From: Eleanor McHugh <eleanor@...>
Date: 2009-04-22T22:18:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Goodbye Ruby - Hello Earth

On 18 Apr 2009, at 23:58, Michael Satterwhite wrote:
> Phlip wrote:
>>> Now, do I believe the earth's climate is changing? Absolutely. It  
>>> has
>>> been in a state of flux since the beginning of time - why should  
>>> it stop
>>> now? Do I think man is the reason? The jury is out on that one.
>>
>> Actually, >95% of all scientists agree the cause is anthropogenic  
>> (us).
>
> As before ... exactly where does that statistic come from? What is its
> source? It's very easy to throw around numbers that have been tossed  
> out
> - but many if not most statistics (from both sides) are simply made  
> up.
>
> As I pointed out in the previous post, there are over 30,000  
> scientists
> who signed a statement that they do *NOT* believe that. There is no
> comparative list of those who believe that it is. In and of itself,  
> that
> doesn't say that it isn't. After all, there was once a vast majority  
> of
> scientists who believed the earth was the center of the universe.
>
> This is my main complaint with this type of argument. Those in the
> argument - on BOTH sides - seem to be incapable of rational thought.
> They hear a statement and don't question it. Worse, they accept - or
> reject - facts just because it happens to support their personal bias.

Most scientists are not impartial and the further one moves from  
empirical study into model-driven simulation, the less credence one  
should give to any theory.

My main criticism of climate science's attempts to model global  
warming is that it's fundamentally flawed in its methodology. The  
climate is a chaotic non-linear system and hence the only way to make  
accurate predictions is to understand its exact starting conditions.  
Instead researchers take patchy historical data over a brief  
geological period and feed that into incredibly complex climate models  
to produce predictions.

Am I the only one reminded of Ptolemy's model of the heavens? A  
stunning intellectual achievement, but as Copernicus demonstrated so  
effectively, a complete fiction which prevented astronomy from  
progressing for a good fourteen hundred years.


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason