"The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact." - KURT GÖDEL
"According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
A guiding principle for accepting claims of catastrophic global events, miracles, incredible healing, invisible friends, or fill in the blank is:
“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” - Carl Sagan
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken
I would add irrational and highly delusional to the mix when faith requires one to accept magical violations of the well known, well tested or easily demonstrated laws of Nature. - PWL
"Science is Progress and the Future. Faith is regression to the Dark Ages." - PWL
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” - Carl Sagan
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." - Alfred Korzybski
"Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence." - James Randi
"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch." - Novalis
"Nullius in verba. Take no one's word for it." - Motto of the Royal Society
"I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS." - Richard Feynman
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley
“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein
"Science is empirical. Knowing the answer means nothing. Testing your knowledge means everything." - Lawrence Krauss
"Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism - and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency." - Stephen Jay Gould
"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work." - James Randi
“The natural state of the world for the last few million years is ice ages with intermittent warm periods lasting you know typically 10,000 years which we’re in now, year 10,000 now so logically there is an ice age due.” – Piers Corbyn
Regarding Piers Corbyn’s recent forecasts.
This graphic from NSIDC on the right side shows the “negative phase of the artic oscillation” weather pattern that seems to be happening now as Piers Corbyn forecast with the cold blowing (see the two black arrows labeled “cold” in the right side of the diagram) over northern Europe and Canada and the USA.
It sure looks like Piers Corbyn called it right using a forecasting model based upon the Arctic Oscillation Index and comprehension of the diagram you show above. Cold blowing across Europe and Canada/USA in the NO graphic as Piers forecast. Fascinating.
This interview occurred in October just before the whistle-blower released the Climategate Files which confirm many of the long suspected crimes against science and humanity by Jones, Mann, et. al..
David Warren, of the Canwest News Service based in Ottawa, Canada has some eloquent and biting words today for the alleged scientists of the Climategate fame. This “op ed” piece is running in papers across Canada the last few days. An extract follows, for the full article use the link provided.
It would be interesting to see some attempt to estimate the total direct cost to the world’s taxpayers of all the scare-mongering since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring first started appearing in The New Yorker magazine in June 1962.
Each scare, in turn, is packaged and marketed with more skill than the previous; each enjoys its run in the world’s headlines, and the frenetic political attention we have been watching in Copenhagen in its most advanced form. Each in turn is gradually forgotten as more facts come to light, as the apocalyptic predictions fail, as the storyline bores through repetition. And then a new scare needs to be invented.
“Anthropogenic global warming” will go the way of its predecessors, having achieved what was meant for it, in its season: the extortion of huge amounts of money by the parasites clustered around all the existing environmentalist spigots, the sinking of new bungholes into the public accounts, the creation of new big-brotherly bureaucracies to feed new vested interests and untold riches and prestige for the “settled scientists” who work the system for patronage.
But then it will be replaced with a new environmental scare narrative.
The parties are already working on “acidification of the oceans”; there were loose ends from Rio ’92 on “biological diversity” and there will always be fresh water-supply issues to play with. The threat from asteroids was briefly considered, then dismissed: too hard to blame that on the free market. But the activists will come up with something, for their livelihoods depend upon it.
For this reason, I think we need, after thorough public inquiries, to bring criminal prosecutions against some of the major scientific players exposed by the recent release of e-mails and papers at the centre of the “global warming” scam. The more any percipient reader pours through those “hacked” documents, the clearer he will see the criminal intent behind the massaging of the numbers; for the masseurs in question stood to benefit directly and personally from getting “the right results.” This is, by its nature, an issue for the criminal courts.
“We’re talking about the fate of all of human kind and the kind of future we’re going to leave for our children!” – David Suzuki
David Suzuki interviewed by Canada’s CBC Power and Politics host Evan Solomon. Wow, epic rant there David! With “beliefs” like you have David Suzuki no wonder you’re freaking out epic! Slooow down. Don’t panic! Check the science dude.
Now we break net and bring you to backwards world where protesters FOR AGW are fighting with the police out side of the Copenhagen climate change meeting followed quickly by the epic rant of Suzuki!
“In the United States of America, unfortunately we [alarmists] still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate [for the ends to justify the means and thus] to have an over-representation of factual presentations [aka exaggerate aka lie aka ignore counter evidence aka commit fraud] on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” — Al Gore in an interview.”
How can he make this claim that these glaciers are melting due to the man make global warming climate change hypothesis?
What is EVIDENCE Al Gore? Please be very specific and show all your work!
Anyone? What is the evidence? What is the counter evidence?
Blood & Gore, not it’s not a blood and gore horror movie, it is an all too real life nightmare for the world! From the I can’t make this stuff up file, Al Gore’s business partner in his Carbon Trading and Investment company, GIM, is named “Blood” thus we end up with “Blood & Gore”, a nickname they even use!
Let’s look at some of the reasons why climate change is natural. Original bullet points are from Jim McConalogue of the European Foundation, highlighting, links and commentary below the line in each point are by pwl. I’ll be updating this page to flush out the commentary for most of the items as the days go on. Whenever possible I will quote actual scientists who have expertise on a particular point or set of points, and even better I will post a video of them discussing the issues directly. If you have any additional points, counter points, corrections, better links, or additional links you’d like to have added please make a comment.
In compiling this assessment, I am grateful to the real hard-working academic researchers and professors; the integrity and arguments of Roger Helmer MEP; the ‘Friends of Science’ organisation for providing facts and myths on climate change; the United States organisation, ‘No Cap-and-Trade Coalition’; for the detailed research by Dr. Singer in his editing of the report, ‘Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate’, (The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change), published by The Heartland Institute in 2008 and also his report with Dr. Idso, ‘Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)’, also published by the Heartland Institute in 2009, where many of the central arguments are drawn from. Also, the work and insights by Lord Monckton of Brenchley’s report ‘Climategate: Caught Green-handed! Cold facts about the hot topic of global temperature change after the Climategate Scandal’, Science & Public Policy Institute, 2009 have been useful. I have attempted to credit all other researchers and organisations in the content of the report. Other valuable papers include Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner in Executive Intelligence Review, 22 June 2007 and John McLean’s paper ‘The IPCC can’t count its “expert scientists”: Author and reviewer numbers are wrong’ in January 2009, all of which I have used to compile my pamphlet.” – Jim McConalogue
01) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.
“Evidence is information, such as facts, coupled with principles of inference (the act or process of deriving a conclusion), that make information relevant to the support or disproof of a hypothesis. Scientific evidence is evidence where the dependence of the evidence on principles of inference is not conceded, enabling others to examine the background beliefs or assumptions employed to determine if facts are relevant to the support of or falsification of a hypothesis.
“A person’s assumptions or beliefs about the relationship between alleged facts and a hypothesis will determine if that person takes the facts as evidence. … A person’s assumptions or beliefs about the relationship between alleged facts and a hypothesis will also determine how a person utilizes the facts as evidence. … In summary, beliefs or assumptions about causal relationships are utilized to determine whether facts are evidence of a hypothesis.
Background beliefs differ. As a result, where observers operate under different paradigms, rational observers may find different meaning in scientific evidence from the same event. … Note that a causal relationship between the facts and hypothesis does not exist to cause the facts to be taken as evidence[1], but rather the causal relationship is provided by the person seeking to establish facts as evidence.
Popper provides that a scientist creatively develops a theory which may be falsified by testing the theory against evidence or known facts. Popper’s theory presents an asymmetry in that evidence can prove a theory wrong, by establishing facts that are inconsistent with the theory. In contrast, evidence cannot prove a theory correct because other evidence, yet to be discovered, may exist that is inconsistent with the theory.”
Many of these 100 Reasons provide alternative interpretations of the data or counter evidence that falsify the man made global warming climate change hypothesis.
02) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.
03) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.
04) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.
05) Throughout the Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.
06) Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.
07) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.
08) The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers not the 4,000 usually cited.
