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On Tue, 10 Jul 2007, Jack Smith wrote:
On Tue, 2007-07-10 at 15:42 -0500, Mike Miller wrote:
It is interesting that one network is playing such a strong role in
promoting distortions of science:
http://foxattacks.com/
Humans causing global warming is a theory, not a fact. A theory is
nothing more than an idea about how something happens or has happened.
Like the Copernican theory of the solar system, or Newton's theory of
gravitation or Einstein's theory of relativity or Darwin's theory of
evolution.
It will be impossible to attribute climate change to any one cause as it
is impossible to have a control and it is also impossible to isolate the
system and test just one factor. Thus human-caused global warming will
never become more than a theory as we can never prove it.
Sure, like the theories above. The truth is, you can't *prove* anything
about the world in the way that you can prove things in mathematics, but
through a series of scientific experiments you can remove all *reasonable*
doubt.
Theories are just educated or semi-educated guesses and can and will be
challenged and attacked, simply because there's no way to prove the
critic nor the defender right or wrong.
"Educated guesses?" Not really. What do you mean by "prove?" If two
theories predict two different results of an experiment, you do the
experiment and you see the result and you can then reject one of the
theories. Does that constitute a mathematical proof? No, but it is all
the proof you will ever get in the real world. It is the kind of proof
that has led us from caves to skyscrapers and from smoke signals to TV
sets. It really works.
I have been especially disappointed by John Stossel recently because he
used to seem so good to me: A genuine skeptic and critical thinker, or
so it seemed. But when it comes to global warming, gasoline prices and
a few other issues, he seems to have a blind spot. I have to wonder if
he's getting paid.
Of course John Stossel gets paid- he has a job. So do you and I. And
Stossel *is* skeptical of the globlal warming theory and the
gasoline-price conspiracy theories.
Did you really not understand me? My concern is that Stossel is being
paid by oil companies either directly or indirectly via ABC. Here's
Stossel just a few weeks ago:
http://www.nacsonline.com/NACS/News/Daily_News_Archives/June2007/nd0607072.htm
But that was not accurate because the data do take inflation into account:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/21/AR2007052101589.html
It got worse after that, so Stossel is not correct. He was even more
absurdly wrong about global warming issues. His dismissive, confident
attitude is embarrassing given the facts and the high degree of agreement
among climate scientists.
Most of the people shown in the Fox News clips are being paid by oil
companies either directly or indirectly (via "think tanks").
And you don't think that perhaps some scientists want to pursue a topic
that is not only not definitvely able to be proven one way or the other
but also is very easily hyped up to be able to get a bunch of grant
money and write a lot of papers? Or that some of the people yelling the
loudest about global warming have vested interest in companies that
stand to benefit from CO2 caps and such? Or stand to gain politically?
Are you suggesting that we should choose what we like believing, and
believe that? Are you saying that no one's opinion is worthwhile? What
do you think we should be doing?
I'm sure that scientists are influenced by their peers, by funding sources
and by other things irrelevant to the data, but in the end, they care a
lot about getting it right. They are in the best position of anyone to
make decisions about whether human activity is influencing global warming.
Mike
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