Sure, we occasionally take a swipe at pseudoscience—homeopathy, astrology, claims that genetically modified food causes cancer, and so on. But the great thing about science is that it’s self-correcting. The good drives out the bad, because experiments get replicated and hypotheses put to the test. So a really bad idea cannot survive long in science.
Or so I used to think. Now, thanks largely to climate science, I have changed my mind. It turns out bad ideas can persist in science for decades, and surrounded by myrmidons of furious defenders they can turn into intolerant dogmas.
This is very true and something I read some place else. I forget where.
Bad ideas, or bad hypotheses, are weeded out because of the strongest aspects of the scientific method - testability and replicability. If it can't be tested it's an unworkable hypothesis. If it can't be replicated, it's unverifiable - period.
And what can we say about predictability in all this?
Climate science essentially has only its mathematical models to work with for confirmation of hypotheses. None of this can be tested out in the real world. The predictive power of climate models has been poor and inadequate.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I for one support lowering dirty, toxic emissions. i don't doubt they are harmful to our environment.
What I don't buy into is the dogma that's ossified around this entire issue and is now turning into accusations of immorality aimed at people who are skeptical of the science of climatology. Dogma can turn relatively smart people into complete idiots who really just want to ride a moral high horse but don't really know jack-shit about the science.
On a side note, rising nations like India and China have accused countries that demand action be taken now of attempting to stultify their economic growth so as to prevent them from becoming economic super powers.
There's a conspiracy in play.
I mythers can play the conspiracy card so can I.
But wait a second - the great All-knowing Oracle of science has said man is the primary cause of global warming.
The gods have spoken and they are on the side of morality!
Hail to the mighty gods of consensus science!
EDITED:
Here's another gem from the article:
That these alarms—over population growth, pesticides, rain forests, acid rain, ozone holes, sperm counts, genetically modified crops—have often proved wildly exaggerated does not matter: the organisations that did the most exaggeration trousered the most money. In the case of climate, the alarm is always in the distant future, so can never be debunked.
Right on the money.
Case in point; climate models that predict the current 17 year pause is just that - a pause, but that the globe will continue to warm at an alarming rate in the future.
How can a "it will happen in the future" conclusion ever be falsified?
Is that science?