[lug] Anyone else hate to get rid of old equipment?

[Carl Wagner]

Maxwell Spangler wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-05-26 at 09:11 -0600, Carl Wagner wrote:
>
>   
>> So in essence, I don't trust the raw data, and without that, garbage 
>> in->garbage out.
>> And I am concerned with anything that will cut my standard of living in 
>> half or worse. Remember Cap and Tax is just the start.
>> What if we spend 30 Trillion dollars and it turns out to be a naturally 
>> occurring event.  How do we get the money back?
>> Don't believe the above?  What would it take to get back to 1850 carbon 
>> emissions levels?  Kill off 80% of the population?
>>     
>
> Skepticism is healthy but organizing too much effort to fight change for
> the sake of fighting change is not healthy.
>
> I won't debate your long list of ideas and suppositions because of how
> unproductive it would be overall.  What matters is that we have a common
> ground to discuss things overall such as pollution is bad (but a
> necessary by-product of our lives) and nature is good (but we will
> impact it as long as we live.)  I trust science instead of my opinions
> or yours in order to guide us to recognizing problems and suggesting
> courses of action.
>
> What I truly appreciate about the scientific process is that its only
> goal is truth.
>   
Usually, or at least it should be.
> If the process is applied correctly, from nothing you will get an
> initial theory, then law about science.  Later, another application of
> the scientific process will disprove that law and replace it with
> something more accurate.  Repeating this has given us a world of nuclear
> power, solar powered mars rovers, ships as big as tall buildings that
> float more resources than some small towns and planes that fly at the
> speed of sound.  It is layers upon layers of work searching for truth
> that has provided this.
>   
I love science and the products it produces.  I just have issues where 
science is corrupted by politics/personalties.
What I have seen in the last year reaffirms my belief that AGW is 
science corrupted by politics/personalities.
The truth, one way or the other, will come out in the end.

But I missed the part of the chapter on the scientific method where it 
is acceptable to:
    fight fredom of information requests
    discredit people of different opinions
    fudge data
    hide everything you can, that was paid for by tax payers
    etc.
> You can live a life of skepticism but you must be willing to ultimately
> be open to accepting scientific fact.  Also, you must be willing to
> accept that human beings are flawed and make mistakes: along the way of
> learning truths about science we may make mistakes and go in the wrong
> direction.  You can't dismiss science because along the way some
> scientific beliefs have been proven wrong.  It's the process you must
> respect and support.
>   
I am more than willing to accept scientific fact.  I just don't believe 
that AGW has been proven to be a fact, yet.
To be a fact it must be testable to determine it's truth.  Gravity can 
be dis-proven when an apple ceases to fall.
I have never see an experiment where that is the case so it remains a fact.

How do you test AGW?  Everything is caused by it:  Droughts, floods, 
extreme cold, extreme warmth, tornadoes, hurricanes, lack of tornadoes, 
lack of hurricanes.
> BTW, for all this talk about science, I believe it has to be balanced
> with more spiritual interests as well.  Science will give us nuclear
> bombs but it won't tell us when it is right or wrong to use them.  For
> that we need religion, philosophy, etc.  That's a big part of the
> environmental debate as well, but as most of your list dealt with
> skepticism over what others say are facts, I thought I'd write about my
> trust in science to help us with our path forward.
>
>