Dawn of a New Epoch

[HudsonHawk]

I see the religion-like-faith also in the anti-science crowd as well - if only we got back to a "natural" way of living, organic this, no burning of fossil fuels, etc. - then we'll be in harmony with the earth. That didn't work so well for the dinosaurs. My point is not to support or argue against fossil fuels or organic this or that, my point is that I see a religious type of faith in some segment of the organic / anti-fossil fuel (as a shorthand) crowd as you (and I) do in the science-will-solve-it crowd.

This is true for all sides. This goes back to Lizzie's point above...we argue about how to interpret the 1% of information we have, while ignoring the 99% we don't.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Basically, I've always found people who disclaim belief in any religion, especially the Dawkinsite I'm So Scientific It Hurts crowd, to be more driven by faith than any other group.

 

[JimWagner]

Belief is what people substitute when the answer rational thought provides is, we don't know.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Belief is what people substitute when the answer rational thought provides is, we don't know.

I think you have to be careful about painting scientific theory and interpretation with the same brush as blind faith. Theorizing is part of the scientific method, and many ideas and interpretations are eventually proven incorrect, but that doesn't mean they were based on nothing, or were not worthy of consideration. Scientists are certainly a stubborn bunch, and have more than their share of quacks and hacks. But postulating ideas for scrutiny and testing is an important piece of the puzzle, and saying "I think this is the explanation" isn't always a bad thing, even when it's not irrefutable.

 

[JimWagner]

Not my meaning at all. I'm just saying that many people employ belief systems, not all of which are religions, when they cannot accept that we actually do not know the answer to some question. We may or may not eventually know the answer to some particular question, but erecting a belief system to explain an unknown is futile at best and dangerous at worst.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Not my meaning at all. I'm just saying that many people employ belief systems, not all of which are religions, when they cannot accept that we actually do not know the answer to some question. We may or may not eventually know the answer to some particular question, but erecting a belief system to explain an unknown is futile at best and dangerous at worst.

Again, I think you have to be careful about what you mean by "belief system". Putting together an explanation, even a complex "system" based on the available evidence is how science works. I agree that you have to be careful not to let your devotion to that explanation cloud your judgement in refusing to accept contradictory evidence, and I agree that refusal to acknowledge gaps is dangerous, but I don't think one should just say "well, we don't know, so there's no point in trying to explain". We'd never gain any understanding without testing of ideas and theories.

 

[Bolero]

I think Jim is implying Religion primarily and Belief System secondarily is used as a Crutch for those not able to Explain or Comprehend certain events or Happenings...The Roots maybe of Atheism ???

 

[HudsonHawk]

I think Jim is implying Religion primarily and Belief System secondarily is used as a Crutch for those not able to Explain or Comprehend certain events or Happenings...The Roots maybe of Atheism ???

I guess my issue is with the idea of "accepting" that we don't know the answer. Acknowledging is one thing, accepting is another. Perhaps I'm splitting semantic hairs here.

Science is often like a puzzle. There may be a thousand pieces, and we have ten. We have to acknowledge that we don't have the pieces, but the only way to put the puzzle together is lay it out, see what pieces are missing and set about trying to find them. We use the pieces we have to interpolate the missing ones, as that's the only way we'll ever find them. Sure, there's the occasional "Eureka" moment, but those are exceedingly rare. 99.9% of scientific discoveries are the result of testing of those interpolations and mind-numbing repetition. We have to be careful not let our bias blind us to the evidence that we have the wrong piece, or that we're even trying to draw the wrong picture. That occurs often. But we have to start with the end in mind, or we'll get nowhere.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

The biggest issue in the climate science debate is whether or not global temperatures have actually even risen or not. The data are sporadic, and everything more than a few decades old isn't a direct measurement. Completeness of the data is a much bigger issue than their interpretation. The other issue is that people tend to focus on the most very recent, looking only a few thousand or tens of thousands of years. That's minutiae in geologic time.

Even if someone chooses to doubt the figures, the effects of a warming planet are both visible & verifiable. The melting of polar ice & indeed the ever shrinking surface areas covered by ice & it's reduced thickness, the extremely rapid melt of Glaciers all over the world, the rise in ocean temperatures which also causes the rise of sea levels, these things & many more, can only be the result of rising global temperatures.
Is it really necessary to go back further than since weather records began? ......our societies & particularly our farming methods, have depended on relatively stable weather systems over the last few centuries & now that global warming is bringing about climate change, probably man induced, the earth's past natural weather patterns are irrelevant to our current predicament.
There is some debate about a mini ice age arriving in the next 20 years or so due to a drastic drop in solar activity.......................this is going to be interesting.Prehaps global warming will save humanity after all.

 

[Bolero]

Not my meaning at all. I'm just saying that many people employ belief systems, not all of which are religions, when they cannot accept that we actually do not know the answer to some question. We may or may not eventually know the answer to some particular question, but erecting a belief system to explain an unknown is futile at best and dangerous at worst.

