Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?

[elcorso]

Because people have feelings, emotions, grievance, anger, hallucinations, etc. These things easily override logic and science.

 

Oh no. There is science of feelings, emotions, grievance, anger, hallucinations, etc.

 

Just go to college and ask for the specialty you want, they will immediately create the career. But it has to be 'legal', do not ask for example to be a cocaine dealer, or a sicario.

 

Roch

[elcorso]

Australia is presently leading the world in the fight against "coffin nails" Our figures for the drop in the number of smokers speak for themselves, and when later figures become available there will almost certainly be a marked further drop in the % of smokers. We also have restrictions about smoking in many public areas etc. It is also an offence to smoke with children in your car.

Perhaps "Big Tobacco" and it's lobbyists fund either or both of your political parties, so you are afraid to take stronger anti smoking measures ?

BTW, my first wife has terminal lung cancer from smoking. Apparently she didn't quit the habit soon enough.

 

What a sick joke. Clearly, you guys are too scared to make them unaffordable to most !

 

No Cookies | The Courier-Mail

 

Hi Alex,

 

Although I'm a smoker I agree that my cigarette smoke does not have to pollute the lungs of others who do not smoke and and especially children. But honestly I believe there is abuse of our freedom, for example in my country is not allowed in public parks even without people around.

 

If they do the same with stress, being our leaders what more they produce, are a lot more would reduce the total number of diseases of all kinds. Much more than the tobacco prohibition.

 

Kind regards,

 

Roch

[Jud]

Hey- I do not believe I put any references up from any web site Jud - that was your contribution. Not that I am keeping track..

 

How quickly we forget....

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/slightly-ot-interesting-link-please-dont-start-argument-19709/index4.html#post307103

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/slightly-ot-interesting-link-please-dont-start-argument-19709/index4.html#post307132

[Priaptor]

Australia is presently leading the world in the fight against "coffin nails" Our figures for the drop in the number of smokers speak for themselves, and when later figures become available there will almost certainly be a marked further drop in the % of smokers. We also have restrictions about smoking in many public areas etc. It is also an offence to smoke with children in your car.

Perhaps "Big Tobacco" and it's lobbyists fund either or both of your political parties, so you are afraid to take stronger anti smoking measures ?

BTW, my first wife has terminal lung cancer from smoking. Apparently she didn't quit the habit soon enough.

 

What a sick joke. Clearly, you guys are too scared to make them unaffordable to most !

 

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/cigarette-packets-to-cost-more-than-20-as-smokers-hit-with-53-billion-in-extra-taxes/story-fnihsrf2-1226689145482

 

I guess I don't understand.

 

We pick and choose what people should and should not be allowed?

 

There are so many double standards to this it is absurd. As long as you add to the commercial "drink responsibly" commercials for one of the biggest killers is acceptable in a world where ads for life saving drugs are 10% about the benefits and 90% about complications.

 

No issue with educating people about risks but I have a huge problem with picking and choosing winners and losers, infringing on a person's right as long as that choice doesn't effect the innocent and as long as people are willing to pay the price for their choice.

 

So you would tax the cigarette market to make them unaffordable? Well here in the states an interesting thing happened in NYC where taxes are so high a black market was created and police now being used to "collect those taxes" which recently led to some poor guy getting killed in a police encounter.

 

Sorry to hear about your wife.

[sandyk]

But honestly I believe there is abuse of our freedom, for example in my country is not allowed in public parks even without people around.

 

Roch

With your medical problems, the last thing you should be doing is smoking.

BTW, my 1st wife's younger brother also died prematurely from lung cancer due to smoking.

My son's filthy habit brought back my Asthma years ago, after several years of no Asthma due to no longer being exposed to his mother's smoking. I didn't miss the late night car trips to buy cigarettes for her at some store several miles away either .

An uncle of mine died from throat cancer due to smoking.

They weren't sure what got him first, the throat cancer or the gangrene in his leg.

At least the news of my son's mother having terminal lung cancer finally enabled him to quit smoking after several unsuccessful attempts.

It frightened the crap out of him !

We also have regular ads on TV featuring cancer patients dying from smoking and their upset families..

The hospital systems are overworked as it is, without trying to save people knowingly playing Russian Roulette with whether cancer from smoking is going to get them or not.

