Do skeptics confuse freedom of speech with the scientific method?

Question

People who take fringe positions like "global warming is not man made" or "evolution is not true" often complain that their voices are not being heard due to the establishment ignoring them.

But their voices *are* heard as is evidence by the fact that the majority of yahoos on this forum are skeptics who draw info from skeptic websites and ignore the majority scientific opinion. In fact the skeptical voices are being heard disproportionately loud compared to the amount of evidence they have to support their positions.

Science is a battlefield where good ideas with evidence for them win out over bad ideas over the course of time and with the accumulation of further evidence. It has become clear, over the course of time, that global warming skeptics and creationists are perennial losers as evidence has accumulated. Their voices are not drowned out for no reason, they simply don't have many compelling things worth listening to.

Answer 1

I don't get what your saying, are voices are not being heard anywhere but on here. I feel hammered down by the news preaching we need to take care of our enviroment, the commercials for the enviroment etc etc. I'm not saying we need to ignore our environment, but enough is enough already people! I think we all get the idea that we shouldn't pollute, but CO2 IS NOT A POLUTANT, if you really believed that you'd stop breathing. So Man-Made Global Climate change is a hoax that you bought into hook, line and sinker.

Answer 2

I am having difficulty in finding all the CO2. It is not there is this truth or science. Gore is what??? Look at the CO2 big problem which it is not. If we accept that CO2 is 300 ppm. Try and convert that to the percent of our air. It is so small it is like my bank account. If the great CO2 is not there , there is no Global Warming.

Answer 3

AARON, those who are not scientists, have no string of letters after their names should just not form opinions?

What is happening is that we have a lot of people on both sides of this argument summarizing for us the views of some people they assert are well qualified to tell us all about this. The summarization is getting to be 3 and 4 layers thick.

People arguing that there is AGW stand on their soap boxes and invoke a cloud of  scientists to vouch for them... never bother to make individual scientific observations of their own, never bother to give us anything but a work that is a summary, a distillation.  It is like so much anti-evolution rhetoric... we are never introduced to the words of those who are doing the actual work.

Same on the other side. We are not seeing peer reviewed science opinions, we are seeing political and pundit reviews of  reviews of reviews of discussion papers that presume to know what peer reviewed science is saying.

If  a politician appears to be starting a discussion by waving a generalized consensus at us,when what was needed was to have people who shape public opinion educated, not given a third hand summary intended only for 8th grade dropouts, we should expect that people to say they want better explanations.

Your claim that  your opinion is supported by all people of science should come with a sign off sheet for the scientists who agree with you and a place thereon for a partial agreement or complete disagreement tick.

Now, even people who know that we have AGW, may not be convinced that we can stop GW. They may or may not agree that we can stop AGW with any action that would be politically viable. When you look at the tepid,  timid steps being proposed, you have to clearly doubt that we will take strong enough action to stop even AGW.

Stopping GW? When there was no AGW in previous cycles, did GW not go ahead anyway?

Merely stopping AGW is no assurance we can stop GW, but we can not even say we believe we will stop AGW.  

So we have to seriously ask how best to prepare for a global warm period that will eventually result in a new major ice age. One can believe or disbelieve that we can and will stop GW, but taking steps to be ready when it happens still makes sense unless one believes that we are already doing enough to stop GW or that we appear to be getting close to making that move.

Even if we believe that we will stop AGW, there is no science saying this is enough to stop GW.

Just recognize that you are no longer discussing only whether there is AGW, whether AGW is significant but also whether stopping AGW  is going to happen, and if it does, will it stop GW?

We can not sell Kyoto, not because it costs too much, but because it can not claim that it will stop AGW, let alone GW. It can not claim that, let alone guarantee it.

Even Europe's  proposed 80% world reduction in fossil fuel consumption, which looks like a target that might not be attained for a century, can not claim that it will stop GW, even though some will claim it will stall AGW.

