Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-L] integrity +- climate change



Should have been:

I am not sure that this is true. In fact, I am quite certain it is not.

On 6/11/2015 3:35 PM, Ze'ev Wurman wrote:
>> Thirdly, there is the small matter of/motive/ or
>> lack thereof. I see it, everybody -- including me,
>> and including the government -- would be absolutely
>> delighted to discover that the CO2, mercury, etc.
>> from burning coal was harmless.

_*I am not sure -- in fact, I am quite certain -- that this is true.*_ I have no idea what drives JD, but I do know what drives governments -- the interests of their political and industrial supporters more than anything else. And I know what Sierra Club and other eco-zealots friendly to the administration are mostly after -- magnify the guilt feelings of the general population so it will be more willing to "punish" itself via various taxes and self-imposed economically-harmful limitations. This will give more power to the government (more intrusion, more taxes, more control) and to ecological zealots and their ideologies.

So no. Governments are definitely not after a pure "truth" in general, unless the stakes are very low. The moment stakes get high, as in climate change, governments are anything but disinterested bodies in pursuit of an objective truth.

In fact, I am rather surprised that smart and rational people can actually believe this is not so.

>> In the same vein, we would be delighted to find ...

Agan, I wonder who hides behind the "we." If governments or NGOs are a part of the "we," all that follows is questionable.

Ze'ev

On 6/11/2015 2:11 PM, John Denker wrote:
On 06/11/2015 10:00 AM, David Marx wrote:
John Denker seems to be arguing below that a funding source can lead to biased
research. This is true, but one should also recognize that federal funding
can do the same thing, since the requirement of federal funding seems to be
that one adopt a specific athropogenic narrative to do any climate research.
That's nonsense several times over.

For one thing, that's not what I argued.

Secondly, it's not strictly true that he who pays the
piper calls the tune. Richard A. Muller famously took
a bunch of money from the Koch brothers (and others)
and used it to perform a meta-analysis that showed the
climate-change data was dramatically /better/ than he
expected it to be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth

Thirdly, there is the small matter of /motive/ or
lack thereof. I see it, everybody -- including me,
and including the government -- would be absolutely
delighted to discover that the CO2, mercury, etc.
from burning coal was harmless.

In the same vein, we would be delighted to find
some sort of remediation scheme, perhaps carbon
capture. I know of some solutions that are at
least thermodynamically possible, e.g.
CO2 + CaSiO3 --> ... --> CaCO3 + SiO2
CO2 + wollastonite --> limestone + sand
and making it happen wouldn't even be too crazy
expensive. It would however be enough to make
fossil-carbon fuels economically uncompetitive
against renewables.

Continuing down that road, we would be delighted
to discover a Mr. Fusion machine that was small,
cheap, and so low-risk as to require virtually
no regulation. That's an extreme, but it's not
meant to be sarcastic; it's meant to illustrate
that nobody is opposed to convenient solutions.
The task is to find solutions that actually work.

Fourthly, there is the small matter of /mechanism/
and /evidence/. Government attempts to manipulate
evidence tend to leak like a sieve. The documented
examples overwhelmingly run in one direction, namely
toward soft-pedaling the risks:
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/13042015/climate-censorship-gains-steam-Florida-Wisconsin
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article12983720.html
http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy/promoting-scientific-integrity/climate-change.html
etc. etc. etc.

Conspiracy theories are, well, theories. They're not
evidence.
When I mention evidence, I realize I'm preaching to
the choir; I am not so naïve as to think that the
debate will be won or lost on the basis of evidence.
The climate-change deniers believe what they want to
believe, and no amount of evidence is going to change
that. Possibly constructive suggestion / reference:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Debunking_Handbook.pdf

Just because somebody says there's a symmetry doesn't
mean there is one. Alleging pro-climate-change data
manipulation on the part of the scientific community is
like George Bush alleging military cowardice on the part
of somebody who was awarded a silver star, a bronze star,
and three purple hearts. It's not symmetrical. It's
beyond dishonest; it's beyond shameful.

When things like that happen, we need to push back, hard.

To maintain scientific integrity (and integrity in
general), eternal vigilance is required.

_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@www.phys-l.org
http://www.phys-l.org/mailman/listinfo/phys-l