“The belief that the ends justifies the means may be the true root of all evil.” – Troy Brumley
“Al Gore, First Emperor of the Moon, Head Authority on Mann-Made Climate Change“
“In the United States of America, unfortunately we [alarmists] still live in a bubble of unreality [see photo above]. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate [for the ends to justify the means and thus] to have an over-representation of factual presentations [aka exaggerate aka lie aka ignore counter evidence aka commit fraud] on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” — Al Gore in an interview. “
“So there is no need to invoke a complicated explanation for global warming involving disputed data on sunspots, cosmic rays and clouds, as some sceptics continue to do. The answer lies not in elaborate suppositions, but in the science and the data we can trust.” – Sun sets on sceptics’ case against climate change, Steve Connor,
The question is what is the science? How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? What happens when the data can’t be trusted due to the games that the alleged scientists involved played with it?
The climate debate seems to be less and less about the science than it does to be about people’s internal mental representation of their “beliefs” about the science that they “trust”.
Christopher Monckton proves to be an amazing interviewer.
“I’m most grateful to you for having giving me so much of your time. I do beg you not to believe either me or anyone else on this but do exactly what you just said and check for yourself and when you do I think you’ll find you’re addressing a non-problem. Thank you very much.” – Christopher Monckton
In the ideals of science “belief” and “trust” have no place as anyone would be able to “replicate” the science claims of any hypothesis on their own at any time.
For some hard sciences this is possible, for example with Newton’s gravity hypothesis just about anyone can do the experiments to confirm or refute the claims. Of course to test Einstein’s claims takes a bit more work and a lot more understanding as to grasp Relativity takes deeper comprehension.
What I wonder about is how can someone grasp what is going on in the global warming climate change debates without bring trust and belief into it? Is it even possible?
Many people I talk to find it difficult to accept that the raw temperature data from the scientists that collect it could be untrustworthy due to sloppy science or due to deliberate manipulation. They think that one couldn’t get away with it. Again it comes down to trust.
# have confidence or faith in; “We can trust in God”; “Rely on your friends”; “bank on your good education”; “I swear by my grandmother’s recipes”
# something (as property) held by one party (the trustee) for the benefit of another (the beneficiary); “he is the beneficiary of a generous trust …
# allow without fear
# reliance: certainty based on past experience; “he wrote the paper with considerable reliance on the work of other scientists”; “he put more trust in his own two legs than in the gun”
# believe: be confident about something; “I believe that he will come back from the war”
# the trait of believing in the honesty and reliability of others; “the experience destroyed his trust and personal dignity”
# hope: expect and wish; “I trust you will behave better from now on”; “I hope she understands that she cannot expect a raise”
# a consortium of independent organizations formed to limit competition by controlling the production and distribution of a product or service; “they set up the trust in the hope of gaining a monopoly”
# entrust: confer a trust upon; “The messenger was entrusted with the general’s secret”; “I commit my soul to God”
# faith: complete confidence in a person or plan etc; “he cherished the faith of a good woman”; “the doctor-patient relationship is based on trust”
# extend credit to; “don’t trust my ex-wife; I won’t pay her debts anymore”
# confidence: a trustful relationship; “he took me into his confidence”; “he betrayed their trust”
It seems that “trust” is replete with “belief and confidence being placed in” others. Here in lies the problem with such a complex discussion about climate science. It is complex and most people tune out when the math gets mentioned. As a result of eyes glazing over they revert to the basic human feeling of trusting another, often trusting the “experts with authority”. I suspect that in the global warming climate debates most people suffer from the belief stricken false argument of appealing to authority since they can’t deal with or won’t deal with the science involved.
Part of the reason is that people often want to simplify by distilling the options down to a simple decision. They don’t want to have to evaluate the thousands of details involved as it takes a considerable amount of time to comprehend each new detail.
I started this blog after a year or so following the debate. What happened was enlightening to me that the facade of “the truth as known by the consensus popular view of science” on many topics was shattered when I asked a couple of questions. It turned out that I simply wanted to comprehend the basic science behind the claims of man made global warming climate change. As someone dedicated to life long learning and a deep interest in science, I work as a systems scientist and with complex software and hardware systems, I thought it would be good to learn the basics by asking a few questions. So I was at a science blog and posted a couple of questions about an article that I’d seen come up in a Google search. The article was from a weather man in South America commenting on Darwin’s notes during his long voyage, the comments were about the climate. The article was suggesting that the climate hasn’t really changed all that much since then. Well not knowing the “veracity” of such claims I thought I’d ask a few questions of people who seemed to be knowledgeable about science and climate science.
The response was shocking indeed. Very quickly I was vilified for asking questions that hit at the assumption of man made global warming climate change. As I pointed out that they weren’t answering the questions but were simply engaging in ad hominem personal attacks and being unscientific in doing so it escalated to the point where I wasn’t just booted off their forums but was banned and all my comments were deleted in the process. Censorship was at work, and alive and well. At some point I might post the copies of the portions of the conversations from those postings that I had the fortitude to save. In any event the specific details aren’t the main point I’m making with this story of what happened.
What occurs to me is that each person makes a mental representation, a map if you will, of what they think is objective reality. Portions of this map are highly accurate. Other portions of the map aren’t so accurate. The key thing that people forget is that “The Map Isn’t the Territory.”
“Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” – Alfred Korzybski
This applies in science as scientists need – as a result of human biology and in particular as a result of human brain biology – to make a mental map of objective reality. By necessity this map will have its accurate portions and its inaccurate portions and parts everywhere in between. A main challenge in science, other than the complexities of technology and technical or theoretical knowledge, is ensuring that one’s map is accurate in as many places that matter and importantly in as many places as is necessary to support one’s science. The challenge rests is determining what is real in objective reality and what is just (as in only perceived to be) real in one’s map of objective reality. If it’s only real in ones map of objective reality and not actually real in objective reality then what we are dealing with is a belief and not objective reality.
In science the resolution of belief verses what is really real is supposed to be what can be proven to be real via tools such as the scientific method which uses experiment and observations to confirm or refute science claims from our maps of reality. Of course even when our maps of objective reality are confirmed to the Nth digit of precision they are still maps, although possibly highly accurate maps, and not objective reality itself.
Nature, the mother not the journal, is the final judge in all matters of science – not human judgments, not peer review consensus, not peer review refutations, not our opinions. Nature is the final judge, jury and executioner of all scientific knowledge and for what is real in objective reality. We only need adjust our maps to be as accurate as possible with Nature. This is of course harder said than done. Climate science is one such place where that is particularly difficult due to the high complexity of the many Natural Systems involved.
The deep challenge comes in when there are many differing views on what is being observed, theorized and concluded by human scientists. As humans scientists are also fallible. The scientific method and process is supposed to mitigate against this human bias towards our favorite maps of objective reality.
As the Climategate emails, documents and programs have confirmed the so called consensus and peer review process and even the very heart of the climate science itself has been deeply compromised. Humans it seems, yes even the previously trusted and venerated Climategate alleged scientists have fallen into the ancient patterns of our ancestors – belief stricken group think, thought control or thought management tactics, and politics.
One of the possible outcomes of the Climategate affair is that scientists involved in climate science might start speaking out about how their science research refutes the mainstream group think consensus views.
Any scientific hypothesis is supposed to rise or fail based upon the evidence. It’s coming on a year since I started this blog, Paths To Knowledge dot net, and I’ve yet to even begin to scratch the surface of comprehending the many thousands of issues and detailed points in climate science. No wonder the typical person gives up and takes up “trust in authorities”, as it’s a massive challenge just learning the issues let alone the much more difficult challenge in being able to evaluate these issues and make a determination that has anything to actually do with objective reality. Sure it’s easy to make choices and build up a map of the world that one thinks is reality, it’s quite another to be able to build up a map that can withstand the hard objective tests of the scientific method.
The more that I learn about the science of climate science the less and less the promoted map of man made global warming climate change makes any sense.
Some say there is a mountain of evidence. That may well be, and if so please bring it to me for I can’t see the mountain from where I currently stand.
Nature is the final judge of all science. It is not in the minds of men but in Nature where we test the mettle of any scientific claims.
In my journey to find out for myself what the actual science says and what the criticisms of that science say I’m not only learning about the climate science and other sciences but I’m learning a lot about human nature and the nature of “belief” and “trust” and “faith” and how these can be seriously dark forces when the masses of humanity take up a mental map of reality that doesn’t correspond to the objective reality of Nature itself.
