Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Can't say I find this shocking.

Here's an interesting study that Glen Reynolds found.

From the abstract:

A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones. More importantly, greater scientific literacy and numeracy were associated with greater cultural polarization: Respondents predisposed by their values to dismiss climate change evidence became more dismissive, and those predisposed by their values to credit such evidence more concerned, as science literacy and numeracy increased.

So not only does more scientific knowledge correlates with being more skeptical of the Global Warming line, but in general more scientific knowledge correlates with increased polarization.

Though skeptics is warranted. Especially with the latest explanation for the lack of warming in the last decade... Chinese coal plants!

That's right, now coal can cool the earth, if it's go enough sulphur. Well, why am I reminded of the same eggheads that vacillated between eggs being good for you and being bad for you.

And it's not like billions and billions were spent and economies were restructured based on something that we don't have a basic understanding of the mechanisms... wait.

All the same global warming remains a threat to mankind. “Long term warming will continue unless emissions are reduced,” said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at Britain’s Met Office. Surely not the sulphur emissions. We need more of those. The addition of the sulphur term to the AGW model recalls the problems associated with maintaining a geocentric view of astronomy.

...

The model worked reasonably well. “In notes bound with his copy of the Alfonsine Tables, Copernicus commented that ‘Mars surpasses the numbers by more than two degrees. Saturn is surpassed by the numbers by one and a half degrees.’ … Copernicus and his contemporaries were therefore using Ptolemy’s methods and finding them trustworthy well over a thousand years after Ptolemy’s original work was published.”


It was not until later that the alternative heliocentric method was shown to produce better results on simpler assumptions than the Ptolemaic that it was replaced. Much of the resistance to changing the Ptolemaic model arose from social, rather than scientific reasons. Institutions were invested in the geocentric model. Schools, governments and the Church hierarchy, not to mentioned venerated authorities such as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, had all believed the geocentric model to be true. Challenging that view meant the new theory would mean they were wrong; heliocentrism assumed the aspect of rebellion and could not simply be just another astronomical theory.

The huge social investment in AGW by the UN, activists groups and national bureaucrats, not to mention the vast sums of money predicated on “Green Energy” has created a similar effect. To suggest that AGW is in fact false, which would ordinarily be an ordinary part of the scientific method of inquiry, has been transformed into an act of blasphemy. Those who reject AGW are in fact called “climate deniers” whereas re-examining theories is supposed to be the staple of experimental science.  Yet despite its sacred status, AGW has so far proved far less impressive than the Ptolemaic system. If the AGW model could predict temperatures at anywhere near the accuracy of Ptolemy’s methods it would be hailed as scientific bedrock.

But as the NAS study showed, it cannot. It is principally good at getting things dead wrong.  Now the AGW proponents have no alternative but to salvage their system by adding more terms to the model. Not in order to improve its predictions, but to explain why the results were 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Yet the question must be asked: is the premise wrong to start with? Billions of dollars have been invested in the service of a theory which is looking less and less like “established science” and more and more like Wrong Way Corrigan.



Yeah... AGW can't predict beans, but don't you dare question it, because it's SCIENCE!

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