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The Myth of ‘Settled Science’
National Review ^ | 2/21/14 | Charles Krauthammer

Posted on 02/21/2014 2:41:35 PM PST by SoFloFreeper

I repeat: I’m not a global-warming believer. I’m not a global-warming denier. I’ve long believed that it cannot be good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I also believe that those scientists who pretend to know exactly what this will cause in 20, 30, or 50 years are white-coated propagandists.

“The debate is settled,” asserted propagandist-in-chief Barack Obama in his latest State of the Union address. “Climate change is a fact.” Really? There is nothing more anti-scientific than the very idea that science is settled, static, impervious to challenge. Take a non-climate example. It was long assumed that mammograms help reduce breast cancer deaths. This fact was so settled that Obamacare requires every insurance plan to offer mammograms (for free, no less).

Now we learn from a massive randomized study — 90,000 women followed for 25 years — that mammograms may have no effect on breast-cancer deaths. Indeed, one out of five of those diagnosed by mammogram receives unnecessary radiation, chemo, or surgery.

So much for settledness. And climate is less well understood than breast cancer. If climate science is settled, why do its predictions keep changing? And how is it that the great physicist Freeman Dyson, who did some climate research in the late 1970s, thinks today’s climate-change Cassandras are hopelessly mistaken?

(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: algore; climatechange; environment; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; krauthammer; liars
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Kraut isn't always right, but I think he is pretty close here....trouble is, will the Republican party listen?
1 posted on 02/21/2014 2:41:36 PM PST by SoFloFreeper
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To: SoFloFreeper

Kraut speaks like a former Mondale Staffer.


2 posted on 02/21/2014 2:46:30 PM PST by Paladin2
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To: SoFloFreeper

3 posted on 02/21/2014 2:46:55 PM PST by DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis
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To: SoFloFreeper

The last rule of the scientific method is to go back and recheck/reevaluate everything, it is never finished. Science is not consensus of some people.


4 posted on 02/21/2014 2:48:12 PM PST by mountainlion
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To: SoFloFreeper

Some would prefer another ice age.


5 posted on 02/21/2014 2:51:57 PM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink)
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To: SoFloFreeper

He is right except for his concession that something must be wrong with CO2. It’s plant food. The tons mankind releases into the atmosphere is still miniscule compared to naturally released sources and the total amount in the atmosphere. CO2 has been far higher in the past and had no adverse effect on plants, animals or the climate. It is ignorance of a high order to consider it a pollutant.


6 posted on 02/21/2014 2:54:02 PM PST by TigersEye (Stupid is a Progressive disease.)
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To: SoFloFreeper
"spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere"

From UCSB ScienceLine:

During their lifetimes, plants generally give off about half of the carbon dioxide (CO2), that they absorb, although this varies a great deal between different kinds of plants. Once they die, almost all of the carbon that they stored up in their bodies is released again into the atmosphere.

7 posted on 02/21/2014 2:57:03 PM PST by Dalberg-Acton
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To: TigersEye

>> He is right except for his concession that something must be wrong with CO2.

Yeah, dead on.

If he’d have said he long believed there was something wrong with spewing more and more soot (particulate) without doing anything about it, I’d agree. But the relatively small amount of extra CO2 is at worst benign, and maybe even beneficial.


8 posted on 02/21/2014 2:59:01 PM PST by Nervous Tick (Without GOD, men get what they deserve.)
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To: SoFloFreeper

The only way to change the weather is to redistribute wealth.


9 posted on 02/21/2014 2:59:59 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer (The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.)
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To: mountainlion

If fact were to be established by the consensus of the persons responding to a poll, the moon would very likely probably still be assumed to be composed of newly-made cheese. However, a little reality intruded, and the moon is, in fact, made up of various kinds of mostly silicate rocks, not a speck of cheese to be found on the entire satellite.

“Settled science” is an oxymoron, because, by its very nature, the answer is never final, but always subject to the discovery of new fact. This discovery, which may fundamentally alter the original hypothesis, requires the definition of a new hypothesis, and subsequent testing of that hypothesis.


10 posted on 02/21/2014 3:09:15 PM PST by alloysteel (Obamacare - Death and Taxes now available online. One-stop shopping at its best!)
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To: SoFloFreeper

“I’ve long believed that it cannot be good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

The atmosphere has a mass of about 6,000,000,000,000,000 tons (6 million gigatons (GT)). Of this, 0.039% is carbon dioxide from all sources.

The atmosphere contains 720 GT of CO2. The oceans contain 37,400 GT of suspended carbon, land biomass has 2000-3000 GT.

And humans contribute only 6 GT. The oceans, land and atmosphere exchange CO2 continuously so the additional load by humans is incredibly small.

This becomes very obvious when you look at the land-ocean-atmospheric carbon cycle.

To even suggest that mankind is influencing this is like saying that a bacteria is forcing a flea to force an elephant to go in a particular direction.


11 posted on 02/21/2014 3:12:50 PM PST by yefragetuwrabrumuy (WoT News: Rantburg.com)
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To: mountainlion
I think I have an open mind, but you are right, when has science ever been settled? New facts are always coming to light which contradict scientific dogma. What gets me is that 'man-made global warming' has such a weak foundation. It is based on a computer model that has proven to have a very low degree of predictive accuracy. So low, in fact, that the keepers of the model had to 1) fudge the data and 2) loose the raw data that would allow others to check the results. If this be settled science, then count me out.
12 posted on 02/21/2014 3:13:40 PM PST by fhayek
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To: SoFloFreeper

‘Settled Science’ is a term used by the lazy the uninformed science challenged or functional idiots..
It is a political designation for propaganda purposes.. or a fund raising gambit..


13 posted on 02/21/2014 3:14:00 PM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
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To: SoFloFreeper
There is no such thing as settled science. The computers generate predictions from theories. The report of every result from a computer simulation should begin with Theoretically, if we assume ....
14 posted on 02/21/2014 3:16:09 PM PST by Marylander
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To: mountainlion

Except for EXXXXXXXX- not going there today :)


15 posted on 02/21/2014 3:17:47 PM PST by 11th Commandment (http://www.thirty-thousand.org/)
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy; Nervous Tick

As carbon-based life forms it’s a little self-hating to wage a jihad on carbon isn’t it? lol


16 posted on 02/21/2014 3:22:59 PM PST by TigersEye (Stupid is a Progressive disease.)
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To: SoFloFreeper
I've long believed that it cannot be good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

No, but the plants love it.

And they reward us by spewing tons of oxygen into the atmosphere.

17 posted on 02/21/2014 3:23:29 PM PST by P-Marlowe (There can be no Victory without a fight and no battle without wounds)
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To: Paladin2
Kraut speaks like a former Mondale Staffer.

So, are you saying, "once a lib, always a lib?"

18 posted on 02/21/2014 3:25:20 PM PST by EveningStar
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Ha ha ha ha .... Whoops where’s my wallet?


19 posted on 02/21/2014 3:34:18 PM PST by shineon (.)
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To: 11th Commandment

Bookmark


20 posted on 02/21/2014 3:40:50 PM PST by publius911 ( At least Nixon had the good g race to resign!)
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