Lord Monckton on the Pseudo-Science of "Climate Change"

Recent posts have involved an examination of ways in which the meaning of the term "scientific method" has been changing in basic and disturbing ways.


While I have focused especially on the scandalous refusal of the Darwinian research program to C14 date soft-tissue-presenting Cretaceous fossils, I was grateful to come across, on William Briggs' blog, a wonderful new post from Lord Monckton, the redoubtable scourge of that pseudo-science formerly known as "Global Warming"(subsequently renamed "Climate Change", once it became clear that there has been no global warming at all for the last fifteen years).


Lord Monckton makes several cogent (and pungent) observations along some of the same lines as have been considered here, in posts on "Consilience"-as-substitute-for-falsification in the post-scientific method, as well as those on the truly scandalous, smoking-gun case of refusal to C14 date Mary's Bones.


Lord Monckton's whole treatment is well worth the read here: "Why Every Scientist Needs A Classical Training".


Relevant excerpt:

"The greatest error in the Berkeley team’s conclusion is in Dr. Müller’s assertion that the cause of all the warming since 1750 is Man. His stated reason for this conclusion is this: “Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.”

"No Classically trained scientist could ever have uttered such a lamentable sentence in good conscience. For Dr. Müller here perpetrates a spectacular instance of the ancient logical fallacy known as the argument from false cause — post hoc, ergo propter hoc. However closely the fluctuations in one dataset appear to follow the fluctuations in another, one cannot legitimately assume that either caused the other.

"Dr. Müller admits elsewhere in his editorial that mere correlation between one data series and another does not imply a causative link between them. Nor, one should add, does it tell us which caused which; nor whether all possible natural influences that might have driven both data series simultaneously have been allowed for.

In logic, though correlation does not necessarily imply causation, the absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation. During the past 15 years, notwithstanding record increases in our CO2 emissions, there has been no global warming at all. The former, then, cannot have been the principal cause of the latter.......

"If Dr. Müller had had a Classical training, he would have been made familiar with the dozen logical fallacies first codified by Aristotle 2300 years ago. He would not have attempted to draw any firm scientific conclusions as to causality merely from a superficial and in any event inadequate and uncertain correlation; and still less from a monstrous argumentum ad ignorantiam. Perhaps it is time to ensure that every scientist receives a Classical training, as nearly all of them once did."

Bingo.

Consilience: Welcome to the Post-Scientific, Post-Catholic World

You believe that the Universe (the better informed among you believe that our Hubble bubble) originated in a Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago.

You believe that the Earth is about 4 billion years old; that life has evolved from one or more primordial ancestors (most of you believe in abiogenesis as well, but are at pains to insist that you are not required to say so, since you cannot demonstrate this belief experimentally- but as we shall see, most of you think you have even better grounds upon which to believe it anyway).

You believe that random mutation and natural selection are completely adequate means by which to explain the observed biodiversity of our world.

The vast majority of you believe that man’s appearance is also explainable by these means. 

A (much smaller and understandably shrinking) subset of you believe that God must have intervened in the process at the point where man first appears.

The better informed among you are aware that none of these assertions has been demonstrated experimentally (that is, not one of these assertions is scientific, as that word has been understood by Einstein, by Popper, by every great discoverer of scientific principle in history.......until the advent of this post-scientific world).

But even (especially!) the better informed among you believe these things, and you believe them so strongly that you scorn any suggestion that experimental demonstration of these beliefs might reasonably be demanded.

You believe that you have something better than experimental demonstration, which confirms you in these beliefs.

That “something better” is consilience.

Consilience is the only persuasive argument that the post-scientific worldview (the worldview of inflation, of dark matter and dark energy, of the multiverse, of String Theory, of “Deep Time” neo-Darwinism) has ever advanced.

It has persuaded you, and it has persuaded (may God help us), even Princes of the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church now proposes consilience as relevant- in some vague but apparently real way- even for Catholics:

“.......new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.  It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge.  The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.”--

Pope John Paul II, Address to Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 1996

Here it is proposed that the note of scientific truth is found, not in experimental test with the intention of falsifying assumed knowledge, but in the “convergence, neither sought nor fabricated” among independent branches of research.

Consilience is also a key to understanding the Nouvelle Theologie: instead of the Traditional Catholic proclamation “outside the Church there is no salvation”, we are presented with a dialogue among mutual seekers of Truth, all of whom “tend to converge” upon some objective Truth which lies, perhaps, somewhere further down the road of the “convergence” (consilience).

In the scientific world, something was established by experiment, and always subjected to crucial experiment, ceaselessly, *with the intention of falsifying what we might think we know*.

In the post scientific world, experiment exists merely to resolve difficulties in the path of the consilience, of that which we *already have determined that we know*.

