Posted on 02/16/2005 12:12:54 PM PST by 1Old Pro
Edited on 02/16/2005 2:03:25 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Hannity ping. Avacor, Chamonix, LiveLob and all the rest of your favorites.
I am an earth scientist who has not only studied the global warming question myself, but I met the woman I married while we were in grad school and she was doing atmospheric modeling for her degree in the meteorology department. Good enough?
I was very vocal against those who were not using sufficient caution in their leaps onto the Global Warming bandwagon, and it cost me research funding and departmental support. My wife was quieter, but she was not happy with the distortions that were out there.
However, even she--a registered Libertarian!--and I--die-hard conservative--admit that there's good evidence for climate change (I didn't say "Global Warming," per se) occuring. The questions I pose, though, are:
1) Is it anthropogenic? The history of the earth has generally been warmer than now, so is the current warming trend just "getting back to normal" and nothing to do with humans?
2) Does it matter? Even if we haven't caused it, we have to live with it, so does the origin matter, except for #3....
3) Could we even do something about it if we tried? Certainly, the question of "blame" is important if we want to know if we can "fix" things if they get too bad.
4) What is the best approach? Anti-capitalism isn't the only possible approach to consider. Perhaps our best hope is to keep ourselves prosperous enough to develop remedies via a vibrant capitalist economy.
and
Protect the Bill of Rights>Back in my day the first lesson learned in geometry was:
It is impossiible to prove a negative.
It was pounded into us over & over again
[...]Dumbing down America has done wonders for the media as it helps them lead the masses.
No offense, but it sounds like the dumbing down started before you two reached 10th grade or Logic 101. ;-)
While I'm being a wisecracker, should I point out that "You can't prove a negative" is inherently an unsupportable statement...since it's a negative itself!
The fact is, many negatives are easily prove via contradiction or other means. For example, we can prove that there are no rational numbers equal to the square root of 2.
Couldn't the geometry teacher figure out how to prove that a circle was not a square?
What Logic 101 instructor wouldn't know
If A, then B.
Not B.
Therefore, not A.
But most importantly, it would be an extremely unwise policy to require "proof" before action. Funny, many people who didn't require proof of WMD in Iraq now ask for it regarding climate change. "Proving" that private retirement savings wouldn't do worse than Social Security returns shouldn't be a requirement before supporting them. Anyone who leaves his house has made conclusions without proof.
One thing I heartily agree with, though, is the handle of "Protect the Bill of Rights". :-)
It sure is taking ARoD a long time to come up with that proof. Maybe s/he is polling all scientists individually.
Hannity was right, I was wrong and you're proving it. Nice one.
The point is that proving human activity is not responsible for global warming is a in-practice impossible task, as you could not in one lifetime analyze every human action and derive its ultimate effects on the global temperature.
Thus, someone saying global warming is caused by human activity challenging someone else to prove it is not so is asking the impossible. What can be proven is that the information we have to date is not sufficient to prove that global warming is caused by human activity to any degree. And given the total absence of evidence that logically leads to such a conclusion, the positive statement of the insufficiency of global warming theories is proven with the evidence I provided above.
Now that I think about it a little more, it's even more absurd than I thought. "B" in this case is completely undefined. Therefore, "Not B" is a completely meaningless expression.
There IS an exception where you can prove a negative - and that is where the positive is internally contradictory. But we are not arguing over Invisible Pink Unicorns here.
Carville is never bland. You gotta give him credit for that.
Hannity, OTOH...snnnnnnnooooooooooorrrrre.
I like Sean and appreciate what he does but he was wayyyy out line. The fact that he's started a news forum board has to make you a bit suspicious.
I would like to see him argue with a more historical conservative foundation. Like to see him sit down and study the Constitution, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, Von Hayek, Burke, Machiavelli (see where the libs are coming from) and much more. I'd like to see more depth in his arguments.
I used to listen to him, but got bored after a while. Too much yelling and repeating the same old things.
I'm sure he's a nice guy and I appreciate his work in helping to get Bush elected.
I don't appreciate him slamming Free Republic and think he owes Freepers an apology. I doubt he will though and that's sad because I don't have any respect for him anymore.
I think he bashed Free Republic, and will continue to do so to get Freepers to sign up for his message board. You have to sign up just to read it (unlike Free Republic). I'm sure he'd like to advertise his message board as having the largest membership of any radio host.
"I'd like to see more depth in his arguments."
I would too....but FAT CHANCE, LOL!!!!
I will admit, I did feel bad for Sean today. It's obvious he has thick skin when insult comes from the left, but when we criticize he really takes it to heart.
Just trying to help.
TT
Anyone have transcript or recording from before the clip posted? What was the topic he was referring to?
You claim: ...proving human activity is not responsible for global warming is a in-practice impossible task, as you could not in one lifetime analyze every human action and derive its ultimate effects on the global temperature.
That ignores other ways that a negative can be disproven...again, via contradiction. Brute force isn't necessary. For example, if we were able to prove (absurdly and hypothetically) that all inputs to a global climate system are dampened out unless they are repeated within 1%, exactly at a frequency greater than a human lifespan, etc., then wouldn't that be proof that humans weren't forcing the system? And we did it without interrogating a single human. We can prove that Tyrannosaurus Rex did not watch TV, even without finding the electric bills of every dinosaur...by proving that the conditions for a "positive" result cannot be met.
...insufficiency of global warming theories...
Insufficiency of theories and status of provability say nothing of the truth, though....they are only measures of validity of an argument. Still, beyond it all, we make decisions with far lower standards than "proof".
...we are not arguing over Invisible Pink Unicorns here.
bbhhh :-)
I like your post for the most part. They're usually insightful and entertaining but that one to me wasn't.
I don't understand why we do this to each other. Sometimes we should just agree to disagree and leave name calling to the ilks at DU and the DNC.
I guess I better remove the fringe off my pajamas, didn't know he could see that well!!
Well, it look like your right about extra thin Sean skin is when the right criticize him.
However, 99% of the comments are to help improve his abilities to debate and improve his show.
Adapted from the Report of the Philodemic Debate Society, Georgetown University, 1998
3100th post notch for muh belt!
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