I think this takes us all the way back to the very first Caveman whom was unable to comprehend a lightning strike and therefore developed his own Belief system to account for it...resulting in great relief and mental comfort for himself and others....much the same way some present day belief systems provide relief, comfort and understanding of certain events they cannot answer for or comprehend....
It has never been enough to accept unknowns and be neutral re same... waiting for some Scientific Explanation....Man instead (as Jim proffers) comes up with a belief system to explain it away...

 

[JimWagner]

I would agree that the scientific method is valid for explaining and understanding many things in the physical universe. And those who truly understand how to employ it also understand that its conclusions are always subject to change as new evidence is discovered or new methods of measuring or detecting phenomena are developed. The fact that we don't know something is certainly not a reason for not trying to know it and I never implied that it was.

But, if we truly have no way of knowing or verifying something at the present time then making up an explanation and saying that is the true explanation is NOT science at all. It can be a hypothesis to be tested and if proven lead to a theory, but until there is actual proof it's just a direction to explore. Or something to base a religion on.

When politicians, who are basically clueless about science among many other things, or anyone else for that matter looking for something to shore up their agenda seize on something they present as a proven scientific theory when it's not really that we have big problems. Even worse is a incompetent scientist who has an agenda and cooks up a half baked theory to support it. It's difficult for most people to separate science fact from science fiction.

If all scientists were pure of motive and completely objective as well as highly skilled we wouldn't have these problems, but scientists are people too and can be just as screwed up as the next person.

I think that climates change. I also think that the climate is a very complex system. Many factors are at work. The activities of mankind are just some of what influences it. I know just enough about chaos theory leave those butterlies alone.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I see the religion-like-faith also in the anti-science crowd as well - if only we got back to a "natural" way of living, organic this, no burning of fossil fuels, etc. - then we'll be in harmony with the earth. That didn't work so well for the dinosaurs. My point is not to support or argue against fossil fuels or organic this or that, my point is that I see a religious type of faith in some segment of the organic / anti-fossil fuel (as a shorthand) crowd as you (and I) do in the science-will-solve-it crowd.

A lot of the "natural natural natural" stuff we see today is as much marketing hype as anything the Boys ever cooked up on their best day. Same spit, different spitter, to mince a phrase. Millions of dollars are being made each year in the "organic foods" business, and where there are millions, there are the Boys telling you exactly what they want you to believe and not telling you what they don't. I see the raw milk salesmen, for example, carrying on and then I remember the reason why people stopped drinking raw milk in the first place: it was giving them brucella, salmonella, and tuberculosis.

That's not to say I think there's anything wrong with advocating non-manufactured, minimally-processed foods. But there comes a point where it stops being science and starts being at best marketing hype and at worst voodoo, and that's the point where they lose me.

 

[HudsonHawk]

The melting of polar ice & indeed the ever shrinking surface areas covered by ice & it's reduced thickness, the extremely rapid melt of Glaciers all over the world, the rise in ocean temperatures which also causes the rise of sea levels, these things & many more, can only be the result of rising global temperatures.
Is it really necessary to go back further than since weather records began?

I think if you want to say the changes are anthropogenic, you have to compare them to historical changes from times of pre-human influence. You have to remember that polar ice caps are a relatively recent phenomenon, and have fluctuated greatly over the last 15 million years or so. The current ice caps are just babies, being only 12,000-15,000 years old.

There is some debate about a mini ice age arriving in the next 20 years or so due to a drastic drop in solar activity.......................this is going to be interesting.Prehaps global warming will save humanity after all.

The other theory about global warming is that a rapid melting of the ice caps will result in a disturbance of ocean currents, resulting in rapid decrease in temperatures precipitating the next ice age.

 

[Fading Fast]

A lot of the "natural natural natural" stuff we see today is as much marketing hype as anything the Boys ever cooked up on their best day. Same spit, different spitter, to mince a phrase. Millions of dollars are being made each year in the "organic foods" business, and where there are millions, there are the Boys telling you exactly what they want you to believe and not telling you what they don't. I see the raw milk salesmen, for example, carrying on and then I remember the reason why people stopped drinking raw milk in the first place: it was giving them brucella, salmonella, and tuberculosis.

That's not to say I think there's anything wrong with advocating non-manufactured, minimally-processed foods. But there comes a point where it stops being science and starts being at best marketing hype and at worst voodoo, and that's the point where they lose me.

I agree there is a marketing push, but there is also a religious-like, "we are saving the world," "doing the natural thing as mother earth intended it" fervor there too from some of its acolytes. I know some of them and there is a religious like passion and attitude and self identity that they bring to their choices of natural, organic, what have you that is not just about a food or healthy choices.

 

[HudsonHawk]

But, if we truly have no way of knowing or verifying something at the present time then making up an explanation and saying that is the true explanation is NOT science at all. It can be a hypothesis to be tested and if proven lead to a theory, but until there is actual proof it's just a direction to explore. Or something to base a religion on.

