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OT - new carbon tax 3-Mar-2011 At 5:38:17 PM Gavo

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Interesting argument. But I simply do not agree that people do not agree on "what science is". Of course, there will be exceptions to any consensus. One person will always argue the sky is not blue.

But noone I know, and beside the climbing community my circle of friends are almost exclusively scientists or work in the field of science, debate "the scientific method". That is, a hypothesis based on evidence generated to date... experimentation to TRY AND DISPROVE THE HYPOTHESIS, and then analysis of the data. After this, an article is created, and REAL science journals will circulate the article amongst peers (other scientists in the field) who review the method and try to find flaws.

This method is not perfect, sometimes flaws exist in the method and a keen-witted reviewer of an article might pick up on this. Someone who knows their stuff will not read the discussion section of an article and instantly agree with the author/s, but rather draw their own conclusions from the data and this SHOULD match the author.

But many MANY people have a distorted view on the scientific method and view scepticism, which is the entire foundation of science, as a negative attribute whereas it is entirely positive and necessary for the method.

The idea of trying to disprove a theory is also logical. A theory is never entirely proven, it cant be by the very definition of "real" science. However it can be so substantiated beyond a reasonable doubt, that a person would have to have the iq of a coconut to believe otherwise.

Creationism, religion (creationism being a sub-topic of a religious group), astrology... all NON-SCIENCE. There is ABSOLUTELY NO DEBATE THERE. There absolutely is consensus. Consensus amongst those who PRACTICE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD. By that I mean, that those who argue that astrology or creationism are valid arguments, either do not submit genuine articles for peer review, or they outright disregard the findings of others and practice pseudo-science.

I understand your point, but your examples are incredibly flawed as I tried to illustrate above. For example. using the scientific method, you can very simply disprove something like astrology, as well as creationism. In fact, we do it all the time! Especially for creationism I mean even C14 dating well surpasses their idea of the age of the earth! But watch a debate with a creationist and see what they say... "show me the data".. and you do.. and they literally ignore it.

Science is not perfect, but it is the absolute best we have and many orders-of-magnitude better than anything else available. And when you have a statistically overwhelming number of people generating completely unique and independent experiments that all point to a single general endpoint, the coconut factor comes into play again.

I do agree with your final point though, that perhaps I put too much weight on the data and argue that point when people might need a different argument presented to them.

OR.. perhaps people can grow the hell up, stop being friggin lazy about matters of paramount importance, and do some damned reading. On an evolutionary level we are getting "smarter" but on a social level, I do not believe we are keeping up. The health of the planet, I believe, should be the concern of every person, not just climate scientists, or other scientists with an interest in the area.

People only seem to give a shit when it directly affects them. Well if you live in certain seaside low lying regions, it does directly affect you. It is beginning to effect everyone but they are not opening their eyes to it because there is not fire streaking across the sky and mass extinctions happening instantaneously.

Yes, this will affect everyone and yes, one might assume the position of arguing the effects, rather than the cause.... Yes, someone should be doing that as well I suppose. Me, I hope people are mature enough to see what is right in front of them if they make the effort to look.

And all this convincing, all this arguing... where does it get us? Another year will pass, our position will remain stationary.

Why is science alone not enough to act on? I think that is utter crap. Certainly at times, it might not. But when your home is at risk, you act. And we have masses upon masses of evidence all pointing to a big, ongoing ouchie coming our way. Why not then act on it? Let the politicians debate it? Crap. If there were piles and piles of scientific evidence indicating that you were about to spontaneously combust, would you not go get a fire-extinguisher or sit in a bath?

I argue the point that science alone should not dictate certain things. I dont think it should rule everything but on matters of paramount importance, i.e. the health of the planet, your damn right I believe it should