What’s Wrong with the World

John,

What a delightful post! This is an issue near and dear to my heart and I think you are spot on when you say:

But if the results of science are always provisional (and they are), then people should be skeptical about claims of certainty or near-certainty by scientists. And the level of skepticism should increase with the level of complexity involved in the claim or claims in question. Rather than being a troubling phenomenon, this seems to me to be the most rational approach. The statement “the science is settled” is about the most unscientific thing anyone could ever say, and we should be suspicious of anyone who says it.

Speaking of global warming, I thought you and our readers would enjoy this piece by Matt Ridley, a science writer who is a champion of evolution (to get that on the table) but has changed his opinion on global warming and tells the tale here:

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/my-life-as-a-climate-lukewarmer.aspx

This is just a taste (you'll notice some of the same themes come up that you deal with):

I was not always a lukewarmer. When I first started writing about the threat of global warming more than 26 years ago, as science editor ofThe Economist, I thought it was a genuinely dangerous threat. Like, for instance, Margaret Thatcher, I accepted the predictions being made at the time that we would see warming of a third or a half a degree (Centigrade) a decade, perhaps more, and that this would have devastating consequences.

Gradually, however, I changed my mind. The failure of the atmosphere to warm anywhere near as rapidly as predicted was a big reason: there has been less than half a degree of global warming in four decades — and it has slowed down, not speeded up. Increases in malaria, refugees, heatwaves, storms, droughts and floods have not materialised to anything like the predicted extent, if at all. Sea level has risen but at a very slow rate — about a foot per century.

Also, I soon realised that all the mathematical models predicting rapid warming assume big amplifying feedbacks in the atmosphere, mainly from water vapour; carbon dioxide is merely the primer, responsible for about a third of the predicted warming. When this penny dropped, so did my confidence in predictions of future alarm: the amplifiers are highly uncertain.

Another thing that gave me pause was that I went back and looked at the history of past predictions of ecological apocalypse from my youth – population explosion, oil exhaustion, elephant extinction, rainforest loss, acid rain, the ozone layer, desertification, nuclear winter, the running out of resources, pandemics, falling sperm counts, cancerous pesticide pollution and so forth. There was a consistent pattern of exaggeration, followed by damp squibs: in not a single case was the problem as bad as had been widely predicted by leading scientists. That does not make every new prediction of apocalypse necessarily wrong, of course, but it should encourage scepticism.

What sealed my apostasy from climate alarm was the extraordinary history of the famous “hockey stick” graph, which purported to show that today’s temperatures were higher and changing faster than at any time in the past thousand years. That graph genuinely shocked me when I first saw it and, briefly in the early 2000s, it persuaded me to abandon my growing doubts about dangerous climate change and return to the “alarmed” camp.

Then I began to read the work of two Canadian researchers, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. They and others have shown, as confirmed by the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, that the hockey stick graph, and others like it, are heavily reliant on dubious sets of tree rings and use inappropriate statistical filters that exaggerate any 20th-century upturns.

What shocked me more was the scientific establishment’s reaction to this: it tried to pretend that nothing was wrong. And then a flood of emails was leaked in 2009 showing some climate scientists apparently scheming to withhold data, prevent papers being published, get journal editors sacked and evade freedom-of-information requests, much as sceptics had been alleging. That was when I began to re-examine everything I had been told about climate change and, the more I looked, the flakier the prediction of rapid warming seemed.

I am especially unimpressed by the claim that a prediction of rapid and dangerous warming is “settled science”, as firm as evolution or gravity. How could it be? It is a prediction! No prediction, let alone in a multi-causal, chaotic and poorly understood system like the global climate, should ever be treated as gospel. With the exception of eclipses, there is virtually nothing scientists can say with certainty about the future. It is absurd to argue that one cannot disagree with a forecast. Is the Bank of England’s inflation forecast infallible?

Great post, and great follow-up, Jeffrey S. -- I hadn't seen Ridley's recantation.

Some other thoughts:

Sometimes it's a good idea not to believe in "science", such as

* when "it" has an increasing number of retractions,

* when high-prestige journals are the most likely to have high retraction rates*,

* when most retractions are caused by misconduct,

* when "it" fails to tell us that "its" answers aren't really significant and could mean something completely different,

* when 120 of "its" papers have to be retracted because they were literally computer-generated gibberish, and

* when the people saying "the science is settled" turn out to really mean that they're just anti-capitalist.

