Why is he being so agressive against people who think the opposite of him? I mean if you are tolerant against people whose religion place the women in a submission role and restrain to nothing individual rights, you can be also tolerant to people who think the earth is not warming up.
Well, it's more complicated than "thinking the opposite"; it's more along the lines of "thinking the opposite of what hurts the wallet".
Religion is a correct analogy. If in a certain culture, women are submitted, that doesn't hurt people outside it.
People globally feels - and is, actually - threatened by global warming, so it's understandable to have ahem heat directed to people with power and without sense of collaboration (and I'm using an euphemism here), which is the current requirement for working out the problem.
Isn't the stakes of being wrong in the other direction (that global warming isn't happening) just as high?
Imagine if we spend billions/trillions of dollars trying to capture CO2, reduce oil consumption, etc. and it turns out CO2 wasn't the cause of global warming. That money could have done a lot of good if spent in other ways (i.e. lift millions of people out of poverty).
Because they don't just "think" the opposite of him; they claim that they have a scientific basis for their position. It's like the difference between hearing someone committed a crime, and watching them commit it (and testifying about it).
We certainly tolerate people who think unicorns fly out of pots of gold at the ends of rainbows, but we don't let them make decisions that will affect the health and well-being of a significant part of the planet's population.
This is the very definition of dogmatism. You literally just claimed that thinking differently is okay, as long as it's not your sacred cow which is getting involved in the discussion.
Let me help you understand what this sounds like: "Because they don't just 'think' that evolution is real; they claim that the bible isn't the inspired Word of God!" That's absolutely no different than what you just wrote: science is your "inspired Word" about which no one can disagree, even if they're allowed to disagree about everything else.
"Being tolerant" of a person's views doesn't entail "being respectful of" them, nor does it imply one must simply abide their expression in silence.
Here's a counter-question: why is it that when people who have extraordinary or extraordinarily extreme opinions are questioned or challenged there seems to almost always be an attempt to deflect the discussion toward one revolving around respect and tolerance instead of the merits of the issue involved? (That's kind of a rhetorical question, really--my long and varied experience on topics of this sort has led me to one conclusion if nothing else, and that is this: people who hold such views and attempt such deflection aren't interested in honest dialog.)
I usually see the opposite, the people with extreme opinions are often told their intolerance doesn't have to be tolerated.
Often times this bothers me because the people who choose not to tolerate the intolerable are the ones who seem not interested in honest dialogue.
My reasoning is because most often they are the people who also get to label what is considered intolerance and extreme opinions. Then, the use of such labels is the reason to dismiss the opposing viewpoint without honest dialogue. If you take an objective viewpoint of common debates on the news and whatnot, you'll see it.
Nah; you're just repeating the same "tolerance means tolerance of every single idea in every context" idea I wrote about. It has nothing to do with objectivity--that's your own subjective opinion and projection.
I see your mistake, but I was not referring to the argument that you describe. Which I would agree is a rather silly argument to make.
I'm speaking of situations where the opposing viewpoint is labeled as intolerant before the label-er even knows what the opposing viewpoint is or is mistaken of what the opposing viewpoint is; usually from emotional reactions. In those instances it is rather easy to remain objective enough to see what's going on.
I would believe you provided an example of what I'm describing. You labeled me as a "tolerance means tolerance of every single idea in every context" person before you knew whether I believed that or not.
The entire question is a fraud of course : the argument for climate change is based on statistical likelihood of existing trends continuing based on past measurement. While that does satisfy some standards used in science, no scientist in his right mind would refer to that as "proven", because it isn't.
So here's my version :
1) There is no argument from either maths, or even a simulation from first principles (NOT measured data and statistics and correlations) that shows a scenario like global warming.
