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Clockwork Orange
Doubletree Resident
(160.36.35.157) on 4/27/2015 - 2:24 p.m. says: ( 251 views
, 5 likes
)
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"It can't be considered "fact" even if there is 100% agreement among scientists" |
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Message Replied To ========== It's unfair to put this all on republicans. Yes they are doing everything it can to ensure SCIENCE does not happen in practice or in the schools, but there are scientists who are more than willing to come up with research to support the claim that climate change does not exist. Actually a more accurate statement would be even the right admits climate change is happening, but they question whether or not it's manmade. However 97% of climate scientists agree that it is manmade, and with that being a vast majority of the scientific community with expertise in the area then it's considered knowledge. Science doesn't need 100% agreement for it to be considered fact though that final 3% may still protest which is their right. ============================== And what is dangerous here, that some will acknowledge while others seemingly will not, is the inherent danger of falling back on "consensus" in the face of a politicized scientific issue. What it does is crowd out legitimate study and critique of the current mode of thinking, which is exactly what science is supposed to be about. Science is largely about positing hypotheses and then trying to poke holes in them. When a hypothesis becomes dogma and any hole-poking is called "denying" then we are no longer doing good science. I believe this has happened with climate change. This not the first time this kind of thing has happened. The cholesterol-fat hypothesis of obesity and heart disease is another; I think what we've seen with climate change is similar, at least in terms of the bad climate around the science being done. What happens when a majority of scientists and, crucially, then governments push a hypothesis as orthodoxy? Anybody wanting to critique the hypothesis, or test competing hypotheses, first gets frozen out by federal funding sources. Then they end up faced with two choices: they stop investigating these hypotheses (bad for science) or they seek funding from industry, where there are always parties interested in pursuing other possibilities. But what happens when they do the latter? Well, then they are "bought and paid for" by industry (bad for science). It becomes an absolute no-win situation for anyone trying to do real science on competing hypotheses, and as a result, a no-win situation for good science. Now, note that the above is an indictment of the process and the political climate around the climate change issue, not the hypothesis itself. I find it quite likely than our industrial and agricultural activities are influencing the climate, probably on both local and global scales. To what degree-- who knows? To what ends-- who knows? Can we do anything about it-- who knows? |
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-- Starred by: MichiGator Flea MiamiGator BurrGator Thunder -- "For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie-- deliberate, contrived, and dishonest-- but the myth-- persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy, Yale University Commencement speech, June 11, 1962 |
It can't be considered "fact" even if there is 100% agreement among scientists Clockwork Orange 4/27/2015 - 2:24 p.m.
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