 

Alex

[sandyk]

Obama says there's snow in all 56 states due to global warming, I'm sure it's backed by the best science money can buy.

 

 

Proof Australia is getting hotter

 

Mar 03, 2015 1:00PM

 

 

THERE is no point in denying it: Australia is getting hotter, and it’s not going to stop. And we have the figures to prove it.

 

Last year was the hottest year on earth. In Australia, it was the third hottest ever.

 

According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the average global temperature for 2014 was 0.57 degree warmer than the 1961-1990 average. In Australia, 2014 was ranked as the third warmest since records first began, dating back to 1910.

 

Combined with 2013 — ranked as the hottest year on record for Australia — we have experienced our warmest-ever 24 months, with prolonged heatwaves and hotter-than-average nights denying Australians some sought after, cool relief.

 

In Queensland, the town of Bouliaa has experienced 25 days of 40-plus temperatures – the longest heatwave ever. Western Australia had several days of near-50-degree heat this summer.

 

The Bureau of Metrology’s annual climate statement for 2014 backs up the WMO’s observations.

 

The CSIRO’s annual summary provided an equally damning report of Australia’s warming climate and goes further: predicting more extreme weather events, more extreme heat and fewer cooler extremes.

 

“Daytime maximum temperatures have warmed by 0.8°C [since 1910], while overnight minimum temperatures have warmed by 1.1°C,” the report stated.

 

In addition, since 2001, “the number of extreme heat records in Australia has outnumbered extreme cool records by almost 3 to 1 for daytime maximum temperatures and almost 5 to 1 for night-time minimum temperatures”.

 

Last year Australia’s average temperature was nearly 1 degree (0.91) above average.

 

All states — except for the Northern Territory — ranked 2014 in their top four warmest years on record, with New South Wales recording its hottest year to date — 1.41 degrees higher than the previous record set in 2009.

 

“Australia has warmed up most notably since the mid-20s century,” says Dr Karl Braganza, manager of climate monitoring at the Bureau of Meteorology.

 

“Prior to that, temperatures were reasonably flat — we didn’t have much of a trend.

 

“There was no clear trend prior to World War II — it’s from 1950 onwards that we’ve had a significant warming trend across Australia.”

 

How will it affect the states?

 

With hot days five times as likely to occur today as ever before, south-eastern states are, in particular, vulnerable to “a significant increase in fire weather across most of the fire-prone regions”, Dr Braganza says.

 

Combined with “a longer fire season and more frequent fire weather days”, Australia’s southern climate is primed for disaster, with rainfall steadily declining since 1970 in the southwest regions, across all seasons — most notably in autumn and early winter.

 

Dr Perkins says that heatwaves have become more intense in Victoria and South Australia, their force aided by lack of moisture in the air, a result of lower-than-average rainfall.

 

“Not having a lot of moisture in the air really does contribute to how a heatwave may occur. When you’ve just had rain, the heatwave won’t be very intense, if it occurs at all.

 

“But when you haven’t had much rain in the past six months, it’s a much higher likelihood that they have will be more intense.

 

“Hot, dry, weather and bushfires — there’s a good link there.”

 

Tasmania has also had a “warm and dry year” — with the state’s coldest months, June to September, experiencing temperatures well about their respective averages.

 

Although the effects of heatwaves are more profound in drier climates such as that of Victoria, South Australia and parts of New South Wales, north and northwest Australia have their own problems.

 

Western Australia, like NSW, recorded its hottest year on record in 2014, with statewide maximum temperatures the highest they have ever been. Current forecasts are showing that some parts of the giant state may even hit 50 degrees, Australia’s observation of such heat a first in 17 years.

 

Queensland has probably seen the least variation in its already hot climate: 2014 was its equal-third warmest year on record, with maximum temperatures reached 48 degrees in some parts of the state.

 

But Dr Perkins says while much of Queensland may not experience the same degree of heat intensity in summer as other, colder states, “Brisbane has been getting heatwaves in spring”

 

“They may not be having a heatwave in summer, but they’re having them a bit more in the spring, particularly after a dry winter.”

 

Global warming, she says, has increased the likelihood of heatwaves threefold, and “pretty much for any heatwave that’s happening, there’s some human signal behind it”.

