66 replies to this topic

[NanuqoftheNorth]

The problem is, the majority of adults in our society teach children from day one that being "normal" is trusting in their gut instincts, embracing baseless primitive superstitions and distrusting scientists. If that weren't bad enough, these children are brainwashed into believing that perception-is-reality with lies-for-profit ads every 8-10 minutes, 24/7/365, via mass media. Finally, our capitalistic society teaches them to view 47% of our citizens as leaches, while affluent tax evaders are lauded as some kind of saint-like "job creators", even if those JCs are little more than financial criminals and trust fund babies. With such a wide spread distain for critical thinking skills and actual facts, it is beyond amazing that we aren't all raving on about Jews blowing up the twin towers, the "Ghey Kenyan/American Hating/Dictatorial Socialist President", the Sandy Hook "false flag" gun confiscation scheme, and the intuitively obvious virtues of supply-side economics, creationism and vaginal probes. Time to bring back witch burnings! Why? Because, you just know in your heart, it's the right thing to do. Anyway, all those uppity, mysterious, Obama worshiping wenches have it coming! Don't waste any more valuable time researching it, trust your gut, not your head! Time to take back our country! Act like a New Guinean... http://au.ibtimes.co...inea-police.htm

[pstall]

Can you Issac Asimovs tell me the official age of the earth? And what is the importance of the age of the earth when our history of temps only go back so far?

[CatofWar]

perhaps you should leave the basement for once

You are dense. I thought people knew this.

[Cat]

Most science deniers I know have strange standards for belief. Evidence doesn't mean much to them. I don't think truth does either.

edit: what I found is the majority of science deniers I know demand little if any evidence for their own beliefs but then are outrageously skeptical and demand enormous amounts of evidence for any belief that contradicts their own.

[twylyght]

Last I checked, science involved putting forth a hypothesis.... and then testing it. Otherwise, it is just blind faith

[Delhommey]

Last I checked, science involved putting forth a hypothesis.... and then testing it. Otherwise, it is just blind faith

Much of modern science (and all of some branches) is completely untestable. So you'll need to update your understanding.

[natty]

Everything deserves a healthy dose of skepticism...by those that are knowledgeable enough to be skeptics.

[twylyght]

Much of modern science (and all of some branches) is completely untestable. So you'll need to update your understanding.

And this is why you continue to fail

[thatlookseasy]

Much of modern science (and all of some branches) is completely untestable. So you'll need to update your understanding.

Dont know if I would say completely untestable. For global warming, you obviously cant test what the climate would be if humans never released CO2, but you can test the concepts involved. You can test the heat capacity of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, you can test the chemical properties of gas mixtures found in the atmosphere, you can test how air with higher CO2 concentrations dissolves along the air water boundary to raise the pH of ocean water.

You can test the concepts involved if nothing else.

[thatlookseasy]

why isn't it no longer called global warming? doesn't the climate change like min by min?

or is this like partly cloudy vs partly sunny?

If I remember correctly, there was a concerted effort by global warming deniers to rename global warming to something that sounds less threatening. I first remember hearing it from people in the Bush administration

[Delhommey]

Dont know if I would say completely untestable. For global warming, you obviously cant test what the climate would be if humans never released CO2, but you can test the concepts involved. You can test the heat capacity of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, you can test the chemical properties of gas mixtures found in the atmosphere, you can test how air with higher CO2 concentrations dissolves along the air water boundary to raise the pH of ocean water.

You can test the concepts involved if nothing else.

I was thinking more along the lines of high level astrophysics and meta-theories like String Theory.

[thatlookseasy]

I was thinking more along the lines of high level astrophysics and meta-theories like String Theory.

What do you think the discovery of the Higgs Boson was about? Certainly Physics has its share of hard to test theories, but its not for lack of trying (like this telescope they're sending into space to search for evidence of dark matter)

[pstall]

and do we have an answer for the official age of the earth and how it relates to a small sample size of avg temp's due to just barely over a 100 yrs of data?

come on guys. i know you can nail this one.

[thatlookseasy]

and do we have an answer for the official age of the earth and how it relates to a small sample size of avg temp's due to just barely over a 100 yrs of data?

come on guys. i know you can nail this one.

The earth is 4.54 billion years old and completely unsuitable for life for ~4 billion of those years

[pstall]

thats the offical consensus among scientists? and the age is crucial to climate change how? im not being funny either. if its that old and we only have so much data to go on temp wise, i don't see the need to even worry about the age part.

recency bias could have an adverse effect on this topic and conclusions.