Climate change: We haven't experienced anything like this in the past 2,000 yearsClimate scientists

For some reason, progressive folks want to marry democracy and group think with science. That it just doesn't work that way seems to annoy them...

 

I believe you can find papers that change assumptions, etc., and come up with different results. The thing is, they just aren't gaining any traction among climate related scientists in proposing that climat isn't changing in a way that is seriously problematic and caused by human activity.

Your second paragraph shows my argument in practice. We measure likelihood and then create policy. Our investment in our military is done in that way (outside of congressmen who champion home state expeniture). Our disaster services witin the US are funded based on the likelihood and costs of various kinds of disasters. Yes, they don't get the budget to cover everything projected, but that's part of the deal - cost of disasters X likelihood of those disasters, moderated by budget realities.

 

???
All our actions are decided through political processes. That is how we make decisions.

The HOPE is that those making the decisions include science as a source of information.

When science is totally ignored, we SHOULD see that as a problem.

 

Thanks for missing the point. It is instructive. Science isn't a democracy. That is the point. Science is about what is provable. Policy is based on possible. the two should never mix. Why? Because science isn't determinative enough here to provide enough of a guarantee that the possible is necessary to act on . Your last sentence is a gem. You actively ignore the science because the group think is more in line with your preference. And that is a problem. I agree.

 

That's not quite true.

The natural sciences have no method of positive proof. So, absolute answers are essentially impossible.

For example, there is no way to prove that e=mc^2 is always true. Unfortunately, humans can't deal with "always", because we don't know it all. Newton thought he got it right, having missed what Einstein discovered. Newton didn't guess that the speed of light was involved.

Theories (including that of Einstein) gather confidence as serious attempts at falsification fail and as they prove useful as tools in further research.

And, a lot of work goes into error analysis and understanding of confidence intervals, giving an idea of how likely a conclusion may be.

 

You shouldn't mistake statistical confidence with actual confidence. Big mistake.

 

First, are you absolutely sure absolute answers are impossible? Because if you aren't, then absolute answers are possible; but if you are, then that's an absolute, and that's impossible; which means absolutes are possible...Hey! How do I get out this loopy hat? (Silly kid, Trix are for Rabbits)

Are you claiming greater insight than Newton and Einstein? That's a hefty load. Here's an absolute proven daily, gravity. Try it, but don't get too high--gravity is not the forgiving kind, no matter what the consensus is.

 

First, you say "science is about what is provable". This is false in an important sense, as the natural sciences have no way to prove a theory to be true.

THEN, you say that "science isn't determinative enough". What does THAT mean in light of the above? Are you suggesting that science is so wrong that we should ignore the results of scientific investigations?

The thing is, there will always be outliers - scientists who suggest that there are oversights or that we don't have complete knowledge.

 

"Acutal confidence" - cute! LOL!

 

Omniscience is not a requirement for knowledge. However, I am willing to wager everything I have that the universe will still be here tomorrow, with absolute confidence. Hell, I'd even bet 12 years from now commercial jets will still be jetting all over the globe at record levels, and California will still be above water. (That might be a shame, though none the less, absolutely true.)

 

LOL.. I have to laugh. Natural science have myriads of proofs. To assert otherwise is to actively ignore the actual science. I know, sometimes I use large words in complicated sentences, so I will be clear. The "science" of climate is in its infancy. I would no more base my public policy on it than I would the ranting tantrums of three year olds. So it isn't that it's wrong so much as those who devine it aren't able to actually correctly create a narrative based on it. And yes, there are always outliers, which means that policy then has to be flexible enough to accommodate for the number of times, and the inconsistencies of it.

 

Scientific method may be analyzed.

There isn't any question about this. Scientific method has no possiblyt of positive proof. It depeds on falsification. And, there is no timelimit on that. People are still looking for holes in Einstein's work.

The Newton example had nothing to do with me, for heaven's sake. It had to do with noting that Newton didn't know it all, and thus had no way of knowning that his work on gravity etc. was flawed. Positive proof in nature always faces that problem, and it is recognized by scientific method for that reason.

 

Hmmm. Guess Louis Pasteur and Jonas Salk must be witch doctors, bewitching us with their magic potions. (You know, with reality proving you wrong every day, you might want to put on your thinking cap and do a little rethink on your metaphysics because it's leading you to bad physics.)

Ayn Rand: "Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter’s stomach, is an absolute."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/absolutes.html


BTW: Just how does one know there is no way of knowing? There are a lot of contradictions in your logic.

Ayn Rand: '“It’s logical, but logic has nothing to do with reality.” Logic is the art or skill of non-contradictory identification. Logic has a single law, the Law of Identity, and its various corollaries. If logic has nothing to do with reality, it means that the Law of Identity is inapplicable to reality. If so, then: a. things are not what they are; b. things can be and not be at the same time, in the same respect, i.e., reality is made up of contradictions. If so, by what means did anyone discover it? By illogical means. (This last is for sure.) The purpose of that notion is crudely obvious. Its actual meaning is not: “Logic has nothing to do with reality,” but: “I, the speaker, have nothing to do with logic (or with reality).” When people use that catch phrase, they mean either: “It’s logical, but I don’t choose to be logical” or: “It’s logical, but people are not logical, they don’t think—and I intend to pander to their irrationality.”'

You're not one of those, are you?

Dr. Leonard Peikoff: "
“Certain” represents an assessment of the evidence for a conclusion; it is usually contrasted with two other broad types of assessment: “possible” and “probable.” . . .

Idea X is “certain” if, in a given context of knowledge, the evidence for X is conclusive. In such a context, all the evidence supports X and there is no evidence to support any alternative . . . .

