A Reliable Negative Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity

Whatever you say, BTA. I'm sorry, but I'm going to side with the IPCC's consensus, especially considering that 97% of all peer reviewed papers that held an opinion on AGW sided with the consensus.

Happy to, if that was actually going to be the case. It isn't, though. Favoring green energy development or (*gasp*) nuclear power at the expense of fossil fuels isn't actually going to lead to a net loss of jobs. Hell, increased nuclear power dependency would actually decrease the cost of energy. We aren't going to stop drilling for oil and strip mining tomorrow, after all, so putting real limits on carbon output while simultaneously supporting green(er) energy production is likely to create more jobs than it costs us -- at least in the short term.

Aside from all of that, the fossil fuels we have are all we have to last us for the next few million years. Our future generations may need some of that, themselves, you know. One way or another, we already know that we're going to have to greatly diminish our reliance on this vanishing resource, and the sooner we do, the better off we'll be.

Global warming aside, our carbon output is leading to ocean acidification, which is having an adverse effect on marine life. Considering that a lot of our food lives in the ocean, lowering our carbon output would be a good idea even if without considering Climate Change. I doubt I need to go into any detail about why smog is bad, and lowering our carbon output will, shockingly enough, reduce the measurable health effects that smog causes in the large cities where most of us humans live.

Even if global warming wasn't the sweeping existential problem the scientific community claims it to be, the very same solutions to the problems we as a species currently face each day of our lives are the solutions needed to answer this particular crisis. Convenient, huh?

 

What a shock! If you look hard enough, you can find anyone who will say anything. It isn't like we haven't documented the damage ocean acidification has had on intertidal life or anything.

No one posting in this thread is a climatologist. I don't go to lawyers for brain surgery, I don't go to Medical Doctors for tax advice, and I don't ask accountants to rewire my house. Despite being a Medical doctor***, I also wouldn't take dietary advice from Dr Atkins. Why? Because his dietary advice flies in the face of what the rest of the medical establishment and the American Dietetics Association. Hell, maybe he's right and dietary cholesterol doesn't matter, the daily RDA doesn't mean jack ****, and all carbohydrates are bad for you, contrary to what the rest of the medical and dietetic professions have to say about it. It's possible, but I'm hardly qualified to make that determination myself. As smart as I may be, the smarter thing is to defer to the majority opinion of trained professionals qualified to make such determinations -- especially when it's my body we're talking about.

When deciding what the sanest course regarding environmental policy should be, I'm going to defer to the majority opinion of climatologists. Any sane person should. Lawyers should practice law, doctors should practice medicine, and laymen shouldn't politicize environmental policy. The internet makes us all think we're entitled to an opinion, and we are, but that doesn't mean that we're all entitled to shape environmental policy. I'm not, you aren't, and neither is any person to have posted in this thread. It doesn't matter, though. The same people have been saying the same crap as long as this forum has been here. It's why I normally can't be bothered to post anymore. What's the point of dancing when the steps never change?

*** Who ironically suffered from a heart attack, congestive heart failure, and hypertension before his death.

 

A rousing monologue on the merits of following the majority. Although it seems to run contrary to the values of individualism and intellectualism, it is in fact the wisest thing to do in this situation. There is no greater sign of wisdom than being aware enough to admit that you don't know. This is a case where we can conveniently defer to experts and their consensus.

But what does that mean for the topic of religion, where theists are the majority?
At least there is no consensus!

This is probably yet another off-topic issue, but it's been fairly well documented that whenever anybody invents or discovers a method to provide humanity with vast amounts of cheap, easily renewable energy, that the people who are in the business of SELLING energy are actually the ones who go ape.
I'm thinking of Thomas Edison vs. Nikola Tesla: "One of Tesla's final gifts to the world was a tower near New York City that would have provided free wireless energy to the entire planet. The man who financed the construction of the tower shut it down when he learned that there would be no way to regulate the energy and therefore it wouldn't make money."
Tesla invented alternating current, but the risk that it might cause electricity to become too cheap to sell, was why Edison's ridiculous, unworkable notion of direct current was given so much time and attention. Until they figured out how to sell alternating current.
Tesla also invented wireless electricity, but refused to make it public for fear of it being stolen. And he was devising an impenetrable national defense grid which he would gift to eavery country in the world - it would've made the US anti-missile firewall look like a joke. He was adapting it so that it would require enormous generators impossible to move around. This way it would be unmovable, and only useful for defense. He was hoping to end war!

