Michael Mann is currently suing someone who questioned the validity of his science. Indeed, one judge has declared that is is actionable behavior to 'question his reasoning and intellect.' He is trying to have himself and other climate scientists declared as exceptions to the First Amendment, and being given government sanction as Those Who Shall Not Be Questioned. They can then declare whatever policy demands they like, and if you challenge them you are running the risk of a lawsuit.
I mostly disagree with him.
First, Galileo may have stated that the hypothesis must match the observations, but the whole Galileo affair was NOT caused by the Catholic church, but by Galileo's fellow scientists. One need only look at who brought all of this to the attention of the churhc and who was pursuing actions against Galileo. ALLL of the scientists of the time were employed by the church, so OF COURSE the scientists are going to use the church to censure what Galileo was saying. Also while the heliocentric model was, of course, correct, Galileo's models predicted perturbations that were not present. The perturbation were actually present but since there was errors in guessing the distances of the planets and the sun, the perturbation were much smaller than could be observed at the time AND smaller than they thought they should see. SOOO, Galileo's models given the understanding of the time of the distances DID NOT match with observation. ALSO, the reason that the scientists of the time were so strongly against Galileo was NOT due to Christianity, but WAS due to the scientists of the time so strongly holding to the Greek philosophers.
Now in dealing with whether or not we should do something when we cannot PROVE a difference because of lack of information from 1850, I also disagree. I prefer to look at this as a risk-benefit analysis.
We can show some warming. We can show some problem will be caused by continued warming. BUT, the problems are SO EXAGGERATED as to make a true risk-benefit analysis impossible.
To directly answer your question, YES. We are in danger of going back to government (because the church was gov't at the time) driving the direction of science. They already tend to do this by decisions made as to where the money is spent.
I am not entirely sure there is a way around this, though. Consider that IF the gov't is not giving money to scientific studies, then industry is. Do we want science dictated by big business or big government?
Interesting that a retired English (or Welshman) living in the Philippines would be so interested in the first amendment.
I have followed this rather than listen to the spin deniers have tried to put on it and found Mann is suing two bloggers who called him a fraud and one compared him to "a child molester" that, under any western legal system is slander, Mann at first only threatened to sue unless these claims where not removed, he was again met with taunts and the threat that if he did sue his emails would be open to 'discovery'
Funny then that as soon as Mann did start to sue, these bloggers changed their tune and tried to get the action stopped going through two judges trying to quash suit, they seemed to be a little scared and have forgotten about those emails they claimed they would be able to get.
Both Judges dismissed the bloggers appeals.
The attempts by the bloggers to stop this going to court continue, they are now trying to claim it as freedom of the press, which I don't think stretches to calling people liars and frauds (without evidence) or comparing them to child molesters, by any fair test of the law, which is of course why they are trying so hard to stop the case, which only two years ago, they claimed to want.
>>Richard Richard Feynman summarized Galileo’s approach beautifully, saying that if a hypothesis disagrees with observations, then it’s wrong.<<
That is not true – and it is not what Feynman is saying in the video (he uses the word once as a casual alternative to experiment [i,e., observation of the experiment]).
Observations are not evidence until you identify the information they contain – extract the information that is relevant to your question – and have a test to determine if the information you get is the right information.
This is something that Deniers never consider – because they do not understand science. The last 18 years of temperature data are, indeed, observations – however, no Denier has ever shown that the observations contain evidence necessary to define a pause in global warming – and the reason for that (not counting Deniers ignorance of science) is because the needed information is not there.
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No it is not. It shows how thoughtless the article is. The whole thing is epistemologically flawed in terms of science and clearly just a personal opinion of someone with know knowledge of the science involved, but who claims that it does exist.
It does not matter that he is wrong - but, it matters that he does not care. The guy never said or wrote a word about climate until the mid-late 2000s and all he has done since then is address the subject from a political-conspiracy viewpoint.
I think we are because so many people are choosing ignorance over science. In countries like the U.S. and Scotland (well, not quite a country) people are fighting to teach creationism in schools.
Most people in the U.S. know little science, and one political party is advocating REJECTION of science on its platform. The deniers in this forum consist of religious fundamentalists that believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old; of people that don't seem to know any science at all and are proud of it; and of people that have some training in a completely unrelated science but lack knowledge of physics, meteorology or climate. One of the few "scientists" among the deniers recently claimed that a vapor is a gas above its boiling point! Does he really think that one of the constituents of air is at a completely different temperature than all the other constituents?
This is what will take us back into the Dark Ages. I have never seen any one of the deniers in here (including yourself) show any interest in picking up a modern textbook on science. I remember that you even REJECTED my offer of sending you textbooks, since you said they were unavailable where you live. You persist in posting links to scientific nonsense (stuff that NO climate scientists believe, not even Spencer, Christy or Lindzen) as if it's relevant to the discussion
People have become willfully ignorant and proud of it--that's what will take us into the Dark Ages, not some obscure German physicist's rejection of climate models.
How true. Let someone speak against so-called "global warming" and watch how they are attacked, ridiculed, and lose funding. Those who speak out are just like Galileo speaking out against the consensus of "scientists" who accepted the geocentric universe. We need to end government funding of pseudo sciences to end this harassment.
We are there now. Man made climate change is junk science based on conjecture, probability, lies and fear mongering. There is no agreement on it existence in the scientific community and no proven 'facts' either.
Yep.
Coming up soon, a geocentric universe.
yes it really right opinion
no
http://notrickszone.com/2015/01/06/german-physicist-sees-dangerous-return-to-medieval-scholasticism-climate-models-have-failed-conclusively/
