The End of Snow?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-snow.html

by balbaugh • 12 years ago

17 2 12 years ago

This is idiotica: a ridiculous attempt at a tie-in between pseudoscience and a topical event. it is a waste of time and effort for the reader, the writer, and the researcher.

Climate science is bullshit because it is not science; it is an observational discipline that cloaks itself in the language of science. Calling it science is simply an expression of our vastly inflated impression of ourselves.

Oh, we are severely fucking up this planet, don't get me wrong, we just don't have the tools to prove it scientifically yet. Pretending that we do is just going to make things worse.

The only purposes that this article can serve are to raise the profile of the researcher for tenure-track consideration, and to make money for the newspaper that is shilling for the consumerism that is causing the environmental problem in the first place.

If you are concerned about the planet, don't waste your time with this article. Instead, here's a list of things you can do that would actually make a difference:

(1) Stop having children. (2) Promote mandatory population control. (3) Stop driving your gas-powered car. (4) Stop eating in restaurants. (5) Stop buying stuff in disposable plastic containers. (6) Stop spending so much money, you fucking assholes--you are driving the machine that is tearing up the Earth.

rskar• 12 years ago

Calling anything a science can easily be construed as "simply an expression of our vastly inflated impression of ourselves." But then, the phrase "scientifically proven" is philosophically flawed anyway. Technically, scientists of any field cannot prove anything: They can only demonstrate the degree of veracity their current understanding holds, and otherwise take notice of (apparent) natural laws, formulate (or otherwise divine) hypotheses, and refine (or extend) theories to help guide their research.

Hence, any given science is, at its core, an "observational discipline." However, what makes it a science is the effort that goes into transcending the just-so of the facts (observations) and the hows of the laws towards the whys of the theories. On that basis, climate scientists are indeed doing science.[1]

What makes things especially tough for them is that so much of their science is focused on the hugely chaotic system happening on essentially one specific planet. On top of that, most folks mostly know of the triumphs and failures of their local weather news, where someone somehow conjures an hourly prediction for their small patch of geography.[2]

[1] http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_forecasting

The End of Snow?

Related Stories