2) principle of the excluded third ("tertium non datur") was an accepted standard in logic before Christ was born. It states that any statement that cannot be proven from first principles is disproved just by that fact (NOT wrong, but that wasn't asked)
Ergo, climate science disproved. Or at least, there is no known proof. There is loads and loads of statistical correlations indicating it exists, but there is no correct argument from first principles known, which is what I'd require to say "proof". It is overwhelmingly likely (well I haven't checked, but I believe them) that it exists, but not proven.
Now please keep in mind what I am and am not claiming here before you vilify me. I am claiming that climate science is very far from satisfying the standard used in exact sciences that is referred to when scientists use the word "proof".
Obviously I am not claiming that global warming will reverse or is just a mistake or whatever. The graph has been rising pretty constantly for 150 years or so, and yes, it absolutely does not look like it will reverse. This is however very far from having an explanation from first principles for climate change.
While the idea of "proof" here is just a distraction, we have vastly more than merely "statistical correlations". We know that we've significantly increased the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere, and we have a pretty good idea of what that does to a climate:
"Of all the planets in our solar system, Venus is the hottest one, even hotter than Mercury, the planet closest to the sun. Venus, whose daytime temperature can reach 900 degrees Fahrenheit (464 degrees Celsius), is surrounded by a thick gaseous layer that consists mostly of carbon dioxide. When the sun's rays reach Venus, the carbon dioxide traps the heat within, causing a kind of planetary greenhouse effect."
> the argument for climate change is based on statistical likelihood of existing trends continuing based on past measurement. <
That can easily be generalized to any scientific construct, since all predictions and theories based on experiment implicitly contain the assumption of their continued validity. Consequently what you're doing is conflating an argument against the metaphysical underpinnings of science (amusingly, by arguing from the assumptions of rationalism which are themselves subject to at least as much skepticism and scrutiny) with an argument against the products of scientific discovery.
No it can't. You'll find exact sciences don't work like this.
First in maths you have models. Of course some models match reality and some don't, but proven "given" a model means a very specific thing and is extremely rigorous.
Second physics, at least particle physics, has a lot of models these days. The most famous "in use" one is the standard model. It is not based on measurement, but on the assumption that a specific geometric shape determines the laws of physics, along with a number of constants, none of which can be directly measured (and generally, you don't use the "real" ones for calculation because they're somewhat inconvenient). The conclusions of the standard model are valid given those assumptions, just like mathematical theories are. That has good sides and really bad ones. The good, everybody knows. The worst: according to the standard model, gravity shouldn't exist.
You'll find most rigorous theories of exact sciences work like that. We can give a very, very thorough argument why electrical current and magnetism work in perpendicular planes, give exact values for the magnitudes, and you will not find a single measured quantity anywhere in that argument with one exception : the one that determines the units used. But that is an arbitrary constant, different for the metric versus imperial system.
Now I'm not saying there aren't variations on what it means to be proven within these sciences, but you can reasonably say that given the peano axioms and the model used, these conclusions are proven.
No such claim can be made for climate science. The "laws" of climate science are not the result of first principles (because they don't match observed behavior of the atmosphere), but statistical best estimators of observed measurements. This is absolutely not the same standard as used in exact sciences.
> The "laws" of climate science are not the result of first principles (because they don't match observed behavior of the atmosphere), but statistical best estimators of observed measurements. <
I didn't read the comment I replied to this way; my mistake. By the way, I understand how exact sciences work (I chose astrophysics and relativity for my specializations in physics), but thanks for the exposition.
I thought one of (not the only) the main aspects of the scientific method was that it could only be used to disprove a theory, but never to prove it 100% correct. For example, you cannot ever prove that Big Foot is a hoax, but you can disprove it by finding him. Or, the theory of gravity can never be proven, only disproven if an experiment showed it to be false. Isn't that all this scientist is asking for?
There were some interesting observations that didn't seem to make sense (the speed of light is constant, regardless of the motion of the observer). Then someone figured out how to modify Newton's equations for motion to make this possible. Then someone else took this seriously, and gave a comprehensive explanation of the implications. Then someone built the GPS system, which would not work if the clocks it uses didn't account for the time dilation that relativity predicts.
