1-4 feet by 2100. In the next several decades, storm surges and high tides could combine with sea level rise and land subsidence to further increase flooding in many regions, especially cities on the coasts. Sea level rise will continue past 2100 because the oceans take a very long time to respond to warmer conditions at the Earth’s surface. Ocean waters will therefore continue to warm and sea level will continue to rise for many centuries at rates equal to or higher than those of the current century.
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

Click to expand...

Northeast. Heat waves, heavy downpours and sea level rise pose growing challenges to many aspects of life in the Northeast. Infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries and ecosystems will be increasingly compromised.

Northwest. Changes in the timing of streamflow reduce water supplies for competing demands. Sea level rise, erosion, inundation, risks to infrastructure and increasing ocean acidity pose major threats. Increasing wildfire, insect outbreaks and tree diseases are already causing widespread tree and plant die-off.

Southeast. Sea level rise poses widespread and continuing threats to the region’s economy and environment. Extreme heat will affect health, energy, agriculture and more. Morbidity and mortality from asthma and other respiratory disorders in particular will increase. Decreased water availability will have economic and environmental impacts, especially on agriculture.

Midwest. Extreme heat, heavy downpours and flooding will affect infrastructure, health, agriculture, forestry, transportation, air and water quality, and more. Severe weather, including devastating tornados, will increase in frequency and severity. Climate change will also exacerbate a range of risks to the Great Lakes wildlife.

Southwest. Increased heat, drought and insect outbreaks, all linked to climate change, have increased wildfires. Declining water supplies, reduced agricultural yields, health impacts in cities due to heat, and flooding and erosion in coastal areas are additional concerns.
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

Click to expand...

ataraxia said:

Sure.



For specifics of impacts on different regions in the US:

Click to expand...

Tim the plumber said:

Can you attempt to find a single bad thing that is likely to happen due to a slightly warmer world?

The likely wrod in there covers all the long winded arrogant drivel you posted in an evaision of the challenge.

Click to expand...

RAMOSS said:

Increased extreme weather causing disruption of agriculture.
The melting of the glaciers and reduction of the ice caps, causing the oceans to rise, innovating the coastlines, and causing areas to not be able to be inhabited due to the salt water rising.
Coastal cities needing to be have sea dams or be abandoned.
Increase of sea surges.. causing more economic damage to coastal cities.
Sea islands becomes uninhabitable.
The warming of the oceans will cause lobster to migrate north, ruining the Maine fisherman's livelihood (It's started already).

Click to expand...

Tim the plumber said:

SINGLE.

MECHANISM

Supporting actual science. Showing the degree.

Not shouting down the other side and not just appealing to authority.

Click to expand...

RAMOSS said:

Water expands when it heats. The Meltiong of the ice caps and glaciers increase the water in the oceans

As for 'appeal to authority'.. It seems to me that you are usign that to reject any evidence.
Causes of Sea Level Rise: What the Science Tells Us (2013) | Union of Concerned Scientists

Click to expand...