Where is our thread to debate the existence of gravity?

I think first you'll have to manufacture a gravity-related political issue. Particle accelerator NIMBYs perhaps.

Where is our thread to debate the theory of gravity?

fixed

This thread is emblematic of exactly what we thought would happen over here. Last month you were overseeing an entire sub board on the philosophy of science, which was brilliant btw. Now you are over seeing a thread debating the existence of climate change. This is not a debate. Period. There is no other side no matter how many YouTube videos get posted.

This entire thread is a mockery of “both side-ism”. If you really wanted evidenced based fair debate this thread would be snap deleted.

I understand your position but I'm not that interested in debating the moderation philosophy in this thread.

Plus the playground is still open! I'm going to blag another Durkheim chapter or two tonight

Fine then I’ll say this and be done with it.

Anyone questioning climate change at this point should be treated as a 14 year old who still believes in the tooth fairy. They should be pitied.

It.is.not.a.debate.period.

For the record, unlike Juan, I actually know what I’m talking about. I did my PhD work in the field.

Could you please quote the post in this thread that states climate change doe not exist? Looks like you’re making stuff up.

Thanks. I’ll pass on your semantics debate about whether the tooth fairy can fly or if (s)he just climbs in the window.

In an Inconvenient Truth, Gore says, "Within the decade, there will be no more 'Snows of Kilimanjaro.'" And shows a pic from 1970 contrasted with a pic his friend took recently.




Well, it's now many years past the end of last decade. Are the snows of Kilimanjaro gone? Here's a picture from 2018:




Gore also said, in 2008, that the entire polar ice cap is expected to be gone within five years (presumably just at some point during the summer):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFmqtkeQy9c

The polar ice cap has never come anywhere near disappearing during the summer. The lowest it got was in 2012, when it reached a minimum of 3.4 million square kilometers. In 2018, the minimum summer extent was 4.6 million square kilometers.

Much of the rest of what people take issue with in An Inconvenient Truth is the implications that aren't explicit predictions. He'll say something like, "If the entire Antarctic ice sheet were to melt, this is the amount of coastline that would disappear." And then it shows giant cities across the globe being swallowed up by sea level rise. But it doesn't actually give a prediction of when or if the Antarctic ice sheet will completely melt. But audiences infer that it's some imminent event because ice is melting at alarming and unprecedented levels.

So there you have a few examples of what climate skeptics refer to when criticizing Gore, often in light of his status as a liberal hero, his Academy Award, his fortune from speaking fees that's paid for a huge-carbon-footprint mansion and private-jet travel, borne from creating and exploiting alarmism around climate change.

Does you certainty extend to a conviction that the money that needs to be spent to reverse it is worth it? Especially given that some countries won't do their part?

You don't just get to decree something is settled and there's no more debate. I could say the same thing about Christianity; it doesn't make all the people who believe in the tooth fairy—I mean, the Christian god—go away.

I'm pretty familiar with the climate skeptic talking points, and to a dispassionate audience, they're pretty convincing. I assume if you watch the YouTube video juan embedded (I didn't), that scientist brings up some compelling points countering the alarmism of climate change. You're stawmanning the hell out of the position of most Republicans when you say their skepticism only goes so far as saying that Time magazine said there would be global cooling thirty years ago so now all climate science is null and void. The standard position is more along the lines of: The climate is warming mostly because of natural processes, like solar fluctuations and other things we don't have a good handle on scientifically. We can show we don't have a good handle on them because look at all these predictions that have been way too alarmist over the years. So we refuse to destroy our economy and live in austerity to combat something that may be futile anyway (can't stop warming if we tried), and may not be that bad anyway (longer growing seasons, more plant cover, more temperate northern climates, can ship products over the ice-free north pole).

And I want to say that I'm not much of a skeptic on climate change, but I am confident that I could debate you from the skeptic side and it wouldn't be a total walkover. That is to say, there is a debate.

Up until a few months ago I defined myself as a skeptic. Not in the sense of a denier, but more like ‘I don’t know’ and even if I did I’m not going to have an impact on the issue one way or the other so why waste the time. I made the mistake of saying such on the old politics forum only to get bombarded with attacks similar in tone and substance to yours, with well_named being pretty much the exception. He didn’t so much try to convince me it was true but rather dumped a moral imperative on me to form an opinion. So I took a dive into the climate change literature, which I probably wouldn’t have without his prodding, and fwiw, here’s where I’m at:

The scientific consensus is that the global average surface temperature has risen over the last century. Scientific opinion on climate change was summarized in the 2001 Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The main conclusions on global warming at that time were as follows:

