Article: Phony Science and Public Policy - Very interesting
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Hoplophile
Evolving Lead Gorilla
Same here. I try to read his column regularly, and Thomas Sowell as well.
erictheobscure
Evolving Lead Gorilla
Umm, the Supreme Court just ruled that the EPA should regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions because they are quite obviously harmful to the environment.
Uhhh... in all the psychology articles I've read, they use an alpha value of .05 or .01, resulting in a confidence level of 95% or 99% (confidence = 1 - alpha [as a percent]). I've seen some strong criticism of being lax enough to use an alpha of .05, so a 90% confidence level is pretty darn crappy by those standards...
How do they intend to regulate water vapor (the worst of the greenhouse gasses)? Despite our best efforts, we have not learned how to control the clouds, and virtually every means of energy production produces water vapor. CO2 is piddly #&^$ compared to gaseous H2O.
well before we start arguing about this lets consider that Walter williams' field of expertise is economics, that gives him relative credibilty about the percent error of the trials but with regards to his "scientific" opinion I would rather listen to an actual scientist. :2 :ss
tech-ninja
Pnoon's Bartender
To me it seems that "Global Warming" is the new "Hole in the Ozone". Whatever happened to that? Did we fix it or just lose interest or find out it was a load of crap to start with?
It is not as bad as it was due to drastically reduced flourocarbon use.
erictheobscure
Evolving Lead Gorilla
Uhh, we didn't "fix it" and it wasn't a "load of crap." You personally might've lost interest and it might've stopped getting press in the US media, but it's still a live concern for scientists or anyone else concerned with the lasting and potentially irreversible damage done to the earth.
As was, at one point, the geocentric view of the solar system. Galileo put that one to shame.
I posted a link to this documentary somewhere else, but everyone should at least be willing to watch it. Some of the top scientists in the fields relating to global warming (physics, oceanography, climatology, etc.) are ardently opposed to the homocentric theory of global warming. In fact, one of said scientists utilizes a theory that predicts the weather far more accurately than the theories that rely on man's contribution to global warming.
The Great Global Warming Swindle
erictheobscure
Evolving Lead Gorilla
I teach writing and rhetoric, so let me parse some of this. First, there's the old argument by analogy, which is one of the weakest forms of argument possible. Yes, I realize that your claim about the "homocentric [sic] theory of global warming" is a slender connection to a geocentric model of the universe, but not that the Galileo reference doesn't necessarily prove anything pertaining to this discussion, for one simple reason: Galileo didn't prove all anthropocentric models wrong.
But the far more pressing issue is the slippery logic of "top scientists." People often claim they have "top" leaders in their respective fields on their side, but this is, more often than not, just a rhetorical bluff.
http://www.digitalnpq.org/global_services/nobel laureates/12.07.01.html
Here's a statement signed by a number of Nobel laureates about some of the most urgent challenges that we face. Global warming is one of them. I don't want to perpetuate the Nobel myth, but the prize does serve as a decent measure of who the "top" thinkers in various fields really are.