The costs and benefits of various actions are better known than you portray. The costs of inaction, especially, are absolutely something climatologists have investigated far better than you or I do; but lots of people have spent their lives investigating what different courses of action might plausibly result in. The voting may be up to all of us - except, sadly seems to be ruled by corporate interests so far - but anyone sensible would listen to them.
Well, you’ve completely ignored what I just said - that while things like the value of electric heating may be uncertain, we already know they won’t change basic results that are established by other observations.
We all understand you can find one uncertain number after another, for the rest of our lives, even as climate change predictions come true around us. That’s what a Gish gallop is, seizing on one tiny point after another to instill doubt, even though they don’t affect the over-all picture. I don’t mind dismissing chaff.
But, a scientist’s worldview certainly does have a rather large impact upon the questions which that scientist asks, as well as the inferences which they make when evaluating observations.
And, this notion that somebody who might be fluent in the implications of just one particular worldview would – in just a few short sentences, and without any actual effort to dig into the subject – dismiss arguments stemming from an alternative worldview as “tiny” points is really symptomatic of the larger problem with our university system today. It takes time to learn a new field of research. IEEE, the world’s largest scientific institution, has been publishing on this topic of plasma cosmology for more than half a century now. I’m guessing you’ve yet to be exposed to any of that background …
No, what has happened is that the problem has been solved within the context of just one worldview. But, it’s common knowledge for most at this point – thanks to Kuhn – that paradigms are incommensurable. If I started talking about the Big Bang using concepts from plasma cosmology, you’d rightly object. I completely agree that electric joule heating is a “tiny point” for the climate models within the context of the conventional worldview. But, this conventional worldview involves highly idealized cosmic plasma models which cannot even support electric currents or electric fields. You could not even use these models to fire up a fluorescent bulb. This is an extraordinary, untested gamble that cosmic plasmas differ from our observations of laboratory plasmas – which we absolutely know exhibit a small electrical resistance, and can therefore support electric fields. You’ve unknowingly accepted these (truthfully political) idealizations as a foundational assumption, without any question, and in defiance of our laboratory observations of plasmas.
Is this really a surprise that electric currents play no important role in the conventional climate models, given that astrophysicists simply refuse to infer electric current causes for the magnetic fields they routinely observe in interstellar space?
You know, nobody can force scientists to investigate a new worldview. That’s their choice. But, what the public does have a right to do, when they see such decisions made, is to refuse to accept the claim of 95% confidence.
…still applies. Climate models give good results based on observations, so we know whatever physics we might be missing, it wouldn’t significantly change those results, because the link between carbon dioxide and climate has been verified by measurements. It seems you will talk forever and day, hating to repeat yourself, about how everyone else is indoctrinated and unfair and childish and over-protective of their pet theories, and nobody can admit how awesome your favorite theory must be compared to them…and yet keep dodging that simple point, which is what makes it all chaff. Gallop on.
No. What I’d like is for you to realize that when a tremendous amount of very knowlegable people have devoted themselves to studying the evidence about something, and have a result they’re all confident in but continue to study, and that the financial interests Schmidt worries about have been trying hard to disprove but without coming up with meaningful evidence…it’s probably not
something that depends on a naïve assumption like correlation implies causation;
entirely based on a dogmatic inability to consider other possibilites;
going to be completely different based on one unknown variable.
But you’ve made it plain that you have nothing but contempt for anyone who’s studied anything except plasma physics, and apparently 700+ researchers + Noam Chomsky haven’t persuaded you to look at the reasons people believe in climate change, which you are ignoring or downplaying. So all I can do is call you out for being disingenuous and throwing chaff, and I think this is enough not to have to hash that out again - I will just link to comments here.
That’s a great idea. It’s like if you were talking in the back of a taxi about how the city needed a better public transport system, but it couldn’t get it partly because the taxi companies were blocking any proposals. The taxi driver kicks you out in the middle of nowhere to show you how dependent you are on his services. That’ll show you for wanting a cleaner city!
Nobody is saying that we aren’t highly dependent on fossil fuels right now. Still, the alternatives are out there and we need to be working on sourcing energy in a way that has the least impact on the planet, based on our not insignificant knowledge of the harm that we are currently doing.
In those fields where there isn’t any professional organization that can legally enforce dogma, once the graduate has received his or her PhD there is no longer any reward for suppressing new ideas - in fact the graduate must come up with new material and challenge the status quo, or you will never reach tenure and get the hot babes. This is obviously true, just like it is obviously true that many academics terrorize and abuse their PhD students.
Nobody takes away your climate science doctorate if you buck the common belief system; in fact you will get far more attention and opportunities to prove your case if you have a controversial view. Then if you actually do prove your points, you will be showered with job offers and speaking gigs. There’s no Bar Association, Pope or Synod, ADA or AMA that can strip you of your license to practice because you said something controversional; the way you lose your job is to not be controversial - publish or perish!
In fields where one can be stripped of the ability to earn income (like dentistry, for example) by a professional organization that rigorously enforces doctrinal purity, dogmatism will obviously be more of a problem, and there you’d have a much better case. But climate science ain’t like that.
I give you credit for engaging the subject matter.
The problem here is that the system has basically done its work by this point. The student has just spent the past 4-5 years under constant threat of expulsion internalizing a massive volume of knowledge. Those who are willing to invest in that commitment rarely come out the other end with the attitude that they then want to start over with a fresh worldview. At this point, you’ve made it. You are now an expert. People now look up to you, in theory (in practice, the PhD’s that end up in corporations are oftentimes treated like neophytes). Either way, nobody at this point needs to enforce any dogma. It’s by this point become internalized.
The deeper one gets into this subject, the more philosophical and perplexing the questions become. Is there a way to do this better? I have some ideas, but these are difficult questions.