As for anthropogenic climate change, I've posted my opinions elsewhere.

* One of the explanations for high-prestige journals having high retraction rates is this: Their higher prestige means more readers and scrutiny, which means a greater likelihood of retraction. But if that's the case, what morass of brain-slime must exist in the non-prestigious journals, which don't get the same level of scrutiny?

I had read somewhere but cannot now confirm that somebody during Richard Feynman's lifetime tried to get up a statement by umpteen eminent scientists, Nobel Prize winners, etc., saying that they believed in Darwinian evolution, and that Feynman brushed it off and refused to sign.

Now, as I say, I haven't been able to confirm this memory on a quick googling. But it is a believable story a priori, not because Feynman would have had the slightest doubts about the truth of Darwinian evolution but because he would have been repulsed by the idea of trying to impress the public by getting a bunch of scientists to sign a statement. To him, I think that would have been unscientific propagandizing. Feynman had a nose for any kind of pomposity or posturing, and I think he would have been appalled at the attitude Achenbach displays and the entire attempt to bully people with the name of Science.

I'm not sure precisely what point I'm making there except to say that, whether their own theories are right or wrong, real scientists with the spirit of science have the theoretical humility that goes with that discipline. This new bluff and bluster ain't it.

Two words in response to the impeccability of science: Poison Gas.

Thanks for bringing the Ridley essay to my attention, Jeff. That sucker, if actually read with care, should hit like a Howitzer shell on minds susceptible of persuasion. No wonder he's been treated so roughly by the climate inquisitors.

Achenbach has a point when he says that people tend to be tribal when it comes to their beliefs about science, and he cites a study by Don Kahan that shows that scientific literacy actually increases polarization rather than decreasing it.

This resonated with me. My degree is in physics and it is pretty typical for you to have to unlearn everything you were taught in High School in your first year and then you have to unlearn at least some of what you get taught in your first year in later years. If you go to graduate school you then get to unlearn some of what you were taught as an undergrad. A lot of this was a sort of scientist boot camp to teach us to Trust No One and test everything. We were always fascinated when we ran into other science majors that were arrogant about what they knew because right when we would get arrogant a prof would destroy what we thought were solid beliefs. The history of the science has gone that way as well with the most striking example being the rise of Quantum Mechanics. Lord Kelvin's quote prior to that rise that, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement" is usually cited as the epitome of what we didn't want to become - arrogant scientists unable to deal with discovering the truth about the world around us. I always cringe when I hear "Settled science". It seems to "soft science" (to use a pejorative term that too often seems apt).

Jeffrey,

That's a really interesting article. I was particularly struck by how his skepticism was partly fueled by his knowledge of previous environmental doomsday predictions which turned out to be spectacularly wrong. That was what fueled my own initial skepticism of global warming 15 years ago or so (when it was being pushed in my conservative evangelical seminary of all places). Unlike Ridley, I was never even slightly persuaded by the warmists. I approach environmental doomsday prophets with a firm hermeneutic of suspicion. They've earned it.

Recusant,

You lost me on that one. What does Poison Gas signify in this context?

Jake,

That's a great list of links. I'm sure I'll refer back to it someday. I have one of my own to add which I decided to leave out of the o.p.

It's a good idea to not believe science when we are told that snowfalls in England will soon be a thing of the past and then are told 14 years later about hazardous conditions resulting from heavy snowfall in England.

Justin,

I actually started my college career as a science major, so I can relate to being told that everything I learned in high school was bunk. I think they told me that in my first class! I ended up switching to theology, so I missed out on the subsequent steps you've mentioned, but I appreciated the anecdote nonetheless.

people tend to be tribal when it comes to their beliefs about science,
That is, people tend to have irrational beliefs about science.
scientific literacy actually increases polarization rather than decreasing it.
That is, more scientifically educated one is, more irrational scientific beliefs one has!

Curious but not altogether surprising. Super-specialization is partly to blame , partly the shaky philosophical grounding many fields have, particularly in physics and cosmology. For instance, all of cosmology, including the Big Bang picture is built upon an essentially aesthetic preference that the Earth is not located at a special point in the universe.But is there a scientific or empirical reason for believing so?

