Re:Portland school board bans climate change-denying materials
by cortesoft on Saturday June 04, 2016 @02:13PM
(#11837294)
The inability to predict exactly how a complex system will behave doesn't mean we can't predict, accurately, certain characteristics about what will happen.
If I light a piece of paper on fire, I might not be able to predict the exact shape of the flame at any given instance, but I can be pretty damn sure it will end up as ashes.
Re:Portland school board bans climate change-denying materials
by vertex-four on Saturday June 04, 2016 @02:36PM
(#11837409)
> When people say words like consensus instead of hypothesis you can tell they are having a political debate that involves science rather than a scientific debate that involves politics
Only because you don't have to point out that there's a consensus if it's not a political issue. Lots of things have general consensus - we just have absolutely no need to point out that most scientists agree on something unless someone doesn't believe that's the case.
There's a consensus that generally bad things will happen if we let climate change get out of hand. There's not a consensus on precisely what form those bad things will take.
The problem with 'climate change' aka. 'observed warming is attributable to humans therefore we must start recycling, blah, blah, blah' is one it's mostly political, two, the science is not clear in a 'These are our predictions we passed the predictions', eg. it's clear the earth is warming, but it's also clear the computer models don't work, and it's really not clear what will happen if the warming continues, because a) we don't know how warm it will be, and b) we don't know what that warmth will do.
When people say words like consensus instead of hypothesis you can tell they are having a political debate that involves science rather than a scientific debate that involves politics, in the exact same way that the intelligent design people do the same thing.