Is Global Warming the New Geocentrism?

Question

Aristotle and Ptolemy, two very smart men, held in very high esteem by their peers, and with no specific agenda except for the search of knowledge once believed the Earth was at the center of the solar system and that everything revolved around the Earth. After all, what reason would they have to lie?

The consensus of the scientist agreed with Aristotle and Ptolemy, and soon their ideas were incorporated into the laws of the time by the gvmt of the time (the church). And this idea was taught in the schools.

It took skeptics like Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo to speak up and challenge the popular consensus. And I'm glad they did, and I proud to be associated with great skeptics like them.

Hansen and Mann are then modern Aristotle and Ptolemy and global warming is the new Geocentrism.

The believers are the church and the skeptics are Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo.

What are your thoughts? Do you see things the same way?

Answer 1

Fad science is always the same. In the sixties and seventies, we were going to be starving and out of fresh water by the turn of the century. That didn't happen, obviously. Global climate models that claim to predict the future are about 1 degree better than using crystal balls. For every negative thing mankind will do that can possibly affect the climate, mother nature will come up with something to negate it, be it disease, weather, floods, whatever. Mankind has to learn to adapt, not control.

Answer 2

Yes I do see things the same way. I'm skeptical of any scientist who is so sure of a theory. When their data is very limited. If I could I'd go around and talk to all the people 90 years old and older throughout the world.

I wouldn't trust computer models to be accurate.

I would look at the past and realize that my data is limited by the fact I wasn't alive then and state things like this time is faster than it ever happened in the past. Which I feel isn't true, it's their mantra to help keep an alarmist view going.

Since the only animals that survived and adapted during the first Ice Age were the ones near the equator.

From a site Global Warming Alarmists love:

"The earliest well-documented ice age, and probably the most severe of the last 1 billion years, occurred from 850 to 630 million years ago (the Cryogenian period) and may have produced a Snowball Earth in which permanent ice covered the entire globe. This ended very rapidly as water vapor returned to Earth's atmosphere. It has been suggested that the end of this ice age was responsible for the subsequent Ediacaran and Cambrian Explosion, though this theory is recent and controversial."

Same article about Volcanism:

"It is theoretically possible that undersea volcanoes could end an ice age by causing global warming. One suggested explanation of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum is that undersea volcanoes released methane from clathrates and thus caused a large and rapid increase in the greenhouse effect. There appears to be no geological evidence for such eruptions at the right time, but this does not prove they did not happen."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

Answer 3

If Galileo were alive today he would more than likely be a skeptic, the argument that CO2 levels are unprecedented and so are temperatures over the last thirty years, so it is more likely than not, that man made CO2 emissions are causing the warming. This a very familiar tune that has been sung many times throughout history.

Answer 4

No. Unlike the early scientists, the global warming crowd won't look at facts that hit them over the head. I have a gut feeling Aristotle and Ptolemy were more open minded than the global warming nuts. Their science isn't science at all but is instead a study in obfuscation and demagoguery. With respect to their data, they select, reject, truncate, falsify, and omit what they see fit and then pat each other on the back in the name of "peer review".

It will be interesting when the story shifts to how wrong they were.

Answer 5

Throughout histroy skeptics generally haven't been popular with the establishment - but they are necessary for scientific advancement. If everyone went along with what self proclaimed experts claimed, we'd still be in the dark ages.

Answer 6

There is a difference between skepticism, upon which science is dependent, and denialism. In skepticism you look for assumptions and probe them for veracity. In denialism you find whatever means you can to throw doubt upon a finding or theory. Time after time you see in _most_ people who take the “people are not causing global warming” stance not skepticism but denialism. You see demagoguery and rhetorical parlor games, you see a surficial approach to the science, only deep enough to cast doubt but not so deep as to actually understand. There are people who, for emotional reasons (politics, or they don’t like “dirty hippies” or environmentalists) need the theory of anthropogenic global warming to be wrong. They are denialists.

Answer 7

It's exactly the reverse. The church leaders were the "skeptics".

Once Galileo turned his telescope on Venus and saw phases, every good scientist knew the Earth moved around the Sun. The data proved it.

But religious and politically motivated "skeptics" ignored the data and the science. They continued to insist on the discredited idea that the Sun moved around the Earth.

"Skepticism" about global warming is the new Geocentrism. Exactly like the church, they ignore the data and the science, and support ideas that are scientifically discredited. Proof here:

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462

If you want an analogy for Galileo, it's James Hansen. For years he was ridiculed by many, and persecuted by his employer (the US government) for stating that global warming was real.

Now the data has vindicated him.

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

Good websites for more info:

http://profend.com/global-warming/
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/
http://www.realclimate.org
"climate science from climate scientists"