The standard interpretations of quantum mechanics are dubious, see writings of Stanley Jaki who also demolished the case for the Theory of Everything with Goedel's argument. Even more, even knowing all the experimental facts upto today and building a theory that fully explains these facts, one cannot rule out that a new fact may turn up tomorrow that is not explained by our current theory.

"And the level of skepticism should increase with the level of complexity involved in the claim or claims in question."

This is really too simple-minded. In fact, the whole essay that John cites is too simple-minded (I read it a few days, ago). What is complexity? What the author really is doing is contrasting non-linear models with chaos vs. linear models. The universe is amazingly complex, but we can predict the orbit of planets and stars with amazing accuracy using linear models (although a closed-form solution to the n-body problem is known not to exist). We can model the atom very precisely using linear quantum mechanics. Granted, for certain phenomena we have to resort to non-linear extensions to the theory (as in, for instance, the precession of Mercury), a lot of science is fairly settled at at least an everyday level.

Unfortunately, the generalized Navier-Stokes equations, the basis for all modern fluid mechanics and meteorology is non-linear (there are some linear approximations) with chaos in certain variable regimes. It is very hard to work with these, which is why we have 3 supercomputers used by NOAA from 3 countries, each with different initial values, to try to predict the weather. Sometimes, they agree, but sometimes, they don't. Then, intuition and experience comes into play.

As for the earth not being a privileged location - that is a non-starter. Cosmology is not based on the arbitrary belief that the Earth is not the center of the universe. In fact, cosmology uses different coordinate systems all of the time. It doesn't care where the center is. It uses the simplest coordinate system for the job. Secondly, Fr. Jaki does not demolish a Theory of Everything using Godel's Theorem. He simply proves that there is a limit to the mathematical expression of a subject. That is nothing new. It has been known since 1935. What we don't have is any method, in general, to prove that a given theorem is Godelian undecidable. Godel's proof is a meta-proof. In fact, Theories of Everything are known that do not violate Godel's Theorem (more accurately, Tarski's Schema-T). "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth," happens to one of them, because God is simple and is not covered under Tarski's Schema.

I do not like simplifying science or creating controversy where none need exist. Unfortunately, the primary experiment needed to settle the AGW debate we can't run: super-saturate the atmosphere with CO2, methane, etc. and observe it for 500 years. That would be the correct experiment to run, but, alas, if we were to be wrong about our assumptions, we could only run it once, because there is no reset button for that kind of an experiment.

The Chicken

"That would be the correct experiment to run, but, alas, if we were to be wrong about our assumptions, we could only run it once, because there is no reset button for that kind of an experiment."

Well put!

I can't resist pointing out that the pompous priests of the cult of Science never seem to train their guns on things like ludicrously unscientific pronouncements about embryos, conception, and the unborn child or ludicrously unscientific (false) hype about embryonic stem cell research. Somehow, those things never make it into their lofty concern for "believing science."

This resonated with me. My degree is in physics and it is pretty typical for you to have to unlearn everything you were taught in High School in your first year and then you have to unlearn at least some of what you get taught in your first year in later years. If you go to graduate school you then get to unlearn some of what you were taught as an undergrad.

My nephew went to a medical school, in which the dean opened the orientation for first year students by telling them "half of what we teach you is wrong. The problem is, we don't know which half." It is surely the case that medicine keeps CHANGING what they say is good for people, or bad for people, based on further developments of science. A great many of the things taught doctors in 1900 are now considered to be erroneous. And thus it is plausible that a great many of the things that they teach doctors now will, in 200 years, be considered to be erroneous.

To "believe science" but not be skeptical of individual claims of "science" is to be naive at best, and in reality it is to ignore what science properly says about itself, which is "this particular theory may need correction". The act of accepting the theory of X as a worthwhile theory while acknowledging that it is incomplete and may need correcting is not "belief", that mental act goes by a different name: to theorize.

