leonine
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Joined: 11/3/2009
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Phydeaux
So often those on the global warming will insist - the science is settled because 3221 scientists say so.
It is completely irrelevant how many scientists find agreement. The only thing relevant is
does *any* scientist find a data point that contradicts the theory. Let me make my point by example.
Until the 1800s (call it) Newtonian physics was the law of the land. Thousands of scientists would had no idea of the theory of relativity - or many of the postcalulus mathematics.
They were wrong.
You are mistaken about the history and method of science.
The first, and crucial, general point is that no scientific theory, ever, anywhere, is perfect and complete without a single data point out of place. In fact, scientists in general are highly suspicious of any paper or report that claims 100% fit between the theory and the findings, because real science never works that way: reality isn't that tidy. What convinces scientists, to the point where a theory becomes the generally accepted concensus, is that the theory fits the observations *better* than the competing ones. Once that happens, only layfolk who don't understand this are impressed when some sceptic jumps up and down and shouts about a data point that doesn't fit; the scientists are still looking at the 99 other data points that do fit.
On the other hand, when there are too many misfitting data points, and a new theory accounts for all of them, people come around. Physicists didn't come around to relativity after 1900 just because it was new and sexy and Einstein had great hair. There had been visible flaws in classical physics for years, and people just lived with them because there wasn't an alternative. Relativity became the new norm because it accounted for the flaws, but more importantly, it made some dramatic predictions which came true. That carries weight with scientists.
The reason the vast majority of climatologists believe in AGW is a good example of the process. When the theory was first proposed, back in the 1970s, it was generally regarded as a crank fantasy for a very good reason. There was an accepted theory of climate, and it fitted all the observations to date, and nobody saw any reason to abandon it just because there was a new sensational-sounding idea around. (As has been noted, there was also a theory that we were headed for a new Ice Age, and that didn't impress the experts either.)
But theories, if they are serious ones, make predictions about future observations. The AGW theory made some clear and specific ones. Orthodox theory made predictions too: it predicted that nothing much would change in the world's overall temperature and climate patterns. So when the orthodox theory's predictions started to go persistently wrong, people started to notice that the AGW theory's predictions were consistently coming true.
Politicians don't take much notice of such things: an expert can be right every time, but if what he says isn't politically acceptable, they ignore him. Scientists are different. If a crank is right once or twice when the orthodoxy is wrong, they shrug it off as a lucky guess. But if the crank is consistently more right than the orthodoxy, they come around, and eventually the crank theory is the new orthodoxy.
This is also why people are not impressed by the attempt to explain climate change by solar cycles. Because the theory of solar cycles was part of the old orthodoxy, and it made predictions too, and it never predicted what is happening now. The attempt to make it account for climate change involves rewriting the theory with hindsight to fit past data, which is bad science. More importantly, the rewritten solar cycles theory has also made predictions, and they have always been that warming is about to end and reverse, and they have always been wrong.
That's how science works. As I noted, it's not how politics works, which is why so many people find it hard to grasp.
_____________________________
Leo9
Gonna pack in my hand, pick up on a piece of land and build myself a cabin in the woods.
It's there I'm gonna stay, until there comes a day when this old world starts a-changing for the good.
- James Taylor
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RE: Majority of Scientists skeptical of climate crisis - 
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