BBC staff ordered to stop giving equal airtime to climate deniers

>Options: A) The scientific method B) Organized religion.

So my comment was re: scientific method, "To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning"[1]

Not an advocation that global warming is provable in a closed environment - simply that climate data can be gathered and interpreted in a way that's reproducible.

Also, as you mentioned, warming is accelerating. The most common and destructive claim of climate change deniers is that our current conditions are part of a natural, precedented fluctuations in the earth's behavior. Reliably obtainable scientific data suggests otherwise.

> Alternatively: what is the conclusion if "steps leading to said truth" cannot, in fact, be reproduced ?

Then it can't be taken as fact, but as as tentative, fallible suggestion. This is where most religion diverges from science, which is the point of my previous comment.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

> Also, as you mentioned, warming is accelerating. The most common and destructive claim of climate change deniers is that our current conditions are part of a natural, precedented fluctuations in the earth's behavior. Reliably obtainable scientific data suggests otherwise.

No I mentioned that experiments and actual observed data diverged. Yet you don't even care that this happens.

Reliably obtainable scientific data suggests otherwise ? Ah ... let's take this claim, shall we ?

If you take IPCC AR0, AR1 and AR2, take their "best" prediction and 95% interval for the global temperature anomaly you will note that we are currently outside of that 95% interval.

So these theories made 5 predictions (in the 6th report you will not find a prediction anymore ...), and every testable prediction they made failed within the decade (the last 3 reports don't have data for a decade available yet).

So while I'm not defending climate deniers here, can we please keep these little details in mind ? This is what you describe as "reproducible" and this is what things like the Kyoto accords are based on.

Like reproducible, reliable means something entirely different in my book.

> Then it can't be taken as fact, but as as tentative, fallible suggestion. This is where most religion diverges from science, which is the point of my previous comment.

As I said climate science does not satisfy this standard. I hope you can see that this casts doubt on just how different from religion it is ... especially popular opinion on the matter.

Here's how climate science works:

1) we see something very strange happening to measures of temperature in the last 150 years

2) let's do experiments ... they don't match reality

3) let's do statistics on these measurements ... doesn't work (in fact Chaos theory was based on this work) (this is 1960-1970)

4) Let's ignore our findings in 3, take invalid statistics, make "best" approximations of how the data evolved in the last 150 years only and treat the result as gospel

5) Since the error bars on those "best" approximations are extremely inconvenient, let's just ignore them.

6) statistically inferred rules that are inferred over a warming period only show that it will keep warming ! And of course they do show a limited correlation between co2 increase and warming.

7) We actually don't have any better theory, so let's actually use this. Let's erase normal error bars theory (because they give unreasonably large error bars, far bigger than the observed changes), and just run our model 100 times and where 95 time it ends up that must the be 95% certainty interval, right ?

8) Half the world catches up to it and it becomes a defining theory of politics. So now make sure half the world's idiots make idiotic claims in favour of this theory, the other half make equally idiotic claims against it.

Let's give a bit of a summary here. Mathematically speaking, climate science is a load of bull. There are so many problems with it, it's bad, bad, bad, bad theory. Very bad. There is no reproducibility. There are serious problems with the measurements they start with. Their "cherry-picking" of statistics theory, and regular mixing in of nonsense is ...

So why is it the "consensus" ? Well, very simple : it's by far the best explanation we have for the observed warming.

But given just how this theory works, let's not pretend it is anywhere near "reliable", not the measurements, not the theory, it is also not "reproducible" at all. It's merely the best we got.

See "Who's Afraid of the Naturalistic Fallacy?" by Oliver Curry for the prevailing view on morality and evolution (in the absence of religious assumptions). No naturalist is looking to nature for morality, we look to our values as beings designed by evolution for sociality, and the argument is as sound as it was back when Hume made it. http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep04234247.pdf

You can also review Jonathan Haidt's research on moral emotions and evolution to see that science can do very well on the topic of morality. http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/alternate_vers...

>>>However, if you look at religions, you can find plenty of argument for empathy and non-violence. Of course, not in all religions, but at least you can find some sources for these ideas there, while you find very little in the empirical science. Same goes for other ideas that underly most of western society, such as Protestant work ethics, or rule of law, or concepts of law and justice, etc. You may dismiss the religion as stupid superstitions, but be careful not to throw out the whole civilization we're living in that was built on the same basis.

But why has violence decreased and so much moral progress made while secularism has also increased? Attributing the good to religion even in part just won't work. It seems, rather, that religion is just another cultural phenomena being shaped and changed by more powerful and influential factors in human moral evolution, as Pinker argues in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature