On 10/31/2016 4:10 PM, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
pamela wrote:
On 08:29 31 Oct 2016, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

In short, science is a *model* that can never be proved to be
*true*, it is inductive logic, and depends for its validity on
*never being proved false*. The second string to the
Anti-Science Lefty****'s bow, is the 'precautionary principle'
which says that since we can't *guarantee* things will be OK, we
should not do things at all!


Turnip, there must be a cod-philosophy group where you can debate
such abstract and irrelevant ideas. Why don't you post that pap
there?

Soon you'll invoke Godel's Incompleteness Theorem to show climate
change can't be proven from climate change data alone. Sigh.

Wonder if he's a Jehovah's Witness? In that they seem to believe the ****e
they speak too? With the same passion?


TNP's politics and somewhat vulgar style are distracting you both from
the fact that his description of the scientific method is perfectly
correct, that we test theories by trying to find counter-examples. We
only need to find a single perpetual motion machine to show that our
current thinking on energy is wrong. Of course, no-one has managed it so
far.

The current fuss about the government cap on liability for disposal
costs rests on, essentially, the precautionary principle type of
argument. "You can't prove that costs will not end up higher". Which is
true. And in the extreme case, without a cap, they might put a
commercial operation into bankruptcy. At which point, who is left to
pick up the bill?

The "alternative" movement says "solar panels and storage are getting
cheaper and more efficient, and we can conserve energy with LEDs and
insulation so we don't need conventional power stations". Well, they
might be right, one day. You can only counter this by the David Mackay
method of doing the sums. But the sums are hard and most people don't
understand them, and then the critics just shift the argument to a new area.