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charliehall, there ARE scientists who do not agree that there is a long term climate change. The climate changes all the time. I highly doubt the our plannet’s climate is the same as it was at the begining of creation.
Solar energy is currently not economically competitive with oil, gas, coal, or nuclear without massive government subsidies
The gov. has expensive safety and environment requirements for new buildings and houses. There is no reason that the government can’t require solar panels that are already on the market the as one of the new requirements for new buildings and houses. The cost of these panels are a few thousand dollars, as much as a new bathroom.
Also in the auto industry, just as the government has safety and environment requirements they also need to have requirements that new cars, say in 15 years, need to be powered at least %40 by solar energy and the milage per gallon of gas needs to increase. I think that’s a very viable option.
But I don’t think it will happen because of all the lobbying that will result would the gov. put forth such a plan.
Moderator,
When I insist on others’ accepting facts regarding the temperature of the earth, I mostly limit that to the approximately 130 years for which we have decent worldwide temperature measurements. Those data are quite clear.
Regarding carbon dioxide, there is another molecule linked to human activity that may also contribute substantially to the warming: methane, which is produced by domestic livestock such as cattle. Did you see the recent New York Times article on the subject? Unfortunately, the alternative meat proposed, kangaroo, is not kosher.
Computer modeling, though helpful when nothing else is available, has later been shown to be way off the mark in many cases, and frequently there are widely differing and even opposite results depending on the assumptions made.
But here is the key point those models must predict reality in a useful way
They must predict because the scientists want to, but they absolutely CANNOT predict reality.
“does anybody here understand the theory of relativity??”
I always thought the theory of relativity tried to explain why, no matter how hard you try, at every family simcha there are several relatives who are not happy with the table you placed them.
ZachKessin, I am not denying, if we peel away the scientific theories that scientists have, and look at the facts that are known today to us humans that there is indeed a lot of knowledge out there.
However, I am assuming you agree with me that in 200 years hence there will be a lot of new information that will make the facts and theories and knowledge of our generation look like we were in the infant stage at best and foolish at worst.
The knowledge that we know today is not even a drop in the bucket to the true reality out there.
Maybe in fifty years I will ask you if you know the definite answer to what dark matter and dark energy is. Maybe by then numerous facts will have been disproven so why would I bother to learn intensively about this subject? Especially since I would have to use math which is a subject I prefer to stay away from with a ten foot pole.
Moshiach will hopefully be here sooner than that and then we won’t have to wait that long for scientific answers and the truth will be revealed to us.
philosopher and zach
you two are going to be going around in circles until you clarify what area of science you are referring to. I have written about this before.
There is a continuum:
from technology on the one hand which is solidly based on repeatable observable phenomena, which has been highly consistent and highly successful at making accurate predictions.
to the other end of the continuum, deep theory which is based primarily on exceedingly wide extrapolations, and assumptions which usually have no basis except that they are consistent with other already accepted assumptions. There is very little if any evidence or “proof” except for the various present day measurements that are applied to the theory using the assumptions that themselves cannot be proven. Something like that….
So if you are going to argue the qualities of “science”, if you want to get somewhere meaningful, I would suggest you define what area of science you are talking about.
Moderator-80, I am talking about the deep theory end of the continuum of science, not technology. Thanks for helping me clarify that.
charliehall,
Sure Dr. Spencer believes the earth has gotten warmer you cannot debate temperture readings.
However there are two key points
1) the warming seems to have “miraculasly” ceased.
2) Dr. Spencer along with many others beleive that humans have no effect on the earth’s temprature what so ever. As such the proposed “cap and trade” which any economist will tell you will cost real jobs and cause real hardship on people are absolutley ridiculus.
However it would be hard for scientists who are essentially Kofrim in many (not all but many) cases to admit there is some things that they have no control over,
As an aside “global warming” beleivers have brought about the ludicrous notion that carbon dioxide is a poluutant in other words every time a human being breaths he is polluting the air and essentially destroying the planet!
Oh and methane gas is emitted by cows when they belch so again cows belching is polluting the planet and destroying it.
As Rav Amnon Yitzchok once said you want to beleive in Evolution fine but it was your grandfather who was the monkey not mine and now I’ll feed you bananas!
Science is always an iterative process. We know more now then we did 10, 50 or 100 years ago. In 1920 We did not know if our galaxy was all of the universe or how far away the “Spiral Nebula” were (We now call them galaxies). Edwin Hubble (for whom the telescope is named) first measured the distance to the Andromeda galaxy (M31) in the mid 20’s. In the 1940’s we did not really understand the nature of our own galaxy until Walter Bade worked it out with the 200″ telescope at Mt Wilson. We didn’t understand the rotation of Galaxies until Vera Rubin proposed dark matter.