As I tell my introductory astronomy students (http://orthosphere.org/2012/07/22/the-science-talk/):

"However, scientists have been given great prestige by society at large, and there is always the temptation for us to abuse that trust to promote our own opinions on issues where our expertise do not apply. In this class, I’ve been very careful never to give away my opinions on anything outside my discipline, and that’s why. So, how can you tell when a scientist is stepping over the line? Most of all, by understanding how real science is done, you can have a good idea what sorts of problems it can properly be applied to. Another rule of thumb is the following: when somebody says “Science proves such-and-such” be on your guard. Scientists presenting legitimate results are always more likely to say “such-and-such experiment proves…” or “such-and-such calculation leads us to expect…” There’s no unitary “Science” that can bring the entirety of its authority to bear on any one question."

Also, to solidify Justin's growing skepticism, he should know that Lord Kelvin almost certainly did not make the embarrassing claim attributed to him: https://bonald.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/in-defense-of-lord-kelvin/

Lord Ridley explicitly rejects Christianity, and that is a poor start if he wishes Christians to listen to his arguments, which have been refuted several times in several articles. To get people to pay attention to him, now, after the Northern Rock debacle is a tough sell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley

Ridley was chairman of the UK bank Northern Rock from 2004 to 2007, during which period Northern Rock experienced the first run on a British bank in 150 years. Ridley chose to resign, and the bank was bailed out by the UK government leading to the nationalisation of Northern Rock.

In 2006 the bank had moved into sub-prime lending via a deal with Lehman Brothers. Although the mortgages were sold under Northern Rock's brand through intermediaries, the risk was being underwritten by Lehman Brothers.

So we'll take his finance and banking advice with a grain of salt, but it's far from clear what that debacle has to do with climate change; unless it be that both high finance and climate change activism share an inordinate faith in sophisticated modeling and mathematical abstractions as replacements for human wisdom.

Come on, Paul. Lord Ridley owns 1/6 of the Britains's opencast coal reserves. He's making millions in sales of coal and subsidies. Is it likely that he is unbiased? People in Britain are not unaware of these issues. His uncle, Nicholas Ridley, was one of the architects of the closure of Britain's deep coal mining operations - for the benefit of the opencast coal industry.

https://anewnatureblog.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/viscount-matt-ridley-the-new-king-coal/

And he has a history of supporting Richard Dawkins - here is a video of them debating Rabbi Wolpe and Dr William Lane Craig.

http://youtu.be/p6tIee8FwX8

I question his judgment on a number of issues.

Professor John Abraham, a scientist and a Christian, has this to say about Lord Ridley's opinions.

http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/09/16/john-abraham-slams-matt-ridley-climate-denial-op-ed-wall-street-journal

I don't know where my last post disappeared. Paul, Lord Ridley owns 1/6 of Britain's opencast coal reserves. His biases are obvious, most people in Britain know this.

https://anewnatureblog.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/viscount-matt-ridley-the-new-king-coal/

His uncle Viscount Ridley effectively closed down deep coal mining in Britain, to the benefit of opencast mining.

His judgments are highly suspect. He debates on the side of Richard Dawkins against Rabbi Wolpe and Dr William Lane Craig.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6tIee8FwX8

A scientist, and a Christian Dr John Abraham, has this to say about him.

http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/09/16/john-abraham-slams-matt-ridley-climate-denial-op-ed-wall-street-journal

Masked chicken,
It is not a matter of coordinate systems and the choice of origin. The modern revolution consisted precisely in dethroning the Earth from the center of cosmos and relegating it first to an orbit around the Sun and then Sun itself was relegated to an unprivileged position in the cosmos.This is called the Principle of Mediocrity.

The reason this is significant has to do with red shift.As observed from the Earth, we see galaxies receding away from us in all directions. By the Principle of Mediocrity, and only by this principle, it is inferred that all the points in the universe are receding from all the other points. This yields the Big Bang singularity in the past. But the underlying Principle of Mediocrity that enables us to extrapolate from empirical observations on Earth, this principle is itself not an empirical principle.

Stephen Hawking alludes to this in his Brief history of Time.

Theories of Everything are known that do not violate Godel's Theorem (more accurately, Tarski's Schema-T). "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth," happens to one of them,

"In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth" is not a scientific theory.

"So we'll take his finance and banking advice with a grain of salt, but it's far from clear what that debacle has to do with climate change..."

Interesting. I found his list somewhat curious and lacking in perspective.

