The Great Global Warming Fizzle
As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term “climate change” when thermometers don’t oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other “deniers.” And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.
Any time science gets compared to religion it just, as Dean Keaton might say, makes me tired all over. It’s where you go when you can’t actually discuss science, because you have nothing.
So, if I do not possess the skills and knowledge to challenge a theory on its own ground, this means that particular theory is non-falsifiable?
On the other hand, you have to admit that the “climate change” is a pill hard to swallow. The theoretical background is difficult to master, the amount of data to analyse is huge, the consequences of accepting its conclusions are life-changing in a “frustrating” way. It is not like Relativity and GPSes or Quantum Mechanics and Computers where laymen have no inclination to challenge the theory behind simply because they tend to increase the comfort (at least in the near future), not diminish it. Do laymen possess skills and knowledge to test if such theories are falsifiable? No, they do not. But it doesn’t matter.
When it comes to “trusting” strangers, we tend to trust those who confirm our world view and question those who contradict it. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, most of us, science is a matter of trusting strangers.
First if all, there are people who challenge relativity on philosophical grounds (see Conservapedia), and it’s just as laughable as any other attempt based on ideology. You have to challenge on the merits, rather than try character assassination to make the theory seem unsavory.
You could try the same tactic the next time your physician, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Thinking your doctor is a miscreant won’t heal you of your malady.
You have two choices: become scientifically literate, or trust the experts. Though becoming scientifically literate means you will tend to trust the experts.
Problem is that to trust the experts you need to understand, somehow, that you do not have trust the person, per se, but the approach/education method/empirical data accumulated/theoretical structure incarnated in that person. And this understanding is also hard. We tend to function in a like/dislike paradigm rather than on a rational one where something is “trustable” if there is enough rational reason, proof and coherence with reality within acceptable margins to believe it.
I am saying all these because I believe the current “war” between scientists and non-scientists is (with some important exceptions) more or less a case of misunderstanding. And also believe that scientists should pay attention not only at what they present to the public but also at how. We have a tendency to forget that what is simple, clear, coherent to us is not so for the people outside academia. Also, we forget we have a bigger flexibility when it comes to discarding an idea proved wrong and embracing a new one that seems better (and not because we are better men but because it was part of our education). In our discourse we should always pay attention to these differences, we are the first to think that maybe, if our message is not received, there is something wrong with the way we formulated the message. As a matter of fact, if we understood photons can not be caught with butterfly nets, we should be able to understand why our message is not received.
“Concerning New Principalities Which Are Acquired By One’s Own Arms And Ability” Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter VI.
PV = energy, 101.325 joules/liter atmosphere. Capturing and concentrating a fossil fuel power plant’s CO2 cannot require less than 1/3 its generated energy, and more likely will consume half of it after adding in “sequestration.” Discarding 1/2 generated capacity takes precedence over planting the planet with trees or dumping bauxite waste into the Southern Ocean, “Red Mud By-Product” Chemical & Engineering News 88(48) 4 (2010).
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/green3.jpg
Strike a match lit – that is science. Pray the same match lit a second time – that’s faith. Be patient, and give generously.
1) That which supports religion supports religion.
2) That which ignores religion supports religion.
3) That which contradicts religion supports religion – test of faith!
4) Anybody who criticizes is thereby proven unqualified to comment – and must be destroyed lest god(s) take offense.
Faith is meaningless. The energy to orbit of a body is its mass in burned coal. NASA, ESA, Russia, India, and China all use rockets.
Coals’ enthalpies of combustion are 2.4-3.2×10^7 J/kg. Rule of thumb: 5 eV/O2 molecule consumded, thus 4×10^7 J/kg (-393.7 kJ/mol) for pure carbon oxidized to CO2. Body in low Earth orbit, v^2 = Rg, kinetic energy/kilogram = Rg/2. With R = 6×10^6 m (from the center of mass) and g =10 m/s^2, 3×10^7 J/kg (gee = 8.40 m/sec^2 at 300 miles altitude). A rocket uses 100X as much energy/kilogram. (The Space Scuttle directly used at least double a heavy booster’s energy for each net payload kilogram lofted, and more still given recovery of SSB shells vs. fabrication). “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled,” Richard P. Feynman
If you wish to save the planet, gene-gineer a faster more efficient RuBisCO, the slowest least efficient enzyme on Earth, 30% of all leaf soluble protein, and the photosynthesis bottleneck. “This is not the solution we are seeking.”
Climate science is science, and it has to play by the rules of science. Since scientists are human, they don’t always play by the rules.
For example, it seems pretty obvious that the CRU didn’t keep very good records when they developed their climate station time series. So they couldn’t tell how they’d done it and when FOIA requests came in for that, they couldn’t answer. But rather than admit it, and give out what they could, they stonewalled–and wound up looking like their results were wrong rather than their scientific housekeeping.
That has given climate science a bad rep among a lot of people. But it is still science and not religion. However, there are a substantial number of people who do have a spiritual Mother Earth thing going, and to the extent that climate scientists are associated with those people, they get tarred with the religion brush.