"anorton" wrote in message
...


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...


"T.Alan Kraus" wrote in message
...

On 10/24/2011 6:38 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
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On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 02:14:31 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:
--snip--
Yet Pythagoras knew the earth was a sphere and Erathostenes had actually
measured its circumference quite accurately using basic geometry. In
every period there is a prevalent scientific belief opposed by a very
small number. It usually turns out that the very small number of
opposing opinion eventually becomes the prevalent paradigm.

Kinda like us, the Global Warming Skeptics, huh?

Not really. Your group is more like the "very small number of opposing
opinion" who believes in the flat earth, supported on the back of the
World Turtle, and that it's turtles, all the way down. d8-)


You should follow the money and find out the reasons for the human
global warming carbon thingy... Read Watermelons by James Delingpole, it
lays it out for all to see. I know how hard it is to read something
that seems to expound an opposite view than the one you hold, but you
owe it to your intelligence and open mind.
cheers
T.Alan

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[reply]

I welcome reading things that oppose my views, if the reading is any good.
In fact, that's how I got into this with Larry in the first place. He held
me down and forced me to read Michael Crichton's _State of Fear_. g It
was fun to read, but the science was full of holes big enough to drive a
truck through. Of course, Crichton frequently pointed out that it was a
work of fiction...

This one is not going to oppose my views on the the human influence on
climate change, because I don't have any. I consider the idea that anyone
without a very strong background in this particular subject actually
*holds* a view to be preposterous. All we can do is decide which experts
we like -- which can retrogress into a question of which politics we
like.

So I'll look into _Watermelons_ on your recommendation. From what I can
see in the reviews, it looks like a politically twisted polemic, but I
don't think about those things while I'm reading. d8-)

I might point out that, regarding the political and financial interests, I
looked into the backgrounds of some of the key deniers three or four years
ago and learned that they were financed and supported overwhelmingly by
the coal industry. I'm curious about Delingpole's background. If it was
he, and not a reviewer, who claimed that the "global cooling" hysteria was
a product of the green movement, I could correct that. It came from a
right-wing, self-promoting author-for-hire around 1970, who took some
speculative and preliminary research from Princeton and distorted into a
minor goldmine.

Thanks for the lead. If nothing else, I like to read what the deniers find
convincing. And I do read with an open mind, ignoring backstories and
suspending disbelief until I'm done.

--
Ed Huntress

Regarding your second point, Physics Today recently pointed out the parallel
to the global warming debate today and the debate surrounding general
relativity theory even after it had been proven experimentally in 1919. As
Einstein himself described it:

"This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every
waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this
matter depends on political party affiliation."

In other words if relativity were correct, it would undermine the ideology
of the antisemitic political parties. It did not matter what the best
scientists with direct expertise in the field said. Just like today when
it does not seem to matter that nearly all scientific societies in the world
have endorsed the conclusion that human activities are causing global
warming and NONE have endorsed a dissenting view. Even the American
Association of Petroleum Geologists which (surprise, surprise) held a
dissenting view until 2007, changed their position to one that is
non-commital.

================================================== ===============
[reply]

Ha! Imagine what Einstein would think of the anti-science political wing we
have today. g

There's an interesting story about former skeptic Richard Muller in the
Washington Post today. Apparently Muller's report last week in the Wall
Street Journal, in which he reversed himself and said that extensive
checking shows that the IPCC got the warming data exactly right, has some of
the hard core sputtering in their soup:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...fDM_story.html

It's an amazing commentary on how the politicos have abused and distorted
science.

--
Ed Huntress