oyuki

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Another Victim of Settled Science

It is sad to report that the cult of man-made climate change has claimed another victim. Dr. Ivar Giaever, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973, has tendered his resignation to the American Physical Society because they have adopted the position that the evidence of man caused temperature rise is 'incontrovertible.'

One hundred years ago in the field of astronomy the belief was all the violence evidenced on Earth's own Moon was long in the past. That something like the Music of the Spheres prevailed. Then our probes to other planets showed the violence was not limited to the past. And the final proof that violence still existed in the solar system was when the fragments of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy smashed into Jupiter and we observed it almost in real time with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Percival Lowell captivated many people with his observations of Mars. The fascination was with the canali or canals he saw in his telescope that prompted speculation of life being on Mars. And spawned many a science fiction story. Then our probes like Mariner and Viking showed how dead Mars is. Mars might have had life but it was millions of years in the past.

Forty years ago the concept of a meteor smashing into the Earth and wiping out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was thought a far fetched idea and was scoffed at in scientific circles. Then Dr. Richard Alvarez [ whoops should be Dr. Luis Alvarez] went and found worldwide a rare earth element Iridium at the boundary marking the extinction of dinosaurs. And then the actual impact crater was discovered at the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. Now the argument is how much of an impact did that meteor have? Was it an outright kill or was just the final push of the dinosaurs to extinction.

We all grew up on the idea that all dinosaurs were cold-blooded reptiles. And all the cheesy movies with dinosaurs reinforced this notion. Due to the work of scientists like Dr. Robert Bakker that view has been tossed out. There is evidence now to suggest at least some dinosaurs were warm-blooded.

These are just four examples of 'incontrovertible settled science' being overturned by new discoveries and data. So for such an august scientific body as the American Physical Society to say man-made climate warming is incontrovertible is to fly in the face of traditional scientific inquiry and the quest for the truth. Those who say the science is settled are in fact anathema to the scientific method. For various reasons they have closed their minds to any other possible answer. They are akin to the Holy See and its treatment of Galileo and Copernicus by these actions. How else to explain their brutal attempts to ostracize anyone who disagrees with them? In fact when they call such skeptics 'deniers' they are venturing into an even more troublesome arena, that of the KGB calling dissenters mentally unstable and using medication to 'adjust' them. What a brave new world we are in.

4 comments:

Sharku said...

At one time in Earth's history it was completely covered in ice, I am not talking about Ice age but Iced Eon. It remained iced over for several million years. Since that time life has developed and been near annihilated a few times. For the last several millions of years the "natural state" of the earth has been Ice Ages separated by these brief cycles of warming. So enjoy the "global warming"...... it will end in due time.

nzgarry said...

Well written Anna.
Some famous Scientist commented that a Scientific Theory can never be proven right, but can only stand up by constant testing to refute it.
People who want the question settled are not motivated by the pursuit of objective truth in the scientific sense.

nzgarry said...

PS Also..
They piss me off.

Anna said...

I know Sharku. That is something the likes of Al Gore and the folks who gave us the IPCC do not want known. Our environment is variable and there is a reason the zone the earth orbits in is called the Goldilocks zone. Its a miracle.

NZGarry. Exactly. Scientific truth is not what the leaders want. They peddle to good hearted people that if we try hard enough we can control the weather so trust us to make it. The leaders want another type of control, control to dictate how people live their lives.

and I just realised I named the wrong Alvarez in blog post. Dr. Luis Alvarez was the one who proposed the meteor cataclysm. Duh.