Science Deniers are Everywhere

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Real science is done by scientists. To become a scientist (at the highest level) one must undergo 12 years of study, master advanced mathematics, take courses in general science and in a specialty, do original research, defend a thesis in front of peers.

By your definition, Michael Faraday, the discoverer of magnetic fields, wasn't a scientist. Neither was George Green, a miller and self-taught mathematical physicist who did pioneering work in multi-variable calculus. Neither was Benjamin Franklin, a founding figure in the field of archeology in America, discoverer of the gulf stream, and experimenter in electricity. (Applied science is still science, right? Franklin's invention of the lightning rod was arguably a more consequential accomplishment in applied science than most PhDs pull off today.) Franklin had no formal education beyond elementary school and an apprenticeship as a printer, both of which he dropped out of.

My point: while academic titles, and the hoops you jump through to get them, are important to the way that careers in science play out nowadays, they are not what defines one as a scientist. Using the scientific method is. Anyone who contributes to human knowledge through repeatable experiments and refutable theories, and publishes the knowledge through the peer-review process, practices science and is thus a scientist.

For example, the guys I just mentioned were scientists. And by contrast, economists who unsubstantiated political talking points to land a cushy think-tank job aren't scientists, no matter how prestigious a university they got their PhDs from. It's about what you practice and how you practice it, not what social role you practice it in.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

If everyone doesn't accept all of the conclusions, it's not because a relative handful of professional deniers have been so amazing effective with their disinformation campaign.

That is not true. The reason why you and others like you doubt glibal warming is that you have been on the receiving end of a deliberate and well-resourced disinformation campaign funded by ExxonMobil, the Koch brothers and others. That would be why a vast majority of all GW doubters worldwide are American, mostly on the right of the political spectrum.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

If the only people in the 2% or 3% who disagree with the "consensus" are uneducated amateurs, frauds or kooks, you have a point. If, on the other hand, they have gone through the same rigorous education and training as the majority who are in agreement, than your point falls apart.

It is dangerous, I think, for a society to accept that there are some very important topics that they can't possible understand and therefore they should just accept what the experts who can understand them are telling them.

Virtually every field has a level of complexity and specific knowledge requirements that prevent people outside of that field from fully understanding. Are you suggesting that once a consensus opinion is formed by the "experts" in these fields, that those of us who are not expert should accept their conclusions and move on?

Thank you, Finn, for a thoughtful and well-reasoned response. Our main disagreement is over what constitutes a scientific consensus.

When 97% of the scientific community say that the all the evidence supports a conclusion, that constitutes a scientific consensus. I accept your objection; the fact that a few highly trained scientists disagree with the consensus does not invalidate it. There are credentialed PhD scientists who assert there is evidence of UFOs, perpetual motion, ESP and civilizations on Mars. There is no issue where you get 100% of trained scientists to agree... unless you think that all of science is invalid, this is irrelevant.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

Anyone who contributes to human knowledge through repeatable experiments and refutable experiments, and publishes the knowledge through the peer-review process, practices science and is thus a scientist.

Good point!

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@Thomas,

Hi Thomas! Nice to see you again.

I am arguing in favor of scientific institutions as the gatekeepers of science. I will concede the point that it would be possible for someone to gain the expertise to progress in science or mathematics without a formal education. I think this becomes increasingly unlikely as we progress as a society. Both Faraday and George Green did the work to gain the expertise Faraday sat in lectures and had an apprenticeship. Green obviously spent a lot of time in a library studying advanced mathematics. Both of these gentlemen took the time to master differential calculus.

The scientific institutions were the gatekeepers for both Faraday and Green. There was a process for evaluating their work objectively and it was only after it proved valuable by the scientific and mathematical communities that they were accepted. Our science keeps advancing. I don't know if this has happened in the past century (although I suspect you will come up with an example).

The big question here is how to separate real science from fake science... and how to determine what our current scientific understanding is as a society. I am curious, Thomas, do you have thoughts on this.

Do you accept the idea of scientific consensus when it comes to determining the scientific view on issues like evolution, or global climate change?

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

I am arguing in favor of scientific institutions as the gatekeepers of science.

That would be in keeping with your position as a science denier, Max. And you list US institutions as those gatekeepers, advancing another ludicrous notion.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

The big question here is how to separate real science from fake science... and how to determine what our current scientific understanding is as a society.

Thomas described that process. How did you miss it? I quoted it right in the post immediately before this one of yours that I quote.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

I am arguing in favor of scientific institutions as the gatekeepers of science.

And I am arguing that what keeps science going is a culture of evidence and logic, and people who practice that culture. If by "institution" you mean something with an office and formal titles and a federal agency funding it and so forth, that's not important to me in and of itself. But if your concept of "institutions" is broad enough to include informal things like Skeptic Magazine, or the community of illusionists who share their practical insights into cognitive science, etc, maybe there's room for agreement.

maxdancona wrote:

The scientific institutions were the gatekeepers for both Faraday and Green.

