SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Claims that the "the science isn't settled" with regard to climate change are symptomatic of a large body of ignorance about how science works.
The first thing to understand is that there is no one method in science, no one way of doing things. This is intimately connected with how we reason in general.
[...] Those who demand the science be "settled" before we take action are seeking deductive certainty where we are working inductively. And there are other sources of confusion.
One is that simple statements about cause and effect are rare since nature is complex. For example, a theory might predict that X will cause Y, but that Y will be mitigated by the presence of Z and not occur at all if Q is above a critical level. To reduce this to the simple statement "X causes Y" is naive.
Another is that even though some broad ideas may be settled, the details remain a source of lively debate. For example, that evolution has occurred is certainly settled by any rational account. But some details of how natural selection operates are still being fleshed out.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Friday September 16 2016, @10:01PM
That's a ridiculous strawman. The sky isn't a thing that can fall. We've sent countless satellites and missions into the space surrounding the Earth and we know definitively that it isn't possible for it to fall.
As for climate change, we have records going back many millions of years about what the atmosphere was like and we've got tree rings and fossils going back a long ways as well. Arguing about the semantics of it isn't really helpful. We also have computer simulations of the environment that are getting rather good.
Bottom line here is that the question isn't whether or not humans are causing climate change, the question really is more about how bad it's going to be, how much we have to change and how long we have in order to do it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 16 2016, @11:24PM
See, faith. You lack real, definitive proof and yet you believe anyway. Don't argue science if you're not going to be scientific about it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.