You cannot challenge a claim to certainty by means of an arbitrary declaration of a counter-possibility, . . . you cannot manufacture possibilities without evidence . . . .

All the main attacks on certainty depend on evading its contextual character . . . .

The alternative is not to feign omniscience, erecting every discovery into an out-of-context absolute, or to embrace skepticism and claim that knowledge is impossible. Both these policies accept omniscience as the standard: the dogmatists pretend to have it, the skeptics bemoan their lack of it. The rational policy is to discard the very notion of omniscience. Knowledge is contextual—it is knowledge, it is valid, contextually."http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/certainty.html

I know, you're a skeptic. That explains everything, absolutely, positively, and most assuredly.

And lasty, just how is it that you "know" that Newton didn't "know" it all? Damn. There's one of those pesky contradictions.

 

I'm pretty sure you can make a good long list of events that are extremely unlikely to happen.

I just don't know why you would bother.

 

How do you know that the evidence for Einstein's theory is "conclusive" under all conditions?

What would scientific method look like if it were constructed to be limited to "a given context of knowledge".

We have proof today that Newton's model is incorrect. Science allows for proving theories to be false.

 

Your assertion, prove it isn’t. As stated, knowledge is contextual. But hey, your head, put in it whatever you wish.

 

Not unlikely, won’t. Period.

 

Is there any level of warming for which this is not true?

will the claimed benefits be equally spread around the world?

Would the warming that you propose be sufficient to melt the ice of the world?

 

Won't hear about that on the MSM will ya.

 

Now, you're accepting what I said - that science depends on falsification, not on positive proof.

 

The issue wasn't knowledge - it was proof.

And, the problem with proof is that one must know all parameters. Proof works in math, because definitions are complete - there isn't some unknown factor. Scientific method is constructed such that it provides no method of proof - depending instead on falsification. It recognizes that we don't know it all.

I'm not sure what your point is with that first sentence. Omniscience is complete and accurate knowledge of everything. Obviously, human knowledge doesn't approach that.

We can ask science for a current understanding of the likelihood of various outcomes. And, as you point out we could bet on them with a general understanding of the odds. Our government does that. They work on understanding how much military we need, how much FEMA needs in order to give some level of support for expected natural disasters, how much to invest in remediation for climate change, how much to invest in transportation, education, etc. Whether they do a good job of that is a separate issue, of course. And, in some cases many decision makers aren't even interested in input from those who study these topics.

 

Science says water is H2O, are.you suggesting that's not an absolute because some undefined, possibility in the future might prove it's C2O. That's absurd. I bet you love the Heisenber Principle, the greatest fraud ever perpetuate by a physicist. Reminds me of Lysenko’s theory of Genetics.

BTW: Under your theory of uncertainty, are we living in a real universe or a Matrix.?

 

Scientific method involves figuring out how processes work. H2O isn't a process. Also, there are theories that have gained major confidence. For example, evolution is a foundation of all modern biology.

Lysenko's genetics is a theory that has long since been falsified.

Scientific method requires that an hypothesis must be able to be tested. There are lots of things that we can't currently test - whether there is a god/supernatural, string theory, whether this univese is artificial, how large this universe is, whether there are any other universes, etc. So, those are outside of science.

 

Yup. You need a Natural Gas Plant to back it up.

And another problem, Solar energy is an environmental disaster.

Solar energy produces vast quantities of hazardous waste, which are not being adequately dealt with.

The last few years have seen growing concern over what happens to solar panels at the end of their life. Consider the following statements:​

* The problem of solar panel disposal “will explode with full force in two or three decades and wreck the environment” because it “is a huge amount of waste and they are not easy to recycle.”​

* “The reality is that there is a problem now, and it’s only going to get larger, expanding as rapidly as the PV industry expanded 10 years ago.”​

* “Contrary to previous assumptions, pollutants such as lead or carcinogenic cadmium can be almost completely washed out of the fragments of solar modules over a period of several months, for example by rainwater.”​

Cadmium is a particular toxic waste problem:

The fact that cadmium can be washed out of solar modules by rainwater is increasingly a concern for local environmentalists like the Concerned Citizens of Fawn Lake in Virginia, where a 6,350 acre solar farm to partly power Microsoft data centers is being proposed.​

“There are 100,000 pounds of cadmium contained in the 1.8 million panels, leaching from broken panels damaged during natural events — hail storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. — and at decommissioning is a big concern.”​

OSHA describes cadmium:

Cadmium and its compounds are highly toxic and exposure to this metal is known to cause cancer and targets the body’s cardiovascular, renal, gastrointestinal, neurological, reproductive, and respiratory systems.
​

Disposal of decommissioned solar panels in regular landfills is “not recommended in case modules break and toxic materials leach into the soil.” But where do most decommissioned panels go? Landfills. Recycling is often recommended, but is not practical because “recycling costs more than the economic value of the materials recovered, which is why most solar panels end up in landfills.”

​

Worse, many decommissioned solar panels which were supposed to be properly disposed of are instead labeled “used” and sold to Middle Eastern countries that have no ability to deal with hazardous materials like cadmium.

​

Some might ask, don’t all sources of energy involve hazardous wastes? Perhaps, but the volume of waste produced by solar panels and wind turbines vastly exceeds that associated with reliable power sources, as this chart shows:



https://www.americanexperiment.org/2019/08/environmental-disaster-solar-energy/

 

Germany is building lignite (the lowest grade of coal just above peat moss) power generation plants to replace the nuclear plants they are shutting down which provide the redundant backup for wind and solar.