One thing that constantly amazes me when talking to people about the climate is that most people cut off the discussion when it gets too detailed or when a point challenges a “belief” they have about it. For example, many people state that they north polar cap is melting and that that is serious evidence of man made global warming climate change. Ok, I say, what about the observed fact that the amount of ice on Earth is about constant with the southern hemisphere growing in ice about as much as the northern hemisphere loses ice? At this point many people loose their grasp on the conversation when they invoke appeals to authority. This is part of the challenge of science education but even deeper is the problem of how do you teach or educate people about a science that is in flux or that has so much controversy particularly when it’s denied that there is any controversy within the community of authorities on climate science?
How do people of reason comprehend the complexities of climate science let alone determine what is real and what is belief stricken dogma or bad science?
The interesting thing about belief stricken maps of objective reality is that they die with you while the objective reality of Nature keeps on going regardless of us or how we view it.
A real profound question is how are we being in the face of a global pandemic of belief stricken humans who have maps of objective reality that are so far from Nature that it has a serious impact upon society? How does one effectively communicate empowering people to actually grasp and most importantly test the notions of climate science themselves? Is it even possible? Will there always need to be trust and belief involved? How many does it take to shift the paradigm?
The climategate documents demonstrate that one or a few people dedicated to finding out the scientific truths can make a significant difference to the conversation as well as to the actual science involved. As the political shock waves of Climategate reverberate across the world and in the minds of key decision makers what are the next steps?
As I end this first year studying climate science and posting over 400 articles do I have any definitive answers on man made global warming climate science? No, what I’ve seen deeply and profoundly has shaken my own mental maps in the confidence of “science” especially that of what one reads in the popular media and online but even more so of “peer reviewed” articles. I’m much more skeptical of scientific claims in the sense that I’m continuing to ask basic questions of any science that I come across. The spirit of science is to ask questions and is to question all the basic assumptions. The spirit of science education is to allow those questions and to engage with those asking to spread scientific knowledge but also to vet the science. Anything less isn’t science but is something best left to our ancestors in the dark caves of history.
The enlightenment faces its greatest challenge, the power of belief, faith, trust and confidence to distort the best mental maps we have of objective reality into political propaganda tools.
What ever you do find out the science for yourself from a direct as possible a source. Never believe what science writers or science journalists say as their opinions are very often biased due to their own belief stricken conclusions already made. Be INDEPENDENT! Find out for yourself.
The other probably better caution is to not make a decision on man made global warming climate change unless you’ve done extensive research from direct sources and have learned the science and counter science. This point of view is based upon the reality that climate change is a very complex field of science and it’s not easily reducible to platitudes or simplistic beliefs. There are also many social and economic policies now being intertwined with the science mixing up the clarity with their political propaganda messages. Use extreme caution with anyone who says the science is settled or that consensus is science for as we know from basic science philosophy these are never the case as science is always the pursuit of the nature of objective reality.
Rational conversation from Christopher Monckton confronting the protesters who invaded his meeting.
Protester addressing Christopher Monckton in the convention hall, “We don’t really need to listen to your explanation or the background of what you believe because if it’s true then you should be going out and saying that and we should be seeing a scientific consensus leaning more towards what you’re believing.”
Christopher Monckton “It’s a great mistake to believe science is done by consensus, it isn’t.”
Protester: “I know it’s not”
What? You’re saying that the science should show the results by consensus but then you admit in your next statement that science isn’t done by consensus? A very confused protester.
The protesters were attempting to prevent public speech while Christopher Monckton was engaged in communicating his point of view, as the protesters advised him to do, they blocked him. Then Christopher Monckton found them and engaged them in debate however they were not receptive to hear actual facts of science as they have already made up their minds without knowing any of the science, nor being able to debate it.
The acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize by Barack Obama, the US president, has sparked constroversy. Obama received the prize dedicated to peace in Oslo, pledging to strive for a better world and pursue building a “just and lasting peace”. But critics have attacked the decision to award the prize to Obama, pointing out he is actively leading his nation in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and last week ordered 30,000 more troops to join the Afghan conflict.
The Nobel Prize was created by an arms merchant of death, Alfred Bernhard Nobel.
Very cool tool from visualizing data from NASA satellites in 3d in a web browser.
What I’m interested in is not just the visualization aspect but the actual data behind the visualizations since as we know from the Climategate confirmations of scientific fraud in climate science visual images can be highly misleading towards the alleged scientists point of view. Raw data please. All manipulations MUST be FULLY documented with the software source code that made the changes and detailed reasons listed for all adjustments.
If we are to raise our knowledge, skills and competence in using the scientific method to study the Earth, Moon, Sol and other relevant systems we must do some basic learning. Hard science requires making use of hard data without cheating and with showing ones data and any adjustments with justifications and open source code for auditing and proper open peer reviews!
Now let’s see what we can learn from this 3d puppy. My favorite is the GRACE Gravity satellites.
I’ve often wondered what impact the uneven gravity has on the Earth’s climate systems and if the gravity effects are taken into account in the so called climate models. As you can see from the above video the Earth isn’t even an oblate spheroid, it’s a really bumpy place when it comes to gravity. This must impact the weather and thus the climate systems as the atmosphere and water and ice move about.
I didn’t realize that this email (1255100876.txt) was just a two months ago! Wow! How brazen! Making threats with impunity, or so they thought. The paradigm has sifted for sure.
Yeah, the planet is either cooling, staying the same or warming. Dah.
What amazes me is that they think they can find the causes in such a complex system and assign with any accuracy the percentage warming from each of their selected causes of warming or cooling or staying the same.
December 7th, 2009, a day that will go down in infamy! Not allowed to exhale anymore. You can inhale but no exhaling anymore. No running. No exercise. No mice that roar! Nope, can’t have CO2. Grrr… Arrrgg…
Scientific hypotheses are supposed to fall when they fail to make predictions and another hypothesis comes along that can predict better.
The AGW Hypothesis has failed to predict the cooling trend and now they are looking to explain it after their hypothesis was falsified by Mother Nature.
The Solar Weather Technique gets better results! Sometimes as accurate as 85% a year or so into the future! Now that’s impressive. What’s even more impressive is that he tracks his successes and failures to learn from them! Wait? A scientist learning from his failures? Seriously wow, epic!
As it stands the Solar Weather Technique is doing better than AGW!
The fact that the AGW Hypothesis Alarmist crowd keeps having varying explanations indicates that they hypothesis has once again failed as it shows little if any predictive powers beyond soothsaying with dead tree entrails!
It’s “manN made ” since Michael Mann, one of the primary Climategate alleged scientists, invented the hockey stick graph used in Al Gore’s science fiction film used to cry wolf and fire in crowded theaters everywhere. When we say he “invented” the graph that is saying he “made it up” as in faked the data with his fellow alleged climate scientists, Phil Jones, et. al.. They cooked the data books! They falsified the data which also happens to falsifies their hypothesis as well.
“Bad explanations are easy to vary while good explanations are hard to vary.” – David Deutsch
The key issue with an theory whether it’s a myth or a scientific theory is that not only must it have testable predictions but more importantly it’s “explanation” of objective reality must be hard to vary; in other words, there can’t be many or any variations of the explanation. The narrower the explanation that has success making predictions the closer that hypothesis (theory) is to objective reality. The more variants to the hypothesis (theory) that have as accurate (or inaccurate as the case may be) predictive power the less likely those hypotheses (or theories) have to do with objective reality.
For example, Newton’s Gravitation Theory is very accurate and has tremendous success with predictions however it was long known that it failed in some cases. Einstein came along and filled in that gap with a more accurate theory, General and Special Relativity.
Slice and dice, Occam’s Razor now has a corollary in “bad explanations are easy to vary while good explanations are hard to vary”.
One of the four strands of reality inThe Fabric of Realityis the strand of “Karl Popper’s epistemology, especially its anti-inductivism and its requiring a realist (non-instrumental) interpretation of scientific theories, and its emphasis on taking seriously those bold conjectures that resist falsification.“
An amazing editorial by the CBC’s Rex Murphy. Stunning in it’s clarity. Absolutely stunning. Breathtaking in it’s scope. A video that everyone interested in their planet must see.
Here is the Rex Murphy transcript interspersed with memorable quotes including an expanded quote from Clive Crook.
“When Jon Stewart the bantum rooster of conventional wisdom makes jokes about it you know Climategate has reached critical mass. Said Stewart: ‘Poor Al Gore, Global Warming completely debunked via the very internet he [you] invented.‘.
