PrintDecember 19, 2009
Global Warming and the 'Settled Science' Baloney
If you've misspent your youth conducting experiments, taking graduate courses in physics and chemistry, and learning about thermodynamics, molecular spectroscopy, fluid mechanics, modeling data and publishing scientific papers, then the current debate over anthropogenic global warming can make you hurl.While I won't fault journalists and politicians for their stupendous ignorance when discussing most scientific subjects, I will condemn their utter lack of coherence concerning basic scientific definitions, processes, and principles. Specifically, the chattering classes have no appreciation of the following truisms: settled science comes only in the form of physical laws, while the causes behind specific phenomena are sometimes never definitively settled. And the more complex the system being observed, the longer it takes to reach a consensus about the causal mechanisms.Even Al Gore can probably remember being introduced to Newton's 2nd Law of Motion in high school: F=ma. This is...(Read Full Article)