 

Dr Braganza adds that warming both in Australia and around the world has been attributed mostly to increasing greenhouse gases, “which studies have shown is the likely dominant cause”.

 

The significance of heatwaves

 

In the last 60 years, Australia has warmed by one degree — a seemingly insignificant number that has huge ramifications.

 

Dr Braganza toldNews Corp Australia that “the warming has been accompanied by a shift in the distribution of daily weather, meaning that we are seeing a much higher frequency of extremely hot days and warm nights, and a much lower occurrence of very cold days and nights”.

 

Seasons are also slowly changing: whereas once, colder temperatures were common during much of spring, we are now seeing heatwaves such as the one in October last year last, which resulted in five consecutive days above 35 and averaged 40 degrees over five days in New South Wales alone.

 

An exceptionally warm May also saw temperatures soar across Australia, peaking in the mid-to-high 20s at a time when pre-winter cool should have been setting in.

 

Dr Sarah Perkins from the Climate Change Research Centre, an expert in heatwaves, says that “we’re definitely seeing more heatwaves” across Australia.

 

“Different areas are seeing different changes — some places may see an increase in the intensity of heatwaves, others in the duration.

 

“But the most pronounced change we are seeing is the number of heatwave days — so the number of days that belong in a heatwave each season — has been increasing since the 1950s.”

 

Broadly speaking, experts find it difficult to settle on a uniform definition of a heatwave, as “everyone has a different idea of what a heatwave is”.

 

While Dr Pekins broadly defines a heatwave as “three days in a row of temperatures in the top 10 per cent”, Dr Braganza says: “generally, you are looking for temperatures that are extreme for their location and extending across three or more consecutive days”. Taking into consideration the effect heat has on people’s health is also an important factor.

 

A terrifying future?

 

In the recently released Natural Resource Management report, updated for the first time since 2007, CSIRO and the Bureau have projected how the climate for Australian cities is likely to differ by 2030 and, subject to human action — or inaction — by 2090.

 

Using primarily two methods of measuring carbon emissions — high and moderate — the worst case scenario of each major city warming by at least 2.5 degrees by the end of the century is looking increasingly likely.

 

“At the moment, there’s a lot of climate inertia, and a certain amount of climate warming has already been locked in,” says CSIRO climate unit group leader Kevin Hennessy.

 

“So it now depends on human behaviour in the next couple of decades … because that could be the difference between a high emissions future and a low emissions future.”

 

By 2030, average temperatures will increase across all seasons for Melbourne (0.6); Adelaide (0.7); Brisbane (0.9); Canberra (0.8); Darwin (0.9); Hobart (0.6); Perth (0.8); and Sydney (0.9). That’s locked in, Mr Hennessy says.

 

Depending on what we choose to do about climate change from the middle of the century and beyond — “either accept that some of some amount of climate change in unavoidable and adapt and build resilience, or slow warming by reducing global greenhouse gas emissions,” says Mr Hennessy — some cities may become 4 degrees — or more — hotter, the heat bringing with it a plethora of problems, such as reduced water supply, draughts, the extinction of some flora and fauna and an increase in heat-related diseases and deaths.

 

Even by conservative measures, most cities will warm by at least 1.5 degrees by the end of the century, with some cities such as Canberra, Brisbane, Darwin and Sydney shooting up to nearly 4 degrees above the annual average.

 

In the worst case scenario, cities will flare up to 5 degrees above the 1986-2005 average, the soaring temperatures bringing destruction to Australia.

 

news.com.au

[wakibaki]

Is that a sign that you'll be signing my petition to ban class A amplifiers, sandy?

[sandyk]

Is that a sign that you'll be signing my petition to ban class A amplifiers, sandy?

 

Dream on !

If you really believe that Hypex n-core's etc. sound as good as a well implemented 15/20W Ch. Class A SS amplifier then you must be even deafer than I am !

My 15W/Class A dissipates a bit over 80W of heat which would be far less than many comparable output valve amplifiers. Perhaps ban them instead ? (grin)

Besides which., it's not just about the energy they use. It's also about the energy needed to create the component parts. I would expect that there is far more energy used creating vacuum tubes than semiconductor output devices, and unlike SS output devices which may have a lifetime of 30 years or so, with electros usually drying out well before the SS output devices. Some power valves may need replacement every few years, with even more energy expended to make replacement tubes.