We have seen Noam Chomsky’s principle of “Manufacturing Consent” working with the Climategate criminals Jones, Mann, et. al.. A conspiracy of “values and beliefs”, an elitist clique that thought that they were above the rest of the people they worked for, us. Other scientists have this “academic” elitist bias or shared value, that says that you need not just the “qualifications” but the “right attitude” otherwise you’re “outside the group”. Einstein broke the mold as have McIntyre and others, Einstein was a “patent clerk” when he worked on his famous breakthroughs.
Now we see it with Jon Stewart. While making light of the Climategate in a really funny way he reveals his bias in that he “believes” in “global warming” when he says “does it [Climategate] disprove global warming, no”. Unfortunately it’s much more complex than Jon Stewart realizes and that his shared values and beliefs in “global warming” blind him from deeper inquiry. OR, as a masterful media perception shaper he’s doing his job of making people laugh with short segments and the Climategate is way too much to get into and his demographic also shares his values in “global warming”.
In any event the science will clearly demonstrate what’s going on as time unfolds and Nature does what she does.
What’s interesting in Jon Stewart’s masterful media play is really how good he is at it.
Following on the Watts Up With That article on Google Trends I was curious. Naturally.
Spending a few minutes with Google Trends I typed in “Monckton” and the graph of searches goes up with time while the new reports go down with time. They, the mainstream news, seems to be avoiding Christopher Monckton like the plague.
As this Google Trend (link at bottom) shows this trend graph is troubling for a number of possible reasons.
For starters it is obvious that Christopher Monckton is having an impact through Al Gore’s Intertubes and alternative sources.
It’s also clear that Monckton is being avoided by the mainstream press, at least those that are included in the Google Trends.
Could it be the “manufacturing of consent” that Noam Chomsky talks about at length where it is “shared values and beliefs” that creates the “conspiracy” to subvert certain ideas, thoughts, and people or groups, and not an explicit phone call such as Al Gore calling up his fellow board members at Google and other friends at news companies and saying “down with Monckton” in the news?
Alas it’s not a question that is likely to be answered, although we did think that before the revelations of the Climategate emails, data and programs were released which confirmed the long suspected criminal behavior of Jones, Mann, et. al. and of the fraudulent activities of AGW promoters such as Al Gore.
I do wonder though what it will take for Christopher Monckton to breakout into the mainstream news media. Maybe his attendance at the up coming Copenhagen Climate Conference (of global domination) will enable him access to the mainstream press in ways that they can’t ignore? We’ll see. It certainly will enable one to see the “shared values” of the mainstream news media in a new light.
We have seen Noam Chomsky’s principle of “Manufacturing Consent” working with the Climategate criminals Jones, Mann, et. al.. A conspiracy of “values and beliefs”, an elitist clique that thought that they were above the rest of the people they worked for, us. Other scientists have this “academic” elitist bias or shared value, that says that you need not just the “qualifications” but the “right attitude” otherwise you’re “outside the group”. Einstein broke the mold as have McIntyre and others, Einstein was a “patent clerk” when he worked on his famous breakthroughs.
But wait there more of interest at the Google Trends.
Three men assaulted by goons under orders from Al Gore.
Does Al Gore still think he has sovereign powers as an ex-president? Where does Al Gore get off illegally forcibly assaulting people who ask him questions he doesn’t like? I know of nothing in the US Constitution that would permit a private citizen to use force as was done here multiple times.
The evidence shows that Al Gore considers questions on Climategate and AGW from non-violent people to be an imminent security threat as he orders his (secret service?) security detail to forcibly remove three people who ask inconvenient questions Mr Gore doesn’t like.
“CHICAGO IL – On Tuesday, November 24th 2009, We Are Change Chicago attended a book signing with former vice president Al Gore, at the Borders Bookstore on 150 N. State Street.
…
First up was Saad Ali. As he approached Gore, he peacefully and respectably asked, “Sir, can you comment on the emails and documents that were hacked [ClimateGate] that reveal… that the research was a fraud and that it was all manipulated?” Gore, with an evil smirk, claimed that “he never read them.” By the look on his face and his stutter, it became quite clear that Gore was extremely uncomfortable with the question, so he quickly glared towards his security. The agents grabbed and assaulted Saad, escorting him away from Gore for merely asking a simple question. The press took notice and started filming and snapping pictures of what was going on. One of which appeared the next day in the Chicago Sun Times.”
This of course isn’t the first time that Al Gore has used intimidation and assault to stifle free debate and free speech of his critics as these following videos testify to.
Two streams of videos. First the series with Christopher Monckton interviewed by Michael Coren in Toronto, Canada and then the second series with Professor Lindzen. We also link to the professors new paper showing the new results on heat escaping from the Earth being ~1/6 that the IPCC guessed it was.
Here’s what you won’t hear on the CBC!
~”As the Earth warms it radiates more heat into space. Why is that important? The entire case of the AGW Alarmists is based on one false assumption that is built into all models is that as the world warms then less outgoing radiation will escape into space. That is contrary to reason and elementary physics. The computer models are told this wrong assumption. The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) Satellite measured that more radiation gets out into space when the Earth warms. We now know that more radiation escapes and if it escapes it’s not heating the Earth.” – Christopher Monckton (paraphrased).
Well obviously it “Beg(ley)s the Question” (sorry I couldn’t resist) about why Ed Begley hasn’t read or seen the part of Climategate that shows that the so called “peer review” was hijacked and stacked and thus can’t be trusted! Oops! Obviously Ed’s not up on the latest developments or is choosing to ignore the evidence of the Very Serious Climategate Peer Review Process Corruption that has taken place!
Begging the question (or petitio principii, “assuming the initial point”) is a logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise. Begging the question is related to circular argument, circulus in probando (Latin for “circle in proving”) or circular reasoning but they are considered absolutely different by Aristotle.[1] The first known definition in the West is by the Greek philosopher Aristotle around 350 BC, in his book Prior Analytics, where he classified it as a material fallacy.
Worse than “Begging the Question” Begley uses the “Appeal to Authority” argument for constructing his belief based view of reality. In the video Ed Begley goes on and on literally yelling to control the interviewer with intimidation spouting “peer review” repeatedly in so many ways thus making an appeal to authorities. Unfortunately it fails for him due to the fraudulent representations of the Climategate alleged scientists. Regardless appeals to authority are not substantive in science, what is substantive in science is the cold hard verifiable evidence that either proves or refutes a hypothesis!
For intelligent people who require actual factual evidence of a claim in question the appeal to authority holds no value. What hold value to evidence based people is the actual factual verifiable and repeatable evidence! Prove your hypothesis conclusively with review by anyone with the skills to peer review it! Basing one’s important decisions on appeals to authority in science is just asking for serious trouble and invites cult style belief systems of thought. Verifiable Open Evidence is the knife that separates the facts from the fiction in science.
Source A says that p.
Source A is authoritative.
Therefore, p is true.
This is a fallacy because the truth or falsity of the claim is not necessarily related to the personal qualities of the claimant, and because the premises can be true, and the conclusion false (an authoritative claim can turn out to be false). It is also known as argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it). [1]
The Journals must be quivering under the Climategate revelations of peer review corruption. I wonder how many will crumble as a result? Or will they get their footing back and survive? I wonder how peer review journals will adapt their policies to correct for this pernicious corruption of the scientific process?
“By Ed’s reasoning, excluding everyone who is “not a degreed climate scientist” that rather puts Dr. James Hansen out of the picture, and many others, including Al Gore.” – Anthony Watts
So yes, according to Ed Begley no one without a PhD in “climate science” can be trusted. Not even Al Gore!. Not even Ed Begley himself who is giving advice! Oh wait, if Ed Begley can’t be trusted then neither can his advice about people having a climate science PhD after their name! Oh the hypocrisy abounds as does the lack of understanding of the scientific process! Read the rest of this entry »
The alleged Climategate science criminals and the alleged crimes and unethical acts they committed.
If all you do is watch this one video this is the one video to watch to get a summary of what Climategate is all about.
If you’ve not heard the shocking news, the key scientists behind the main proof for human caused global warming (AGW) have had their internal emails and computer programs exposed by a whistle-blower revealing that they cooked the books to make it seem like the planet it warming.
