Is Global Warming the New Phrenology?

Question

At one time phrenology was considered to be real because it was plausible and a consensus of very well educated scientist said it was real.

Eugenics is another scientific field where the data was viewed as plausible, so the consensus of scientist believed that it was real. Some today still believe that eugenics is real.

Then there were the scientists and experts who claimed that planes would drop out of the sky, banks would lose all our money, the stock market would crash, toasters would fail, gas pumps would be inoperable, cars would stop working at the stroke of midnight on Jan 1, 2000 because of the Y2K problem.

Time as proved all these experts wrong. How much longer will it be before we put the global warming alarmist into this group?

Gravity never required a consensus because just one man with mathematical proof was able to show that it existed. And the work could be verified by anyone, even high school students.

This is why GW believers refuse to let others review their work. The data would never stand up to outside scrutiny.

Science is wrong because no one can predict the future. Tell us how much the climate will warm for every million tons of co2 placed in the atmosphere, tell us how warm the climate will be in 6 months, 1 year, 5, and 10 years. Let’s see how close you’ll be. Predict the number of hurricanes next year. Anything except, it’s getting warmer, trust us.

Answer 1

You don't have to dig very far or open your eyes very wide to see that the global warming/climate change/chicken little proponents are mainly politically motivated.

It comes down to control: Take a "common sense" topic, fund some scientists to "study" it and come up with results that back your agenda, unleash the results on the population and write laws to ensure everyone complies with your point of view.

This topic is particularly insidious because it affects so many aspects of our lives. Transportation, industry, commerce, travel, tourism, the trade deficit, recreation, agriculture, home design, energy usage and so many more things are being altered "for the better". Or so they say. For crying out loud, they are spending taxpayer money on figuring out how to make cows belch and fart less!

Funny how these changes hobble America (already a clean country relative to its industrial output) while gross polluters like China and India are given a free pass. It is like we are supposed to apologize and punish ourselves for being successful. If this is truly a "global" problem, strict and immediate action should be taken to restrict the growing economies (and pollution) in developing nations. Why is this not being done?

What gets me riled even more is that if you don't drink the eco-nazi koolade and worship Arch-Druid Gore, you are somehow a planet-hater, and likely kill puppies and kittens in your free time, too.

The planet's ecology is a self-correcting mechanism. It warms and cools on epic cycles that we have no control over. Pretending that 10 years of "warming trends", or even 100 (or 1,000!) is something to be concerned about is fairly ridiculous. But not as stupid as deluding yourself into believing that riding a bike to work, changing your diet to reduce your "carbon footprint" and boycotting Hummer dealerships will have any impact whatsoever on the planet.

Humans are an adaptable species. We live in mild climates, tropics, arctic, desert, underwater and in space. Which is ultimately easier? Adapting to our surroundings like we have always done, or trying to change the habits of 6 Billion people?

Answer 2

Oh give me a break.

Gravity was once considered to be real because it was plausible and a consensus of very well educated scientists said it was real.

Evolutionary theory is another scientific field where the data was viewed as plausible, so the scientific consensus was that it was real. Some today still believe that evolution is real.

Then there was some bullcrap I made up about Y2K because I watched too much TV in 1999.

Time has proved all these experts right. How much longer will it be before we put the global warming acknowledgers into this group?

I love this argument - 'scientists have been wrong before, therefore they're wrong about global warming!' If this is the best case you can come up with against anthropogenic global warming, you should just give up global warming denial right now. At least you're not denying that there's a scientific consensus. That's a step in the right direction.

Answer 3

No, global warming is like modern evolutionary synthesis. Scientists laughed it off at first, but one the evidence started mounting they were forced to accept it.

The only part of climate change theory that is remotely similar to eugenics might perhaps be the idea of climatic balance (the idea that there was a 'correct' temperature baseline and that the climate was simply the fluctuations of the temperature around this baseline. Most often referred to when people ask "is there a 'correct' temperature for Earth?"). Scientists hung unto the outmoded idea for years before modern global warming theory came along and blew the whole thing out of the water.

Also of note is that fact that modern scientific methods weren't developed until the late nineteenth century (the idea of falsifiability wasn't even put forth until the 1930's). So there couldn't possibly have been the same sort of scientific consensus over these issues as you claim.

Answer 4

No, global warming is scientificly observed TODAY. Take a trip to Alaska, Greeland, and Antarcica.... you can visbily see and feel the effects.

For the record, there was never any scientific "consensus" over phrenology. It was not taken serioulsy even when it was in full swing during the 1800's.

The question of eugenics isn't scientific. It is scientifically possible, espeically with cloning, to breed genetic traits. The question of eugentics is a MORAL and ETHICAL question. It's not being done not because it's not scientifically possible, but because it's immoral.

