Liberals love science - until it proves them wrong.

[demi-conservative]

I feel like you're missing the point. The question of "is a fetus, scientific speaking, a member of the human species?" is not usually considered by liberals to be a relevant question in determining whether abortion is moral or not.

Usually the morality of most liberals revolves around the extent to which higher brain functions are present or not. So a liberal is likely to be more interested in the state of the brain development of the foetus - something science can help answer - than they are about whether it meets any particular criteria of 'human'.

Yes mr 'i live in country down under with few people and can tell you what libs really think'!!

You don't actually. Vaccines are made of dead viruses.

Some are. Some no.

Injecting them into the body gives the immune system a chance to learn what those viruses look like, and create antibodies for them. As a result, when the body encounters live versions of the viruses, the immune system immediately identifies them and has the antibodies for them ready to deploy immediately. Over the decades, we've learned that on the whole there's not really much that can go wrong with vaccines.

Cos of serious bad effects vaccines have been withdrawn. Lots can go wrong.

But science! science magic!!!

Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Michele Bachmann would beg to differ.

You have three numbers. Go you!!

I know what pro-choice people in general think on the issue because nearly everyone I know is pro-choice.

[trump]Great logic! [/trump]

[Starlight]

Yes mr 'i live in country down under with few people and can tell you what libs really think'!!

Um, it has the same size and population as an average US state. It's not like the population is 78 people and too small for me to know what a liberal is. Plus, you know, there's the internet.

[Mountain Man]

["The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"]

Overall, do I think liberals have a tendency to pay attention to science...

If liberals trusted the science so much then why do they feel the need to "adjust" the data to fit their agenda? Evidence of data tampering is well-documented and easy to find:

http://principia-scientific.org/nasa...te-data-fraud/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/eart...ndal-ever.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/051952_cl...l_warming.html
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...ievable-scale/
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/...erature-fraud/
http://realclimatescience.com/2015/1...head-of-paris/
http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/19/mo...-climate-data/

As one observer noted, the fact that the data has been manipulated doesn't prove that climate change isn't real, but when certain anomalies exist only because of data manipulation then you need to be suspicious. I find it ironic that liberals stylize themselves as the champions of science while saying, "Ignore the facts! Pay attention to our sleight of hand instead!" I've said before that if creationists were ever to so blatantly "adjust" the data in favor of their position, the scientific community would howl with outrage.

[Starlight]

I've got a bridge to sell you MM.

I guess your post simply proves the point about how conservatives regularly buy into conspiracy theories.

Here's a guy debunking the data adjustment complaints made by some of your links:

[Mountain Man]

I've got a bridge to sell you MM.

I guess your post simply proves the point about how conservatives regularly buy into conspiracy theories.

On the contrary, dumbass, it proves that "climate change" is one of the biggest scientific frauds in human history, and morons like you swallow it hook, line, and sinker. I bet you still think the infamous hockey stick graph is credible.

As for your video, I've seen it before, and it doesn't actually debunk anything because it misrepresents problem.

[Leonhard]

On the contrary, dumbass, it proves that "climate change" is one of the biggest scientific frauds in human history, and morons like you swallow it hook, line, and sinker.

"Dumbass"? You're the conspiracy theorist. There's nothing you suggest here that is any less outragious than NASA faking the moon landing, 9/11 being an inside job, or the holocaust being only ten thousand people.

I bet you still think the infamous hockey stick graph is credible.

The hockey stick has been vindicated time and again, by multiple institutes across the planet. Several temperature reconstructions, from several different kinds of proxies yield the same basic outline. A mostly flat line for the past few centuries (the most fine grained have a small hump around the middle ages), followed by a sharp rise around the seventies.

As for your video, I've seen it before, and it doesn't actually debunk anything because it misrepresents problem.

Actually all of the problems you're handwaving at have already been addressed. Yes data is adjusted, and no, there is no evidence of fraud. All the archives, datasets and programs used, are freely available to the public. You can go there yourself and see what was done. Typically the datasets I've found have featured lengthy explanations of the adjustments made, which ranged from something simple such as bouyes timing being off, to calibration (which is an adjustment always made).

These adjustements are perfectly justifiable. In fact not doing them would render the datasets less reliable and trustworthy.

If you want me to address specifics, mention them. I can also give a long list of links to answer yours, but that's argument by weblink, which is tasteless.

[Cow Poke]

It's a religious thing. Chickens don't have an eternal 'soul' implanted in them at the moment of conception that makes them special and gives them dominion over all other creatures. The bible tells us so.

Since you're an expert on biblical texts, could you please point us to this intriguing passage?

