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Evolution-GAF: How would you respond to this?

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Mgoblue201

Won't stop picking the right nation
OpinionatedCyborg said:
I agree, but this is a lot different from your initial arguments.

And I think we are talking about people who have a naive view of science, not the opposite. These are people who believed, like you claim, that "entire basis of science is openness and free expression." When they discover that scientists actively repress new information, shroud their methods in secrecy, re-write the process in which they made their discoveries, and often follow preconceived notions in the face of overwhleming evidence, they tend to dismiss science as a whole.

Your initial argument represented this naive, and frankly dangerous, conception of science. By perpetuating the myth that science is purely objective, open, and free, we mislead the layman into believing science is something that it isn't -- and when the layman discovers inconsistencies in the story we have been telling, he or she becomes distrustful of science as a whole and becomes susceptible to charlatans who can them claim that scientists are motivated by political beliefs, fame, or fortune.

Your follow-up comments better defend evolution than your initial arguments, which appealed to authority and mis-represented science.
Again, I was talking about what science aspires to be. Without recognizing that crucial distinction, of course one would miss the point; and it's okay, because frankly I didn't mention it in the first post.

And I'm pretty sure I know what I was arguing about initially: which is, people who would say that there is a huge active element within science attempting to suppress the freedom and openness that science needs. None of your examples are the same thing. Either they were individuals who were flouting scientific rigor on their own, or they were scientists who did not yet recognize the greatness of an idea, which is hardly venal. In order to think that evolution is false, you would probably have to reach the conclusion that there is system-wide malfeasance occurring within science. This is unprecedented, at least in the United States. But there probably isn't a point in arguing about this further.
 

Zenith

Banned
ToxicAdam said:
Press coverage of global warming is not 50/50. The big papers and news organizations have science writers that are from the industry and only report things that favor mainstream views.

The only time you will see dissenting views reported on this topic is from biased rags that Murdoch owns or in Op-Eds from certain writers (like George Will).

Just look for yourself. You will see numerous articles that show the favored position (that man's carbon output is accelerating the rate in change in our climate) and no mention of any kind of doubt or denial of that. In fact, they will run with psuedo-science like AGW is causing "extreme weather" even though there is zero credible scientific evidence to back that up.

Don't you ever get tired of being wrong?

Floods caused by climate change

Devastating floods which wreaked havoc across Britain in 2000 were made more likely by global warming

The Oxford University study said the floods, which damaged nearly 10,000 homes and cost £1.3 billion, were made twice as likely by a warming climate.

This is because warm air holds more moisture, making outbreaks of heavy rainfall more frequent.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8328705/Floods-caused-by-climate-change.html

And this is without getting into how global warming is affecting the Gulf Stream.

How could you not know how changes in temperature affect weather? It's a key component. You yourself must have personally experienced weather patterns prefaced by high temperatures many times. They happen every year! Summer storms? The evaporation cycle you get taught in infants school? Oh wait, I forgot, it's all a conspiracy by Al Gore to make money.
 

ToxicAdam

Member
We are to believe the MET backcasting models, when they can't even properly predict weather patterns in the immediate future? Sorry, I won't eat from that trough of bullshit.


The amount of knowledge we have about our ecosystem and the interactions among those variables is still in it's infancy. So, models are not science when they are being fed incomplete or missing data. They are merely educated guesses.

There is a reason why the rallying cry of the AGW crowd is "the science is better now", because they are constantly learning new things that often have dramatic effects on what was previously thought.


How could you not know how changes in temperature affect weather? It's a key component. You yourself must have personally experienced weather patterns prefaced by high temperatures many times. They happen every year! Summer storms? The evaporation cycle you get taught in infants school? Oh wait, I forgot, it's all a conspiracy by Al Gore to make money.

Changes in land use dramatically affect weather, too. A point that many scientists chose to ignore (or diminish) when studying the Himalayan glaciers. "Common sense" was that the warming atmosphere was to blame and that since retreating was happening in some areas, that it must be happening in all areas in a uniform manner.

So, don't talk down to me you cunt.
 

Zenith

Banned
ToxicAdam said:
So, don't talk down to me you cunt.

lolface

What are the odds, you immediately looked for a way to dismiss it out of hand, almost as if you didn't want it to be true.

This was then repeated thousands of times using a global volunteer network of personal computers participating in the climateprediction.net project.

That takes care of picking the wrong set of variables which allays your "fears" it suffers the same problems as the short-term weather reports.

Changes in land use dramatically affect weather, too. A point that many scientists chose to ignore (or diminish) when studying the Himalayan glaciers. "Common sense" was that the warming atmosphere was to blame and that since retreating was happening in some areas, that it must be happening in all areas in a uniform manner.

That's nice. It also has absolutely zero relation to my post. Talk about your strawmen. Why would you pretend that land also affecting weather instantly means that temperature can't affect it when a child could see through it?