They faked their data and committed other crimes such as deleting data when presented with a Freedom of Information Request which is a crime in Great Brittan. They are also the key players on the UN’s IPCC. The infamous Hockey Stick Graph is Al Gore’s film has now been unequivocally proven to be not just wrong but criminally faked!
The video in the article is an excellent summary of the key players and their specific crimes identified so far.
Mann’s work doesn’t meet that definition [of science], and those who use Mann’s curve in their arguments are not making a scientific argument. One of Pournelle’s Laws states “You can prove anything if you can make up your data.” I will now add another Pournelle’s Law: “You can prove anything if you can keep your algorithms secret.”
–Jerry Pournelle, 18 February 2005 East Anglia Emails, 1109021312.txt
“It’s getting pretty clear what happened. These academics, who were influential in framing the UN climate report on which most of the political decisions on what to do about man-made global warming depend, became alarmed when the data over the past few years didn’t support the predictions of their models. At this point they had a choice: to accept the new data and see what that did to the theory, or simply to cover it up because they were convinced the basic theory was correct and the issue was too important to allow the theory to come under serious doubt.” – Jerry Pournell, 24 November 2009
Guess what they chose? Did they choose honoring the scientific method and follow the data where it lead? NOPE! They actually choose the Dark Side of the Forcings and the results are now revealed to all to see. As a direct result they choose to not be scientists anymore as the evidence illuminates so clearly. They choose to be political activists with a cause ignoring the actual data rather than scientists respecting the actual data. They choose alarmism rather than to properly consider the facts as they are.
“It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker [editor note: an alleged hacker although it could may well have been an internal whistle-blower with integrity and a conscience to clear - pwl] from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging(1). I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.
Yes, the messages were obtained illegally [editor note: that has yet to be determined in a court of law -pwl]. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released(2,3), and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request(4).
Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics(5,6), or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(7). I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.” – George Monbiot, Humann Caused Global Warming Alarmist Science Writer and Activist, published in the Guardian, 23rd November 2009
Unfortunately I concur with Jerry Pournelle’s assessment and with the above portion of George Monboit’s comments. This is a very sad episode in the annals of science.
UPDATE 20091128: Now even members of the IPCC itself are calling to BAN these alleged Climategate science criminals from the IPCC! WOW!
Short answer: because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore.
A longer answer: My voice is not very important. I belong to the climate-research infantry, publishing a few papers per year, reviewing a few manuscript per year and participating in a few research projects. I do not form part of important committees, nor I pursue a public awareness of my activities. My very minor task in the public arena was to participate as a contributing author in the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC.
By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication. [Editor's Note: Fear of reprisals from the Climategate criminals voiced in public! A paradigm shift has occurred!] My area of research happens to be the climate of the past millennia, where I think I am appreciated by other climate-research ‘soldiers’. And it happens that some of my mail exchange with Keith Briffa and Timothy Osborn can be found in the CRU-files made public recently on the internet.
… I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files. … The scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas.
… I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere -and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now- editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations,even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the ‘politically correct picture’. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the ‘pleasure’ to experience all this in my area of research.
… I feel myself entitled to read how some researchers tried to influence reviewers to scupper the publication of our work on the ‘hockey stick graph’ or to read how some IPCC authors tried to exclude this work from the IPCC Report on very dubious reasons. … They are an account of many dull daily activities of typical climatologists, together with a realistic account of very troubling professional behavior.
How long will it be before the resignations begin?
Phil Jones and Micheal E. Mann indite themselves in these emails. Here is one egregious sample. See the references below for the raw email files and read them for yourself.
“From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann“
Subject: IPCC & FOI:04:11 2008
Date: Thu May 29 11 Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t
have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!! Cheers
Phil“
- 1212073451.txt
“AR4″ referrers to the fourth UN IPCC Climate Assessment Report.
“According to Hazel Moffatt, a partner in the litigation and regulatory department at the law firm DLA Piper in London, deleting emails subject to a FOI request is a criminal offense in the United Kingdom, punishable with a fine. “It’s quite naughty to do that,” said Ms. Moffatt.” – As Serious As Crime.
The Climate Research Unit released a couple of press releases here and here to cover their asses in the Pernicious Climategate Scandal that is rocking their tidy deceptive world. Nice try but you fail. The very serious allegations against your group are shocking and invalidate and bring into disrepute all of your works and all works based upon your works.
As a result of the Climategate allegations in the CRU Files FOI 2009 Philip D. Jones, Michael E. Mann, et. al. (Gavin Schmidt, Keith Briffa, Eugene Wahl, Caspar Ammann, Stephen H Schneider, Myles Allen, Peter Stott, Benjamin Santer, Tom Wigley, Thomas R Karl, James Hansen, Michael Oppenheimer, Eystein Jansen, Tim Osborn, …) how about your resignation today
(1) for Scientific Fraud, and Read the rest of this entry »
Homerian Wisdom tells the tale of the shifting perception.
That’s a subtle way of putting it Homer. The inside tip of course are the Climate Research Unit (CRU)’s released emails. They were either released by (1) a hacker, (2) incompetence leaving the internally collected Freedom of Information (FOI) Requested information on a public server, or (3) a whistler blower intentionally leaving it on a public server.
Of course Al’s still at his game setting up his corporate pieces to position himself so that he can make billions in various ventures such as Carbon Credit Trading and other investments opened due to his propaganda now shown to have been based upon falsified and “mannipulated” techniques.
The entire basis for Al Gore’s claims using the infamous hockey stick graph has suspected of being based upon fraudulent science for some time. NOW there is evidence to back up these suspicions. As close to a smoking gun as you can get!
“This is not a smoking gun, this is a mushroom cloud.” – Climatologist Patrick J. Michaels on the CRU Files.
To quote the immortal word of Homer Simpson, “Doh!”.
This is a potentially a very serious issue should these charges be proven. Should criminal charges be laid against Dr. Mann and members his close inbred network of 40 or more climate scientists who very possibly manipulated the data to achieve political and career ends and in the process distorted science with fraudulent activities? Certainly it’s unethical science that has been conducted. Time will tell who goes to jail or has their career in science ended for their role in doing the alleged fraudulent climate science of Dr. Mann and his cohorts.
“This is horrible,” said Pat Michaels, a climate scientist at the Cato Institute in Washington who is mentioned negatively in the emails. “This is what everyone feared. Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult for anyone who does not view global warming as an end-of-the-world issue to publish papers. This isn’t questionable practice, this is unethical.“
…
“Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics’ research was unwelcome: We “will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday.”
– Wall Street Journal
“The interior of the earth is extremely hot, several millions of degrees.” – Al Gore!!! on The Tonight Show, 12th November 2009!
After all these years claiming to know the facts Al Gore get’s it SO EMBARRASSINGLY WRONG! This “mistake” of Gore’s is likely the result of Al Gore’s stated strategic tactic to exaggerate the facts regardless of how much he distorts them! The amazing thing is that he gets away with it even when it’s pointed out that he is blatantly exaggerating beyond any reasonable scale and thus lying.
“In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” — Al Gore in an interview.
“This is mind blowing ignorance on the part of Al Gore. … Watching Gore make a complete scientific idiot of himself on national TV: priceless.” – Anthony Watts
Al Gore proves that he can’t be trusted on Scientific Information! We knew that but now it’s abundantly clear, he can’t even get the facts straight!
“There is no way to measure the temperature at the Earth’s core directly. We know from mines and drill holes that, near the surface of the Earth, the temperature increases by about 1 degree Fahrenheit for every 60 feet in depth. If this temperature increase continued to the center of the Earth, the Earth’s core would be 100,000 degrees Celsius!
But nobody believes the Earth is that hot [except evidently Al Gore]; the temperature increase must slow down with depth and the core is probably about 3000 to 5000 degrees Celsius.
This estimate of the temperature is derived from theoretical modeling and laboratory experiments. This work is very difficult (and speculative) since nobody can reproduce in a laboratory the high temperatures and pressures that exist in the core. Also it is not known exactly what the core is made of.” Ask A Scientist
Either Al Gore is a priceless idiot or he’s warning us about 2012!!!! This is what would happen if the Earth’s Core was “several million degrees! Get to your airplanes fast folks!”