Y2K was a real problem, although some (mind you, the conservative side of the aisle aka the Jesus is Comming feaks) went crazy with thier end-of-the-world fantasies. Fortuatnely, the government and private industry mobilized to work out all the kinks. Ever hear of the federal Y2K Commission?

Answer 5

I agree whole-heartedly with Bob on this one, while it is true the phrenology was considered a real science for quite some time, there was eventually enough knowledge and technology to make pseudoscience in the minds of most people.
Global warming alarmists blow things out of proportion, but the real experts are in consensus that there is something along the lines of global warming happening, whether man-made or other wise.

Answer 6

it particularly is no longer a question of genuine or fake. All sane human beings already understand international warming to be a hoax. The questionh is how this hoax persevered for thus see you later! This hoax has already value society trillionjs of greenbacks in lost productiveness. Ask the undesirable in Africa and different undeveloped international places what they think of of this hoax. Why do you think of they're now having foodstuff shortages. in case you like the respond it quite is via the fact some international warming wacko concept it a good theory to apply foodstuff as a gasoline! how many toddlers have long gone to mattress hungry by using fact the money isn't there for foodstuff? how many toddlers might have been fed with the trillion USD wasted on nonsense? perform a little examining. All and that i propose ALL respected scientists understand that there is no scientific information to assist international warming. examine the Wall highway magazine for Apr 18 2008. examine the article by way of Patrick Michaels the precise professor of environmental examine interior the rustic on the Univ. of Virginia. additionally examine how scientific information is altered by way of junk scientists to fulfill the objectives of the international warmist loonies!. examine out the climate in the time of lots of the rustic and tell me in case you haven't any longer examine of greater chilly spells! greater human beings die of chilly climate than of warm climate. you may ask, "what's incorrect with believing in international warming inspite of the certainty that it particularly is a hoax?" i will inform you what's incorrect "it hurts the lives of billions of folk and for some unfortunates it expenses them their lives". So please write your gov't representative and shall we a minimum of get the gov't to no longer waste our moneyon this hoax! enable's get international warming to be considered a faith the place people who want to worship earth as a god can gain this yet people who worship the genuine God at the instant are not compelled to have confidence additionally. this additionally gets the gov't out of the international warming hoax as a fashion to maintain the separation of church and state.

Answer 7

Looking for a job at FoxNews are you?

Why stop there? With that egg sized lump on your head and your nonsensical statements, it's in the stars ... you could be the next President!

Eugenics was an American invention which is still in existence today, I bet you support it. Now it's called Genome Project, cloning and stem cell research. It took a fascist nazi like yourself to turn it into a reason to kill.

Get an education and get a life.

And practice eugenics, don't have any children!

Answer 8

Nope. The things you talk about were considered real by a small group of scientists with theories and no data. Much like the global warming deniers of today.

Global warming, on the other hand has a mountain of data:

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html
summarized at:
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

and, because of the data, virtually the entire scientific community:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

"The fact that the community overwhelmingly supports the consensus is evidenced by picking up any copy of Journal of Climate or similar, any scientific program at the meetings, or simply going to talk to scientists. I challenge you, if you think there is some un-reported division, show me the hundreds of abstracts that support your view - you won't be able to. You can argue whether the consensus is correct, or what it really implies, but you can't credibly argue it doesn't exist."

Dr. James Baker - NOAA

You can not believe global warming is real, just as you can believe the Earth is 6000 years old. But, in both cases, you have to ignore the data and the methods of science.

"This is why GW believers refuse to let others review their work. The data would never stand up to outside scrutiny."

An outrageous lie. The science is there for everyone to see, with hundreds of references to the source literature:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html

Have at it. Hundreds of scientists already have reviewed it.

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_Annexes.pdf
pages 969-979

Would you expect to understand quantum mechanics or the general theory of relativity based on a Yahoo answer?

Answer 9

There's some truth in what you say. Most of us know that global cooling was in fashion only a few decades ago and in the seventies the conventional wisdom was that only dietary fat can make you fat. How soon we forget. Today hardly anybody talks about global cooling and everybody knows that carbs are fattening too.

Al Gore's doomsday scenario is obviously politically motivated and his Oscar Award winning video is full of inaccuracies thinly disguised as science but facts don't matter to the global warming groupies, to them it's religious doctrine and anyone who questions it or points to its fallacies must be either an oil company stooge or a heretic.

Answer 10

Y2K did not cause any problem to our society because corporations spent large sums of money correcting their software well ahead of time. If you think it took care of itself, you have no idea about the real world.

Grow up!

Climatologists are constantly reviewing each others work, their concensus has developed over years. The problem is, the reviewers you are listening to, have nothing valid to say and hence resort to propaganda and rhetorics.