"Another thing that gave me pause was that I went back and looked at the history of past predictions of ecological apocalypse from my youth – "

As always, the wisdom of another Peer is apt:

"When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?"

Ridley's list:

"population explosion" - Back when population had folks freaking out, the growth rate was alarming and the slope of that rate was terrifying to those who actually thought about it (growth rate was over 2% and the slope was up - do the math). Since then technology, policy, and values have changed the rate and the direction of the slope. (When I went through India in the 1980s every small village had a well advertized birth control clinic.) Africa needs to get its act together but the situation has changed dramatically since the pop bomb days.

"oil exhaustion" - Again technology changed the short term situation. The question is do we count on a continuing series of rabbits coming out of hats and ignore the externalities or do we use the time bought wisely?

"elephant extinction" - Again we come to population growth in Africa. Anyway, folks saw a rapidly shrinking population, became alarmed and enacted a series of public and private measures which bought us some time. Ridley seems to not understand that pointing out that a problem exists might actually serve to change matters.

"rainforest loss" - Still losing it but somewhat slowed down. I don't understand the point.

"acid rain" - Montreal protocols.

"the ozone layer" - CFCs banned, etc.

"desertification" - The Sahara has been thwarted? Ridley seems to have the time sense of a three year old.

"nuclear winter" - ??? The only way we will know is to have a nuclear war. Anyone for that experiment?

"the running out of resources" - Ok, Erlich was a fool who hopefully stayed out of the commodity markets but resource extraction does have its externalities and has he (Ridley) monitored various water tables around the world as well as shrinking glaciers?

"pandemics" - It seems to me that complacency isn't useful.

"falling sperm counts" - The matter is still unresolved and difficult to evaluate so his judgment is premature.

"cancerous pesticide pollution" - Again concern led to action - the worst actors are banned or regulated, at least in the developed world. If they were a problem would not that have an effect?

"and so forth" - I'd like to see his other examples. This time of the year we have thousands of Aleutian Geese hanging out in our county. There are well over 100,000 of these guys now and they have been taken off the Endangered Species list and hunting reopened. There wasn't a sighting of any between the 1930s and 1962 when 700 were found on a small Aleutian Island. Extinction was a real possibility and folks who are concerned about these things were justified in being alarmed. That concern led to public and private actions that reversed the situation.

"There was a consistent pattern of exaggeration, followed by damp squibs: in not a single case was the problem as bad as had been widely predicted by leading scientists."

Perhaps identifying a problem begins the solution of that problem and all one can go on is the data one has. Perhaps Ridley is also confusing "leading scientists" with activists who can get carried away. Anyway he seems to accept AGW as real but has decided to go with the small effect side. Looking over his site leads me to believe that his decision is motivated by factors other than the science on GW.

Last century we ran an experiment on millions of children by adding lead to gasoline as well as paint, etc. The folks running the experiment made billions but things may not have worked out so well for those kids and the costs were socialized. As The Chicken has pointed out we are in a centuries long experiment of running up the levels of CO2, water vapor, and methane in our atmosphere. What could go wrong?

"...unless it be that both high finance and climate change activism share an inordinate faith in sophisticated modeling and mathematical abstractions as replacements for human wisdom."

As for climate change skepticism, conservatives have a poor record on environmental matters in general. Cars had nothing to do with smog. Regional government is a Communist plot. The clean air and water acts will destroy the economy, etc., etc. Way back in the day Anthony Lejeune had a regular column in NR. Flying over Lake Erie, then plagued with pollution and dead zones, he expressed amazement that anyone could believe that anything humans could do could possibly effect so large a body of water. That was what his "human wisdom" informed him.

al,

So you really think those predicted catastrophes turned out not to be so bad because we were saved by the environmentalists and good government policies? Just out of curiosity, how would you prove that was the case rather than what seems more probable to me, namely that the doomsayers were wrong about the catastrophes to begin with?

Relevant excerpt from The Brief History of Time:

...all this evidence that the universe looks the same whichever direction we look in might seem to suggest there is something special about our place in the universe. In particular, it might seem that if we observe all other galaxies to be moving away from us, then we must be at the center of the universe.

