"The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact." - KURT GÖDEL
"According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
A guiding principle for accepting claims of catastrophic global events, miracles, incredible healing, invisible friends, or fill in the blank is:
“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” - Carl Sagan
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken
I would add irrational and highly delusional to the mix when faith requires one to accept magical violations of the well known, well tested or easily demonstrated laws of Nature. - PWL
"Science is Progress and the Future. Faith is regression to the Dark Ages." - PWL
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” - Carl Sagan
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." - Alfred Korzybski
"Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence." - James Randi
"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch." - Novalis
"Nullius in verba. Take no one's word for it." - Motto of the Royal Society
"I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS." - Richard Feynman
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley
“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein
"Science is empirical. Knowing the answer means nothing. Testing your knowledge means everything." - Lawrence Krauss
"Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism - and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency." - Stephen Jay Gould
"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work." - James Randi
CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman
Adapted from the Caltech commencement address given in 1974.
During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas–which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn’t work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked–or very little of it did.
But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFOS, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I’ve concluded that it’s not a scientific world.
I beat you to it David Brin. I called for the prosecution of Al Gore on fraud charges way back on August 28th, 2009. I’m sure I’m not the first either.
Ocean acidification doesn’t scare me that much… it is relatively linear. And thus ought to be reversible.
“What frightens me are the vast stores of methane locked in permafrost or hydrate ices, in arctic seas. Those might see a sudden tipping point, as the planet heats up, abruptly releasing megatons of the stuff into the atmosphere, causing yet faster, accelerated warming. This kind of runaway effect is nonlinear and cannot be reversed by any conceivable kind of geoengineering.” – David Brin[1] (plus all subsequent block quotes in this article).
You’re really funny David Blin, I mean seriously you’re kidding right? You must be kidding because that is so sad. Read the rest of this entry »
“Those that are proponents of the alleged AGW hypothesis need to either to put up and show hard conclusive evidence that humans are causing global warming climate change, or shut up if they can’t.
The best anyone has been able to do is to produce nothing but the hot air of a weak statistical correlation that can’t even withstand basic scrutiny.
Those making the claims must show the evidence. Those making extraordinary claims – as those alleging the AGW hypothesis are – must show extraordinary evidence. So far not even ordinary evidence. That is a failure by the proponents to put up.“
So put up or shut up.
Now to David Brin’s silly political claim that isn’t supportable.
“They see 100% of scientists as corrupt… while the oilcos are all sweet reason innocents.” – David Brin [1]
David Brin, that is utter nonsense. David, you’ve got some weird conspiracy nutter chatter going on upstairs if you actually believe that. Where the heck do you David get the idea that people “see 100% of scientists as corrupt”?
David set aside your whacked in the head beliefs that allow you to create generalized falsisms like that and embrace actual science rather than slosh political dialog.
I don’t deny anything that is actually real. I do deny made up crap because, well, it’s made up or doesn’t reflect the objective reality of Nature.
Prove to me the alleged AGW hypothesis is real in the actual objective reality of Nature were we exist and there can be no way that I’d deny it once I’m convinced. In the process I will certainly challenge any proof or evidence, that is the scientific method after all. If it doesn’t stand up to challenges then the alleged AGW hypothesis should fall (as it looks like it has).
You’ve got it wrong and backwards David Brin, it isn’t a war on science, it’s a war FOR hard verifiable and open science with integrity and the highest standards that the scientific method can bring to bear on climate science!
“The schism over global climate change (GCC) has become an intellectual chasm, across which everyone perceives the other side as Koolaid-drinkers. Although I have mixed views of my own about the science of GCC, and have closely grilled a number of colleagues who are front-line atmospheric scientists (some at JPL), I’m afraid all the anecdotes and politics-drenched “questions” flying about right now aren’t shedding light. They are, in fact, quite beside the point.