Thanks

[Sea of red]

If liberals trusted the science so much then why do they feel the need to "adjust" the data to fit their agenda? Evidence of data tampering is well-documented and easy to find:

http://principia-scientific.org/nasa...te-data-fraud/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/eart...ndal-ever.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/051952_cl...l_warming.html
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...ievable-scale/
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/...erature-fraud/
http://realclimatescience.com/2015/1...head-of-paris/
http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/19/mo...-climate-data/

As one observer noted, the fact that the data has been manipulated doesn't prove that climate change isn't real, but when certain anomalies exist only because of data manipulation then you need to be suspicious. I find it ironic that liberals stylize themselves as the champions of science while saying, "Ignore the facts! Pay attention to our sleight of hand instead!" I've said before that if creationists were ever to so blatantly "adjust" the data in favor of their position, the scientific community would howl with outrage.

It's fairly common in record keeping to adjust data in relation to other variables, since outside factor are known to influence the readings like heat-indexes, wind chills, and discrepancies in the read outs. So when you see NASA, NOAA, and the Met Office release updates to their data, it's really nothing to be too concerned about - especially since we always have satellite data to keep everybody honest.

On the contrary, dumbass, it proves that "climate change" is one of the biggest scientific frauds in human history, and morons like you swallow it hook, line, and sinker. I bet you still think the infamous hockey stick graph is credible.

As for your video, I've seen it before, and it doesn't actually debunk anything because it misrepresents problem.

You mean Michael Manns report that has been reproduced in other proxies countless times?

Michael Mann was investigated by the National Academy of Science. They brought in several statisticians that had no idea what data they were looking at actually was, and tried to see if Mann had monkeyed around with the algorithms to get dramatic trends. He was of course found to have done no such thing; Phil Jones was also found of being clean in a similar UK investigation concerning instrumental records. A lot of where you'll hear this idea that Mann and company manipulated data comes from Ross McKitrick, Anthony Watts, and Steven Mcyntere, whom have zero experience in mathematics or climate science - and it showed too. So be very careful what you read from their sites, and be sure to read the journal article.

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html

The Mann et al. large-scale surface temperature reconstructions were the first to include explicit statistical error bars, which provide an indication of the confidence that can be placed in the results.

Meaning Mann gave clear error bars so that readers would be able to see the for themselves - hardly a conspiracy.

You can see for yourself. This the original report as you would have seen it in Nature (the journal) in 1998.

http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/pu...old/mbh99.html



Hell of a conspiracy.

But it gets better.
Those reconstructions they're talking about are other studies by climate scientists, that have used other proxies besides the controversial tree rings to reconstruct past temperatures.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globa...ng/moberg.html





So, no, climate change is not something that I swallowed like a 'dumbass'. I couldn't care less about the politics of it. It's been demonstrated with a plethora of evidence: stratospheric cooling, the troposphere 'hot-spot', satellite readings, ocean stations, record keeping from around the world, and the very well demonstrated link between GHG's and the Earths history. I was exposed to much of it during the past decade in academia in my astrophysics career - as well talking with real climate scientists in person. You should try reading actual scientific articles from real scientists instead of promoting these Monty Python blogs.

If you want to dive into the subject feel free to give me your best objections.

[firstfloor]

Still trolling away, eh FF?

[Starlight]

I think one of the problems with climate-change conspiracy theories is that the conservatives often fundamentally misunderstand what incentives are, and are not, present for scientists. Their theories as to what is supposedly motivating 97% of the world's climate scientists to commit fraud on a global scale don't make any sense to me as a scientist.

There's obvious incentives that exist for a few scientists to deny climate change: It's fairly well known that companies in the fossil fuel industry have paid a few scientists to produce some dubious research suggesting that climate change maybe isn't happening. In any group, you can find a small percentage of people willing to sell-out for money, even in a group like scientists who are on the whole more passionately interested in truth than the average person. We saw exactly the same thing from tobacco companies paying a few scientists to claim that smoking totally didn't cause cancer. In both cases that affects a small number of scientists who are being directly paid off, and the rest of the scientific community rolls their eyes and says "no, the data actually does show that this is a real thing, paid-off-deniers aside."

The idea that 97% of climate scientists are doing proper science to the best of their abilities, and 3% are getting paid-off by fossil-fuel business interests to raise questions about the realities of climate change, is totally consistent with everything I've observed about how science and scientists generally work.

What doesn't make any sense to me, is the conspiracy theorist idea that 97% of climate scientists are wrong because they are all incompetent, or being paid off (by who?!?! It's in pretty much no one's interests to promote a false idea of climate change), whereas the 3% whose work keeps being debunked are the only competent scientists on the planet and are just 'brave truth tellers'.

