[Vision2020] When the Lunatics Run the Asylum

Sat Feb 11 13:38:16 PST 2017

However "honest" Mr. Foreman finds his opinions, they are abysmally
indefensible (and profoundly ignorant) when compared to verifiable facts.
The following article explains, at least in part, his inability to recognize
the thinking errors he made in his curiously wrongheaded approach to climate
change in his response to a constituent..

Rose Huskey

"At some point in the history of all scientific theories, only a minority of
scientists-or even just one-supported them, before evidence accumulated to
the point of general acceptance. The Copernican model, germ theory, the
vaccination principle, evolutionary theory, plate tectonics and the big bang
theory were all once heretical ideas that became consensus science. How did
this happen?

An answer may be found in what 19th-century philosopher of science William
Whewell called a "consilience of inductions." For a theory to be accepted,
Whewell argued, it must be based on more than one induction-or a single
generalization drawn from specific facts. It must have multiple inductions
that converge on one another, independently but in conjunction. "Accordingly
the cases in which inductions from classes of facts altogether different
have thus jumped together," he wrote in his 1840 book The Philosophy of the
Inductive Sciences, "belong only to the best established theories which the
history of science contains." Call it a "convergence of evidence."

Consensus science is a phrase often heard today in conjunction with
anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Is there a consensus on AGW? There is.
The tens of thousands of scientists who belong to the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American
Geophysical Union, the American Medical Association, the American
Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society, the Geological
Society of America, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and, most notably,
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change all concur that AGW is in fact
real. Why?

It is not because of the sheer number of scientists. After all, science is
not conducted by poll. As Albert Einstein said in response to a 1931 book
skeptical of relativity theory entitled 100 Authors against Einstein, "Why
100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough." The answer is that there
is a convergence of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry-pollen, tree
rings, ice cores, corals, glacial and polar ice-cap melt, sea-level rise,
ecological shifts, carbon dioxide increases, the unprecedented rate of
temperature increase-that all converge to a singular conclusion. AGW
doubters point to the occasional anomaly in a particular data set, as if one
incongruity gainsays all the other lines of evidence. But that is not how
consilience science works. For AGW skeptics to overturn the consensus, they
would need to find flaws with all the lines of supportive evidence and show
a consistent convergence of evidence toward a different theory that explains
the data. (Creationists have the same problem overturning evolutionary
theory.) This they have not done.

A 2013 study published in Environmental Research Letters by Australian
researchers John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli and their colleagues examined 11,944
climate paper abstracts published from 1991 to 2011. Of those papers that
stated a position on AGW, about 97 percent concluded that climate change is
real and caused by humans. What about the remaining 3 percent or so of
studies? What if they're right? In a 2015 paper published in Theoretical and
Applied Climatology, Rasmus Benestad of the Norwegian Meteorological
Institute, Nuccitelli and their colleagues examined the 3 percent and found
"a number of methodological flaws and a pattern of common mistakes." That
is, instead of the 3 percent of papers converging to a better explanation
than that provided by the 97 percent, they failed to converge to anything.

"There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global
warming," Nuccitelli concluded in an August 25, 2015, commentary in the
Guardian. "Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of
other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on. There is a 97% expert
consensus on a cohesive theory that's overwhelmingly supported by the
scientific evidence, but the 2-3% of papers that reject that consensus are
all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to
have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting,
ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics." For example,
one skeptical paper attributed climate change to lunar or solar cycles, but
to make these models work for the 4,000-year period that the authors
considered, they had to throw out 6,000 years' worth of earlier data.

Such practices are deceptive and fail to further climate science when
exposed by skeptical scrutiny, an integral element to the scientific
process.

This article was originally published with the title "Consilience and
Consensus"

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-climate-skeptics-are-wrong/

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Saundra Lund
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2017 11:10 AM
To: 'Moscow Vision 2020'
Subject: [Vision2020] When the Lunatics Run the Asylum

Visionaries:

Prior to the election, some of us were aware of the unhinged extremism that
is Dan Foreman, which is why he lost the Republican primary in Latah County
for sheriff.  Rank partisanship -- rather than running a worthy candidate -
"inspired" the local GOP party to decide that particular loser would make a
great fill-in candidate for senator.  SMH.  While many folks weren't aware
of the depths of Foreman's extremism, one thing is certain:  local
Republican party leaders absolutely knew and backed him anyway.  Their plan
was to keep a tight lid on his extremism for public consumption just to get
someone elected with a "R" after his name rather than run a quality
candidate.  Sad!

The rest of us - at least those of us with connected brain cells, anyway -
realized how completely out of touch with reality Foreman was in early
January when he was outed by in an article entitled, "Idaho lawmaker would
charge women who have abortions with murder
<http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/artic
le125859554.html> ."

And, this theocrat craving man just continues to let his freak flag fly
high, and we can now add anti-science and anti-common sense to his litany of
"antis" which include (but are not limited to) anti-women, anti-child,
anti-public education, anti-road, anti-public & common good, and
anti-Constitution.  

Oh, and we can also add that he's a voracious consumer of Fake News.  Sad!

If there are any reasonable people who haven't yet realized the depth of
betrayal of our district by local Republican party leadership, here's a
letter he recently wrote to a constituent
<http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=87dde331565b4cee6328a4a13&id=2c0bf8aa4
2&e=4950b149ab> :

If it weren't so serious, it would be funny, right?  Here's a man lamenting
the loss of critical thinking skills who himself lacks the critical thinking
skills to recognize he's pushing fake news, for the love of God, and who is
fine with gutting and dumbing down public education so our children will
never develop the critical thinking skills he's whining about.

And, all of this from a man who couldn't critically think himself out of a
wet paper bag.  Sad!

It's no wonder intelligent life-long Republicans here in Latah County have
been worried for quite a few years and have quit being "party" people with
the spread of the rabid extremism that has infected the state and local
Republican parties.  Perhaps that exodus is a significant factor in the
local Republican party not having a quality candidate to run for the senate
in the last election.

Several weeks ago - after that first article - I heard rumors of a recall
effort.  Does anyone know anything more about that?  If the local Republican
Party lacks the ability to keep this horror in check or convince him to step
down so someone not unhinged can step up to represent us, perhaps a recall
is the way to go.

Saundra Lund

Moscow, ID

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards out of men.

~ Abraham Lincoln

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