People offering summaries of summaries of summaries of science should not expect to be believed. People need to understand it for themselves, not accept third hand summaries that are not all identical,

Answer 4

First of all, not all people who believe that global warming is false believe that evolution is not true.  I for one believe in evolution but not in the global warming hoax.

You're right, science is a battlefield with two sides.  Both sides have valid arguments.  While the GW side has valid arguments, they're old ones.

Science and observation aren't seeing what has been predicted.  And I don't think it would be good to call a whole group of people losers because their beliefs are different from yours.

It's insulting, rude, and frankly ignorant.

Answer 5

Pretty much, yes.  A frequent argument we see is that peer-review is a poor test because 'skeptic' papers often don't make it through the peer-review process.  What the 'skeptics' don't understand is that these papers aren't making it through peer-review not because of their subject matter or conclusions, but because of their poor scientific quality.

For example, the Misckolzci paper regarding the greenhouse effect which he could not get published in any American peer-reviewed journal.  In my question linked below, gcnp's answer explains that it could not get published because the paper is clearly wrong, not because it questions AGW.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Mikira - according to the (conservative) US Supreme Court, CO2 is a pollutant.

http://www.dieselnet.com/news/2007/04epa...

So if that's your reasoning for rejecting AGW, you should now accept it.

Answer 6

This skeptic does not.  You have the right to say any crazy thing you like...like grouping people who ask for empirical evidence (AGW skeptics) and people who deny empirical evidence (skeptics of evolution) together in an attempt to discredit the former.  It's a very effective persuasion technique which has nothing to do with empirical data and the scientific method.

Answer 7

I agree that Creationism is pretty retarded. But so is the belief in "man-made global warming". I believe that the scientific evidence favors the skeptics in this case more than the alarmists and fear mongers.

Answer 8

No, that would be the AGW nuts.

Answer 9

I guess these skeptics who by the way are scientist do not understand scientific methods.  

Believe global warming is not occurring or has ceased



Surface temperatures measured by thermometers and lower atmospheric temperature trends inferred from satellitesTimothy F. Ball, former Professor of Geography, University of Winnipeg: "[The world's climate] warmed from 1680 up to 1940, but since 1940 it's been cooling down. The evidence for warming is because of distorted records. The satellite data, for example, shows cooling." (November 2004)[5] "There's been warming, no question. I've never debated that; never disputed that. The dispute is, what is the cause. And of course the argument that human CO2 being added to the atmosphere is the cause just simply doesn't hold up..." (May 18, 2006; at 15:30 into recording of interview)[6] "The temperature hasn't gone up. ... But the mood of the world has changed: It has heated up to this belief in global warming." (August 2006)[7] "Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. ... By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling." (Feb. 5, 2007)[8]

Robert M. Carter, geologist, researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia: "the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998 ... there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human-caused warming."[9]

Vincent R. Gray, coal chemist, climate consultant, founder of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition: "The two main 'scientific' claims of the IPCC are the claim that 'the globe is warming' and 'Increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible'. Evidence for both of these claims is fatally flawed."[10]

[edit] Believe accuracy of IPCC climate projections is inadequate

Individuals in this section conclude that it is not possible to project global climate accurately enough to justify the ranges projected for temperature and sea-level rise over the next century. They do not conclude specifically that the current IPCC projections are either too high or too low, but that the projections are likely to be inaccurate due to inadequacies of current global climate modeling.

David Bellamy, environmental campaigner, broadcaster and former botanist: a doubling of atmospheric CO2 "will amount to less than 1°C of global warming [and] such a scenario is unlikely to arise given our limited reserves of fossil fuels—certainly not before the end of this century."[11]

Hendrik Tennekes, retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute: "The blind adherence to the harebrained idea that climate models can generate 'realistic' simulations of climate is the principal reason why I remain a climate skeptic. From my background in turbulence I look forward with grim anticipation to the day that climate models will run with a horizontal resolution of less than a kilometer. The horrible predictability problems of turbulent flows then will descend on climate science with a vengeance."[12]

Antonino Zichichi, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Bologna and president of the World Federation of Scientists : "models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view".[13]

[edit] Believe global warming is primarily caused by natural processes

Individuals in this section conclude that the observed warming is more likely attributable to natural causes than to human activities.

