[...] I wanted to bring to light that there is a motivation of scientists as to what they study and the publishing of results. There is competition amongst the scientific community to get published. We don't see all of the research because if it is not popular, it doesn't get published or the findings are thrown away.
Let me put it this way. Science isn't a fairytale where the noble white suited scientist is only out to save the world and only exists for the benefit of mankind. Some will research new medicine that will help people to get rid of a desease. Others will research a new chemical weapon to eredicate men. Like in everything on Earth there is competition. Universities will push scientists to get results fast, since it will attract more research funds, and some scientists might (unconsciously or not) interpret the data in a way it benefits a hypothesis or not. It's not different from companies trying to get a cell phone out before the competition, etc. So far you are correct there's competition to get published.
It's completely irrelevant if something is popular or not. Science is, for whatever reason, driven by knowledge and the understanding of what happens around us. But research needs to be paid for, if not you're out of business. And here's the difference of what you are saying. Unpopular findings are not thrown away because that's throwing away research funds. Secondly, before it can be published, other scientists will do peer-review to make sure the research has been done correct. Scientific papers must pass the scrutiny of critical, expert colleagues, and they must be supported by sufficient evidence to convince others who know the subject well. If a scientist turns out to not do proper research and or he's findings are incorrect or corrupted, he's career is basically over. Scientist will indeed try to get a name for themselves, but if it's a bad name... If a research centre turns out to publish corrupt scientific findings, there research funds dry up and they're out of business or they can not be trusted anymore, meaning everything will be checked thoroughly. Even in the few cases these falsified scientific papers do get published, they will be filtered out eventually because if you have corrupted data it will only lead to corrupted data. Published data will be used for other scientists to discuss about, scientists will try to replicate it, and so on.
A fact can be reproduced every time under the same conditions. That answers all 3 questions.
[...] Even if 100% of the scientists are in agreement, but there isn't refutable evidence, then is it really a fact? I've had Ph D.'s in Physics and Biology explain to me the scientific definition of a fact and it still sounds like what a theory would be in Economics. [...]
I have a feeling of misunderstanding here. It's like debating religion where people will say "oh, but evolution is just a theory". The daily use of the word theory is something different than a scientific use of the word theory. In daily use of these words people see the word fact as something stronger, an undeniable truth, and a theory as something that is an interpretation, an opinion, an idea... In science it's the complete opposite. In science the word
fact is as good as a synonym of 'to observe' (I observe the temperature to be 20°C in here). The next step is a
hypothesis where someone will try to formulate an idea to explain observations. This must be testable otherwise you can not verify or refute it. It's followed by a 'law' that is based on the observation of a lot of facts and in some way it's still a hypothesis, but it's used to describes what happens without explaining it. Final step is a
theory. Basically it's the same as a hypothesis that has witstood all attempts to falsify it. It's more than a hypothesis or a law because it describes the observations and the mechanics behind it. A theory cannot be false.
Please bear with me, I'm just a simpleton on a porn board.
There were ice ages in earth's history right? So to come out of an ice age would mean a dramatic warming of the earth's surface temperature correct? And there were multiple ice ages right? So cooling and warming have been cyclical throughout earth's history correct? So in the last hundred or so years since official records have been kept how do we know that the current warming trend data (when it's not being fudged) is not part of a cycle that goes back billions of years? Given such a miniscule sample size in time how can anyone be certain that this trend is somehow abnormal and even more certain that it's human-caused?
You're not a simpleton, that's a fair question. The Earth has periodical warmed and cooled in the past leading to warm periods and ice ages. That's a natural cycle. These were a result related to Milankovitch cycles. A Milankovitch cycle is a periodical oscilation of the earth's tilt, the precession of the tilt, and stretching and squishing of the Earth's orbit. We know the present global warming is not because of a Milankovitch cycle, proven by radiation levels.
You can read about it here:
source
Or you can watch (somewhere starting from 4:35
Another thing that raises a red flag with me (being a simpleton, mind you) is the way those who express any skepticism are treated as heretics, as if they were offending someone's religious beliefs. Ace posted a graphic a while back and one of the points was that science welcomes criticism, it doesn't shout it down or attempt to suppress it. You have people in the global warming crowd (Robert Kennedy Jr.) who have called for deniers to be arrested. If human-caused climate change is a rock solid fact why isn't it just universally accepted the same as there are 24 hrs (give or take a few seconds) in a day? Or that water freezes at 32 f or boils at 212 f? Why aren't deniers immediately and outright discredited?
I'm going to give you an honest and personal answer although I probably will offend some people. I am not a scientist but I do LOVE science. From the moment I could read I basically was a nerd with my nose in a book reading about science, history, tech, nature, you name it. I remember being a 9-year old kid explaining how a nuclear reactor worked to my teacher in full detail and I can still remember her WTF-face. Whenever I didn't know something, I opened a book and tried to figure it out, or I asked. With the internet it's even easier now. The internet is more then a unlimited source of porn you know.
Skepticism is not the same as stupidity. i don't mind people having questions, being skeptic, having another opinion. I believe it was you who posted the thread "Greenpeace Co-Founder: "Why I am a climate skeptic.", right? Here's the part where I'm going to offend you, but it's nothing personal. That article was not skepticism, but stupidity. It took me 2 minutes to find out he was not co-founder of Greenpeace and he didn't have more then 40 years expertise of environmentalism. It took me 10 more minutes to check what he was talking about and to discover he was talking out of his ass.
Why didn't YOU do that? Are you skeptical, but not that skeptical towards information that is supposed to be skeptical?
And that's nothing personal but it's something I see a lot. People being skeptic, asking questions, saying stuff but they rarely took the time to actually read a fucking book, search the internet, or take the time to learn. Only reading a blog and shouting out "You see?!" is not skepticism, but stupidity and if I see that stupidity I will break it down. I
STILL have to see the first scientific article that refutes it. The best so called evidence skeptics have provided so far is always from some kind of blog with no credits or sources, with mistakes, or with a link to poluting industries as funders and so on. I mean, look at the discussion we're having here... Why is this 98% value important, why are people mean to deniers, how do you know the majority is right, I don't know the difference between a fact and an opinion, etc. Really?
If human-caused climate change is a rock solid fact why isn't it just universally accepted the same as there are 24 hrs (give or take a few seconds) in a day? Or that water freezes at 32 f or boils at 212 f? Why aren't deniers immediately and outright discredited?
Politics, power and money.
And this 98% to 2% thing. Assuming those numbers are true (and haven't been fudged) what does that actually prove? What percentage of scientists in Galileo's day believed the sun revolved around the earth? Or his predecessor Copernicus?
They actually said the same thing the first time scientists provided the idea about humans being responsable for climate change...
The number is important in the
discussion about climate change. There are still a lot of people believing that scientists are arguing among each other whether humans are responsible. The funny thing is that the word consensus is partly responsable for that since people think that scientist are trying to agree with eachother by making a consensus, while the consensus is actually based on the scientific evidence:
there is no more reason to discuss it!
The consensus is based on millions of scientific papers about climate change. From what I can remember from an article they analyzed the scientific papers in a database searching on phrases in the articles like those explicitly endoring human influence, those talking about natural causes, etc. About 98% of the articles showed that man is more than likely responsible. The other 2% are talking about the influence of natural causes, or new methods on how to measure or predict things, etc.
“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
“Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
“There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
"Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E = mc². Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.”
-Michael Crichton
In bold, the point I was making. But he said it better than I ever could.
That's not what (scientific) consensus means. See previous answer.