In the Traditional Church, salvation was something possessed by the Catholic Church in its fullness, and all dialogue was intended to assist the pagan, the Jew, the heretic, the schismatic, in coming to understand and accept this.

In the modern Church, salvation is, also, something dispensed in unknowable ways by God, to those who seek that consilience, that Truth, which lies somewhere, perhaps, down the road of the dialogue, closer to the convergence of the consilience among the truth-seekers.

Truth is objective, in Traditional Catholic teaching.

Scientific truth is the result of ceaseless experimental challenge, in the scientific world.

Truth is relative, evolving, and the mutual object of truth seekers more or less aligned with the consilience toward which they are “converging”, in the Nouvelle Theologie.

Scientific truth is the result of consilience between lines of investigation, in the post scientific world.

Welcome to the post scientific world.

Geocentrism and "Mathemagic", Part 2..."The War of the PhD's Over How To Do The Math"

A development with respect to the earlier post covering Yukio Tomozawa's remarkable paper, claiming a mathematical demonstration of the impossibility of the standard, Friedman "balloon" universe, in light of the observed dipole in the CMB.

My old interlocutor Paul Rimmer has, after a lengthy hiatus, posted a response to the Tomozawa paper here.



UPDATE 3/10: It is clear that Paul has no intention of restoring the link. Alas, in the absence of the link, it were impossible to allow his solution to be assessed.


The status quo ante remains in place.




UPDATE 3/5: Paul has pulled the link to this down...

In it, we see that Paul claims Tomozawa has made a "mistake".

But it has been pointed out that Paul's answer apparently ignores the fact that Tomozawa's paper treats the expansion- the accelerating expansion- of the CMB, while Paul's treatment apparently ignores this acceleration.

More comments are beginning to flow in, and the entire shebang will eventually be written up, in the interest of determining whether there exists any truly logical, self-consistent basis upon which to claim that one ought to "shut up and calculate", based on the assumption, of course, that everyone agrees what the calculations should represent (it appears very likely at this point that everyone does not agree about what the calculations represent).

As another PhD, whose doctoral thesis was on General Relativity, apparently prophetically indicated at the end of my initial treatment of this matter:

"The (Big Bang) models based on (General Relativity) are castles built on sand.

1)      The equality of relative velocities cannot be tested in the photon frame, as the scientific method requires.

2)      Light speed in its own co-moving frame must be zero, not c.

3)      The westbound (Speed of Light) > c.

An inconsistent theory – like relativity – is worse than being wrong.  It can show anything is true – or false.

No discussion is possible until 1 & 2 are made consistent with reality.

Why let MS choose a battleground based on contradictions?"

I have opened this discussion up to several physicists, inviting them to comment on Tomozawa's initial theorems, and Paul Rimmer's claims of a "mistake" in them.

I will be updating these responses as they come in, in order to determine whether or not there exists any consistent, logical basis upon which issues such as this one can be dealt with, under the premises of standard model, General Relativity mathematics.......

Or whether even PhD's can come up with diametrically opposite conclusions from the same observations, based on the application of the same mathematics.

Let the Math Wars begin!

Apologies for Long Hiatus

I have been pulled away by professional responsibilities which have (big surprise) turned out to be rather more involved than originally anticipated.

Please look for updates on several very interesting fronts starting tomorrow.

Mary's Bones IV: When Science Jumps The Fence

It is asserted that evolution is a scientific theory, in which case it could never be "proved", merely adopted as the best scientific (testable, experimentally falsifiable) explanation for observed phenomena.

Scientific theories have no requirement (no possibility) whatever to be metaphysically true, since they all must be falsifiable in order to be scientific.

Metaphysics cannot be falsifiable. Metaphysics can only be true, or false.

Any metaphysics without God is an appalling absurdity, which is where the difficulty lies.

If science "jumps the fence" and begins to assert its various hypotheses as metaphysical certainties, we notice that the resultant metaphysics will certainly be absurd and false.

"Something from nothing" is very big just now in cosmology as well as quantum physics, as in the "eternally inflating multiverse" proceeding from the "energy of empty space that isn't zero" (the nothing turns out to contain something= contradiction=metaphysical falsification).

Materialist, naturalist metaphysics are always absurd.

They have to be. No metaphysics can be true which denies the fundamental ground of being itself: God.

For example, quantum physics makes absurdly accurate measurements based on a scientific hypothesis, stated here by David Bohm:

"the world is assumed to be constituted of a set of separately existent, indivisible and unchangeable 'elementary particles', which are the fundamental 'building blocks' of the entire universe...."

This is fine, let science hypothesize its world of particles. I like cell phones. I like computers.

They work.

Usually.

But Bohm continues:

"...there seems to be an unshakable faith among physicists that either such particles, or some other kind yet to be discovered, will eventually make possible a complete and coherent explanation of everything".

