Canard.
You’re not kidding…
Yeah, I know an old Fools and Horses joke, but canard it is.
Henry Porter talks bollocks. It is not up to the sceptic to prove his argument, it is up to the one making an argument to prove his case. Porter uses the dinosaur extinction theory to explain his irritation.
So you would quote more evidence, such as the presence in the K-Pg layer of iridium, an element rare on Earth but not in asteroids, as well as the altered state of quartz, which can only be made under extremely high pressure, such as is caused by a huge impact of a 10km asteroid. You would mention the long darkness when only ferns grew and the fact that the seas were emptied of all but the most tenacious species.
Ah, but this is still all very hypothetical, the sceptic would say, at which point you might give up and tell him, yes, a spacecraft might have visited Earth and exterminated 75% of the world’s species, but you’re going with the best available evidence. The sceptic would walk away, satisfied that he had achieved a draw, not from the merit of his argument, but simply because he had not let you convince him.
Er, but you haven’t proved anything. I agree, this is a very probable explanation, but proof, it ain’t. The point of science is that theories are falsifiable – someone might yet come up with another perfectly valid explanation with supporting evidence that demonstrates the asteroid theory to be false.
It is not the place of the sceptic to prove you are wrong, it is up to you to prove that you are right. You haven’t. You have provided some pointers that suggest a case. That’s it. The reality is; we are likely never to actually know. I can live with that.
Likewise with climate. It changes. It has always changed – and seeing as we are going with palaeontology, sometime during the Permian period 99% of life on the planet became extinct, probably as a consequence of climate change. As a sceptic, it is not up to me to prove that it is a naturally occurring phenomenon – although there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it is – y’know, it’s been going on long before human activity an’ all – it is up to the warmists to prove their case. They have failed to do so (computer models and consensus – even peer-reviewed consensus is not and never will be science, it is a corruption of the term). And a jet stream generating enough rain to keep the ducks happy is not a justification for dragging us back to an agrarian existence or punitive taxation, which is always the knee-jerk political solution to everything.
So, no, we do not need a sceptics’ conference. Just as we don’t need an atheists’ conference to prove the non-existence of God.
Er, not really. A scientist suggests a hypothesis, tests with experimentation and writes a paper that sets out their theory. These theories are testable and the results can generate further predictions, further tests and develops the theory.
If you wish to contest any theory you have to devise your own experimentation that shows the original is not correct. That really is how it works.
Ultimately it is up to the ‘sceptic’ to prove the ‘science’ is wrong.
Nope. it is not up to the sceptic to prove anything. The hypothesis has been put forward. It is up to those dong the hypothesising to prove it. Particularly when the “science” is nothing of the sort – there is no experimentation merely peer reviewed ideas, cherry-picked data and hysterical screeching about “consensus”. This isn’t science, it is a religion – hence my reference at the end of the article.
Given that it is highly unlikely to be able to prove this one anyway, “prove it” remains a perfectly rational response. There is no obligation whatsoever on sceptics to prove anything for we are not the ones making any claim.
You use the correct word ‘theory’. It is there for a reason i.e. not a proven fact. It is up to the claimant to turn into a fact. If he can’t, it remains a theory.
That you don’t understand the meaning of scientific theory does not make you any more correct.
We aren’t talking about scientific theory, though, are we? AGW is a religion. The science has been thoroughly corrupted.
Even so, if someone posits a theory having carried out an experiment and documented it so that others may replicate the experiment, it is not up to anyone to prove otherwise. They may if they wish, but they don’t have to – as Frank has accurately pointed out, it is a theory. No one has to disprove a theory to remain sceptical.
In this case, it is not up to sceptics to prove AGW is false, it is up to those making the claim to prove it is true – and I return to the religious aspect here; climate is such a chaotic system and the science is so new, such proof is highly unlikely. AGW alarmists are relying on faith. And when people say such things as “the science is settled” or use the term “scientific consensus” I am reminded of Einstein who inconveniently blew a hole in the settled consensus of the Newtonian theory of the universe.
You ought to explain what ‘The science has been thoroughly corrupted.’ means.
There does seem to be a consensus within the scientific community that there is a type of ‘man-made global warming’ that is affecting the climate. Or do you doubt that?
Whatever, those that believe that there is no ‘man-made global warming’ (and I use that as a shorthand for the science involved, not as a title for a journal paper) to propose another model to explain the current world climate. That may well turn out to be an Einstein moment, although I think that there was a reason he was studying relativity (and he was not the only one doing it) – the models they had were not complete. When his papers were published his theory was pretty quickly adopted. Now there is a general consensus that he is broadly correct (his theory breaks down at the extreme ends of our current knowledge and science is working on what is happening there)…..