1. The global average surface temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2 °C since the late 19th century, and 0.17 °C per decade in the years 1971–2001.[5]
2. "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities", in particular emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.[6]
3. If greenhouse gas emissions continue the warming will also continue, with temperatures projected to increase by 1.4 °C to 5.8 °C between 1990 and 2100.[A] Accompanying this temperature increase will be increases in some types of extreme weather and a projected sea level rise.[7] The balance of impacts of global warming become significantly negative at larger values of warming.[8]

These findings are recognized by the national science academies of all the major industrialized nations;[9] the consensus has strengthened over time[10] and is now virtually unanimous.[11] The level of consensus correlates with expertise in climate science.[12]

My conclusion is that non-scientists have no grounds to challenge those core claims and due to the near unanimous consensus those who made it at least that far are basically compelled to accept the consensus. But if scientists who do have access to the data and studies want to challenge the consensus I don’t have a problem with that. That’s science, imo. But just because some scientists are doing so, I don’t think that’s sufficient reason for non-scientists to doubt the consensus, either.

Yes, please tell me where to find said thread.

Definitely interested in the exact cause of gravity... Please explain as if you are talking to a petulant 14 y.o.

Also, please include how confident you are that you know exactly what is the cause of gravity.

E.g. one theory holds that gravity is a consequence of the curvature of space-time... OK... Why is space-time curved?

Also, is gravity merely a characteristic of space-time, is it a force, is it a particle? Is it simultaneously all three?

[Spoil] Bonus question.

How many gravitons can dance on the head of a pin?[/quote]

Translation: you are correct I did make it up.

Top notch science itt. Does the tooth fairy have pink or blue wings?

So it was an incorrect prediction rather than a lie. Getting something wrong does not mean than the underlying theory is incorrect. Darwin made numerous incorrect statements in On the Origin of Species. The most famous one is that he believed that inheritance worked by a process referred to as blending. Off the top of my head, he also made incorrect predictions about the ancestry of domestic dogs. The fact that he made mistakes and inaccurate predictions does not mean that the theory that he proposed was incorrect.

I’m not in favour of popular science films and articles making these kinds of predictions as it enables people to use incorrect predictions as a tool to cast doubt on perfectly legitimate science. I suppose this is something that has to be done to make a film marketable to scientifically illiterate people.

A climate skeptic would respond with valid scientific arguments pointing out where the underlying science may be wrong rather than use a few incorrect predictions as gotchas. What you are referring to is science denialism rather than skepticism based on legitimate analysis of the data.

The accusation of hypocrisy is massively overused as a criticism as it does not address or refute the point being made. After Di Caprio won his Oscar lots of people called him a hypocrite. Whilst being accurate it does mean that what he said was wrong and it does not mean that he should not use his celebrity status to draw attention to an incredibly important issue. The Fox News crew repeatedly use the accusation of hypocrisy as a diversion tactic. It enables them to attack the likes of Gore and Di Caprio whilst ignoring the science. It is a valid complaint when discussing morality but I'm struggling to think of a situation where it has any relevance to a discussion about science.

So can we save time here and just put you in the camp that believes in climate change, but doesn't care?

Bolded should read 'it does not mean'.

The entirety of arguments purported by the AlGores of the world literally all come down to threats. So when the threats turn out to be nothing, is it appropriate to point the threats out?

"If we don't do something, in X years there will be no more snow on Kilimanjaro"

So we didn't "do something", X years went by, and the threat was shown to be hot air

If you believe that money is nothing but painted paper and that you can go into as much debt as you want, it certainly is.

The easiest way is to blow up an atomic bomb in the desert. It should be pretty cheap, because you can even use old stuff from the arsenals of the cold war.

I assume this comment is aimed at me as I'm the only person that mentioned global cooling in this thread?

I explicitly mentioned Sean Hannity when I made this comment. I did not state that it applies to anyone other than him so I did not strawman the position of most Republicans.

Also, why is anyone referring to the Republican position in a thread about a scientific concept? Science is based on evidence. Political allegiance should have nothing whatsoever to do with anyone's opinion on a scientific issue. This partisan nonsense is why we have kids being told that the world is literally 6,000 years old and it's why people are refusing to vaccinate their kids.

I care about things I might be able to change. in this case I'm thinking I might be able to change the ambiguity in a Clovis post

Ambiguity? I couldn’t have been less ambiguous. Anthropogenic climate change is real. Period. The IPCC is world class science. Period. Science isn’t decided by vote. Period. The level of “debate” itt this laughable terrible. Period.

What we should do about climate change is an interesting and important real debate. However, it’s not one I’m interested in discussing itt given the absolute base level of understanding of the science exhibited by posters. Lol YouTube’s and photos of mountains. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

You are above interesting and important debate, but not above shameless self indulgence, blanket insults, and incessant 0 content posts.

Almost verbatim of the Clovis anti-death penalty debate. Except for the color of the toothfairy's wings, that was new.