[petaluma]

Actually, if the natural history of the world has shown us anything, it's just that. The environment is, most assuredly, indestructible! Now wether or not the environment can be damaged so badly that people can't exist in it any more is another matter. Many times in the past, some natural environmental catastrophe has rendered this planet "momentarily" (geologically speaking) uninhabitable. Such disasters have included global ice ages, volcanically, extremely active eras where the atmosphere was so poisoned that all but the heartiest of life survived, etc. But the earth has always bounced back. I suspect, that until the sun extinguishes it's supply of fusible hydrogen and starts to expand into a red giant that encroaches upon, and eventually consumes this planet's orbit, that it likely always will.

 

George, your right that the planet will recover, but not us.....The ratification of the Montreal Protocol by ALL countries of the UN, which has only happened twice, effectively stopped a planet wide depletion of the ozone layer radiating out from Antarctica that would have eventually devastated the planet by allowing UV radiation at potentially lethal levels to reach the surface. Some speculate the only reason it passed is because CFC's were not a significant economic contributor to the petrochemical industry, not the potential devastation that would have been wrought, the opposition was not significant. If that's a true statement we deserve as a species exactly what we are heading for.

 

I find it interesting when anti-climate change folks state the human species cannot do anything to impact the environment on a planetary scale, I point them at the Montreal protocol and the conversation changes quickly....

[Paul R]

So you say that the environment doesn't need protecting, but people do need protecting, huh?

 

Here's a thought for you to ponder: we are dependent on our environment.

 

Here's a clue- if AGW is true, then we engineer the environment every bit as much as we depend upon it. AGW is true.

[AlainGr]

Here's a clue- if AGW is true, then we engineer the environment every bit as much as we depend upon it. AGW is true.

I am sorry, but I check for "AGW" acronyms and it has some contradictory meanings ?

[Paul R]

How quickly we forget....

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/slightly-ot-interesting-link-please-dont-start-argument-19709/index4.html#post307103

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/slightly-ot-interesting-link-please-dont-start-argument-19709/index4.html#post307132

 

 

And so I did, but I wasn't promoting it. Merely suggesting that the consensus you were holding up as a touchstone is or should be open to criticism, and not totally ignored. More than once, a consensus has been proved wrong. And that grouo of scientists has pulled one or two dirty tricks you know,

 

Apologies for forgetting that post.

[petaluma]

Well the meek will inherit the earth... So we'd better destroy it before they get the chance.

 

LOL....

 

I will add who new the Koch brothers and their combined 90 Billion net worth were meek.....

[petaluma]

I am sorry, but I check for "AGW" acronyms and it has some contradictory meanings ?

 

Alain, see what happens when you listen to me.... I just jumped into the thread tonight but will go back and see where AGW was first referenced to see the context. I'm sure somebody will respond shortly.

[Paul R]

I am sorry, but I check for "AGW" acronyms and it has some contradictory meanings ?

 

[h=1]ANTHROPOGENIC OR ANTHROPOMORPHIC GLOBAL WARMING[/h]The idea that human activity is changing the climate, and this is and old version of the idea. I was using the term here specifically to present a target. There are very few reasons to doubt that humans are affecting the planetary climate patterns.

[Paul R]

Personalities differ. They emerge from the undifferentiated unconscious under the influence of a variety of stimuli.

 

Part of the process of individuation is the reconciliation between conflicting world views which may have been incorporated in a child's personality. Some people never fully reconcile the thinking patterns and the datasets they employ in different aspects of their life, say, work and church. Elements of the personality remain compartmentalised.

 

Thus, a person can drive a car, or watch TV, or listen to a hi-fi, and still insist that the science on which all these depend is heresy, typically rejecting the ideas of Darwinian evolution, somehow dismissing the fact that all these things stand or fall as one. The critical introspective capacity which is intolerant of internal inconsistency is incompletely developed in such cases, and the personality remains suggestible.

 

Such inconsistent personalities nevertheless pass the tests of general competence in modern society, where few contexts are survival-critical.

 

In a fully integrated personality internal inconsistency is largely eliminated although indecision remains as a necessary component of developmental thought. The personality is, however, all-of-a-piece, not a collection of ill- or incompletely linked but distinct modules.