Yes in the future we will know more than what we know now. However that does not mean that most of what we now think to be true will be discarded. It simply means that the knowledge that we have now is always at best an approximation to the truth. As what we know increases our ability to understand how it all fits together also increases.
50 years from now I assure you the universe will still be expanding and galaxies clusters will still be bound by gravity, we just might know where that gravity comes from. While now all we can say is that it is “Cold Dark matter”. And yes there is some math here, but none of what I have been talking about requires math to understand (at least at this level).
One more quote to add:
To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‘Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing. — Sir Issac Newton
Okay, thanks Mod, I don’t remember writing deep theory end so thanks for that. I think that sums it up very well : deep THEORY end of the continuum of science.
ZachKessin, I think we are arguing about something we basically agree on with little differences. I wrote:
I am not denying, if we peel away the scientific theories that scientists have, and look at the facts that are known today to us humans that there is indeed a lot of knowledge out there.
What knowledge is based on facts and I agree with you that we know more today than we did years ago and in and the future we will expand on that knowledge.
Let me explain what I meant with the following paragraph:
However, I am assuming you agree with me that in 200 years hence there will be a lot of new information that will make the facts and theories and knowledge of our generation look like we were in the infant stage at best and foolish at worst.
Just as in past generations people believed in foolish ideas for example idolatry and they backed it up with “scientific proofs” of their day and today we know that the sun is not a god or stone cannot be a god so too eventually the “scientific facts” and theories of this generation, for example the THEORY of evolution which is accepted as a fact in a lot of academic institutions and by scientits worldwide will be looked upon as foolish. I believe global warming will belong in the same foolish category.
On the other hand, our knowledge of REAL SCIENTIFIC FACTS is just in the infant stage.
I think we basically differ on the computor model issue. I do not believe computor models can give us facts when they are built on theories.
As Moderator-80 wrote frequently there are widely differing and even opposite results depending on the assumptions made.
A computor model cannot produce a realistic answer based on assumptions. It can only produce a realistic answer when the information provided for the model is factual, but I don’t know if scientists ever use computor models if they have ALL the relevent facts.
Thanks again for the clear answer you posted yesterday on the topic of Dark Matter, Dark Energy and black holes. I really enjoyed reading that.
Mod-80 maybe I did write deep theory end. I see that you never said that.
Why do you call it deep theory or is it some type of technological term?
Oh and thanks Mod-80 for teaching me a new word: continuum. I’ve never heard of that word before.
Can we arrive at definite scientific conclusions?
I think only in the areas that we can physically reach today can we reach to scientific facts. Wherever we can get to whether it is in the deep depths of the ocean or in outer space by rocket and sattelite can we come to some understanding of real scientific facts based on our current capabilities.
So whether it is proving scientifically what was earlier in time like the theory of evolution or what is in deep space where it is beyond our capabilities to reach by rocket or sattelite, or what will be in the future like predicting global warming is based in theory and the scientific community needs to come clean and admit that their so called facts are theories. They have no right to tout theories as facts.
So bottom line is, in the continuum of space and time that is beyond our capabilities to reach, we cannot come to a definite, factual scientific conclusion.
I just wanted to try out the word continuum.
Oh and before I sign off and go clean up the kitchen I want to apologize again to Mod-80 for thinking he wrote about “the deep theory end of the continuum of science”. I thought you wrote that because I had no idea what I wrote. I was probably in a rush then and when I came back I was like, hey I never wrote this, I have no idea what this means and I thought you put it in to clarify what I meant.
So I went back to your post about the contuinuum in science (I’m not really sure how you use that word) and there was nothing about “the deep end of the continuum of science”.
I must have come to a wrong scientific conclusion.
🙂
The last word in faster-than-light travel …for now, anyway.
“A team at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, led by Professor Shengwang Du, has concluded that single photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Unfortunately for time travel buffs, photons apparently obey the laws of physics…”
for the full article, please Google “Sorry Doc, Scientists Say Time Travel Is Impossible“
There is a famous quote attributed to Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington. When asked how it felt to be one of the three people in the world who understood the theory of relativity, Eddington replied, “who is the third?” (the first being Einstien himself.)
Of course this story dates back to the very beginning of the discovery of special relativity, even if it is true. By now, that number has probably increased dramatically.
Of course i myself understand all advanced theoretical physics, since i am a quark 🙂
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