Discussion > Non-Chemtrail discussion on Warmist Trolls
The question do trolls zap your time & ruin threads seems have been answered.. That is why I mostly just ignore them.
EM does seem polite, but too zaps time, by posting reams of cut & paste, but twice when I asked simple "inconvenient for alarmists questions" he just never replied.
- I still welcome any warmists who come for genuine discussion. We have seen a number of now skeptics originally came here like that and have changed sides. Strange how we are rarely visited by ex-skeptics who want to share their enlightenment with us. Mar 7, 2014 at 12:01 PM | stewgreen
stewgreen
Ha, I think that says it all!
Richard Drake
Too many threads. What have I missed this time?
Mar 7, 2014 at 12:46 PM | Entropic man
stewgreen
1. Twice I asked
"EM can you please name any mythical bigoil funded deniers the BBC has aired over the last 3 months ? (I don't count Lawson, Carter, or Bishop as big oil funded, as there is certainly no evidence ..and 85year old Lawson isn't in it for the money I guess" )
2. EM said "You expect certainties? Go talk to a politician or a priest.
You will never find certainty in science, just confidence limits." Unthreaded Mar 2, 2014 at 6:12 PM
I replied with a question
"EM you know that's BS, don't you ?
.. validated science is 100% true and reproduceable and produces accurate predictions. It is not just opinion.
(The evil greens in their fantasy universe think "what our pet scientists say is closest to the truth, it's the consensus" when in fact their certainty comes from taking a bit of validated science and overextrapilating it, so yes that is just opinion They then shout down everyone elses opinions down, ban sceptic scientists. and Get their pet scientist on the BBC then say "see X scientist say this.. those evil skeptics disagree with science !)"" Mar 2, 2014 at 8:31 PM
... I would post privately to EM except he won't use a BH account due to his privacy fears
stewgreen
stewgreen
- I still welcome any warmists who come for genuine discussion.
So in other words a genuine discussion for you only includes those concepts which you judges acceptable. Other concepts are dark holes which you are afraid to explore.
A discussion for this crowd has highlights like -
Ha, I think that says it all!
Good discussion. Discounting highlights this crowd likes to dwell endlessly on minutia after minutia which involve scoring and admitting points.
replicant
EM I found my original question
Entropic man (Marvel Comic character with psychic powers)
- Warmists allege "The BBC often airs Big Oil funded climate deniers"
I wondered if you could please list some of them who've been on in the last 6 months as I can't think of any .
- Lawson's been on a few times but I wouldnt say a rich 80 year old man opens his mouth for money.
- Bob Carter was on radio once and is paid a small salary reviewing NIPCC reports, but that's not big oil money as it comes via Heartland, who despite allegations of big money from Koch brothers don't actually seem to get much from them. Also he's old.
What's your list ?
Feb 21, 2014 at 8:31 PM | stewgreen
stewgreen
Stewgreen
1) Big oil don't fund sceptics any more, at least not publicly. Exxon gave up on the Heartland Institute years ago. The anonymous donor putting money into GWPF is not a big-oil source, but Tory donor and hedge fund millionaire Michael Hintze.
http://www.desmogblog.com/guardian-reveals-key-funder-global-warming-policy-foundation-michael-hintze
2) Your belief that science can be 100% sure about anything brands you as an ignorant non-scientist. If you knew anything about science you would know you had asked a silly question.
Why don't I answer all your questions? I find your approach unpleasant and sarcastic. Your questions tend to be foolish, rhetorical or in the" Have you stopped beating your wife" style.
Ask me sensible scientific questions and I will debate. Carry on in your current style and I won't waste more time on you.
Entropic man
EM. You seem to be projecting yourself
"Your belief that science can be 100% sure about anything brands you as ignorant"
I find that a bizarre statement
..as there is 1. Properly VALIDATED science and there is 2. unproven opinion (which some people call science cos it appears to work under some circumstances)
(sometimes what appears to be fixed science can appear to change e.g. Newtononuan to Einstein, but what is happening is that you are being more precise with your terms, ie Newtonian physics does not work under all conditions)
- Some people are here to debate openly and we are open to changing our views, so I will spend time answering their points. I think some other people like you EM are different and in the end drain us rather than offer insight so do answer the point of the original thread "Do Ch, R & EM" add value to BH ?" No, except they do show us what the warmist world is like, that however reasonable we are, reason will not gain traction with some warmists.
i am sorry you find some of my questions unpleasant ..I only asked you 2 or 3 and yes they maybe rhetorical, however it's perfectly easy to mention that in an answer. I know my style is incrediby tame compared to what we see it warmists blogs and territories.
stewgreen
never certainty ?