However,

There is, however, an alternate explanation: the universe might look the same in every direction as seen from any other galaxy, too. This, as we have seen, was Friedmann’s second assumption. We have no scientific evidence for, or against, this assumption. We believe it only on grounds of modesty: it would be most remarkable if the universe looked the same in every direction around us, but not around other points in the universe.

-----------------------------------------------------
Friedmann's second assumption above is homogeneity that is the make-up of the universe is more or less the same everywhere.

"But the underlying Principle of Mediocrity that enables us to extrapolate from empirical observations on Earth, this principle is itself not an empirical principle."

The term, Principle of Mediocrity is of relatively recent origin (1995, Alexander Vilenkin) and certainly not the basis for modern cosmology coordinates. Sorry, but I have spent a fair amount of time debunking geocentrism and the choice of coordinate system depends on the problem to be solved, not the notion of who is the center of the universe. Even the chief Vatican astronomer says the same thing. Vilenkin created the POM to try to explain, based on quantum principles, why every region of space must be considered equivalent. It is a sophisticated form of begging the question, because POM is built into quantum mechanics, from the start.

There is a related POM in statistics, related to the pigeon-hole principle, that states that in choosing a random sample from two sets, an object is likelier to be drawn from the set containing the larger number of objects. The flaw in applying this to cosmology is that we do not know the size of the sets to begin with. We simply have no a priori right to assume that the Earth is privileged or not-privileged. That information must belong to Revelation, not science. Science is permitted, excluding any argument to the contrary, to choose the simplest form of math to solve a problem. Close to earth, that is geocentric coordinates; far from Earth, it is galactic coordinates. Science, of itself, can have no opinion, properly speaking of whether or not the Earth is privileged, since there is no empirical way to test that. It is simply not a valid question, even though some atheists will attempt to use it to disprove the existence of God.

""In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth" is not a scientific theory."

If you had read my original comment closely, you would have seen that I said it was a sample of a statement of a Theory of Everything that did not violate Godelian Undecidability. I said nothing about science. My argument was a logical argument and it is correct. Theories can be absolutely true, so even though it is based on Revelation, it is also a Theory and a Theory of Everything. It just happens to depend on a different source of information than science, which was the whole point of why it does not violate Godelian Undecidability.

The Chicken

I would again stress that the theories of geocentricism, heliocentricism, Principle of Mediocrity etc are unrelated to the choice of coordinate system.

Suppose there is a room filled with people. You could define the coordinate system with respect to any individual A,B, C etc.
But the question whether A is in the center of the room or there is no person at the center of room, or there is no center of the room at all, this questions exist irrespective of the choice of coordinate system.

Your concern with the choice of coordinate system assumes certain things, such as the Principle of Mediocrity, that my critique questions. Hence, it is just begging the question I ask.

I ask you do you think the universe is finite or infinite?
And if it is finite, does it have a center?

We simply have no a priori right to assume that the Earth is privileged or not-privileged

I agree and ask whether the hypothesis of Big Bang depends on the assumption that the Earth is not-privileged.

Tried to post this twice from my phone and failed so trying again.

Plenty of people in Britain are aware of Lord Ridley's conflict of interest in the climate debate. He owns about 1/6 of Britain's open cast coal reserves.

https://anewnatureblog.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/viscount-matt-ridley-the-new-king-coal/

His motives are decidedly suspect. He also happens to support Richard Dawkins. This makes his capacity for judgment questionable to Christians.

"But the question whether A is in the center of the room or there is no person at the center of room, or there is no center of the room at all, this questions exist irrespective of the choice of coordinate system."

You keep changing the issue. Originally, you made the statement that cosmology is based on the assumption that the Earth is not a privileged point in the universe. I showed that cosmology is agnostic to that point. Not doesn't care. It uses whatever coordinate system simplifies the math. It doesn't care where the center of the universe is. As for the center of the room, that depends on something called the metric of the space. I can think of plenty of metrics where A, B, or C could be the center of the room. You are assuming a uniform metric (specifically, a Euclidian metric) in your discussion. A metric may be thought of as a measure of distance. In fact, space does not have a uniform metric, at least in the simplest possible form of math to deal with that encompasses all of the facts that we currently know and we know this because gravitational lensing around massive stars and galaxies depends on the fact the the metric changed as a function of spatial curvature.

Also, I have no dog in this fight. The Earth may well be the center of the universe. If it is, science will, eventually (maybe after another thousand years) get to that point. There is a unity of truth and, eventually, material truth and revelatory truth will catch up to each other. St. Pope John-Paul II talks about this in his encyclical, Vetitatis Splendor, which may be found, here:

http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html

The Chicken

"So you really think those predicted catastrophes turned out not to be so bad because we were saved by the environmentalists and good government policies? Just out of curiosity, how would you prove that was the case rather than what seems more probable to me, namely that the doomsayers were wrong about the catastrophes to begin with?"

Well, we could start by being more specific. Are you asserting that the trends re: population, ozone, flora and fauna, etc. were unproblematic in the first place or that they were problematic but would have somehow self-corrected and hence concern and corrective measures were unwarranted?

One of the fist things I noted about Bangkok and New Delhi was the smell. It had been some years since I had noticed exhaust fumes besides the occasional diesel vehicle. Anyway, I saw the air clear up in Southern California when measures were taken, measures that are lacking in areas (e.g. Peking) where smog persists. Are you suggesting that returning to 1950s emission standards for vehicles and back yard incinerators would make no difference in air quality?

This may be of interest:

http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Lucifer_Curves_2-22-15.pdf

One more point: as for the Earth being at a special point in the universe, it all depends on how one defines special. Special in what sense? Certainly it is not with regards any one single variable, such as mass, temperature, etc. or collection of some variables. The only way that the Earth can claim to be a special point is via revelation and this is a matter outside of science. Stephen Hawking is a lousy philosopher and theologian and his citatation of the Principle of Mediocrity in explaining cosmology is equivalent to his atheism. The Cosmological Principle says that the universe is homogeneous and was used by Freidmann, LeMaitre, Robinson, and Walker (the so-called FLRW metric) in an attempt to solve the Einstein Equations of General Relativity for a homogeneous fluid-like universe. It is a reasonable assumption to simplify the highly non-linear Einstein Equations. Using this simplifying assumption leads to the Big Bang. Who knows what the actual metric of the universe is? Science doesn't and nothing Hawking says changes that fact. Science has not canonized the FLRW metric. It is like Newton's Laws: they explain a lot, but no one considers them the final description of nature. Science is the search for better and better approximations to describing reality. It never says, "This is truth."

We do not know that the universe is homogeneous, anyways. Here is a review paper:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.1300

This pitting of material science against theological revelation is useless. Even if the Earth is the center if the universe, cosmologists would not change their equations because it would make the math more complicated and require the introduction of ad hoc, unobserved phenomena. I know the geocentrism literature fairly well. Their material arguments are a mess.

The Chicken

The problem is the word "believe" and definition of the word "science." The scientific method, when applied properly without the bias of vested interests in the outcome and with truthful reporting based on, at the very least, the preponderance of observable evidence doesn't care what you believe -- it is based on outcomes. Our problem is that "science" as conducted by major research institutions has been co-opted by powerful, monied, special interests.
Only by critically questioning "beliefs" can we arrive at something close to "The Truth." Absolute truth requires omniscience and the ability to disprove a negative, which is impossible in human perceptual terms.

The most useful tool is critical thought. What applies to media bias and propaganda also applied to scientific reporting:
http://www.criticalthinking.org/files/Media%20Bias.final.pdf

"The Thinker’s Guide
By Dr. Richard Paul and Dr. Linda Elder
The Foundation for Critical Thinking
For Conscientious Citizens on
How to Detect
Media Bias &
Propaganda
In National and World News
Based on Critical Thinking Concepts ....

