• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Trump Advisor on climate: "Science has gotten a lot wrong in our 5,500 year history"

Status
Not open for further replies.

JP_

Banned
If they really thought climate science was wrong, they'd be in favor of increasing climate science research to find the truth.

By what if science is wrong? We just made the earth a cleaner place for nothing!

4254681996_27b1ed7ff0.jpg
 

Kinokou

Member
climate-change-comic.jpg


Even if climate change is not real (but it is), then we still need to get rid of fossil fuels. How many people are dying and having health problems every year because of pollution? Don't we want to fix that?

Yup, from the media I consume my impression is that air pollution is going to become the new major early unnecessary death cause.
 

Ushojax

Should probably not trust the 7-11 security cameras quite so much
I cringe at this kind of deranged reasoning. It's somehow a bad thing that the scientific method leads to refinement of ideas and rejection of flawed hypotheses? That people once thought the earth was flat is no argument, science is the reason people stopped believing that. Getting things wrong and proposing alternative theories in response is the whole premise of science.
 

norinrad

Member
I'm not so sure of that. I honestly think they convinced themselves they're right.

Of course they are wrong. Kal EL also tried to warn his people, if only they had listened. I really see something like that happening to earth except Musk's rockets won't be ready to take any of us anywhere, dooming us all or those who come long after we are gone.
 
The prevailing notion in America is that no one figured out the Earth wasn't flat until Columbus so this doesn't surprise me

Pretty much every seafaring culture figured that shit out right quick save the Chinese
 
No one ever really believed the world was flat. That's Anglo-American anti-Catholic propaganda.

The clergy scientists in the Midddle Ages knew the world was round and could even tell you its curcumference.

I'm not sure if it's anti-Catholic, at least on the American side. They like (or liked to, in the South when I was growing up) teach that Columbus is a Real American Hero(tm) and that the Kings and Queens of England were dumb-dumbs who tried to tell him the world was flat, but he was a man of principles, ideals, and knowledge and did not listen.

The reality is that they knew the world was round, but because there was no known land mass between Europe and Asia on their current maps circumnavigating via the Atlantic would have been borderline suicidal using navigation technology of the time. Columbus doesn't sound as heroic when you say he stood up to conventional wisdom that there would be nowhere to park along the way, though.
 

epmode

Member
Why is this such a big point of contention anyway? Is it about saving jobs in industries that would be dismantled because of regulations? Making the oil companies happy? Just fucking over the Democrats (since whatever they believe MUST be wrong)? Contempt for intellectual authorities? All of the above?

My country's off the rails, GAF.

edit: Oh god, I didn't even notice the Young Earth implication.
 

jstripes

Banned
I'm not sure if it's anti-Catholic, at least on the American side. They like (or liked to, in the South when I was growing up) teach that Columbus is a Real American Hero(tm) and that the Kings and Queens of England were dumb-dumbs who tried to tell him the world was flat, but he was a man of principles, ideals, and knowledge and did not listen.

The reality is that they knew the world was round, but because there was no known land mass between Europe and Asia on their current maps circumnavigating via the Atlantic would have been borderline suicidal using navigation technology of the time. Columbus doesn't sound as heroic when you say he stood up to conventional wisdom that there would be nowhere to park along the way, though.

Yup. Columbus thought he was going to sail to India. If you ever wondered why Native Americans were called Indians, there you go.
 

i-Lo

Member
When shit starts to go south, there is a very good chance that he and his ilk are going to blame immigrants, muslims, abortions, homosexuals, poor people, previous administrations, china and even perhaps de-segregation.
 
I'll never understand climate deniers.

They've been dragged kicking and screaming to the point where most admit there MAY be a problem. But they argue that it isn't worth spending money to mitigate the risk. Even if 97% of climate scientists tell them there is a big problem, one that will cost their precious economy and pension funds vast amounts of money, they are prepared to gamble it won't occur in order to line the pockets of their donors and lobbyists.
It is the definition of global treason.
 

Future

Member
This is when the media needs to interject and call out the stupidity. Sure news media aren't supposed to biased for parties, but they should be biased towards the truth.

It's like when McCain corrected that old woman when she called him an Arab. NO ONE should be embracing this nonsense
 

Square2015

Member
IIRC from history class, 3500 BC is when recorded civilization began. The Sumerian civilization took off at that time followed by Babylon, etc.

(Or was it 2500 BC?)
 

Lister

Banned
There was an "overwhelming" agreement that the earth was flat because you were ostracised by the church and state if you said otherwise. Fucking idiots.

Huh? I don't think this was ever the case. That the earth was round was known to educated people (and probably anyone who sailed) since early antiquity at least, almost certinaly earlier, this is where we first start to see writings describing the reasons why people thought the earth was round.
 
Natural scientists are awful at understanding how the world works at a social level. Just see, well, climate scientists on climate policy and the jokes who are econophysicists.

If only the results of hard science could just be tailored to meet the needs of the soft sciences like economics. It's not the economists fault that the hard sciences are so bad at telling them what they need to hear.
 
