SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the we-just-need-a-test-world-to-play-around-with dept.
From The Guardian
Those who reject the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming often invoke Galileo as an example of when the scientific minority overturned the majority view. In reality, climate contrarians have almost nothing in common with Galileo, whose conclusions were based on empirical scientific evidence, supported by many scientific contemporaries, and persecuted by the religious-political establishment. Nevertheless, there's a slim chance that the 2–3% minority is correct and the 97% climate consensus is wrong.
To evaluate that possibility, a new paper published in the journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology examines a selection of contrarian climate science research and attempts to replicate their results.
Alas the results weren't good for that 3%...
Cherry picking was the most common characteristic they shared. We found that many contrarian research papers omitted important contextual information or ignored key data that did not fit the research conclusions.
The article also notes,
..there is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming. Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on. There is a 97% expert consensus on a cohesive theory that's overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence, but the 2–3% of papers that reject that consensus are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics.
(Score: 4, Informative) by darkfeline on Saturday August 29 2015, @11:45PM
The common misconception: Galileo was persecuted by the church for his heliocentric theory.
The reality: The church and many astronomers before Galileo have developed and accepted heliocentric theory. The reason the church "persecuted" Galileo was because 1. he was an asshole, 2. he wanted the church to adopt his particular (incorrect) variation of the heliocentric model involving lots of epicycles, 3. he wanted the church to officially adopt his theory as the way reality really worked instead of merely as a working scientific theory or model, and all of this 4. in spite of all of the warnings and efforts to protect this madman by well-meaning friends of the church. Ultimately, they charged him of heresy as a formality and Galileo spent the rest of his life living luxuriously "in imprisonment" under the care of the church.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!