Sorry. I got trapped in that reactionary scientific method-thing. You know, where contrary empirical observations eliminate a theory.(*) Time to move on to progressive thinking. FORWARD, comrade.
(*) "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." - Richard P. Feynman
By Jove that must be it. We need to sacrifice more oxen. Or maybe a statue or two, to please the gods.
Cheers, James Arthur
It's likely that the "experts" are much more skilled at fooling one another.
There was a cool interview the other day on the Forum show here, with a guy who wrote a book about Freud. Sigmund Fraud more like. He launched a half century of bogus and expensive "therapy" that didn't work. An entire field of quack medicine was created.
That's the sort of "science" that economics and sociology and climatology are now; theories and fads that can't be experimentally falsified but keep making bad predictions.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
Where are the predictons?
Since James Arthur hasn't adduced the predictions, nor produced the storm frequency data which confounds these - imagined - predictions, there's not a lot of empirical evidence involved.
Sadly, before you can make that sort of claim, you have to identify the predictions that you imagine to have been falsified, and the empiricial evidence that falsifies them.
Here's the evidence
James Arthur appears to have had some specific evidence in mind - it would be nice if he could find it.
James Arthur has got to be a little more spiritual than is likely to be useful.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Without going to trouble of looking, I can suggest that the links might be to news items that right-wingers would like to read.
Judging from the links about climate change that John Larkin posts here, he'd be happier with a aggregating site that only posted links to denialist web-sites.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
"Donald Trump signed away Obama-era flood standards just weeks before Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, in a bid to get infrastructure projects approved more quickly."
not if, it's when"
tried to tell me adding an Ethernet amplifier between my modem and router would boost speeds. I suggested maybe he means the cable side? No, he ins isted the Ethernet side. No such thing exists (that's what network switche s are for), and it's rated for full speed up to 100m, maybe a little more a s-is.
m is demonstrably false. But he was sure he was right.
experts.
n-experts are idiots. Forget all this "well they could be wrong" or "I've looked at the data" or "widely held theories have been wrong in the past".
e experts are less correct than the non-experts.
Not really. Experts run into the real world from time to time - climate sci ence does involve real data about the real world.
Spencer and Christy got away with inadequate corrections for orbital decay for their satellite data for a few years, but the other experts got sceptic al after a while and shamed them into doing the job right.
Freud's pyschoanlysis lost credibility precisely when people started measur ing clinical outcomes.
Economics is a special case - people with lots of money and political power prop up duff theories which say things that suit them, and try to undercut theories that work - like Keynesianism - that don't.
Sociology did suffer from a lot of faked results - it is a data-driven subj ect, so the results can be falsified, but a lot of the results in the liter ature do need to be tested.
Climatology is an empirical science, and a lot of its results are testable. Unfortunately, the crucial result, that anthropogenic global warming is re al, has been tested, and found to be correct but in conflict with well-fina nced political and economic interests, who have inundated society with a he ap of counter-propaganda that you are too dumb to recognise as such. In tha t sense it is very like economics.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Not just statues. Eventually we'll have to dig up the Unknown Soldier from the Confederacy.
He'll be surprised to learn that he was fighting for climate change denial.
But once you are committed to States Rights, other right-wing lunacies must follow naturally.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
At least the deniers *believe* they've found major enough fault with climat e science to doubt it. But they're like people I run across occasionally t hat say something like "why did they do it this way, those engineers must r eally be stupid". And this is on a highly engineered product like a car, n ot some dollar-store radio. And I respond "no, they're not stupid. I'm su re there was a very good reason for why it was done this way".
Because you see, as an engineer myself I realize things are often much more complicated than they seem to the non-expert. But for some reason we have a bunch of weather/climate experts running around that have absolutely no training.
Found this and thought it was relevant:
This is why:
not if, it's when"
tried to tell me adding an Ethernet amplifier between my modem and router would boost speeds. I suggested maybe he means the cable side? No, he ins isted the Ethernet side. No such thing exists (that's what network switche s are for), and it's rated for full speed up to 100m, maybe a little more a s-is.
m is demonstrably false. But he was sure he was right.
experts.
n-experts are idiots. Forget all this "well they could be wrong" or "I've looked at the data" or "widely held theories have been wrong in the past".
e experts are less correct than the non-experts.
That quack medicine created businesses and made money. Same reason we have fortune tellers and the like. Economists and sociologists have a hard job . These are fundamentally complex things to study, like climate. But sinc e you have it all figured out, maybe you need to tell them it's time to go home. You've figured it all out.
What's climate research doing? It's causing a whole lot of anti-science se ntiment and criticism. I'm not seeing the motivation. These people are fu nded by universities and governments, where historically a lot of good rese arch happens. The researchers that are denying it are primarily funded by special interest groups. Hmmmmmm.