Conversation with Richard Dawkins and Steven Weinberg.
Part 1 of 8.
“The whole history of the last thousands of years has been a history of religious persecutions and wars, pogroms, jihads, crusades. I find it all very regrettable, to say the least.”
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
“I can hope that this long sad story, this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas, will come to an end. I hope this is something to which science can contribute … it may be the most important contribution that we can make.”
“This is one of the great social functions of science — to free people from superstition.”
- Steven Weinberg, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics
The belief that the ends justifies the means may be the true root of all evil. – Troy Brumley
A prime example of how science is distorted by – likely well meaning – scientists or science educators. Deliberately or not this video is a masterful piece of propaganda pretending to be science. Credits are due to Greg Craven, the master propagandist who appears in the video.
Greg Craven: falsum in uno, falsum in omnibus?
Greg Craven: false in one thing, false in everything?
Neither risk presented in the video is acceptable because they are a false choice and Greg Craven knows it [or he should know it as a science teacher]! His logic is flawed since he presents a “binary choice” and that is his mistake, black and white thinking. His second mistake is presenting a false dilemma when he knows the facts much better [or should know them better as a science teacher]! There are so many other choices one can choose that it’s not funny. It’s typical of many people trained in the sciences and technology, as well as the general public, to think in black and white binary terms. The universe is fuzzy people. It’s about time we realized that.
The logical fallacy of false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy) involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are other options. Closely related are failing to consider a range of options and the tendency to think in extremes, called black-and-white thinking. Strictly speaking, the prefix “di” in “dilemma” means “two”. When a list of more than two choices is offered, but there are other choices not mentioned, then the fallacy is called the fallacy of false choice, or the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses.
False dilemma can arise intentionally, when fallacy is used in an attempt to force a choice (“If you are not with us, you are against us.”) But the fallacy can arise simply by accidental omission—possibly through a form of wishful thinking or ignorance—rather than by deliberate deception (“I thought we were friends, but all my friends were at my apartment last night and you weren’t there.”)
When two alternatives are presented, they are often, though not always, two extreme points on some spectrum of possibilities. This can lend credence to the larger argument by giving the impression that the options are mutually exclusive, even though they need not be. Furthermore, the options are typically presented as being collectively exhaustive, in which case the fallacy can be overcome, or at least weakened, by considering other possibilities, or perhaps by considering a whole spectrum of possibilities, as in fuzzy logic.
Furthermore the dark vision of doom and gloom presented by the human caused global warming alarmists is exaggerated! Even Al Gore admits that he exaggerates – lies outright – just to get people to act! It’s clear that the alarmist views are not on the same footing as a rational scientific view that can be audited and examined fully in the public eyes.
Al Gore admits that he deliberately lies to and scares people for political gain on the topic of human caused global warming climate change. His lying is so blatant that he arrogantly brags about it! Wow, mastery of propaganda is certainly a strong suit for Al Gore.
“In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” — Al Gore in an interview.
Steven Schneider [now deceased], [was] an alleged climate scientist who also advocates [advocated] lying to people and scaring them with outright lies for political gain. Wow what a one man propaganda machine.
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” – Steven Schneider, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), (Quoted in Discover, pp. 45–48, Oct. 1989; for the original, together with Schneider’s commentary on it misrepresentation see also American Physical Society, APS News August/September 1996.
Schneider has been publicly criticized by fellow atmospheric scientist, Craig Bohren, for his history of self-promotion using contradictory climate scares:
“…some of the prominent global warmers of today were global coolers of not so long ago. In particular, Steven Schneider, now at Stanford, previously at NCAR, about 30 years ago was sounding the alarm about an imminent ice age. The culprit then was particles belched into the atmosphere by human activities. No matter how the climate changes he can correctly say that he predicted it. No one in the atmospheric science community has been more successful at getting publicity. NCAR used to send my department clippings from newspaper and magazine articles in which NCAR researchers were named. We’d get thick wads of clippings, almost all of which were devoted to Schneider. Perhaps global warming is bad for the rest of us, but for Schneider and others [such as Al Gore] it has been a godsend.“
More scare mongers with a deliberate lying bent where the end justifies the means, scientists, politicians and eco-warriors alike admitting they are willing to lie through their teeth to get the job done even if it’s global warming is false! Wow.
“What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)
“Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are.” (Petr Chylek, Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, commenting on reports that Greenland’s glaciers are melting. Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001)
“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing”
(Tim Wirth 1990, former US Senator) as quoted in NCPA Brief 213; September 6, 1996
“A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the [enhanced] greenhouse effect“
(Richard Benedict, US Conservation Foundation)
“We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion — guilt-free at last!“
– Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue)
Taking action can cause much worse problems for humans by rushing and taking the wrong actions. It’s very possible that the huge economic upheaval that is being caused by the rush to judgment by the alarmists will actually cause more harm than any real amount of actual warming.
Will Greg Craven, the guy in the video, take personal responsibility for all those that die in the economic turmoil of the implementation of useless “carbon solutions” for his role in presenting false dilemmas? Will he be responsible for those that die as the planet it terrorformed by his advocacy? I doubt it.
Besides the facts now show that the last ten years have been getting colder. Cold is the new warming. What? Yup. It’s getting colder which means the planet is warming. Weird, but that is what the alarmists claim.
Having an accurate assessment of the risks is crucial for any decision making process. This guy presents the situation in binary thinking and aims you towards his forgone conclusion revealing his bias. More propaganda based upon false reasoning steps and a very crude method of risk management. Since we already know that the alarmists claims are false (even they admit it) this guy is presenting a false choice on the alarmist side of the ledger.
Overall Greg Craven fails as a scientist to present the full set of known facts but passes as an effective and craven propagandist. As such Greg Craven gets a failing grade.
One Richard Feynman has this to say about falsification and full disclosure and it should be a lesson to Greg Craven and the others quoted above as Greg and the others are being schooled by Feynman indeed:
“But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves–of having utter scientific integrity–is, I’m sorry to say, something that we haven’t specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you’ve caught on by osmosis.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you’re not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We’ll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. “Well,” I said, “there aren’t any.” He said, “Yes, but then we won’t get support for more research of this kind.” I think that’s kind of dishonest. If you’re representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you’re doing–and if they don’t want to support you under those circumstances, then that’s their decision.
One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results.
I say that’s also important in giving certain types of government advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it would be better in some other state. If you don’t publish such a result, it seems to me you’re not giving scientific advice. You’re being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don’t publish it at all. That’s not giving scientific advice.
…
But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science.
… And now you find a man saying that it is an irrelevant demand to expect a repeatable experiment. This is science?
…
So I have just one wish for you–the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom. ” – Richard Feynman, Cargo Cult Science, A Lesson From Richard Feynman For Scientists of Today to Learn
Sounds like Greg Craven needs to go back to grade ten science class and relearn the basics as long as his science teacher is someone like Richard Feynman and very unlike Greg Craven.
A detailed analysis of Greg Craven’s video “How the World Ends” (which have the same false dilemma argument) is illuminating of Greg Craven’s craven attitude towards factual science presentations.
Now a more rational video presentation on climate science.
What is Normal Climate?
“All we can do is adapt, it is the sun that does it, not man.“
Now is the only moment of time that actually exists in reality. The past is but a memory. The future an illusion. Tomorrow never comes for when it does it is today and there is always another tomorrow. Now is the Time! This moment, now! Now. Now. Now. The Time is Now and never any other!
That time is NOW! Save us from Mann Caused Global Warming Climate Change Alarmists and their Soothsaying Hysteria! Save US NOW and bring Justice to Science so that Science can Prevail over Soothsaying Alarmist Propaganda!
So it’s fine for the endangered human caused global warming climate change alarmists to yell “look it’s Ida, extreme weather” caused by human caused global warming climate change yet when it’s pointed out that October 2009 is the 3rd coldest in 115 years on record it’s just weather and not climate? Double standards on the “it’s weather no it’s climate vs. it’s climate no it’s just weather”?
Climate extremes cause weather extremes! Is that a fair statement? Or is it that weather extremes cause climate extremes?
Climate is weather averaged over decade long times scales… extreme climate depends on your time window and your statistical prowess poker face.
