Re: Good climate change skeptics
Posted by
Steve Smith on
Sep 23, 2015; 2:27pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Good-climate-change-skeptics-tp7586673p7586688.html
Gil-
The Saros cycles are fascinating. Of course I always "assumed"
there was such periodicity and wondered if anyone had tried to
correlate these conjunctions with earthly phenomena. I don't see
this undermining the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis, only
perhaps a few of the attributable "evidence" for it.
I don't think of scientists as "questioning everything" or at
least not "everything all of the time" or at least not on an
individual by individual basis. Science is perhaps the earliest
form of "crowd sourcing".
The early scientific organizations like the Royal Society founded
in 1660 and the complex web of correspondence (mostly) throughout
Europe during the age of enlightenment. Their motto is "Nullius
in verba" (take nobody's word for it).
The cycle of hypothesis generation and testing has several phases
of "question everything". To get to a new and interesting
hypothesis, one must ignore/forget/confront much of current
established knowledge... then once a fairly firm hypothesis is
formed, one must deliberately look for counter-examples to
undermine one's own hypothesis to avoid confirmation bias and to
seek the easiest form of (dis)proof which is "by
counter-example". Once a hypothesis has been wrung out well and
advanced to a "tentative" theory, it is time for the larger
community to take the same crack at it... do their best to poke
holes in it. Once it has been through "enough" of that kind of
scrutiny, we tend to accept the theory as a tentative,
conditional, temporary "truth". Unfortunately non-scientists tend
to glom onto that kind of "vetting" process as if it leads to a
final, irrefutable and irreversible conclusion. Scientists know
that all knowledge is provisional, that it will get overturned,
elaborated, or eclipsed somewhere down the line.
Those who realized the earth was spherical, not flat got trumped
when someone else eventually pointed out that it was more of an
oblate spheroid! And now, with Gil's Saros cycles we have to
remember that complex tidal forces are even wracking it out of
shape on a 14 year cycle!
In a century (if there is anyone there to reflect on it) we will
laugh at some of our strongest beliefs for (or against) climate
change. By then we will know a lot more, this is not a phenomena
that is easy to "test", mostly we can only watch it play out like
a slow motion 50 car pileup on the freeway!
- Steve
Glen (as typical) raises a good question what the
purpose and thrust of this forum is.
If you even know.
A few scientists have even said that one of the truly
awesome things about science is they "question everything".
And there's been a theory that weather patterns are
influenced somewhat by
For what it's worth Neil De Grasse Tyson at one time noted
on a Bill Myre (however it's spelled) talk He's conflicted if
the perceived changes are part of a greater weather pattern,-
Or if it's related to humans doing they're thing.
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