I am aware of zero, and I mean zero financial incentives for scientists to misrepresent data in order to try and falsely conclude that climate change is real. There is plenty of grant money to study climate change. So you write a grant application to the people managing the government's scientific research slush fund and say "I'm going to study X, which is related to climate change, give me money please" and the grant organisation analyses whether they think X is worth studying and decide to give you money for it. Then you do the study, and most of the time, get a statistically insignificant result, because that's how science usually works - most of the time you put in the effort and discover nothing. So you then do, or don't, publish your study saying essentially "we studied X, we got this result, and it's not particularly exciting. But we learned that it would be worth studying Y." Or, if it is an exciting result, you definitely publish it. Then in the next round of grant applications you apply for a grant to study Y. But it's important to emphasize that government financial grants are never tied to particular scientific outcomes of studies. There's no financial incentives to have particular results in your work.

The only time that particular scientific results are related to funding is when particular businesses do shady stuff and get their dirty hands involved in the process. And that's when we see the tobacco companies producing research claiming no link between smoking and cancer, or fossil fuel companies producing research questioning climate change. Whereas, there's been a complete lack of incentives for all these scientists to be faking the idea climate change. The notion that they made it all up boggles my mind... it doesn't make any sense at all given what I know about the incentives involved in scientific research, and how scientists work.

[Cow Poke]

From trolling?

hmmmmm

[Cow Poke]

I think one of the problems with climate-change conspiracy theories is that the conservatives often fundamentally misunderstand what incentives are, and are not, present for scientists. Their theories as to what is supposedly motivating 97% of the world's climate scientists to commit fraud on a global scale don't make any sense to me as a scientist.

There's obvious incentives that exist for a few scientists to deny climate change: It's fairly well known that companies in the fossil fuel industry have paid a few scientists to produce some dubious research suggesting that climate change maybe isn't happening. In any group, you can find a small percentage of people willing to sell-out for money, even in a group like scientists who are on the whole more passionately interested in truth than the average person. We saw exactly the same thing from tobacco companies paying a few scientists to claim that smoking totally didn't cause cancer. In both cases that affects a small number of scientists who are being directly paid off, and the rest of the scientific community rolls their eyes and says "no, the data actually does show that this is a real thing, paid-off-deniers aside."

The idea that 97% of climate scientists are doing proper science to the best of their abilities, and 3% are getting paid-off by fossil-fuel business interests to raise questions about the realities of climate change, is totally consistent with everything I've observed about how science and scientists generally work.

What doesn't make any sense to me, is the conspiracy theorist idea that 97% of climate scientists are wrong because they are all incompetent, or being paid off (by who?!?! It's in pretty much no one's interests to promote a false idea of climate change), whereas the 3% whose work keeps being debunked are the only competent scientists on the planet and are just 'brave truth tellers'.

I am aware of zero, and I mean zero financial incentives for scientists to conclude that climate change is real. There is plenty of grant money to study climate change. So you write a grant application to the government scientific research slush fund people and say "I'm going to study X, which is related to climate change, give me money please" and the grant organisations analyse whether they think X is worth studying and decide to give you money for it. Then you do the study, and most of the time, get a statistically insignificant result, because that's how science usually works - most of the time you put in the effort and discover nothing. So you then do, or don't, publish your study saying essentially "we studied X, we got this result, and it's not particularly exciting. But we learned that it would be worth studying Y." Or, if it is an exciting result, you definitely publish it. Then in the next round of grant applications you apply for a grant to study Y. But it's important to emphasize that government financial grants are never tied to particular scientific outcomes of studies. There's no financial incentives to have particular results in your work.

The only time that particular scientific results are related to funding is when particularly businesses do shady stuff and get their dirty hands involved in the process. And that's when we see the tobacco companies producing research claiming no link between smoking and cancer, or fossil fuel companies producing research questioning climate change. Whereas, there's been a complete lack of incentives for all these scientists to be faking the idea climate change. The notion that they made it all up boggles my mind... it doesn't make any sense at all given what I know about the incentives involved in scientific research, and how scientists work.

I bet you're getting paid by the climate scientists, aren't you?

[Leonhard]

I bet you're getting paid by the climate scientists, aren't you?

They certainly didn't pay well considering one my professors salary. If its a hoax done for the sake of keeping climatologists employed, then its got to be the dumbest ponzi scheme in the history of the universe, executed by the most brilliant people in the world who've hidden all tracks of it being a several thousand man strong conspiracy.

[Starlight]

I bet you're getting paid by the climate scientists, aren't you?

I've worked with some. They seemed nice. But, now you mention it, I really should have asked them to pay me off.

[Cow Poke]

They certainly didn't pay well considering one my professors salary. If its a hoax done for the sake of keeping climatologists employed, then its got to be the dumbest ponzi scheme in the history of the universe, executed by the most brilliant people in the world who've hidden all tracks of it being a several thousand man strong conspiracy.

I was just pulling Starlight's chain, and he seemed to get that.