 

Fuzzy science at best. People tend to become exactly what they want to believe.

[Paul R]

Dream on !

If you really believe that Hypex n-core's etc. sound as good as a well implemented 15/20W Ch. Class A SS amplifier then you must be even deafer than I am !

My 15W/Class A dissipates a bit over 80W of heat which would be far less than many comparable output valve amplifiers. Perhaps ban them instead ? (grin)

Besides which., it's not just about the energy they use. It's also about the energy needed to create the component parts. I would expect that there is far more energy used creating vacuum tubes than semiconductor output devices, and unlike SS output devices which may have a lifetime of 30 years or so, with electros usually drying out well before the SS output devices. Some power valves may need replacement every few years, with even more energy expended to make replacement tubes.

 

 

Bah! Tubes!

[petaluma]

ANTHROPOGENIC OR ANTHROPOMORPHIC GLOBAL WARMING

 

The idea that human activity is changing the climate, and this is and old version of the idea. I was using the term here specifically to present a target. There are very few reasons to doubt that humans are affecting the planetary climate patterns.

 

Very Texas petrochemical industrial based response. Thanks!

[AlainGr]

ANTHROPOGENIC OR ANTHROPOMORPHIC GLOBAL WARMING

 

The idea that human activity is changing the climate, and this is and old version of the idea. I was using the term here specifically to present a target. There are very few reasons to doubt that humans are affecting the planetary climate patterns.

Thanks Paul

[sdolezalek]

Obama says there's snow in all 56 states due to global warming, I'm sure it's backed by the best science money can buy.

 

Which of those extra 6 states might you be from?

[Paul R]

Very Texas petrochemical industrial based response. Thanks!

 

Huh?! Hardly.

[petaluma]

Huh?! Hardly.

 

Paul, I humbly request your forgiveness on my vapor lock on reading your post. The only things I can plead are I was watching tonight's new Top Gear episode, I had a few glasses of nice Dehlinger Pinot Noir, and that I'm just getting old.......

 

This is really embarrassing........

 

David

[firedog]

Yes, the environment or the planet does not need saving. It will survive any catastrophe we could currently visit upon it. The Siberian Traps adequately proved that. We might not survive, or even most life on the planet. People need protecting.

 

Paul-

That's some kind of silly literalist position. Obviously, people mean "something approximating our current environment so we and most current flora and fauna can live in it successfully" when they talk about "saving the environment".

If you want to tell us that, say, an atmosphere without oxygen is still an environment, well great. It's a fairly meaningless and useless distinction, and doesn't do anything to promote intelligent discussion.

[Jud]

And so I did, but I wasn't promoting it. Merely suggesting that the consensus you were holding up as a touchstone is or should be open to criticism, and not totally ignored. More than once, a consensus has been proved wrong. And that grouo of scientists has pulled one or two dirty tricks you know,

 

Apologies for forgetting that post.

 

It was long ago, so certainly no apologies are necessary.

 

But the lesson there, when one researches the thread, is that of the two references you brought up to dispute the consensus, one was from a debunked hack and the other was a website financed by the Koch brothers. So you can find people who dispute the consensus and are given a platform to do so, but there in fact is a consensus and has been for a long time in the large community of climate scientists. That community is anything but a group of drones moving in lockstep on many issues, but they certainly agree on AGW, just as otherwise disputatious biologists agree on evolution, for example.

[Snowmonkey]

I guess I don't understand.

 

We pick and choose what people should and should not be allowed?

 

There are so many double standards to this it is absurd. As long as you add to the commercial "drink responsibly" commercials for one of the biggest killers is acceptable in a world where ads for life saving drugs are 10% about the benefits and 90% about complications.

 

No issue with educating people about risks but I have a huge problem with picking and choosing winners and losers, infringing on a person's right as long as that choice doesn't effect the innocent and as long as people are willing to pay the price for their choice.

 

So you would tax the cigarette market to make them unaffordable? Well here in the states an interesting thing happened in NYC where taxes are so high a black market was created and police now being used to "collect those taxes" which recently led to some poor guy getting killed in a police encounter.

I guess the same principles apply to users of heroin, ice and crack.