It took most of the 20th century for the consensus to accept the blatantly obvious fact of Continental Drift. They chose to ignore the evidence – because it didn’t fit their belief system.
Similarly, we hear consensus claims that the Earth is heating this century (despite all evidence to the contrary) because the evidence doesn’t match their belief system.
My experience with scientists is that the vast majority are mindless sheep, bleating behind the funding shepherd.
Continental breakups, wholesale movement over the globe, and reassembly, yes. “Drift”, no. Undirected physical processes–“plate tectonics”–and chance movements did not cause the present positions of the landmasses on the Earth. So it’s worse than you think.
Pointless semantic argument.
Not to Harry it isn’t, it’s the sine qua non of his world view.
remember …the Ediacaran fossils screamed “Precambrian Life!” for seventy+;years before the consensus noticed them
http://omnologos.com/what-attenborough-wont-say/
Because we have been under the “spell” of GW (and AGW) for a few decades, it has probably become a paradigm among climatologists, meaning, we need a “revolution” in climate science to change the main direction of thinking, and revolutions in science normally take many decades to be “absorbed”.
True scientists, though, usually don’t care too much about the “main paradigm” and if they are convinced of the power of the new idea (in our case the very facts proving that the climate is cooling) they just continue to do their research and divulge their new findings, because that’s where the logic of their studies have lead them to.
In summary, we cannot expect Hansen, Mann, et. al., to change their views, it’ll never happen. On the other hand, who needs them?
In a sense, old scientific minds tend to be biased when analyzing facts that cannot fit in the old paradigm and, therefore, unable to do true scientific research.
We must not confuse “Science” with “what people that do scientific research/publish papers are saying”. 🙂
Bigfoot is real!!! 😉
At least you can say that bigfoot is not real and not be called a “denier”.
You can talk about anything and try to formulate/create a scientific knowledge about anything, but any true scientific theory or model is open to criticism and should be based on concepts and hypotheses that could be proven wrong.
The ultimate test of any science are the observable facts, as precise and objectively observed as possible.
No science is absolutely true and/or irrefutable… except the modern GW models, which of course, are not a true scientific knowledge.
The use of mathematics can be misleading, especially the statistical models and when these models apply to analysis of data, instead of theoretical description.
It’s not enough to have sophisticate concepts and a nice mathematical formulation to have a scientific model, the facts must be described in an objective and logically meaningful way.
The true scientist should be open to be proven wrong all the time, but we all know that this doesn’t happen in real life.
1. anybody who thinks havin a PhD on a particular topic means anything else than having a PhD on a particular topic doesn’t understand what having a PhD means. This includes many people who have a PhD and treat it as a mark of battlefield-earned nobility
2. expanding earth would be more credible were it not for the snake-oil language it uses
3. most if not all scientific areas are open to self-skepticism. I remember listening to cosmologists nonplussed when one of them suggested Dark Matter and Dark Energy might not exist after all. So there’s both a consensus on DM/DE and a consensus on the possibility they’re bunk
4. all possibly scientific areas with social consequences are openly exploited for political reasons: see the wars on drugs or obesity, most illnesses attributed to “bad behaviors”, climate change, etc.
That’s why they’re not truly scientific, and display instead close-mindedness wrt skepticism.
Yeah, despite all of our “great achievements” as a civilization the simple fact that we mix science with politics so easily is a clear sign of our primitiveness (IMO), just because science is basically the only true objective knowledge we have.
The presence of a Phd conveys a desire for credentials. It conveys nothing about intellect.
Generally false, and generally said by those envious of the ability of others to accomplish something new.
re: “It took most of the 20th century for the consensus to accept the blatantly obvious fact of Continental Drift.” Author of Blog
Steven, I am commenting expecting the Wrath of Kahn type of response but here goes:
The young geologist, at the time, Sam Carey did yeoman work world wide popularizing Continental Drift among Geologists, helping the theory to be accepted. Later in his life he wrote three books recanting. He believed that the Expanding Earth Hypothesis better explains the position of the continents. I urge you to read some of his thoughts. One of his books contains the finest overview of geology I have ever read [Theories of the Earth and Universe, 206 pp., Stanford University Press. 1988] and has a rigorous critique of Continental Drift. He died in the early 2000s.
This web site acts a clearing house on the expanding earth hypothesis:
http://www.eearthk.com
Dan Kurt
Eeyup, between Harry Dale, Mr. Kurt, etc. you draw the truly deep thinkers…