Climate is weather. Without weather there would be no climate. Two sides of the same coin flipping about with randomness generated internally within the system. (See Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science, chapter 2 for how this newly discovered form of randomness operates for even very simple systems to show highly complex and extremely unpredictable behaviors).
Climate is weather. Extremes in weather are just the planet going about it’s business. As such extremes in weather mathematically show up in the decade long time scales to varying amounts.
How do we really know where each change in climate really comes from? Assigning this fraction of a degree to that cause and that fraction of a degree to this other cause ad infinitum makes no sense as that isn’t how Nature plans it out not that Nature plans it out.
Now it seems that it’s a heat budget thing with heat into a system (the planet) and heat out (of the planet) by various means. We have various forms of light and electromagnetic radiation touching and being absorbed by the planet with some reflecting off or changing and reflecting off. We have movement of the planet in it’s ever changing always unique orbit of Sol, not to mention other gravitational influences such as the moon and even other planetary bodies. We have cosmic rays and other high energy particle streams impacting the planet or going right on through. Cosmic rays from near and distant stars as we orbit the galaxy so close. We have chemical reactions and volcanoes and oceans mixing and moving and we have the hot and molten inner layers plus the rotating core providing our magnetic fields fluctuating always churning and interacting. Not to mention the bizarre lumpy gravity fields that distort the seemingly squashed spheroid of the planet into what can best be described as a total gravity mess beaten up all bent out of it’s idealized shape we can see from space. We’ve got so many processes and forces at work that we think we can apportion a fraction of a degree to this or that.
It would be really funny if it wasn’t so serious a conversation about doom and gloom. The climate change soothsayers have taking a bite out of sanity and are running a con game that has at it’s core irrational correlations that are weak at best and fraudulent at worse and outright lies in the extreme.
I would love to see an article by one of the major scientists on ALL the elements impacting the climate summarized, glossarized and indexed by the various “fractions of degrees” that they allegedly contribute and how to the climate and to the all important weather.
Climate is a mathematical abstraction. Weather is real and is happening now, the only moment in time that actually exists. The past gone. The future is an illusion and never exists. Tomorrow never comes as there is always another tomorrow when today shows up now. It’s an important aspect of comprehending time that now is all that is real. All there ever is is now and that means weather rules the climate not the other way around.
This is what we really need to be protecting against: The Real Threat to Humanity – other than ourselves – are Asteroid Impacts! We missed being hit two days ago and a month ago our atmosphere protected us from an asteroid with enough punch to product an 50 Kiloton detonation high up in the atmosphere. Ouch!
Actually it would be more like this but the above video has a better sound track!
This one is the bomb, literally an Extinction Level Event (ELE)!
“It’s to give people an opportunity to think for themselves… what happens is that most of us think that our very strongly held beliefs, you know those things we hold, our opinions, that are very strong, we think that that is thinking for ourselves but it isn’t really. The ability to think for yourself really means the ability to think something that you haven’t thought before. To think outside the allowable range of thoughts rather than just inside the allowable range of thoughts.” – Werner Erhard, TV Interview
Learn to think for yourself out side of your allowable range of thoughts and especially outside the cage of your beliefs and opinions.
The Known Knowns.
The Known Unknowns.
The Unknown Knowns.
The Unknown Unknowns.
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.” – quote popularized globally by Donald Rumsfeld in justification of mass murder; quote popularized by Werner Erhard in the 1970′s and 80′s to make the world a better place one person at a time.
During the 1970′s and 1980′s Werner Ehard’s est Training Program used this quote (or a variant thereof that covers all four possibilities, known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns, unknown unknowns) as a part of the course material. Landmark Education’s The Landmark Forum course also uses it. One point of using it is to help people see the limits of their knowledge and the edges of the metaphorical box they live in. Where are our blind spots when it comes to our knowledge or lack there of? What are the risks of ignorance? The exploration of these four domains would be extensive and take many hours of these courses.
All belief is religion as belief isn’t based upon verifiable knowledge.
“A United Kingdom court has ruled that a man can take his employer to court on the grounds that he was discriminated against because of his views on climate change. …
Mr Nicholson successfully argued that his moral values about the environment should be recognised under the same laws that protect religious beliefs.
In the landmark ruling, Justice Michael Burton said that a belief in man-made climate change is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the religion and belief regulations.” Beliefs on climate like Religion, court rules
The word “belief” is a problematic word with so many definitions that you have to pretty much define what you mean either by the context or by direction definition.
Generally when I’m down on the word belief I specifically mean “religious belief” or “supernatural belief” and not a belief that my car is still parked where it is.
I don’t think it’s responsible to say that “I believe in Newton’s Gravity Theory” as to use the word belief to talk about facts mis-communicates to the masses of people out there without scientific training. It’s better to use other words. Your “belief” that letting go of a stone has nothing to do with whether or not the stone falls.
Common uses of belief basically mean that you don’t know or don’t have evidence and that you assume it is true anyway. Since you do have evidence that dropping a stone on earth will have it fall (unless it’s otherwise supported or blocked) using the word belief is a mistake. One instead should say “I know that when I let go of a stone at chest level, it will fall (assuming that it’s not supported or blocked in some other manner).” This has clarity.
It is a big mistake for Richard Dawkins to be using the word belief the way he does with regards to scientific knowledge. He should be more careful and define his terms more precisely when talking about scientific knowledge and what is know and what isn’t since the religious masses use the word belief differently.
Sure people have a “belief” that X person will be a good political leader, but that is an entirely different category and meaning of belief than “belief that god exists” which is a statement that has no evidence and will never have any evidence in all probability not even mentioning all the evidence against the possibility of any gods existing.
As for climate change caused by man the science isn’t settled and if you think it is that is your “belief” and not a valid scientific statement. The more I learn the more I learn that we don’t yet have conclusive answers and that politics of extreme environmentalism started it and now that mainstream politicians have gotten into the act it’s now even more highly suspect. So I’d say show the evidence in a context where it can be audited by anyone which means showing all the data, raw and manipulated, detailed and comprehensive explanations for the manipulations, the statistics methods involved and why they were chosen, the software and the data used to create the graphs, all the scientists notes, photographs, and other materials used in the preparation of all the science papers. It’s clear that climate scientists (and others) have not been up to the standards of other fields and that all publically funded science needs to have it’s standards of openness and auditability raised.
I’m a very strong show me the hard evidence guy. Belief has no place in science nor in the communication of science nor in the science education process unless it specifically means “we think it could be true or false but we don’t just know yet”.
Believing that murder is wrong is a statement of one’s moral values and the word belief is often used although I’d question it’s use there. I’d not say it that way. I’d rather be more specific and say that “Murder is wrong because human life is valuable.”
Is saying “gravity sucks” a statement of “belief” or is it a succinct statement of the known laws of Gravity? I pick the latter.
“The relationship between belief and knowledge is that a belief is knowledge if the belief is true, and if the believer has a justification (reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) for believing it is true. … Later epistemologists have questioned the “justified true belief” definition, and some philosophers have questioned whether “belief” is a useful notion at all.” – wikipedia
So “belief” is shaky ground at best, and as such it’s best to avoid using it when speaking generally about science or anything that is a statement of objective reality or it’s nature. I also use it carefully. My main use is in talking about the belief and faith stricken members of society.
Is that my belief? No, it’s a precautionary guidance principle based on knowledge gained from far too many conversations with the belief stricken who set well placed linguistic and philosophical traps.
Climate change belief given same legal status as religion In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that “a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations“.
An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.
Facts do not matter anymore as belief in global warming is now officially recognized as a nutter religion!
(All religions are anti-scientific since they require faith above facts of Nature and Nature always wins thus the supernatural religions are false).
The Religion of Climate Change
He’s close “belief in human caused climate change is a religion” but it’s not that they’ll believe in anything its’ that they put “belief” above reason and facts and they’ve been convinced by the likes of Al Gore. It is not the lack of a belief in god that is the problem it is belief itself that is the problem, belief in god, belief in climate change caused by man (aka Mann) that is the real problem. When you are willing to “believe” rather that use reason to examine the facts of Nature that is when you take the irresponsible “leap of faith” into the land of being belief stricken with something that is more likely simply wrong than even having a hint of being right. Critical thinking and reason and the scientific method and open science with peer review by anyone are the tools we need to move forward as a society. Not belief in something. Belief and faith are the great mind killers and possibly the death of civilization as well.
