[K T Ong]

Originally posted by MagiK: [img]graemlins/rant.gif[/img] Ok now to really answer your question. You do not have to be a weather scientist to know bullshit when you step in it. You don't need to be a scientist to see that the people who started the crusade left because the radical eco-nuts have quit doing science and have turned it into a religion. (I even posted the writings of the founder of Green peace at one point on this forum)

That's what I would like to know; how do you know it's BS? If you don't use the methods for ascertaining the truth used by scientists, then what are the methods you use?

K.T. I read, I read a lot, I have been lucky and had a job where I got to see information before it got to the news media for public distribution. I am also quite talented at sifting data for relevant facts and a memory that allows me to track concepts over decades. I don't forget concepts...details yes but not overall derivitives of data. I have spent all of my life since I was around 12 (28 years ago) keeping tabs on science and science discoveries, and when I see things that don't fit I look for the source.)

Don't fit what?

I read a lot, too -- or I wouldn't have got a Masters in philosophy. But of what relevance is one's erudition, talent at sifting facts etc to whether something one claims is true or false? Is this not what one calls argumentum et hominem? Just because I'm very erudite etc, does that mean that whatever I say must be true? And conversely, just because I have no sense of integrity etc, does that mean that whatever I say must be false? Surely the truth of what one says needs to be validated by another independently of any considerations of one's erudition or integrity etc.

I do actually want to know everything there is to know about things I think are important. So I get highly outraged when scientists loose their integrity and make up data just to get their next government grant (such as the guy who made up the data about salt causing high blood preasure) Or when I see people passing themselves off as hard scientists to garner media attention.

So do I, but the question is: how do you tell? From what you've posted so far, it would seem to me that any scientist who asserts global warming is for real automatically falls into your black list. Presumably, then, absolutely all of them are guilty of the crimes you enumerate -- which is honestly stretching one's credulity a little too far. And why can't those scientists who assert that global warming is not for real be guilty of the same crimes? Are they not just as human?

You do not have to be a PHD in every field to be able to spot inconsistancies or fabricated information. Can you claim to have paid as much attention as I have to these issues for 28 years? Just curious, you see because I grew up when the movie Soylant Green scared the bejeezus out of me, and when I was told there would be no rain forest by the time I was an adult and that the world would runn out of Oil by the 1980's...I grew up listening to the green whackos spout their bullshit to scare all the little kids and became outraged when I learned they were not telling the truth. So you see...this might be one of my own personal little crusades. I demand accuracy, and objectivity in scince, I do not want to see people throwing out data because ti doesnt fit their model and I am sick to death of the doom and gloom groups who lie to people every day because in their minds "The ends justify the means".

I've been looking at these issues since the early 1980's. Can't be that much less than what you've gone through. And from what you've posted, it would appear that absolutely any position that asserts that global warming is for real is based on inconsistancies or fabricated information. Curiously, you don't seem to consider the possibility that those who assert that global warming is not for real -- at least some of them -- might be equally guilty of the same charge you level against the opposite camp.

Oh and by the way. It is by my own authority. Here in the United States, we don't need to ask the government for permission to think for our selves.

Fine. By my own authority I likewise declare that the Eiffel Tower doesn't exist and planet Earth is in the shape of a cube.

One last thought. The fact is that whatever you say about your own erudition, talent at sifting facts etc has also been claimed of at least a few scientists who assert that global warming is for real. (And a couple of them have been around longer than you, be it said.) If their credentials in this respect mean nothing to you, by the same token why should your credentials mean anything to me? For all I know, you may be brewing up stories -- just as you claim they are.

[ 09-13-2002, 08:10 PM: Message edited by: K T Ong ]