Well please name a properly validated science that turned out to be be wrong after time ?
But Published peer reviewed science is just opinion & can often turn out to be wrong .. that may have the confidence limits you speak of.
- astrology, divining, ulcers caused by stress' - never have been validated science, never been properly validated.
- 'stomach ulcers caused by bacteria' - science cos properly validated.
Darwin's theory of evolution, yes validated for many specific circumstances, but possibly not 100% universally defined.
Refinement of existing science
Science says that X bacteria causes Ulcers, then you find that when you just take a tiny number of bacteria X it never causes ulcers. That doesn't invalidate your previous validation , it's just that you have to include that bacteria must reach the QUORUM trigger level before they can cause ulcers.
stewgreen
"Your belief that science can be 100% sure about anything brands you as an ignorant non-scientist. "
Well, if by "100% sure" you mean that I should not be certain in belief that my piano will still be there in five minutes because of the possibility of it vanishing due to quantum effects, I suppose you are right.
But in normal use of words, there are oodles of things that science is 100% certain of.
If I believe that science is 100% sure that the electrical conductivity of silver is greater than that of iron at zero degrees C, does that brand me "as an ignorant non-scientist"? Well, if you say so.
Martin A
> the electrical conductivity of silver is greater than that of iron at zero degrees C
can you prove that to be true under all imaginable conditions? If not it is not a fact but just a hypothesis (or should that be theory?) that has yet to be falsified.
So quite similar to climate science, no?
Chandra
Martin A stewgreen
I'm afraid Chandra is right. Your conductivities are each based on a sample of measurements of limited precision and accuracy.
The outcome are means and confidence limits. The probability that the conductivity of iron exceeds that of silver is actually very small, but it is not zero. You are not absolutely sure that silver is more conductive. In common speech you may express your confidence as certainty, but strictly speaking your uncertainty persists.
I regard this tendency towards engineering certainty as dangerous. The engineers designing the Comet airliner were sure that it was safe, until they discovered metal fatigue.
Stewgreen makes my own point that there is always the possibility that further evidence can force change in an existing theory.
Entropic man
No it's not any way similar to CS. I don't even think that, although it has the word in its title, CS should be considered 'science'. It's something else, that attempts to give the appearance of being science.
I'll concede that I don't know what happens to the conductivity of metals at pressures of millions of atmospheres, ultra intense radiation levels, so perhaps I should have pinned it down by saying "under any conditions that could be produced in a school physics lab" or similar. And perhaps I should have picked an example that you'd have found convincing - perhaps the number of protons in an oxygen atom.
And I'll agree that surprising things will still be discovered. And that, ultimately, we can be sure of nothing.
But, as I said, in normal use of language, there are lots of things that we can be 100% sure about that science tells us. If I were called as an expert witness, and I were asked in a murder trial "Can we be 100% sure that the conductivity of silver is greater than that of iron?" I would answer without hesitation "Yes, you can be certain of that". I most certainly would not reply "If I were to believe that, it would brand me as an ignorant non-scientist".
Martin A
Hi EM - what would be your (rough) estimate of the probability that iron is actually more conductive than silver? (to within two or three orders of magnitude will be fine)
Martin A
So I guess you are agreeing, Martin, with what EM said was true:
> You expect certainties? Go talk to a politician or a priest.
You will never find certainty in science, just confidence limits.
It wasn't really up for debate was it?
Chandra
Groan. Isn't the probability that iron is more conductive than silver to all intents and purposes equal to the probability of a positive answer to "Do Chandra, Replicant and Entropic man add value to BH?"
Richard Drake
"The probability that the conductivity of iron exceeds that of silver is actually very small, but it is not zero."
EM - I suspect you are not going to follow my argument. But here goes anyway...
[1] I know that you like simple models of things and I think you often see them as reality. I agree that there are means and confidence limits. But that is a *model*; it is not reality. When the probability of the limits ever being exceeded in the entire life of the universe is tiny, it becomes a matter for philosophical discussion as to whether they apply or not. It is not a "fact" and it is highly debatable whether your model still applies.
By the way, the Comet crashes have nothing to do with this - they are an irrelevance.
[2] As an aside - the Manhattan project borrowed the silver from Fort Knox to make the coils for the electromagnetic separation of U235. General Groves would have been quite surprised if it had turned out they were wrong and iron windings would given lower resistance all along.
[3] For it to turn out that the conductivity of silver is less than that of iron would involve every measurement that has ever been made over the years being off by hundreds of standard deviations - not one or two but hundreds. If the probability of that were the probability of winning the lottery, and if you gave every particle in the universe its own lottery ticket, the probability of getting a winner would still be vanishingly small.