But this isn't exactly how it works. Theories cannot be proven, only disproven. We can gather more and more evidence, and each time results confirm our theory we gain more confidence in it, but you can't prove gravity exists, you can only observe and rely on consistency of expectations. I guess you could argue that's "faith".

If all scientists were pure of motive and completely objective as well as highly skilled we wouldn't have these problems, but scientists are people too and can be just as screwed up as the next person.

As a scientist, I can confirm they are often much more screwed up than the next person.

I think that climates change. I also think that the climate is a very complex system. Many factors are at work. The activities of mankind are just some of what influences it. I know just enough about chaos theory leave those butterlies alone.

I think this is true for most science. We often like to simplify things into talking points to support one agenda or another, but usually the reality is far more complicated than can be described in one sitting.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I agree there is a marketing push, but there is also a religious-like, "we are saving the world," "doing the natural thing as mother earth intended it" fervor there too from some of its acolytes. I know some of them and there is a religious like passion and attitude and self identity that they bring to their choices of natural, organic, what have you that is not just about a food or healthy choices.

I know the kind of people you mean -- a great many of them live up here. Some of them really are sincere in these beliefs, and, honestly, they don't bother me all that much. They're kind of corny, but harmless. But I think just as many are sincere like that guy with the greasy mullet selling "No Evil Oil" on late-night TV, or that insufferable Whole Foods schmuck. Sincerely trying to seperate the credulous from their cash.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

I think if you want to say the changes are anthropogenic, you have to compare them to historical changes from times of pre-human influence.

The problem with comparing our present situation with pre historic weather patterns & temperature flactuations, is knowing the time scales these changes took to occur. We know today that the rise in global temperatures, or if you prefer the effects of global warming, are extremely rapid, prehaps too rapid to be a natural
I know the polar ice caps & glaciers are remnants of the last ice age but they have been stable for the past 10,000 years so why should they be melting now & at such a rapid rate ?
Prehaps the greenhouse gases released by human activity & locked in the atmospere are merely 'speeding' up a natural cycle of rising global temperatures as philosophygirl suggests, even if there isn't a particular reason for them to do so other than by the 'greenhouse effect' but isn't that just a 'Get out clause' ? "we aren't responsible since it's likely it would have happened anyway " or "our participation in this current event is strictly fortuitous" & so we can carry on an usual.
I don't mind us shirking our responsibilities but at least let us be honest about it.

 

[HudsonHawk]

The problem with comparing our present situation with pre historic weather patterns & temperature flactuations, is knowing the time scales these changes took to occur.

I agree, which is kind of my point. There is too much missing information to make very broad generalizations.

We know today that the rise in global temperatures, or if you prefer the effects of global warming, are extremely rapid, prehaps too rapid to be a natural
I know the polar ice caps & glaciers are remnants of the last ice age but they have been stable for the past 10,000 years so why should they be melting now & at such a rapid rate ?

I think you answered you own question above. We don't know if the current rate of melting is particularly fast or not. It's the only example we have, with no frame of reference.

I don't mind us shirking our responsibilities but at least let us be honest about it.

I agree. And I think we have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of our planet and resources. But I think we also have to be realistic.

 

[GHT]

The argument is that only since that time has humanity's presence on Earth resulted in permanent geological changes to the planet, changes that will be detectable millions of years hence.

Seriously? Tin mining, in the English counties of Cornwall and Devon, since the Bronze Age, have left permanent scars on the earth's surface. Tin mining has also poisoned much of what could have been arable land in the same area. Examples like this, and many more throughout the world, dispute such an argument.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Seriously? Tin mining, in the English counties of Cornwall and Devon, since the Bronze Age, have left permanent scars on the earth's surface. Tin mining has also poisoned much of what could have been arable land in the same area. Examples like this, and many more throughout the world, dispute such an argument.

What I take away from the linked article is that those sorts of impacts were part of the "Holocene Era," which followed on from the end of the last Ice Age and into the rise of human population. While there were intermittent human impacts on the planet, they were not globally pervasive. What this panel seems to be suggesting is that what's happened since the middle of the twentieth century is that human actitvity has led to actual worldwide changes to the sedimentary layer currently being deposited on the planet's surface, in terms of both its composition and its radiation content, and that this layer is becoming a permanent part of the structure of the planet.

Although this isn't mentioned in the article, I'd think that, for example, the worldwide distribution of high lead levels in the soil around roadways and cities during the peak era of leaded gasoline during the late forties, fifties, and sixties would be an example of such a permanent change. It's similar to the tin mining example -- but it's not localized -- it's a problem thruout the industrialized world, and will remain a problem ad infinitum. Millions of years from now, if any archaeologists exist to excavate the planet, they'll be able to reconstruct an perfectly accurate map of mid-twentieth century highway systems simply from tracing these lead deposits in the sedimentary layer of the Anthropogenic Epoch.