If only the results of hard science could just be tailored to meet the needs of the soft sciences like economics.

Except you'd have to question how "hard" these sciences are when you have physicists blindly applying statistical methods to data, making moronic assumptions, asinine analogies and doing other nonsensical things you'd only expect from a sham of a researcher. They have no feel for causality. None. It's shocking, absolutely shocking.

Of course, it's not just econophysics but natural scientists doing work in social sciences in general. They produce terrible research. Medical researchers produce awful social science research too.
 

Plum

Member
When shit starts to go south, there is a very good chance that he and his ilk are going to blame immigrants, muslims, abortions, homosexuals, poor people, previous administrations, china and even perhaps de-segregation.

Very good chance? That's as certain as the sun rising tomorrow. When the first mass climate refugee movements start they'll be more than willing to help (figuratively) "hold back the horde."
 

Wilsongt

Member
At this point, deny climate change is just admitting where your paycheck is coming from when you are an elected official or a spokes man for one of them.
 
Except you'd have to question how "hard" these sciences are when you have physicists blindly applying statistical methods to data, making moronic assumptions, asinine analogies and doing other nonsensical things you'd only expect from a sham of a researcher. They have no feel for causality. None. It's shocking, absolutely shocking.

Of course, it's not just econophysics but natural scientists doing work in social sciences in general. They produce terrible research. Medical researchers produce awful social science research too.

I don't really get what you are saying. Your problem was with me making fun of the invisible hand so you think that knowledge should effectively be self regulating like the markets and by some invisible process people will naturally settle on the right answers? The scientific method is no longer useful?
 

Glass Joe

Member
earth_temperature_timeline_2x.png


This image/meme is being shared on my facebook a lot lately and I do have some questions about it. How is it that in B.C. times, Earth's temperature varied a lot without all of these harmful pollution interferences of today? What exactly made Earth in 8000 B.C. as warm as the Earth today without all of these harmful emissions back then?

Also, what makes temperature readings from sooo far ago scientifically factual? I'm all for a cleaner environment, but it seems like if the effect and cause matched, we would have seen a big spike in the Industrial Age and with coal-powered steam engines on trains.
 
I don't really get what you are saying. Your problem was with me making fun of the invisible hand so you think that knowledge should effectively be self regulating like the markets and by some invisible process people will naturally settle on the right answers? The scientific method is no longer useful?

I'm saying natural scientists aren't as smart as you think are. What you wrote about the invisible hand is bizarre. Knowledge is self-regulating? Knowledge cannot make decisions which it needs to be able to do to self-regulate. Of course, researchers self-regulate. They also create journals which impose rules, have qualifying exams for research programs, etc. as measures to try to ensure quality.

Also, the process of buying and selling in a market is not invisible. The reasons why they do so are not hidden either. The invisible hand is used as analogy to refer to how privately made decisions could lead to a Pareto efficient result.
 

gaugebozo

Member
Except you'd have to question how "hard" these sciences are when you have physicists blindly applying statistical methods to data, making moronic assumptions, asinine analogies and doing other nonsensical things you'd only expect from a sham of a researcher. They have no feel for causality. None. It's shocking, absolutely shocking.

Of course, it's not just econophysics but natural scientists doing work in social sciences in general. They produce terrible research. Medical researchers produce awful social science research too.

Hey. Hey. I will blindly apply statistical methods to your mother.
 
I'm saying natural scientists aren't as smart as you think are. What you wrote about the invisible hand is bizarre. Knowledge is self-regulating? Knowledge cannot make decisions which it needs to be able to do to self-regulate. Of course, researchers self-regulate. They also create journals which impose rules, have qualifying exams for research programs, etc. as measures to try to ensure quality.

Also, the process of buying and selling in a market is not invisible. The reasons why they do so are not hidden either. The invisible hand is used as analogy to refer to how privately made decisions could lead to a Pareto efficient result.

Well you are just making an assumption about how much confidence I have in every single piece of science ever recorded which is in itself bizarre. Linking some some random articles to shatter my "illusion" is also bizarre.

Rhetoric about the invisible, misusing and overreaching with the concept, are used to justify deregulation. I was wondering if you wanted science to be deregulated since you were trying to make some point about the quality of the results it produces despite the advances visible to all over the past hundred or two hundred years being obvious.

The scientific method is the method for questioning the previous results so the obvious question is if "science" is getting it wrong are we saying that the scientific method is leading to wrong answers that it cannot correct? Is it providing worse answers that just tossing a coin or asking the opinion of wealthy donors to political parties?
 

Dali

Member
There was an overwhelming science that the Earth was flat, and there was an overwhelming science that we were the center of the world, 100%, you know, we get a lot of things wrong in the scientific community

What's this "we" stuff? I just checked his credentials.
 

Monocle

Member
Yeah, it's a self-correcting process you fucking idiot. It's a process of refinement. That's the whole point.

Nothing more infuriating than listening to absolute morons talk about science.

And "5,500-year history of our planet"? Fuck off to the Bronze Age, fool.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom