Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Settled Science

I thought the science was settled. Maybe not so much. It seems a team of German physicists have looked into global warming and decided.... no. The papers introduction states:
(a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 degrees Celsius is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
I'm no scientist, but for me the greatest bullshit factor is when someone tells me that the science is settled. In no other discipline is the science settled. We're still arguing about Darwin and physics is still searching for the Unified Theory. Science is never settled, it continues to seek, to search, to question.

Anyone who tells you that science is settled is lying to you.

1 comment:

Paul said...

I spend a fair amount of time discussing science with one of my sons, soon to be a graduate student in astrophysics. His take on this is that the biggest problem is the sensational way that the news business presents science to the public -- without any of the discussion of assumptions, analytical technique, and measurement error that is in the peer reviewed papers.

Without disagreeing with that point, I counter to him that some scientists invite that: grant proposals and research papers that lack conclusions don't get funded.