Sure you say it's for excessive taxation but that's always the standard ans wer by conservatives. And supposedly the majority of nations are in on thi s conspiracy, too. Sounds a lot like the flat-earth claim that there's a 5
2-nation pact involving Antarctica.
ot if, it's when"
gn.
You're completely wrong about that, it has everything to do with climate ch ange because of the the historically "super" large amount of rainfall, 51" over two days. No practical stormwater management system could begin to han dle that volume. They were off by a factor of 1000, and you call that a nor mal weather pattern. It's all about similarly useless developers raking in billions in profits at taxpayer expense. Accuweather has estimated the fina l price tag for this mess is going to be $190B. You're just another useless troll with keyboard.
t's not if, it's when"
do
e design.
pipe in here. I've heard a few random meteorologists while listening to th e radio and TV say something to the effect that Harvey, Katrina and Sandy w ere likely the way they were because of warming ocean temperatures, caused by climate change. But, you denier dumbasses know better than them.
most medical professionals are involved in a massive conspiracy to screw ev eryone, too.
You mean in NOLA, but that wasn't the case a few miles to the east near Bil oxi. The entire landscape was leveled. A nuclear airburst couldn't have don e more damage.
Who gives a damn, the place is another misplaced hellhole, misplanned, poor ly maintained, full of corruption, not worth keeping.
Bad infrastructure has nothing to do with global warming.
:
not if, it's when"
esign.
e change because of the the historically "super" large amount of rainfall,
51" over two days. No practical stormwater management system could begin to handle that volume. They were off by a factor of 1000, and you call that a normal weather pattern. It's all about similarly useless developers raking in billions in profits at taxpayer expense. Accuweather has estimated the final price tag for this mess is going to be $190B. You're just another use less troll with keyboard.On the surface, no. But if a region's weather pattern changes enough to ov erwhelm what was put into place based on historical climate, then it has so mething to do with it.
But really I doubt there's few places in the world that can handle 4 feet o f rain in this short time.
Houston's infrastructure couldn't handle half that, but more rain means more bad.
:
not if, it's when"
esign.
e change because of the the historically "super" large amount of rainfall,
51" over two days. No practical stormwater management system could begin to handle that volume. They were off by a factor of 1000, and you call that a normal weather pattern. It's all about similarly useless developers raking in billions in profits at taxpayer expense. Accuweather has estimated the final price tag for this mess is going to be $190B. You're just another use less troll with keyboard.The storm statistics have nothing to do with infrastructure and everything to do with warming. When 0.001 probability events have been trending into 0 .1 probability events, then it's time to wake up, smell the roses and reali ze there's a problem. That area in particular is at the center of a region slated to become inhabitable within the next 75 years. Of course the idiots will drop a few trillion $$$ trying to deny it before the sham has to be a bandoned, because there's lots of money to be made (stolen) off the taxpaye r.
You should look at the statistics on that friggin misbegotten hellhole- No better than insects building a nest.
:
not if, it's when"
esign.
e change because of the the historically "super" large amount of rainfall,
51" over two days. No practical stormwater management system could begin to handle that volume. They were off by a factor of 1000, and you call that a normal weather pattern. It's all about similarly useless developers raking in billions in profits at taxpayer expense. Accuweather has estimated the final price tag for this mess is going to be $190B. You're just another use less troll with keyboard.But anthropogenic global warming means that the infra-structure has to be i mproved, or in practice that even half-decent infra-structure isn't going t o be good enough in a few years.
Historically speaking, the way that you find out that your infra-structure is inadequate is that it gets washed or blown away by unexpectedly severe w eather.
Nobody worries about it until it fails - or - if you are lucky - gets stres sed to the point where it is obviously on the edge of failure.
I was living in Nijmegen in the Netherlands in 1995 when the Rhine got unex pectedly high, and a whole lot of low-lying areas got evacuated. The dikes didn't end up giving way, though the army spent an anxious day or two dumpi ng extra dirt on some areas that were bulging in a rather threatening way.
It turned out that the river defenses had been set up to deal with once in
50-year floods, and the Dutch government spent a lot of money over the next decade beefing them up. Nobody has been flood conscious for as long as the Dutch, and the 1953 disaster had killed 1836 people, which had meant the s ea defences had been beefed up - the Delta plan - but even in the Netherlan ds that anxiety hadn't translated into worrying about the river defenses.-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
We see the same thing from anti-vaccination campaigners, they point and complain too. it doesn't mean that their arguments hold water.
-- This email has not been checked by half-arsed antivirus software
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