Thursday, January 9, 2020

Do You Believe in Science?

Should I believe in science as pop culture would define it?

No. Nobody should believe in science any more than anyone should simply believe in math.


Now, would this imply that Custodia Sepulchrum goes in for promulgating a 4000 year old flat Earth over which the sun, moon, planets and stars orbit around? Or that the Apollo moon landings were not only hoaxes but there are no rockets launching astronauts into space? Nope.

This sort of caricature is the sort of false dichotomy that grifters and idiots use to discredit anyone not buying into either their scam or their imbecilic view of the world and what they fear.

It's just that science is not a belief system. We do not accept what scientists tell us as an article of faith, just trust that they're right. It's that scientists prove theories through repeatable experiments or with models that make predictions that are verified empirically. If you want to believe in something, find a religion. Science is based on accurate and precise measurements of the physical world around us, theories are always open to dispute and are often replaced by new theories that better explain observations and measurements. Skepticism and questioning and debating theories old and new are the very heart of science. Otherwise, science would never progress.

To say something is "settled science" just as to ask if one "believes in science" is not science but a pop-culture religion that bastardizes the word science so that I'll denote as "SCIENCE!".

Let's look at the latest "settled science" blaring headlines of imminent doom "SCIENCE!" fad: Climate change!

So do I believe in climate change?

This latest incarnation of apocalypse porn to either sell us more crony capitalist goods and services nobody wants or needs or to justify the further expansion in size and power of the managerial/nanny state. Of course climate changes over time and it's been happening since this planet was formed. In fact, the Earth has had four different atmospheres since its formation and has been for the most part hot house Earth interspersed with periodic ice ages. To think that humans contributing 10% of all carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is going to send the planet into a fiery death spiral after surviving 5 major extinction events with the last one most likely caused by a 10 Km asteroid impact. Read what a mess that caused here and honestly tell me CO2 going from 380 ppm (that's parts per million) to 400 ppm, which is .04%, 4 hundredths of one percent, has caused anything even within less than several of orders of magnitude as bad. Show me anything bad that's happened because of CO2 and I mean real things not some computer model based on maybe or could be. Computer models, by the way, like the GCM models of CMIP that haven't gotten any predictions right yet. Prove it, that's real science. Further, I doubt we humans can top the environmental damage of the Chicxulub impactor even if we try.

So 400 ppm CO2 is horrifying? Well, after the unbreathable primordial atmosphere of the Hadean Eon 4.5 to 4 billion years ago, through a still unbreathable atmosphere of mostly CO2/nitrogen to the breathable carboniferous period of 358 million years ago, the world didn't end. Even with 800 ppm to even 1700 ppm CO2 up through the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago . Faint young sun? That's only a hypothesis- prove it.

So, no I don't "believe" in climate change, I accept that climate changes over time and life adapts and goes on as fact. But I don't accept the hyperbolic ravings of green neo-puritans with their fire and brimstone sermons based only on fear mongering. Greta and her "how dare you" can go shove it. This isn't science but "SCIENCE!". I accept science when it shows proof.

Science, insist on the real thing with provable facts,  never settle for cheap imitations.


Donald Cavaioli

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