I'm not sure about Green, but in Faraday's and Franklin's case, your precious gatekeepers slammed the door of the gate in their faces. Faraday was not admitted to the academy because he wasn't a gentleman. They never gave him a PhD except honorary ones, decades after his scientific breakthroughs. As for Franklin, he had to drop out of elementary school because his brother couldn't afford the tuition.

Those are extreme cases, sure, but the gist of them rhymes with incidences I've seen in my own academic career in physics. (Technicians made important original contributions to Nobel-Prize-winning experiments, but never got credited in the professors' papers because they weren't academics.) I have become increasingly disillusioned with the sausage-making that goes on in the fiefdoms of academia, even while I got increasingly impressed with the scientific process.

maxdancona wrote:

The big question here is how to separate real science from fake science...

And my answer is, "thou shall know them by their evidence and their theories". For example, global warming is for real because the greenhouse effect is easily demonstrated in model systems everyone can build and investigate --- greenhouses --- and because we have the infrared-camera satellite images to prove it. By contrast, take Austrian economics. It's a field that produces plenty of PhDs and endows many a professorship. Nevertheless, it is not a science because its core theory is too wishy-washy to be falsifiable.

maxdancona wrote:

Do you accept the idea of scientific consensus when it comes to issues like evolution, or global climate change?

I accept that there is a consensus among academics in these matters. But I reject the implied conclusion that the substance of the consensus must therefore be true. Such conclusions are arguments from authority, and arguments from authority are inherently fallacious.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Quote:
If everyone doesn't accept all of the conclusions, it's not because a relative handful of professional deniers have been so amazing effective with their disinformation campaign.

That is not true. The reason why you and others like you doubt glibal warming is that you have been on the receiving end of a deliberate and well-resourced disinformation campaign funded by ExxonMobil, the Koch brothers and others. That would be why a vast majority of all GW doubters worldwide are American, mostly on the right of the political spectrum.

It must be wonderful being omniscient and being able to know things about how I and others think of which we're not even aware.

You really should put this amazing power to work for the benefit of humanity rather than putzing around on an internet discussion form, but before you go, how about sharing with us how this whole climate change thing will precisely turn out.

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@Thomas,

Good to see you posting here again. I agree fully with all you wrote. Science is uniquely valuable, but scientists, and their technicians, are human beings subject to all the various appetites for fame, fortune and envy as all the rest of us. Academia is as replete with obsessions over status and rank as most human institutions and more than many. Many meaningful disciplines, such as economics and others, are falsely labeled as sciences as you noted.

I believe most of the furor over AGW is based mainly on the remedies, political economic and physical that are called for by advocates, and the concerns of many over their efficacy and their economic consequences. Moreover the argument is often conflated by parallel issues that can affect the optimal strategy, such as the use of nuclear power. The efforts of advocates to silence their critics with the hammer of the supposed orthodox consensus is itself a rather unscientific approach which brings its own adverse side effects.

The greenhouse effect is real and some warming is occurring. We need to address it, with both the related economic consequences on mankind, and emerging new technologies in mind. The rather mindless demand that we do it all now and solely with the forced application of contemporary photo voltaic solar and wind turbine power; while discounting the benefits that accrue from the replacement of coal with natural gas; the continued use of nuclear power and investment emerging new solar technologies is rather nuts in my view.

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@georgeob1,

Good to see you too, George!

As it happens, I'm less pessimistic than you about alternative energy. In Germany, federal, state, and local governments have invested heavily in solar panels and wind turbines. And while I'd have to look up the details of the results, they seem encouraging overall.

On the other hand, our getting out of nuclear energy is nuts in my opinion. Our nuclear plants have been operating for decades, delivering a major part of our energy with a fraction of the pollution we've accepted from our sulfur-rich-coal plants as a matter of course. It's been a technology that Germany has been really good at. And now we're throwing it all away because our gate-keeping institutions are afflicted by a bad case of ideology. Such a shame.

But none of this changes the general principle: the ultimate test is to run the experiments, observe how they play out, and change our theories of the world when observation refutes them. It's not about faith in the wisdom of institutions.

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@Thomas,

Nod to Thomas.

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@ossobucotemp,

Hi Osso!

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@georgeob1,

Quote:

but scientists, and their technicians, are human beings subject to all the various appetites for fame, fortune and envy as all the rest of us.

That is, of course, at least partly false. But just because I disagree with you on this and some other things, it didn't cause me to vote you down. Why does such a childish thing even exist on a website that is pointedly addressed towards adults?

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Olivier is not a putz on a discussion 'form'.
Form seems to happen.
Olivier is pretty smart.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

For example, global warming is for real because the greenhouse effect is easily demonstrated in model systems everyone can build and investigate --- greenhouses --- and because we have the infrared-camera satellite images to prove it.