OK, I completely derailed myself with this story. I should've taken the electric car, geothermal or solar power as an example.

 

Drew, have you ever seen how scientific papers are reviewed? Do you know how large the pool of scientists is they draw for reviews?

In my field, to be published you need to send your paper to a journal, they then send it off to one of their "unbiased" reviewers -- one of perhaps a dozen "accepted" experts. This dozen is continually reading and approving each other's publications, stroking each other on the back for how brilliant they are -- and killing any paper that may shed doubt on their own work. This happens every nearly every field of science; a dozen or so people decide what is and is not publishable. Editors in the fields of chemistry and physics tend to get relieved if they show bias, but I haven't seen the same level of policing in other fields (to be fair that doesn't mean it's not there).

You can look through history and see many examples where a brilliant scientist was snubbed by others in his or field because they just didn't like the person (including the first person to find a high temperature superconductor -- the second guys got the Nobel Prize). It happens in all fields.

That 97% of peer reviewed papers show one point of view is not surprising given the reviewers are chosen from the same pool. It doesn't mean they're wrong, but it does cause some concern.

And BTA is right -- your comment about nuclear power being less expensive is not true currently. Perhaps in a future where coal, natural gas, and oil are extremely high priced it may prove true. For now, states that use a high percentage of nuclear power (like Illinois) pay a premium.

Coin:

There was a cool game with that from Origin -- Martian Dreams. I, for one, would not want massive EM generators transmitting powers through the air to my home. The high powered radars on naval ships can burn the paint off another ship that's too close. And those are really low powered compared to the Tesla concept. Oh, yes ... I rarely believe the wisest choice is to become a lemming.

In a related topic: I was watching a program about economic theory. The current prevailing belief is the "collective is smarter than the individual." Basically the stock market, being tied together by millions of computers using many different algorithms and monitors by millions of individuals, as a collective "unit" is better than any individual and will automatically compensate for an emotional response (i.e., remove panic from the market). This doesn't seem that correct to me (and it could be I simply don't understand the concepts), but it's the prevailing theory that was put out by a Nobel Prize winning economist from Univ of Chicago. A colleague at the Univ of Chicago has a different theory and has math models that show panic can run rampant in a "collective" -- it's an interesting theory and seems to be a better fit for the stock market ... and perhaps elsewhere.

 

So in this comparison, if you stand by the global warming consensus, you will fall off a cliff with the other lemmings?

 

It would be worth pointing out that the phrase "oceanic acidification" is actually a bit inaccurate, the ocean is still PH alkalinic (8.14 approx) and is moving slowly towards PH neutral (7) so technically the ocean is currently neutralising, not acidifying.

 

I'd just like to say that, given how far off-topic this discussion is, I'm impressd that it hasn't also become yet another gun-control debate.

 

I have been following this thread from the beginning. Though it has taken MANY turns, it has been quite fun and entertaining to follow. And after all of this, I can honestly say I'm even more confused about global warming...

 

Acidifying means you're moving in one direction on the pH scale (lower pH) ... neutralizing means you're moving to the middle. In this case both terms would be correct (with regard to pH, not the bleaching of coral -- which I don't know enough about to comment).

 

No, you're doing a great job at sowing confusion.

 

Ah, but although that may be your intent, the intent of the stories you are purveying is in fact to sow confusion.

Sneers aside, since Blades is from the U.S., the clarity he may at first have had on the subject was that "the science in still under debate". Which it isn't really, since there is an overwhelming consensus based on compelling evidence. If he is now confused on what the truth of the matter is, then I'm actually the culprit.

Being doubtful of the media stories is a healthy development!
wattsupwiththat was in fact involved in engineering the climategate scandal, so that website is hardly a maverick, more like the source of the noise.

 

I am no scientist. I tend to go with my gut and what my eyes tell me and what my heart tells me. Which is... weather patterns seem to me to be more extreme over the last decade. Natural disasters seem to be more common. I see a reason for this though. More media coverage on everything. Every little thing is reported as a major issue and blown to incredible proportions. Instead of letting the experts deal with it as in the past, EVERYONE and their mother has an opinion that they feel is informed. And when you pummel the masses with this effect, it changes perceptions for the Average Joe on just about every effing thing in the world. We live in effed up times....

 

BTA I used the word "seem" in there. Twice. I think the whole topic is overblown by the abundance of uninformed media outlets that we suffer from these days which makes everyone question everything, which completely works against humanity finding the answers it needs.