Khabibullo Abdusamatov, mathematician and astronomer at Pulkovskaya Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences: "Global warming results not from the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but from an unusually high level of solar radiation and a lengthy - almost throughout the last century - growth in its intensity...Ascribing 'greenhouse' effect properties to the Earth's atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated...Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away."[14][15][16]

Sallie Baliunas, astronomer, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: "[T]he recent warming trend in the surface temperature record cannot be caused by the increase of human-made greenhouse gases in the air."[17]

Reid Bryson, emeritus professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison: "It’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air."[18]

George V. Chilingar, Professor of Civil and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California: "The authors identify and describe the following global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate: (1) solar radiation ..., (2) outgassing as a major supplier of gases to the World Ocean and the atmosphere, and, possibly, (3) microbial activities ... . The writers provide quantitative estimates of the scope and extent of their corresponding effects on the Earth’s climate [and] show that the human-induced climatic changes are negligible."[19]

Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: "That portion of the scientific community that attributes climate warming to CO2 relies on the hypothesis that increasing CO2, which is in fact a minor greenhouse gas, triggers a much larger water vapour response to warm the atmosphere. This mechanism has never been tested scientifically beyond the mathematical models that predict extensive warming, and are confounded by the complexity of cloud formation - which has a cooling effect. ... We know that [the sun] was responsible for climate change in the past, and so is clearly going to play the lead role in present and future climate change. And interestingly... solar activity has recently begun a downward cycle."[20]

David Douglass, solid-state physicist, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester: "The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming."[21]

Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology, Western Washington University: "global warming since 1900 could well have happened without any effect of CO2. If the cycles continue as in the past, the current warm cycle should end soon and global temperatures should cool slightly until about 2035"[22]

William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus and head of The Tropical Meteorology Project, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University: "This small warming is likely a result of the natural alterations in global ocean currents which are driven by ocean salinity variations. Ocean circulation variations are as yet little understood. Human kind has little or nothing to do with the recent temperature changes. We are not that influential."[23] "I am of the opinion that [global warming] is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people."[24] "So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thing—all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more."[25]

William Kininmonth, meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology: "There has been a real climate change over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that can be attributed to natural phenomena. Natural variability of the climate system has been underestimated by IPCC and has, to now, dominated human influences."[26]

George Kukla, retired Professor of Climatology at Columbia University and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in an interview: "What I think is this: Man is responsible for a PART of global warming. MOST of it is still natural."[27]

David Legates, associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware: "About half of the warming during the 20th century occurred prior to the 1940s, and natural variability accounts for all or nearly all of the warming."[28]

Marcel Leroux, former Professor of Climatology, Université Jean Moulin: "The possible causes, then, of climate change are: well-established orbital parameters on the palaeoclimatic scale, ... solar activity, ...; volcanism ...; and far at the rear, the greenhouse effect, and in particular that caused by water vapor, the extent of its influence being unknown. These factors are working together all the time, and it seems difficult to unravel the relative importance of their respective influences upon climatic evolution. Equally, it is tendentious to highlight the anthropic factor, which is, clearly, the least credible among all those previously mentioned."[29]

Tad Murty, oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: global warming "is the biggest scientific hoax being perpetrated on humanity. There is no global war

Answer 10

I think the problem is some people want a debate on things like evolution and global warming, but they also want the truth to be taught in the schools.  Those two things are mutually exclusive.

Teaching both things gives kids the idea the matter is undecided, which is teaching them nonsense.   It would be better to teach them nothing, and give their brains a fighting chance to learn.

An old goat like me can't help thinking of how the educational system changed after the Cold War.  When we had enemies like the Commies and n**i's, proposing teaching anything but science's very best thoughts, right or wrong, could get your butt thrown in the slammer.  If it hadn't been that way we'd be speaking Russian or German today, as the saying goes.