Are you actually denying that temperature affects the weather? Winter and Summer have the same weather where you are?

Only a total ignoramus would deny that "warm air holds more moisture, making outbreaks of heavy rainfall more frequent." I'm going to side with Oxford University rather than an internet 'tard who subscribes to conspiracy theories on this one.
 

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I'm in college right now and they're teaching climate change as an absolute fact at this point. That's not an appeal to authority re: GW itself... I just thought I'd mention that if I was a skeptic, I'd have to think that culture at large was going to hell in a handbasket, and I was the only sane one.. :p
 

ToxicAdam

Member
Zenith said:
lolface

What are the odds, you immediately looked for a way to dismiss it out of hand, almost as if you didn't want it to be true.

This wasn't new information to me. I've been avidly reading news related to the climate for 15 years now.

Just use logic. If our output of GHG's have (wholly caused) a .6 Celsius uptick in temperature in 100 years, and this change is enough to drive "extreme weather events" to happen more often, than what does that say of our past? The temperatures were just as warm today as they were 600-1000 years ago (MWP) after coming out of the a mini ice-age (that many speculated helped bring down the Mayan civilization). Shouldn't there be numerous accounts (and physical evidence) of massive, disasterous weather during this time as the warmup could have been just as dramatic?

In fact, the amount of GHG's in the atmosphere were even higher than they were today (millions of years ago). Shouldn't our planet have had incredible storms that would have wiped out most of life on this planet?

That takes care of picking the wrong set of variables which allays your "fears" it suffers the same problems as the short-term weather reports.

Am I reading it wrong? Isn't it just using the same model being repeated on different computers? How does that change the core program itself?


That's nice. It also has absolutely zero relation to my post. Talk about your strawmen. Why would you pretend that land also affecting weather instantly means that temperature can't affect it when a child could see through it?

No, it's not a strawman it's called an example,you meathead. An example of how human activity can dramatically change regional weather that is not related to GHG's. Which is exactly the kind of things we should be talking about when discussing regional weather events.

Maybe you want to spend a second and read up on fossil water, also. You might then ask yourself why you are reading about it for the first time (if you were not aware) and why aren't we measuring the total amount that is being reintroduced to our atmosphere the same way we measure other GHG's?


Are you actually denying that temperature affects the weather? Winter and Summer have the same weather where you are?

Why are you putting words into mouth? I am denying that there is hard scientific facts (you know, measureable observations not created on computers) that the amount of GHG's that human's have put into the air are creating more "extreme" weather events.

Only a total ignoramus would deny that "warm air holds more moisture, making outbreaks of heavy rainfall more frequent." I'm going to side with Oxford University rather than an internet 'tard who subscribes to conspiracy theories on this one.

Oh, the familiar fallback ... I'm going to trust the scientists whose careers and paychecks rely on protecting the tribe.. herp derp. Why attempt to think for myself when others can do the thinking for you?

The same kind of mindset that allowed smart people in our government to be duped into the Iraq War.
 

Zenith

Banned
I'm going to trust the scientists whose careers and paychecks rely on protecting the tribe.. herp derp. Why attempt to think for myself when others can do the thinking for you?

The same kind of mindset that allowed smart people in our government to be duped into the Iraq War.

wat.

you "herp derp" over people not believing your conspiracy theory that scientists in the highest institution in the UK are fabricating evidence to somehow make pots of gold?

also I was against the Iraq war. Anyone smart could see they were cherry-picking the facts, just like global warming denialists.
 

ToxicAdam

Member
So, you are going to trust modelers that have been proven to be fantastically wrong in recent history? That's your perogative. Ignore their real world performance, in favor of their unfalsifiable results that helps propagate their cause.


Speaking of cherry picking, thanks for not responding to anything else I wrote and attempting to merely diminish it all as conspiracy theorist babble. I guess scientific tribalism doesn't exist or maybe you refuse to acknowledge it could exist because in the end, it's all "for a good cause".
 

Fusebox

Banned
I think any theory that can withstand 150 years of concerted attacks by major institutions should be given a special title.
 
Mgoblue201 said:
And I'm pretty sure I know what I was arguing about initially: which is, people who would say that there is a huge active element within science attempting to suppress the freedom and openness that science needs. None of your examples are the same thing. Either they were individuals who were flouting scientific rigor on their own, or they were scientists who did not yet recognize the greatness of an idea, which is hardly venal. In order to think that evolution is false, you would probably have to reach the conclusion that there is system-wide malfeasance occurring within science. This is unprecedented, at least in the United States. But there probably isn't a point in arguing about this further.
I thought your two arguments were pretty close to the truth, but not as strong as they should be. I think you will express yourself more clearly in the future when this subject arises again.

How the hell did a topic about Evolution devolve into Climate Change denial nonsense?
It doesn't surprise me :|.
 
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