But if you want to prove him (and the general scientific community) wrong it is not up to them to prove they are right to you is it?
The point is, I have no desire to prove anyone wrong or right. I don’t have to.
Cherry picked data, the hockey stick graph for example. What came out of the University of Anglia emails showed deep corruption that can only lead to mistrust of the people peddling the theory – even if they are right, they are rightly mistrusted because of their behaviour. There’s plenty more, but this isn’t the place for that. And I don’t have the time or energy.
Yes, I do. See above. And, no, I don’t accept “peer reviewed” as some sort of trump card. Peers can be wrong, too.
Climate changes. It always has and always will. It takes a massive amount of hubris to presume to set it in aspic. Not that scientists are saying this, of course.
If they insist that I accept their theories as fact, yes, absolutely it is. Otherwise, it’s just a theory and people may accept it or not. The AGW alarmists are doing exactly that – insisting that we accept their theories as fact. That very much places the onus on them, not the sceptics.
“The point is, I have no desire to prove anyone wrong or right. I don’t have to”
The point is you do if you want to be taken seriously. It is literally ‘the place of the sceptic to prove you are wrong’ rather than the other way round.
“Climate changes. It always has and always will. It takes a massive amount of hubris to presume to set it in aspic. Not that scientists are saying this, of course.”
I have no idea where you get your quite sweeping generalisation of what ‘scientists are saying’. I can guess that it is not from scientific journals though. Ditto your linguistic explanation of the definition of climate change. Your opinion is an irrelevance, you are looking for a strawman and found it.
“If they insist that I accept their theories as fact, yes, absolutely it is.”
Again, you show a woeful ignorance of how science is done. As far as I know there is no such criteria for any particular strand of science. They develop theories, test them, others look at the theories and search for flaws in the data that can be used to develop the theory. Picking on details in past work and using that as empirical evidence that a whole theory is ‘wrong’ is just asinine.
You do not have to believe a single word of it, just as creationists do not have to believe anything from Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. This does not make mentally ill religious loonies any more correct in their assumptions though.
I was going to respond to this – given that I am far from woefully ignorant and there was no strawman, however, given your resort to the creationist mentally ill ad-hom, there’s no point discussing it further.
Not so. The default position for both sides should be the null hypothesis. So it is up to the proponents of any theory to disprove the null hypothesis before promoting their favoured theory as sound. The fact that they often don’t bother is a feature of human nature, not a route to good science.
I don’t know what that comment means. ‘Scientific’ or not a theory is a theory until it becomes a ‘Law’. It is not beholden on anybody other than the theoretician to make it so. A theory may become accepted but it is not yet a Law and remains a theory.
There is a difference between the meaning of the word theory as used in every day language and the word theory as used in the scientific sense. A scientific theory is the current best available explanation for something and, in order to qualify as a theory, it has to fit with the vast majority of the available evidence. On the way to becoming a theory the explanation normally passes through a stage when it is described as a hypothesis. I would suggest that AGW is, at best, a hypothesis. Having said that, AGW is an attempt to explain steadily rising global temperatures which in 1998 appeared to be accelerating. Since then the increase in temperatures has levelled off and so the temperature can now be seen to be rising no more quickly than it did in pre-industrial times. Meantime the alarmists, baffled by the levelling off, are now searching for the missing heat. Could it be that the hypothesis is wrong and there is no missing heat? That would seem to be the most prosaic explanation.
With regard to scientific theories generally, it is normal to accept a well founded theory provisionally until a better explanation comes along. The longer a theory stands without being overthrown, the less likely it becomes that it will be. There does, however, always remain that possibility.
There’s also the implications of said ‘theory’. Whether or not the Dinosaur extinction theory holds up or not, has limited impact on our lives today. Therefore the bar for acceptance of the theory and it’s supporting evidence is set fairly low. Personally, it appears quite plausible to me that it’s true. However if the theory is wrong I lose nothing.
With AGW/Global Warming/Climate Change, the theory is used as a reason to modify taxation systems, introduce laws and generally introduce measures negative to those of us alive now on the pretense that it will somehow safeguard the future. In this regard I would contend that the criteria for acceptance of the theory should be very much higher to overcome skepticism. A bit of ‘real’ evidence might help!