Meteorologist Likens Fear of Global Warming to 'Religious Belief'

CNSNEWS.com ^ | 12/02/04 | Marc Morano

[geopyg]

Taking his comments and replacing Global Warming with Evolution sounds like this:


"Do you believe in EVOLUTION? That is a religious question. So is the second part: Are you a skeptic or a believer?" said Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, in a speech to about 100 people at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

"Essentially if whatever you are told is alleged to be supported by 'all scientists,' you don't have to understand [the issue] anymore. You simply go back to treating it as a matter of religious belief," Lindzen said. His speech was titled, "EVOLUTIONARY Alarmism: The Misuse of 'Science'" and was sponsored by the free market George C. Marshall Institute. Lindzen is a professor at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Once a person becomes a believer of EVOLUTION, "you never have to defend this belief except to claim that you are supported by all scientists -- except for a handful of corrupted heretics," Lindzen added.

According to Lindzen, EVOLUTIONISTS have been trying to push the idea that there is scientific consensus on EVOLUTIONARY change.

"With respect to science, the assumption behind the [EVOLUTION] consensus is science is the source of authority and that authority increases with the number of scientists [who agree.] But science is not primarily a source of authority. It is a particularly effective approach of inquiry and analysis. Skepticism is essential to science -- consensus is foreign," Lindzen said.


---The last sentence is what I have thought is the big deal on any science issue: Skepticism! (I always love science articles that say "New find causes scientists to rethink...."

[SuziQ]

Once a person becomes a believer of global warming, "you never have to defend this belief except to claim that you are supported by all scientists -- except for a handful of corrupted heretics," Lindzen added.

So true!

[Publius6961]

BUMP!

[Iowegian]

Taking his comments and replacing Global Warming with Evolution sounds like this:

It works very well IMO. Thanks.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.
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[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!

[The_Reader_David]

No, actually, I'm making a point about chaotic dynamics. The models which purport to show anthropogenic global warming are based on too short a time span of data, and are lousy at retrodicting (in which direction they can be tested on the basis of the kind of weak data like tree rings, ice cores, and historical reports) and thus can have no claim for being good at predicting.

I'm always grimly amused at how some wonderfully stable computer models (e.g. the ones the Club of Rome used in Limit to Growth) can be dead wrong despite being based on sound observations. But, they are still scientific theories in Popper's sense. (They just happen to have been falsified, and therefore shown to be wrong scientific theories.)

f.o.g. seems to not like my sociological point about scientific theories (whether good or bad) also becoming religious dogmas for secularists, but wants to deflect it by claiming the bad theories of the anthopogenic global warming crowd aren't scientific theories.

[cogitator]

I'm not sure that you fully comprehended my point. To put it succinctly: GIGO. I.e., you're seeking accurate retrodiction to validate the predictive capability of a climate model, right? To get accurate retrodiction requires accurate historical data. The further you go back in time, the less accurate the historical data becomes. So there's a limit to how accurate your retrodictions can be.

Better is using the models to accurately model recent events, because that data is pretty good. The "Pinatubo test" has been a benchmark -- models had better get the cooling right if they're to be expected to get the warming right, too.

Though it's old, this is still a good article to read: Forcings and Chaos in Global Climate Change

Here are a couple of others:

Greenhouse Gas Influence on Northern Hemisphere Winter Climate Trends

The Sun vs. the Volcano: Drivers of Regional Climate Change (I think you'll appreciate this one)

[AncientAirs]

Sorry! Here's the online source:

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0411/opinion/derr.htm

[hosepipe]

[ Meteorologist Likens Fear of Global Warming to 'Religious Belief' ]

Exactly.. as is evolution theory.. and creationist theory.. all faith based..

[CedarDave]

Thank you for the online source. This entire thread has now been bookmarked by me for future reference.

[lasereye]

If you have some every few days, you should have hundreds of verifiable fossils that disprove evolution

That's about as ignorant a statement as I can imagine. It's not possible to have a fossil that "disproves" evolution, even if it didn't happen. Any more than it's possible to "disprove" global warming. So you better agree with global warming, since all the scientists agree on it - until it's "disproven".