Or, consider quantum mechanics.
This follows much the same pattern. Someone made interesting observations about how light behaves (and other things). Someone worked out some math that would explain how it works. Someone else used that math to build useful things like computers (semiconductors work like they do because of QM).
You can be nitpicky and say that those theories aren't "proven", and that Newtonian mechanics is "wrong". Or you can say, they are all obviously true enough to be useful. Just because Newtonian mechanics is "disproven" for the inside of computer chips or for the precise motions of GPS satellites, does not stop it from being correct and useful for everyday life or even for serious engineering.
I'm not arguing that scientific theories aren't useful, just that the point of science is to continue to search for ways to disprove things, not to ever prove something. Considering the infinite amount of knowledge about our universe that has yet to be discovered or understood, the only way to go about making sense of it all is to start by disproving things one at a time. There is always a deeper level of understanding and knowledge that could potentially make something previously thought to be true untrue.
Considering the billions of dollars both sides of this debate have on the line, spending a few thousand to incentivize individuals to disprove this theory would be quite rational in my mind. Whether Global Warming can be disproven or not is a completely different question.
the point of science is to continue to search for ways to disprove things, not to ever prove something
No, the point is to learn things. Any time something is shown to be less likely (disproven) other things must therefore be that same amount more likely. The goal is to concentrate that likeliness in as small an area as possible.
Simply disproving things doesn't help with this. Disproving things that we thought were true helps with this (a star viewed thru a telescope has a disc because of diffraction, not because of similar triangles; the earth really does move). Finding the limits of what we know helps with this (Newtonian mechanics works, but not for extremely small or fast things).
Given infinite possibilities, just disproving some at random won't help. You need to find which possibilities you can learn the most by testing.
There is always a deeper level of understanding and knowledge that could potentially make something previously thought to be true untrue.
This is not a useful way of looking at things. It's better to say, for anything that's true, there are limits within which it is true. Newtonian mechanics is not untrue, it's just not all-encompassing.
Consider all those infinite possibilities as a multi-dimensional space. A particular theory is a region (or set of regions) in that space that are true, and that aren't true. Any one experiment can test one point and see if it matches what the theory says. If you have a cluster of points that are all true or all false, you don't gain anything by testing more points in that same area. You gain by testing points near where the theory says the edge of a region should be. If the edges are all where they should be, you've proved the theory as true (or rather, true enough). If not, it's either wrong or more limited that you thought (it's less true than you thought).
If you're talking about whether theories match the real world, then you're correct. It can never be conclusively verified due to the problem of measurement.
However, given a theory, you can prove whether or not something is correct in the model described by the theory. So while it can never be conclusively proven whether, say, the standard model matches the real world perfectly, you can most definitely prove that electrons behave in a specific way in a world that behaves like the standard model says it should.
That leaves open the question whether the real world matches the standard model or not, and while very compelling measurements and experiments can be produced, we don't really know. Well, we do know, actually. There's no gravity in the standard model, so it most definitely does not describe our world, which is why the whole string theory research is happening.
But climate science does not have that. It does not have tiny theories with constants that try to find the smallest possible unit and how it behaves. Climate science laws talk about volumes of air, say cubes of 10km on a side, and statistically it will behave like X. But nobody really knows why we got X, except that it "tends" to predict measurements fairly accurately. Why ? We have some idea, like "co2 keeps sunlight from reflecting out", but we don't know why the observed concentrations in the athmosphere don't match what you see in a gas experiment (basically in experiments greenhouse effects stop at ~250-280ppm depending on concentrations of other gases, doesn't happen in the athmosphere obviously). But climate science doesn't even try to explain this, or reduce it to first principles, they just try to model whatever they see.
Why is he being so agressive against people who think the opposite of him? I mean if you are tolerant against people whose religion place the women in a submission role and restrain to nothing individual rights, you can be also tolerant to people who think the earth is not warming up.