Dear Reader,
The logic behind bias and propaganda in the news media is simple and it is the same
the world over. Each society and culture has a unique world view. This colors what they see
and how they see it. News media in the cultures of the world reflect the world view of the
culture for which they write. But the truth of what is happening in the world is much more
complicated than what appears to be true in any culture. To be a critical reader of the news
media in any society, one must come to terms with this truth and read accordingly. Critical
thinking is a complex set of skills that reverses what is natural and instinctive in human
thought.
The uncritical mind is unconsciously driven to identify truth in accordance with the
following tacit maxims:
• “It’s true if I believe it.”
• “It’s true if we believe it.”
• “It’s true if we want to believe it.”
• “It’s true if it serves our vested interest to believe it.”
The critical mind consciously seeks the truth in accordance with the following instinctcorrecting
maxims:
• “I believe it, but it may not be true.”
• “We believe it, but we may be wrong.”
• “We want to believe it, but we may be prejudiced by our desire.”
• “It serves our vested interest to believe it, but our vested interest has nothing to do with
the truth.”
Mainstream news coverage in a society operates with the following maxims:
• “This is how it appears to us from our point of view; therefore, this is the way it is.”
• “These are the facts that support our way of looking at this; therefore, these are the most
important facts.”
• “These countries are friendly to us; therefore, these countries deserve praise.”
• “These countries are unfriendly to us; therefore, these countries deserve criticism.”
• “These are the stories most interesting or sensational to our readers; therefore, these are
the most important stories in the news.”
Critical readers of the news reverse each of these maxims. This guide explains how to do
this and thus reduce the influence of bias and propaganda on human thinking....."

Ultimately, the best answer to me is to give up "belief" altogether and base one's worldview on critical thought, direct experience and the preponderance of observable evidence.

Of course, no one cares what I believe. LOL.

As someone who enjoys a bit of gallows humor, I was recently informed of an anti-vaccination book that is actually pro-measles. The top customer reviews of the book are some of the most scathing comments I've read in a long time.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1466938897/

I still have a soft spot for the guy who proposed on this blog that flu vaccines are a government mind control conspiracy. That was a classic.

Al -- one writer who put a lot of effort into examining that lead poisoning thesis is Steve Sailer. His interesting posts on the subject can easily be found through Google. Here's one summary essay:

http://takimag.com/article/did_heavy_metal_brain_damage_cause_the_1960s_steve_sailer/print#axzz2zbgF2xxp

. . . which includes this marvelous little paragraph:

Ironically, [Kevin] Drum [writing in Mother Jones] stands the dominant narrative about the 60s on its head. Instead of the 60s representing enlightened emancipation from the shackles of 50s conformist culture, Drum finds the 60s, with their rising rates of crime and illegitimate births, to be the result of brain damage.

Step2 -- those Amazon comments are indeed impressive in their terse and scathing sarcasm.

Who articulated the flu vaccine conspiracy theory?

Paul,
It was Daniel Smith. I appreciated his theory since I had wanted to make "somebody with a briefcase" as my appeal to authority for a long time and that gave me the perfect opportunity :)

Some of Sailer's links are broken but his hypothesis likely has some value even though it is incompletely stated. Also his comments on L.A. are puzzling for someone who lives there.

Anyway, Duncan Black has often made the point that the increase in crime due to lead is likely only part of the story and that other non-criminal but still anti-social behaviors are also involved. Example: What else was going on in the 1960s besides wacky behavior on the left? Well, for one, the 1960s was the beginning of a conscious effort on the right to take over the Republican Party. The whole "summer of love" thing is long gone but the consequences of the Goldwater campaign are still with us.

We might also want to consider things like the rise of private equity firms like Bain.

Some of Sailer's links are broken but his hypothesis likely has some value even though it is incompletely stated. Also his comments on L.A. are puzzling for someone who lives there.

Anyway, Duncan Black has often made the point that the increase in crime due to lead is likely only part of the story and that other non-criminal but still anti-social behaviors are also involved. Example: What else was going on in the 1960s besides wacky behavior on the left? Well, for one, the 1960s was the beginning of a conscious effort on the right to take over the Republican Party. The whole "summer of love" thing is long gone but the consequences of the Goldwater campaign are still with us.

We might also want to consider things like the rise of private equity firms like Bain.

@John Fraser

I am referring to an essay, written in 1969 by Isaac Asimov, named "The Sin of the Scientist". It should be known that Asimov was a strident liberal Democrat and fervent believer in AGW. That he was part of the very bulwark of the Left makes his essay so poignant.

Essentially, he writes that not even the atomic bomb was truly evil, as its development was responsible for the great strides in understanding atomic theory and peacetime use of nuclear energy. He asserted that, on the other hand, the development of chlorine gas as a weapon, by the positive act of a scientist was an unforgivable perversion of science as a whole.