Heretics of Science.

TenPenny

TenPenny

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Thanks for the link. As you said, even if you leave out the climate change discussion, the basic premise is important for people to read and think about.
 
Mowich

Mowich

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Excellent article, Colpy. Had to go looking for that word 'phlogiston' - never heard of it before.

I especially liked this:

"What sustains pseudoscience is confirmation bias. We look for and welcome the evidence that fits our pet theory; we ignore or question the evidence that contradicts it. We all do this all the time. It’s not, as we often assume, something that only our opponents indulge in. I do it, you do it, it takes a superhuman effort not to do it. That is what keeps myths alive, sustains conspiracy theories and keeps whole populations in thrall to strange superstitions."

How very true, as I still think some crop circles are not made by human hands. ;-)

 
Tonington

Tonington

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Lesson 6 is bogus (never consult a physician for health treatment). There are many hockey sticks, Mann's reconsturction is but one of them. The climate is changing rapidly, which is dangerous; the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was marked by a large extinction event. The pace of climate change during the PETM was 6°C (averaged globally, which means tens of degrees in some places) in 20,000 years. The current pace (which is smaller than the projected pace, which will certainly be faster) has been approximately 0.8°C in 100 years. Do the math. PETM is 0.03°C per century. The current pace is nearly 27 times faster.

So when he says this:
For, apart from the hockey stick, there is no evidence that climate is changing dangerously or faster than in the past, when it changed naturally.
​
It's not heresy, he's just plain wrong. What follows in his essay is the same screed that many others have laid out, but is wrong. For example, feedbacks. There is consensus about feedbacks. It's physics. Ice melts, water is darker than ice, the planet absorbs more heat. The permafrost melts, and more trapped methane escapes, the radiative forcing for which can be calculated. It's far higher than 1.2°C per doubling.

Not heresy, just wrong.

In fact, the author of this piece repeated in his book the fallacious canard favoured by many deniers, that scientists were announcing an imminent ice age. That is so wrong, that even meteorologists published a paper debunking this garbage claim:
The Myth of the 1970's global cooling consensus

It's funny that he on the one hand says we can't trust a consensus about the future (though I'm sure he doesn't actually believe that) and on the other we can trust them about the past, though he apparently doesn't trust them on the past...
Never rely on the consensus of experts about the future. Experts are worth listening to about the past, but not the future.
​
Not heresy, just really, really wrong.

An equally important lesson is that those who have Galileo delusions are almost always wrong, really wrong.
 
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Cannuck

Cannuck

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Feb 2, 2006
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"What sustains pseudoscience is confirmation bias. We look for and welcome the evidence that fits our pet theory; we ignore or question the evidence that contradicts it."

If I only had a dollar for every time I came across that in this forum alone.
 
Colpy

Colpy

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Cannuck said:
"What sustains pseudoscience is confirmation bias. We look for and welcome the evidence that fits our pet theory; we ignore or question the evidence that contradicts it."

If I only had a dollar for every time I came across that in this forum alone.
Click to expand...

Everybody does it, I think......

I know I do.

That doesn't make you wrong, it just makes you human.
 
CDNBear

CDNBear

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Sep 24, 2006
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Cannuck said:
"What sustains pseudoscience is confirmation bias. We look for and welcome the evidence that fits our pet theory; we ignore or question the evidence that contradicts it."

If I only had a dollar for every time I came across that in this forum alone.
Click to expand...
If I only had a dollar for every time you've done it.

Especially the ignore part.
 
Bar Sinister

Bar Sinister

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Interesting article, but Bishop Hill makes a dangerous jump when he attempts to discredit climate change by comparing the science supporting it to pseudo-science. It is a clever trick that has been used many times to give credit to an unsupportable point of view. Erich von Daniken used it in his Chariots of the Gods and other nonsense he proposed. It works like this. Start by listing a number of well known facts - pyramids are big; the pyramid of Khufu contains; 2.5 million blocks of stone; many of the blocks of stone were transported for hundreds of kilometers. Then you jump to non-reality - the pyramids are so big ancient people could not have constructed them, therefore they could only have been built by extra-terrestials. All of von Daniken's writing follows this pattern of interspersing known and accepted archeological fact with utter rubbish.

Bishop Hill's article uses the same techniques as Von Daniken. He first lists a number of ridiculous claims, many of which are little better than superstition. He then claims that climate change is akin to these superstitions. Of course, in doing so he blithely ignores the fact that most of the scientists he seeks to discredit also do not believe in any of the pseudo-science he lists. He also ignores the most important and irrefutable fact of climate change and that is that if greenhouse gases continue to increase in the atmosphere then climate change is inevitable whether or it is actually happening or not. When you steer a ship toward an iceberg, something bad will happen if you don't change course.

A clever article, but upon analysis it has little scientific substance.
 