Answer 11

Science is not "a battlefield where good ideas with evidence for them win out over bad ideas over the course of time".  This shows the fundamental problem with how some define science and why there are problems defining global warming.

This isn't a court where the best orator has the best chance of winning.  Science IS knowledge, where objective facts win regardless of the height of the stack of a persons evidence.

Objective data is date that you, I, or a six grade class can duplicate and come to the same conclusion.  This is why we don't argue over gravity, or the speed of light.

No one has any idea if it's going to be warmer or colder at any given time in the future.  You cannot provide any data that can be duplicated by any other person.  You can only present your opinion.

Opinions are not science, they are not fact, and that are not objective.  People who confuse SWAG's with science are those that limit the progress of science.  We should never forget that the argument for a Geocentric solar system was the most popular theory of the universe until skeptics had the math, the objective proof, to prove them wrong.

Answer 12

I SEE WHEN YOU WROTE THIS GARBAGE YOUR BRAIN WAS OUT TO PASTURE. I DONT BELIEVE I'M ALLOUD TO REVEAL THE PUBLISHED LINK TO SHOW THE WAY TO DELETE GLOBAL WARMING, AT LEAST NOT UNTIL MY QUESTIONS ON THE SUBJECT RUNS OUT. BUT THEIR IS A WAY OR IGNORE IT AND ALL LIFE ON EARTH WILL DIE.  LIKE THE WHALES ARE DIEING DUE TO NOT BEING ABLE TO FIND FOOD WITH SO MUCH WATER FOR THEIR FOOD TO HIDE IN. THAT PART I COULD END IN 1 YEAR, IT TAKES$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$... THATS MY ONLY HOLD UP.  IF WE SENT SHIPS WITH HIGH POWERED REFRIGERATION UNITS WITH BIG TOP TENTS TO ALL THE GLACIERS AND BLOW FROZEN AIR 24 HOURS A DAY ON ALL SIDES OF THE GLACIERS AND COVER THE GLACIERS WITH TENTS, JUST MAYBE WE CAN STOP THE GLACIERS FROM MELTING AND THEN FREEZE THE FRESH WATER AROUND THEM.

Answer 13

Nice Lady, before you comment on climate modeling, you ought to read up on the difference between it and numerical weather prediction.  The two are different, and instability and error in long-range weather forecasts does not imply that climate models are similarly untrustworthy.  I strongly urge you to read the IPCC AR4 section discussing *climate* models, their development and testing.  You come off sounding like a clueless noob, not a Ph.D. scientist, when you make such uniformed comments about something that is clearly not your strong suit.  

Skeptics don't confuse scientific method with anything so much as not understand it.  We constantly hear them cry out there is no proof for the theory that CO2 affects climate.  Although that statement is true, it is irrelevant since philosophically you can't ever prove a theory to be true.  Furthermore,  the preponderance of empirical evidence agrees with the theory that CO2 is affecting climate.  The evidence that CO2 is not affecting climate is thin to non-existent, but *any* little piece, no matter how insignificant, is enough for them to believe that it is the magic bullet that will bring down the whole theory.  That at this point, contrary data will be assimilated into the theory, which will be modified (slightly) to accommodate it, in no way negates the core postulate (that CO2 affects climate).

Answer 14

No.  It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It has to with with not allowing science, which I love, to get hijacked by leftists elitists thugs, who pretend very bad things are going to happen, if we don't suddenly adopt their socialist solutions.   I am a scientist and an engineer (degree in geological engineering).  I understand climate, geology and evolution better than most.  Science is a pursuit of truth.  It does not include forming consensus and exaggerating problems to gain political advantage.

Answer 15

The testimonies do not support your arguement.

