OT: scientific orthodoxy

[Bill Wright]

Yes, I remember an article in the Sunday Times saying that all the experts had been against it.

Bill

[Martin Brown]

That will be why most drugs actually work reasonably well. I know their salesmen are in the count your fingers before and after league.

And you should be aware that Mendels pea results are so statistically improbable that he must have cheated. He wasn't wrong but his results are too close to theory given the relatively small samples involved.

Rubbish. You are letting your paranoid delusions get the better of you. The evidence for climate change is very convincing. You should look at your bed fellows who are mostly paranoid deranged right whingers.

OK. A more mundane example then from chemistry where the poor guy missed out on a Nobel prize because his reaction was so far out from the prevailing orthodoxy that he really couldn't get published apart from in a really obscure journal. Boris Belusov in the 1950's found a very simple reaction that has deceptively complex clock like behaviour:

It didn't reach the west until 1968 when it completely overturned the understanding of equilibrium thermodynamics. The irony is that he published the recipe and it is so robust and simple that the ingredients thrown together in almost any combination will work!

There are a handful of other reactions that show this sort of spatial temporal behaviour but very few are on timescales that we can see.

I agree with you there. A carbon tax is not the way forward - it just provides another plaything for the spivs and speculators to manipulate.

You are *too* cynical. BTW good to have you back.

Have you adjusted fsd on the interconnects and gas generation - they both maxed out the other week so heaven help us in a cold snap!

[Martin Brown]

On 11/11/2014 10:53, "Nightjar

[RJH]

Haven't you defeated your own argument there?

Wonder why the extreme right are almost all vehement climate change deniers?

[jkn]

So, the orthodoxy changes. Usually, due to evidence.

See Thomas Kuhn, 'The Structure of Scientific Revolution'. The old heresies become the new orthodoxy. Usually, this is called Scientific Progress (no quote marks). It's what gets you your shiny new tablets, smartphones, high- mpg cars, cordless tools, etc. etc. as well as predictions about climate ch ange.

J^n

[Tim Streater]

Except that to make tablets, smartphones, high-mpg cars, cordless tools, etc etc, requires actual science and actual engineering. Predictions don't *need* either. Predictions are only as good as your models and your ability to measure boundary conditions to feed into the models. Either can be flawed and all you get is a different prediction. You don't get a cordless tool whose battery runs down after 4 minutes, eh?

[dennis]

Well they are probably more intelligent than the average lefty.

[newshound]

I found the Connections series irritating at the time, but picked up the book in a charity shop last year. Seconded as a good read.

Plenty of copies here

if your charity shops let you down.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Nope. Quite he revrese. I am showing motive, as well as opportunity.

They are not, its only the left are the vehement climate deniers.

They deny the actual temperatures in favour of computer models that enhance the importance of big central governments which is what they believe in most of all.

The rigjht are only in it for the money.

Its the libertarians who are neither right nor left, but actually care about things like the people and truth, that are above denial and facing the actual facts.

That AGW is a by and large a fraud and people are being ripped off by liars.

And those liars lie not only about climate, but about the people who refuse to believe their lies.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Probably because they believe everything should be kept in its place - including nature.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh dear. Bigotry and nonsense.

First of all the statement is false.

Secondly the statement made about the statement is false.

Guess who is primarily in favour of human governement taking over the natural functions of the world?

The green left.

Climate change (the religion) is ALL about the principle that man vcan and must 'control the environment'

Google doublethink.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Not surprised you jump to the defence of your own.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I don't count myself as part of the right so called.

I am probably more genuinely socialist than you are, as yours is all affectation.

[Nightjar]

On 11/11/2014 19:55, Martin Brown wrote: ....

The evidence for climate change is incontrovertible. The case for what causes it is, however, unproven. The Russian model, based upon their sunspot activity hypothesis, has been a lot more successful at predicting global temperatures than the models based upon the CO2 hypothesis.

[Bill Wright]

But there shouldn't be an orthodoxy. Science isn't done by consensus.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

Wonder why the extreme left are all climate change fanatics? Maybe it's because they are anti-capitalist, statist, and centralist. They are against freedom of the individual. They are miserablists who want to see us all reduced to poverty. So many greenies are ex-CND, ex-anarchist, ex-communists.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

No, that's what lefties think. They want to see us all subjugated to the state. And ideally sitting in darkness freezing our bollocks off when there's no wind.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

A lot of lefties are hypocritical and do not practice what they preach. One example is that a lot of them send their kids to private schools. Then there was this woman who made a scene at my bonfire party because I was pumping 'poisonous CO2' into the atmosphere, shortly after she'd been boasting about having done 15,000 air miles this year.

Bill

>

[Bill Wright]

That's because the climate constantly changes. Always has.

Bill

[harryagain]

Here's one of them.