If you then go on to claim that all the measurements of resistivity of Ag and Fe that have been made over the years could *all* have been independently wrong, you are adding another huge number of zeros in front of the already vanishingly small probability.
To re-emphasise the point, you are talking in terms of *models* when you talk about being less that 100% sure that the conductivity of silver is greater than that of iron. I don't accept that your model, at levels of probability that make the reciprocal of the number of particle in the universe look like a huge number, still applies.
Anyone who were to suggest that because there are uncertainties (of that vanishingly small level) in some things that science has told us, then the uncertainties of climate science can be accepted would be practicing legerdemain.
Chandra - if you followed this, no I don't accept that there are always confidence limits - they are a model which applies a lot of the time but to say that the model always applies is pushing the use of the model too far.
Martin A
I'm no expert in the philosophy of science but EM's statement is consistent of what I have learnt to be true. The examples discussed are clearly also consistent in the limit (because we really don't know what happens to the conductivity of metals at pressures of millions of atmospheres, ultra intense radiation levels etc) so to me there really is a confidence level associated with the 'fact'. You are of course free to make the necessary approximation and ignore the minuscule level of doubt and it wont matter a jot.
> Anyone who were to suggest that because there are
uncertainties (of that vanishingly small level) in
some things that science has told us, then the
uncertainties of climate science can be accepted
would be practicing legerdemain.
Does anyone say that? And what do they mean by "accepted"? Accepted as not yet falsified? I see no reason why any aspect of climate science is special - if it can be falsified, then it is wrong. Until it is falsified then it might (or might not) be correct and it competes with other explanations of whatever it is that it tries to explain.
Chandra
Since none of us is capable of surviving in any situation where the conductivity of iron is greater than that of silver (as postulated by the nit-picking pedants on this thread) the hypothesis is irrelevant.
There is more relevance in the philosophical argument about angels dancing on pins.
Mike Jackson
Re silver/iron issue it's covered by what I already wrote above
"sometimes what appears to be fixed science can appear to change e.g. Newtononian to Einstein, but what is happening is that you are being more precise with your terms, ie Newtonian physics does not work under all conditions."
"Stewgreen makes my own point that there is always the possibility that further evidence can force change in an existing theory.
"further evidence can force change in an existing theory."
No you are not changing the science, you just made a error in your terms if you asserted that it works in all circumstances "true under all imaginable conditions?" , instead of just the ones you tested it in re pressure, temperature, background radioactivity etc.
- we are not talking about theories we are talking about VALIDATED science
Greens are often confused between what is science and what is theory
stewgreen
Greens are often confused between what is science and what is theory, and think what their pet scientists say = science. And if his/her opinion changes ..that means science has changed.
(As I said I see once again a discussion has been driven off the original topic by our warmist visitors, this time cos EM .s privavcy concerns means he can't accept private messages)
stewgreen
> - we are not talking about theories we are talking about VALIDATED science
So in the world according to 'stewgeen' a theory only becomes 'science' once it has been 'validated' (or should that be 'VALIDATED')? Whereas outside this little parallel world people seem to think theories can only be falsified, not validated. Indeed even here I've seen people pontificating that for something to be science it has to be falsifiable. But nevertheless you think your level of knowledge enables you to judge and reject climate science (although that won't stop you claiming always to have been a lukewarmer, like the other lukewarmers crawling out of the woodwork).
Chandra
The minimum one should expect from a science is that it has been successfully tested at lest once. Climate science does not publish what grounds would invalidate it, let alone wait for the tests to be carried out. When I asked a Met Office employee what real world conditions would invalidate the models she said ‘nothing, we just change the models’. ‘Version numbering’ means never having to admit that you’re wrong. Good science should not be a continuous conveyor belt of revisions.
TinyCO2
1. I am moving a little toward EM
as I am wondering if EM missed the word "climate" & meant to say
"You expect certainties? Go talk to a politician or a priest.
You will never find certainty in CLIMATE science, just confidence limits."
i.e he meant not in science, but climate science and other super complex systems.
2. I note talk of 1 in billion 'piano' certainies is moving way away from the initial context , which was whether you can be reasonably certain about something.
- I argue that if your theory is consistantly able to make accurate predictions about the future that validates it as science. If it is unable to make those predictions then it is still just a theory.
stewgreen
OK , this is restart of the
thread, "Do Chandra, Replicant and Entropic man add value to BH? by Dung" .. (or are they here maliciously to disrupt ?)
- Replicant answered that by trolling ie. taking the thread down a dark tunnel into a discussion on chemtrails