Thursday, August 14, 2014

Global warming paradigm

Article: Three Facts Most Man-made Global Warming Sceptics Don’t Seem to Understand

This is actually a skeptic addressing perceived problems that other skeptics may have.

I am not going to quote a lot of this, despite how good it is. Or maybe because of how good it is. It really should be read in full.

I am going to quote and comment on the material about paradigms.
The history of science suggests that paradigms are never disproven, they are only ever replaced. Physicist and philosopher, the late Thomas S. Kuhn, also explained that competition within segments of the scientific community is the only historical process that ever actually results in the rejection of one previously accepted theory or in the adoption of another.
Right now, there is little competition. People who are part of the global warming community run the grant-giving apparatus and the peer-review apparatus. It is hard to find the money to do "independent" research, let alone that buck the dominant paradigm.

An honorarium of a couple thousand dollars permanently disqualifies a skeptic; billions in money promoting global warming orthodoxy is business as usual.

 Reason #2.
Rebuttals don’t overthrow established paradigms.

Anthropogenic global warming is a fully functional, well-funded scientific paradigm that is having a major impact on social and economic policy in every western democracy.

As I explained in session 13 at the conference: Scientific disciplines are always underpinned by theories that collectively define the dominant paradigm. In the case of modern climate science that paradigm is AGW. It defines the research questions asked, and dictates the methodology employed by the majority of climate scientists most of the time. AGW may be a paradigm with little practical utility and tremendous political value, but it’s a paradigm none-the-less. The world’s most powerful and influential leaders also endorse AGW.
The AGW (anthropogenic global warming) paradigm is a similar to the heliocentric paradigm of Ptolemy at the time of Copernicus and Galileo. It is very entrenched. It does explain some phenomenon, and has some predictive value. Large numbers of scientists subscribe to it. Their jobs, or grants, depend on subscribing to it. It is part of the political orthodoxy. It does not really reflect reality.

The author goes on to note that research shows that rebuttals to research that supports the dominant paradigm are simply ignored.
Indeed it is the naive view that scientific communities learn from obvious mistakes. And as past failures become more entrenched it can only become increasingly difficult to distinguish truth from propaganda, including in the peer-reviewed literature.
"Peer-review" becomes an avenue for enforcing the dominant paradigm. Part of the "Climate-gate" scandal was the revelation that scientists were bullying editors into not publishing research counter to the global warming paradigm.

[Note: If "anthropogenic global warming caused climate change" is so true, why is this kind of behavior necessary?]

The third point is going to take decades to accomplish.

As I said above, read the whole thing.

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