October 7, 2004
GRATUITOUS INCLUDED (via Tom Morin):
Past climate change questioned: Swings in temperature might be more common than thought. (Quirin Schiermeier, 9/30/04, Nature)
The Earth's temperature may have fluctuated more wildly during the past 1000 years than previously thought, according to a new study that challenges how researchers use tree rings and corals to give us a picture of the Earth's past.If true, the study suggests that recent warming might not be as unique as was thought previously, and might partly be due to natural temperature cycles, rather than humans spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
To work out the planet's temperature during the past few hundred years, researchers often look at the width and density of annual rings in trees or the growth of corals. Such temperature indicators, known as proxies, are then used to construct average global temperatures.
But this method could be tainted by a systematic error, according to Hans von Storch, a climate modeller at the GKSS Institute for Coastal Research in Geesthacht, Germany, and his colleagues. Consequently researchers might have underestimated the size of temperature fluctuations from medieval times until the nineteenth century, by a factor of two or more.
Nothing gives us greater pleasure than the schizophrenic ferocity with which libertarians and econocons denounce global warming science as a political ideology while defending Darwinism as revealed truth. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 7, 2004 7:51 AM
The political use of science in support of what such activists believe to be their unique and profound insights into nature, knowledge, politics and humanity simply reeks of hubris and arrogant self-involvemmnet. Like the university sophmore who has become entranced by the magic of Rousseau's "General Will" or Marx's "Dialectical Materialism", the reliance of agnostics on the "objectivity" of science as a guide for social organization (via Darwin) or support for the enlightened use of the coercive power of the state because of Global Warming shows how weak and wrong headed their faith really is.
You know, OJ, you'd have a lot more credibility if you didn't bash Darwin at the drop of a hat (and drop the hat yourself if nobody else does).
Everybody out there:
IT ISN'T DARWIN.
IT ISN'T EVOLUTION.
"Men of Sin" will use ANY cosmic-level authority -- the Bible, the Koran, "Direct Revelation", Darwin, Freud, Marx, Mohammed, Lenin, Castro, Reason, Nature, "My Spirit Guide/Channeled Cosmic Entity", Economics, Ideology, whatever -- to justify whatever they were going to do anyway.
Posted by: Ken at October 7, 2004 12:41 PMHey Ken-
We are supposed to have gotten beyond the reliance on the crap you've mentioned above and we generally have. One of the remaining "isms" left is scientism or the belief that all difficulties can be detected in advance and cured through the rational application of science or technology. If you believe that life has a material, purely chemical or mechanical explanantion then you are guided by a belief that will reduce all human life to matter susceptible to engineering and experimentation without any limit other than the interests of the most powerful. Survival of the fittest through natural selection taken to its logical conclusion. All because of the "belief" in the religion of science/reason.
Posted by: Tom C, Stamford,Ct. at October 7, 2004 1:24 PMAlthough it neither proves nor disproves God, I note that throughout history, the dominant churches/religious organizations have been guided by a belief that reduces all human life to pawns to be manipulated without any limit other than the interests of the most powerful.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at October 7, 2004 2:05 PMKen:
My credibility isn't the question, but those who accept the Darwinian fairytale on faith and insist it reason.
Posted by: oj at October 7, 2004 2:36 PMNobody defends Darwinism as revealed truth
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 7, 2004 3:47 PMCorrection: No Darwinist is capable of acknowledging that it is revealed truth.
Posted by: oj at October 7, 2004 3:50 PMI dunno, Orrin.
You demand that macroevolution occur on your watch before you'll accept the indirect evidence for it.
Yet you accept the Christian dispensation, that also did not occur on your watch, and for which there is no evidence whatever.
A logical consistency certainly isn't a hobgoblin in your mind
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 7, 2004 11:31 PMHarry:
Precisely. Faith isn't logical, whether Christian or Darwinist.
Posted by: oj at October 7, 2004 11:36 PMIt's a matter of evidence, since it is debatable and rejectable.
If it were faith, it would be neither.
Their are valid critiques of Darwinism, and you need to get up to speed on them, because simply saying everything is faith is meaningless.
If everything is faith, then nothing is.
Nobody accepts that.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 8, 2004 2:46 AMHarry:
Of course they don't, it's too disorienting, but it is what Reason demonstrates.
Posted by: oj at October 8, 2004 8:47 AMHarry:
Excellent points, although I would reword something you said above: Nobody defends Darwinism as absolute truth.
The funny thing about truth is that the best way to apprise even a portion of it is to admit in advance that posessoin of the entire thing is impossible.
Which is why it takes a religionist to be a Creationist. No one else would make such sweeping conclusions from profound ignorance.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at October 8, 2004 9:05 PMAll scientific concepts are provisional and revisable -- even junkable. You are quite right.
Unlike religionists, we are not required to continue to believe the manifestly wrong -- even self-harmful -- things that religionists have to.
Michael Schermer (founder of Skeptic) has about as clear a discussion of this as I've ever seen in 'Why People Believe Weird Things'
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 9, 2004 6:17 PMHarry:
Yes, but the beauty of Judeo-Christianity is that we just stay in one place and y'all always come crawling back to us after flirting with alternative theories.
Posted by: oj at October 9, 2004 6:22 PMHad any spells cast on you lately, Orrin?
Did you milch cow dry up?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 10, 2004 4:48 PM"... y'all always come crawling back to us after flirting with alternative theories."
You just abused the bloody heck out of the word "always."
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at October 10, 2004 7:10 PM