C

Cliffy

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Its a blog. It is an opinion piece, nothing more. He is not a scientist, so he doesn't know Jack.

Speaking of Jack, I miss the old fart.
 
Colpy

Colpy

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Cliffy said:
Its a blog. It is an opinion piece, nothing more. He is not a scientist, so he doesn't know Jack.

Speaking of Jack, I miss the old fart.
Click to expand...

Ahhh....

think again.........it is an opinion piece, of course, but I think he knows a LOT more than Jack:

Matt Ridley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Angus Millar Lecture 2011 - Scientific Heresy

31st Oct 2011; 18:30

BOOK ONLINE

The Angus Millar Lecture 2011

Venue: Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 9 Queen Street, Edinburgh, EH2 1JQ
 
darkbeaver

darkbeaver

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Jan 26, 2006
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Tonington said:
Ahh, the circus ringmaster is here....put black sand on snow and watch it melt faster than the snow without.
Click to expand...

You can change the parameters as much as you like, fiddle, dodge, skate, wiggle and whine, there has never been a greenhouse effect and there never will be

Bar Sinister said:
Interesting article, but Bishop Hill makes a dangerous jump when he attempts to discredit climate change by comparing the science supporting it to pseudo-science. It is a clever trick that has been used many times to give credit to an unsupportable point of view. Erich von Daniken used it in his Chariots of the Gods and other nonsense he proposed. It works like this. Start by listing a number of well known facts - pyramids are big; the pyramid of Khufu contains; 2.5 million blocks of stone; many of the blocks of stone were transported for hundreds of kilometers. Then you jump to non-reality - the pyramids are so big ancient people could not have constructed them, therefore they could only have been built by extra-terrestials. All of von Daniken's writing follows this pattern of interspersing known and accepted archeological fact with utter rubbish.

Bishop Hill's article uses the same techniques as Von Daniken. He first lists a number of ridiculous claims, many of which are little better than superstition. He then claims that climate change is akin to these superstitions. Of course, in doing so he blithely ignores the fact that most of the scientists he seeks to discredit also do not believe in any of the pseudo-science he lists. He also ignores the most important and irrefutable fact of climate change and that is that if greenhouse gases continue to increase in the atmosphere then climate change is inevitable whether or it is actually happening or not. When you steer a ship toward an iceberg, something bad will happen if you don't change course.

A clever article, but upon analysis it has little scientific substance.
Click to expand...

So, how were the pyramids built? The irrefutable fact you cite is in fact utter rubbish. At least Von Daniken made many very interesting observations that continue to defy the reason of twenty first century science.
 
Tonington

Tonington

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darkbeaver said:
You can change the parameters as much as you like, fiddle, dodge, skate, wiggle and whine, there has never been a greenhouse effect and there never will be
Click to expand...

Albedo changes (feedback) are not radiative forcings imposed by greenhouse gases. Fail.

Even the author of the gish gallop Colpy linked to wouldn't make as outlandish a claim as you do.

Oh yes, and Colpy, you should click this link above.
 
Goober

Goober

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Jan 23, 2009
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Tonington said:
Lesson 6 is bogus (never consult a physician for health treatment). There are many hockey sticks, Mann's reconsturction is but one of them. The climate is changing rapidly, which is dangerous; the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was marked by a large extinction event. The pace of climate change during the PETM was 6°C (averaged globally, which means tens of degrees in some places) in 20,000 years. The current pace (which is smaller than the projected pace, which will certainly be faster) has been approximately 0.8°C in 100 years. Do the math. PETM is 0.03°C per century. The current pace is nearly 27 times faster.

So when he says this:
For, apart from the hockey stick, there is no evidence that climate is changing dangerously or faster than in the past, when it changed naturally.
​
It's not heresy, he's just plain wrong. What follows in his essay is the same screed that many others have laid out, but is wrong. For example, feedbacks. There is consensus about feedbacks. It's physics. Ice melts, water is darker than ice, the planet absorbs more heat. The permafrost melts, and more trapped methane escapes, the radiative forcing for which can be calculated. It's far higher than 1.2°C per doubling.

Not heresy, just wrong.

In fact, the author of this piece repeated in his book the fallacious canard favoured by many deniers, that scientists were announcing an imminent ice age. That is so wrong, that even meteorologists published a paper debunking this garbage claim:
The Myth of the 1970's global cooling consensus

It's funny that he on the one hand says we can't trust a consensus about the future (though I'm sure he doesn't actually believe that) and on the other we can trust them about the past, though he apparently doesn't trust them on the past...
Never rely on the consensus of experts about the future. Experts are worth listening to about the past, but not the future.
​
Not heresy, just really, really wrong.

An equally important lesson is that those who have Galileo delusions are almost always wrong, really wrong.
Click to expand...

So what is the percentage of harmful gases created by cattle flatulence?
 
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