The Religion of Climate Change, UN Ki Moon Cult
Yes indeed, sober scientific based discussion still has it’s place. No science is ever settled. If you think climate science is settled then you don’t know about the facts of climate science as much as you think you do. Not only that, but you also don’t understand the scientific method nor science eduction. Questions are essential of all science at all stages. To suppress discussion is anti-scientific.
To make scientific questions such as “mann made climate change” into a religion based upon belief is the height of insanity and irresponsible governance by the court and anyone else.
“It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false and tragically false. Look for yourself, this is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people where turned into numbers. … It was not done by gas… It was done by arrogance… it was done by dogma… it was done by ignorance. When people believe they have absolute knowledge with no test in reality this how they behave. this is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of the gods. … Science is a very human kind of knowledge… we are always at the brink of the known… every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute power.” – Bronowski‘s The Ascent of Man
Continuing Dr Bronowski’s personal view of mans major discoveries and the evolution of his thought; this programme highlights the achievement of twentieth century physics in proving that absolute certainty inside or outside science is beyond our grasp.
1) The Method of the Artist.
2) The Invisible Waves.
3) Karl Friedrich Gauss and Göttingen.
4) Max Born and Heisenberg.
5) The Principle of Uncertainty.
6) Leo Szilard.
7) The Tragedy of Scientists.
This documentary is a good companion to the latest documentary,”The Great Global Warming Swindle” recently shown on CH 4 UK and is available on Google video. The hoax of Global Warming / Green House was exposed 19 years ago by CH 4 UK in this documentary entitled Green House Conspiracy. Those who subscribe to the rubbish trotted out by Al Gore and his mindless followers are not new they were the same arse clowns who were telling us we were all going to freeze to death 30 years ago.
What The FUCK? Almost every aspect of this video from 19 years ago is exactly the same as it is today!!!! Wow, nothing has changed. The warmies are still crying wolf. I wonder who let them out of the asylum?
The Solaranite Theory of Climate Change starts around 3:00 into the flick.
Solaranite Theory of Rapid Anthropomorphic Climate Change: “Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe.“
The details of the Solaranite Climate Change Theory come to light in this following riveting conversation. Pun intended.
Eros, the leader, confronts a group of skeptical earthlings with the true nature of his plan. The scientific minds of Earth are on a treacherous course of weapons discovery that will eventually lead to a bomb that could explode the whole universe, the “Solaranite Bomb”.
Colonel Edwards: Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our earth?
Eros: Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots!
Jeff Trent: Now you just hold on, Buster.
Eros: No, you hold on! First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade: you began to kill your own people, a few at a time. Then the bomb. Then a larger bomb: many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb, split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you can arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by our sun: The only explosion left is the Solaranite.
Colonel Tom Edwards: Why, there’s no such thing! Why, a particle of sunlight can’t even be seen or measured.
Eros: Can you see or measure an atom? Yet you can explode one! A ray of sunlight is made up of many atoms.
Jeff Trent: So what if we do develop this Solaranite bomb? We’d be even a stronger nation than now.
Eros: “Stronger.” You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The impassioned plea continues with an appeal to intelligence and metaphor.
Colonel Edwards: You speak of Solaranite. But just what is it?
Eros: Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe. This is why you must be stopped. This is why any means must be used to stop you. In a friendly manner or as (it seems) you want it.
Over a period of 28 hours or so this long weekend I had a conversation with someone, CK, I met on Face Book who shared a common technical interest. We had a number of other exchanges with each other over the past few months but this one was different partly for it’s brutal honesty and partly since CK choose to jump out of what was likely the most important conversation of his life.
I managed to save a copy of the conversation moments before CK deleted my access (it was on his wall) and thus ending the conversation with us two. Likely he’s busy gathering agreement with his friends that I’m an evil no good person when in fact it’s likely that I’m one of his best new friends he’s ever had. Be that as it may, here is a non edited transcript (spelling corrections were made). Oh, from what I can tell CK is a young adult male with a gay lover and a roman catholic upbringing.
I hope this helps when talking with religious delusionals of all sorts but christians in particular since we deal with dispensing the christian miracle mythologies here.
I’ll add comments and expand my responses and even critique my own responses over the next few weeks or so as I have time to reread the transcript below and think longer it.
All the best and live long and prosper in peace. Your feed back and comments are appreciated.
PWL
ps. This Jesus and Mo comic is appropriate since CK’s solution for “resolving the incompatibilities” between science and religion is to become insane by fully embracing “cognitive dissonance” and not working to resolve the conflict even though he claims to work towards that end. More on this in the conversation. He also, as you will see, negotiates his way between these two incompatibilities by accepting part of Objectivism (it’s basic three axioms of existence, identity and consciousness) while maintaining his “faithful belief” in his invisible super friends even though acknowledging that objectivism provides “proof” that there are no gods other than those in human minds. Thus CK’s religious driven insanity.
CK: just wants to find SOMEONE who shares his philosophies… lol
PWL: What philosophy are yours?
CK: Except for the stance on matters of sexuality and religion, I’m a staunch objectivist. Go Ayn Rand!
I believe cognitive dissonance is the greatest evil in the universe.
That’s a good start to the summary. In essence, I believe you must accept a small set of axioms as true, and then use inductive logic based on that. If only I could put my axioms in words… lol
PWL: I am also a big fan of Ayn Rand.
People do work well together and can in many circumstances work towards their mutual benefit.
What do you mean by cognitive dissonance?
I’m confused by your sexuality considering you seem to be very catholic… seems mutually incompatible to me.
I’m confused by your religious stance and Ayn Rand, objectivism proves that your mythical god doesn’t exist and is just an artifact of your mind wanting comfort or what not. So you’re not a staunch objectivist if you believe in the mythical invisible super beings and thus the supernatural realm.
The real world doesn’t care about our philosophies since it doesn’t care about anything.
They are not axioms if they are not in words…
BUT then Leaps of Faith know no boundaries or limits and ignore any that are pointed out. That is the essential nature of a leap of faith, it destroys actual rational thinking with the emotional non-rational leap of faith.
“Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The “ideas” or “cognitions” in question may include attitudes and beliefs, the awareness of one’s behavior, and facts. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.[1] Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.” – Cognitive Dissonance.
So if you believe “cognitive dissonance” is the greatest evil in the universe why do you practice it?
Why do you consider it evil?
MD: wow :{
CK: Sexuality: Rand didn’t exactly believe they should wait until they found the right one, and then stay with them the rest of their life. Yes, objectivism does reject the almighty.
When I say cognitive dissonance, I mean holding two apparently exclusive beliefs wihout batting an eye — it’s an offense to reason. In my case (objectivist Catholic), although you’d think they are exclusive, but the reason I believe they are not is that I do not blindly believe — I observe the positive effects of faith, I observe the evidence of miracles, and I make judgments for myself. I consider the beliefs and try to reason and justify them.
If I were to just say, “well, it is” THEN faith and reason would be exclusive. But to examine faith and try to reason about it, why you believe it even when you know science, then you have used reason. You just use inductive logic rather than deductive logic.
PWL: Actually you must use actual repeatable verifiable evidence not logic or some belief stricken dogma system…
As the saying goes you are mistaken about a great many things CK.
There are no real positive effects of faith that are not available without faith!
“Religion puts your mind in a straight jacket.” – Dr Death aka Doctor Jack Kevorkian
“Creeds are a weakness of the will. All religions are to make you conform to a different way of thinking than you feel naturally.” – Doctor Death aka Doctor Jack Kevorkian in part quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson.
“America fits all Fourteen Principles of fascism.” – Doctor Jack Kevorkian
The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism: here and here.
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause.
4. Supremacy of the Military..
5. Rampant Sexism.
6. Controlled Mass Media.
7. Obsession with National Security.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined.
9. Corporate Power is Protected.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption.
14. Fraudulent Elections.
Victor Stenger author of “Not by Design: The Origin of the Universe”, “Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses”, “The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology”, “Timeless Reality: Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes”, “Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe”, “The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do The Laws Of Physics Come From?”, “God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist” and “Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness” interviewed in depth (98 minutes).
The main battle ground is “superstition”, belief and faith verses Reason, Rationality and Scientific thinking.