Do you really think that a "greenhouse" is a good "demonstration" of how the climate works in any sense other than popular science? The glass in greenhouse works in a way that is fairly simply to understand. It allows in short wave energy and blocks long wave energy. This isn't how "greenhouse" gasses work. "Greenhouse" is a metaphor... the climate isn't actually encased in glass or anything like glass.

The atmosphere is a complicated system. A great deal of energy escapes the climate (unlike a greenhouse). In the climate you have energy transfer through convection and evaporation. The "Greenhouse" in greenhouse gasses is a gross oversimplification. If you tell someone that the atmosphere is actually acting like a greenhouse, you are misleading them.

So why do climate scientists use such a simplistic (and misleading metaphor)? It is because climate scientists understand thermodynamics, they know about black body radiation and entropy and know which differential equations best model convection.

These are things that take take a great deal of study to understand. But scientists need to explain their findings to laypeople in order to inform our democracies-- and so greenhouses it is.

The fact that 99% of the people who talk about "greenhouse gasses" don't know how the actual atmosphere is quite different than a greenhouse is a bad thing... but I don't know how to solve problem without insisting that every citizen learn differential calculus.

But let's be clear.... an intelligent person who has a pop science understanding of "greenhouses" gasses who goes to college for a climate science degree will come out with a completely different understanding. In fact, she will likely say that her original understanding was completely wrong.

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@Thomas,

I'm not particularly pessimistic about it, though I am concerned about the high cost and the low capacity factor (= actual output/installed generating potential) of conventional wind and solar power. Few land-based wind turbines get more than ~ 28% of installed capacity over time, and in most areas photo voltaic solar is about the same. However, in the case of solar, cost is coming down, and that could make a big difference.

The challenge here is economic consequences of a sufficient diversions of our energy sources.

Some folks I know at Berkeley are working on the use of solar energy in a form of photosynthesis that would produce free hydrogen. It looks promising to me in that a clean burning fuel useful in nearly all conventional engines would result, though problems of efficient collection remain.

I agree with you about nuclear power. We have created a regulatory climate in which the time required for permitting a nuclear plant has become incalculable, rendering capital investment impossible. The now shrinking set of ~ 92 nuclear plants in this country not long ago produced over 40% of our electrical power at a delivered cost less than that of coal and comparable with that of a combined cycle gas turbine plant .... and with no carbon emissions.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Do you really think that a "greenhouse" is a good "demonstration" of how the climate works in any sense other than popular science?

Yes. I think simple model systems like this are far more valid than arguments from the authority of climate researchers. Just as "electron microscopes magnify" is a far better argument for the wave--particle dualism in quantum mechanics than "Heisenberg got a Nobel prize for this".

maxdancona wrote:

The glass in greenhouse works in a way that is fairly simply to understand. It allows in short wave energy and blocks long wave energy. This isn't how "greenhouse" gases work. "Greenhouse" is a metaphor... the climate isn't actually encased in glass or anything like glass.

That would have been true 100 years ago. But with the advent of carbon-dioxide enrichment in greenhouses, it no longer is. You build the same greenhouse twice, once with carbon-dioxide enrichment, once without. And then you measure which greenhouse gets hotter. If the fire department lets you, repeat the experiment with methane and other atmospheric greenhouse gases. That's not a metaphor, that's a real model.

maxdancona wrote:

But let's be clear.... an intelligent person who has a pop science understanding of "greenhouses" gasses who goes to college for a climate science degree will come out with a completely different understanding. In fact, she will likely say that her original understanding was completely wrong.

Only if the pop scientists did a bad job in the first place. And if she didn't run her own experiment on her own greenhouse, as suggested above.

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@ossobucotemp,

Quote:

Olivier is not a putz on a discussion 'form'.

putz, the noun and putzing around, the verb form, don't share identical meanings, Osso.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

Yes. I think simple model systems like this are far more valid than arguments from the authority of climate researchers.

No, they aren't any more valid. In fact, these simple model systems are just another form of "argument from authority".

People in the general public believe there are "greenhouse gasses" because they were told that there were greenhouse gasses. Very few people have any desire to really understand what this means. Ask any non-scientist what makes a gas a "greenhouse gas", or why Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas while Nitrogen isn't. They won't be able to give you a good answer.

To really understand the climate with enough depth to judge the science requires a lot of work. You know this I am sure, you need to understand the math, the principles of thermodynamics, energy transfer... there is a lot to climate science. Most people hear "greenhouse" and get a picture. It is a largely inaccurate picture... but it is good enough to get the scientist's point across, and people don't have the patience needed to get a better understanding.

It is the same argument from authority.... only with an over-simplistic, and misleading model.

The question is how a normal non-scientist is able to judge which simplistic models lead to real scientific insight, and which simplistic models lead to the wrong answer. I don't think there is any solution to this problem other than an appeal to authority; the authority being the people who have studied, learned the math, read the papers and done the experiments.

Mastering science is hard work. A person either does the work to master science (meaning learning advanced mathematics, studying work done before, doing original work and being challenged by peers), or they have to trust the work of others.

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Science Deniers are Everywhere

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