The ice-core man

Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post

Published: Friday, May 04, 2007

"...Because of the high importance of this realization, in 1994 Dr. Jaworowski, together with a team from the Norwegian Institute for Energy Technics, proposed a research project on the reliability of trace-gas determinations in the polar ice. The prospective sponsors of the research refused to fund it, claiming the research would be "immoral" if it served to undermine the foundations of climate research.

The refusal did not come as a surprise. Several years earlier, in a peer-reviewed article published by the Norwegian Polar Institute, Dr. Jaworowski criticized the methods by which CO2 levels were ascertained from ice cores, and cast doubt on the global-warming hypothesis. The institute's director, while agreeing to publish his article, also warned Dr. Jaworowski that "this is not the way one gets research projects." Once published, the institute came under fire, especially since the report soon sold out and was reprinted. Said one prominent critic, "this paper puts the Norsk Polarinstitutt in disrepute." Although none of the critics faulted Dr. Jaworowski's science, the institute nevertheless fired him to maintain its access to funding."

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/...

As Lindzen wrote earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal, "there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis."

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?i...

Answer 16

The Scientific Method works as follows (I took it from wikipedia)

Define the question

Gather information and resources (observe)

Form hypothesis

---->Perform experiment and collect data

Analyze data

Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis

Publish results

Retest (frequently done by other scientists)

---->Perform experiment and collect data

This is the point that is the problem. We are not able to perform an experiment except with computer models.  To accept the results of a computer model, you need to demonstrate the effectiveness of computer models.  Since computer models can't even tell me if my Sunday plans will be rained out, I find it hard to believe it can be precisely accurate 100 years down the road.  It is actually my understanding that the mathematics of weather are fairly well understood, but are so complicated and require so many iterations that to calculate accurately without making any approximations, estimates, or assumption requires computer power that simply doesn't exist.

So herein lies a problem: we do not experiment (with few exceptions, such as the forest where the CO2 levels are held at 1000 ppm to monitor growth and frost damage).  It is all armchair.  Armchair psychology, medicine, and other areas of science where we do not control the parameters of our experiments, rather than sit back and watch, have been shown to be highly flawed and unreliable methods.  Why should this be any different?  

I fully admit that any data gathered to support the "deniers" or "skeptics" that relies on climate records and such is subject to the same scrutiny and suffers from the same flaws as pro-global warming research.  

Armchair research is useful to some extent.  It can serve as a guide to investigate further, collect historical data for comparison to your planned experiments, etc.   But armchair research is absolutely NOT the scientific method.

Answer 17

If global warming is science, then the debate can and should continue.  When is comes to science, there is no such thing as "case closed."  Science is self-correcting.   People thought the Earth was the center of the universe, not because they were stupid, but because that was the knowledge at the time.  Same as now.  In the 1960's computers took up entire rooms, not because the people didn't know how to build them, it's that transistors and silicon chips didn't exist.  

Everything scientific is always up for debate, it must be proven, observed, and seen as repeated.  Macro evolution has never been observed, never.  A dog gives birth to a mixed breed puppy, but it's still a dog, it didn't change into a bird.  

If we found nothing but fossils of penguins, it would have been shouted from the mountain tops that this was a transitional species from fish to birds.  "See, look, he's got fins instead of wings!"  Of course to do school work like that would have gotten me failing grades.  "This is blue, I know, It's a blue-berry!"

Answer 18

The battles are generally regarding education.  Should schools teach science or ignorance?  Those who believe public schools should teach ignorance are unhappy that their lack of thinking does not get equal time.

Answer 19

Unfortunately, their voices are heard...far too loudly. I don't begrudge them the right to say what they think, but I do wish they would educate themselves and use a little objective logic for once. If they did that, the things they said wouldn't sound so absurd, or rather like a child covering his ears and repeatedly shouting, "It's NOT true!" at the top of his lungs.

Additional: I'm sorry, everyone here seemed to jump on the global warming thing with very little mention of evolution. I was speaking more to evolution in my answer, though mr. fact-checker below me I think demonstrates quite well that anyone with an idea can make numbers say anything. That goes for both sides.