Scott Adams is trying to figure out which side of politics is less rational. But he assumes the answer to his question before he even gets started when he wrote:
Climate Change Claim 1: Human activity plus natural factors are changing the climate in ways that could be calamitous.
Verdict: True. The overwhelming majority of credible scientists agree.
Scott needs a lesson in science. I replied:
Your climate change claim 1 verdict assumes that one side is right and the other wrong, and it does so on the basis of popular consensus, which plays no part in science (so I won't mention the 30,000 scientists who signed a letter saying otherwise). Science is built, not on consensus but on evidence, hypotheses, and testing. Let me illustrate by summarising the entire global warming debate in a few sentences..
The global warming theory is that doubling CO2 will cause something "around" a degree C warming. A bit more, a bit less, but something thereabouts.
Everyone agrees. Everyone sane, that is, both alarmists and skeptics alike.
But the alarmist theory goes on as follows: Yes, but that ~1C will cause more evaporation from the oceans, and H2O is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so the 1C gets multiplied 2,3, 4, 6, you name it, times, causing catastrophic warming of 4C, 6C, whatever hairy scary figure you care to pick.
That's it. The difference is between skeptics who say CO2 causes 1C warming and alarmists who say it causes a multiplied amount limited only by how frightened they want you to be today.
So, how to test it?
Well, if 1C causes more H2O in the atmosphere, there should be:
a. more water in the atmosphere,
b. increased heating (a "hotspot") where the water is in the troposphere, and
c. by blocking heat escape, less radiation escaping into outer space.
All three have been measured:
A. less water in the atmosphere,
B. no hotspot - if anything, the opposite, and
C. more radiation escaping into outer space.
The theory makes three predictions, experiment shows all three to be false, therefore the theory is wrong, and any count of "experts" saying otherwise is just a count of mistaken people.
THAT is how you do science.
Re: Posted on Scott Adams' Blog
i don't agree in some points for your reply. sort of dilemma but still a nice piece of work.
Re: Posted on Scott Adams' Blog
Hi Joseph, thanks, but not sure what the dilemma is. The theory about global warming makes three predictions, all three are falsified by observations of the real world, so the theory is wrong. I suppose the dilemma is that so many have been carried along by the madness of crowds into believing nonsense, that those who state the plain truth about the invalidity of this theory get fired, defamed, unpublished, threatened and so on.