That is because science itself is the main issue: its relevance and utility as a decision-making tool.” – David Brin [1]
David Brin wasn’t discussing the science of climate change at all in the above article. Instead he’s making some false arguments. Yes, “science itself is the main issue” and cool-aid drinking by anybody should be saved for fun summer days at the beach. Unfortunately David Brin takes some huge gulps himself gorging on the political fumes put off by the alleged AGW hypothesis instead of dealing with ensuring that hard science is applied to climate science.
These are excellent videos that make many excellent points about the tracking of temperature data.
It is a scientific crime to invent and fill in missing data, certainly without indicating that that was done and precisely where and how.
However the bigger point is that averaging temperatures itself is a violation of the principle of the integrity of the data as averaging of temperature data “fills in” the “temperature” of the geographic locations in-between stations which is making up those intermediate temperatures and that doesn’t reflect reality with certainty.
Made up data is fraud. Pure and simple. It is misleading. It distorts objective reality.
The fog that has been hiding the conflicts of interest and predetermined agenda driven propaganda of the IPCC is lifting. The Economist Magazine [1] has a few choice and pointed words:
“THE past month has not been a good one for Rajendra Pachauri (pictured above), the charismatic chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and director general of TERI, an Indian research institute. His numerous positions on boards and industrial advisory panels, in India and beyond, have led to charges of conflicts of interest. His intemperate defence of mistakes about Himalayan glaciers in the most recent IPCC report had to be followed by a public statement of regret as it became clear that the IPCC had indeed been wrong—and that its source has been a magazine article rather than a piece of scientific literature. And, to cap it all, public mockery of mildly salacious passages in his recently published novel (he writes poetry, too) has added further spice, if not substance, to the stories.” Read the rest of this entry »
It’s official, Obama named the storm “Snowmageddon“!
Snowmaggedon, the epic snow storms of 2010, descends up on the east coast of the USA. Snowmaggedon is just a few categories below The Day After Tomorrow as far as snow disasters go.
Snowmaggeddon 2010 – NOAA/NASA
“The North American blizzard of 2010 is a winter storm and severe weather event creating potential for historic snowfall totals in the Middle Atlantic states, possibly eclipsing the Knickerbocker Storm of 1922. The blizzard stretched from Mexico and New Mexico (USA) to New Jersey, killing people in New Mexico, Maryland and Virginia.
Rajendra Pachauri is on the defense as his world is crashing in on him with his frauds coming to light.
Indeed Rajendra Pachauri the hard facts of actual verifiable, repeatable, experiment based hard science will prevail over the propaganda faith based nonsense of the flawed AGW Non-Hypothesis that you propagate.
You’re headed to Jail Rajendra Pachauri. You’re cell mates will be Al Gore and Maurice Strong, among others.
Actual Science vs Faith in Anthropomorphic Global Warming Climate Change (click to enlarge).
“One of the key features of Hansen’s global warming theory is that the polar regions are supposed to warm much faster than the rest of the planet. The image below is from his classic 1984 paper, and shows that Antarctica is supposed to warm up 6C after a doubling of CO2. If the cooling trend which UAH shows continues, it will take Antarctica a very long time to warm up six degrees.” – [1]
There is very little difference between what Hansen is doing and the old time soothsayers. Sure Hansen has computers with which to ply his magical tricks of math and dead tree entrails are at the core of his “dire doomsday” climate predictions. It’s the same old confidence game just different means of deception.
“THE past month has not been a good one for Rajendra Pachauri (pictured above), the charismatic chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and director general of TERI, an Indian research institute. His numerous positions on boards and industrial advisory panels, in India and beyond, have led to charges of conflicts of interest. His intemperate defence of mistakes about Himalayan glaciers in the most recent IPCC report had to be followed by a public statement of regret as it became clear that the IPCC had indeed been wrong—and that its source has been a magazine article rather than a piece of scientific literature. And, to cap it all, public mockery of mildly salacious passages in his recently published novel (he writes poetry, too) has added further spice, if not substance, to the stories.”
Snowmaggeddon 2010 – NOAA/NASA
Paths To Knowledge (dot Science) 