Now we have metaphysics, not science. The key words above are "faith", and "complete and coherent explanation of everything".

There will never be a complete and coherent explanation of everything based on fundamental particles as the ground of being.

This is because such an idea is a metaphysical absurdity.

Metaphysics without God is an absurdity, always and everywhere.

So, what about evolution?

Once we see evolution ceasing to allow itself to be experimentally falsifiable- exactly as we do in fact see in the case of refusing to C14 date Mary's Bones- we know that it has ceased to be a scientific theory (if it ever was- I still can't tell for sure on that point yet) and has begun to proceed as a metaphysical research program.

As metaphysics, evolution is an absurdity.

So it is crucial to establish whether evolution claims for itself the status of science; that is, just the best collection of notions which can usefully yield predictions, always subject to experimental falsification- or whether it is metaphysics; that is, a claim about being as being.

I think the  thread linked here shows very strong evidence that evolution is now a metaphysical, not a scientific, research program.

It should be assessed on those grounds.

The assessment will not be kind, because the metaphysics will be absurd.

But that will be addressed in Mary's Bones Part V.


UPDATE 2/12: I have sifted through all of the counter-arguments to H1 and am presented with one that is strong. Read it here. 


UPDATE 2/12: I have answered the above argument here. I consider the refutation to be conclusive.




NOTE: "H1" in the linked post refers to my "Hypothesis #1":

H1: The Darwinian theory is a metaphysical, not a scientific, research program

Mary's Bones Part III: Is Evolution Science or Metaphysics?

I would like to begin to present here the ongoing results of a truly.........interesting sojourn at the TalkRational site.

Fair warning: If one clicks some of the links I will be providing in the course of this series of posts, and scans up and down the thread from them, one will likely encounter instances of blasphemy so utterly vile as to present a problem for me here.

Do I risk leading someone to a site where such incredible evil is not only permitted, but encouraged?

I conclude that only those spiritually prepared to enter the lion's den should enter it.

Otherwise, just stay here and I will present relevant posts with direct links sufficient to fairly characterize the arguments (minus the blasphemies).

Believe me, if I had the choice, I would stay here.

But since I am already in the lion's den, let me tell you that the lions have a big, big problem on their hands.

The problem consists in the existence of Cretaceous dinosaur bones presenting the extreme anomaly of soft tissues (now there are dozens and dozens of similar finds reported by separate teams of researchers working in widely divergent areas of the world).

First off: I learned a very important point concerning the C14 dating of the TRex bones related in Mary's Bones, Pt II.

In the update inserted at the top of that post, you will see the first substantive benefit I received from entering the lion's den.

The "relatively modern" ages reported in the abstract of the referenced paper by Kaye, et el (2008), are actually reported in the paper itself as far too modern; that is, the results obtained would be consistent with our TRex having croaked on a timescale:

"139.01%±0.65 of modern (1950) of ¹⁴C activity"

approximately consistent with last Tuesday.

Now that doesn't work for anybody, whether strict Darwinian, theistic evolutionist, or young earth creationist.

The date is clearly most plausibly associated with modern contamination of the sample.

But here, again, the plot thickens.

In this post, which is representative of dozens and dozens of others, an objector insists that C14 dating is never appropriate for Cretaceous specimens, since we already know that all Cretaceous fossils are at least 65 million years old, and C14 dating only returns valid dates on samples less than approximately 60,000 (carbon) years old.


My reply situates the real issue here:

Oh, this is rich. The logical fallacy is "circulus in probando", or circular argumentation. We have a bone. We want to know if it is less than 60,000 carbon years old. In order to do the experiment which will objectively answer the question, we must...... First determine whether the bone is less than 60,000 years old. Sir, has it yet occurred to you yet that if you are receiving public funds of any kind to do "science", that you ought in conscience return them?

Now here is the basis of the problem for the lions.

The entire science of paleontology was developed precisely because it was assumed that ancient bones- like dinosaur bones, which are assumed to be at least scores of millions of years old- could never contain soft tissue, blood cells, and collagen- such organic substances would degrade much, much more quickly than that.

But the scientific method involves, always, the principle of falsifiability.


If one is pursuing a scientific program of research, then no matter how many times a given assumption has proven to be justified, even one well-established, confirmed, and carefully verified contrary observation is sufficient to call the assumption into question at the very least, and even to falsify it.


The existence of counter-predicted soft tissue in 80,000,000 year old dinosaur bones, therefore, calls the assumption of an 80,000,000 year age into question- at least if we are dealing with a scientific theory!


This principle of falsifiability is often associated with the great philosopher of science Karl Popper, who puts it this way:

"The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game."

• Ch. 2 "On the Problem of a Theory of Scientific Method", Section XI: Methodological Rules as Conventions

The very best formulation of this principle, in my opinion, comes from Albert Einstein himself:

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

So.


Is the Darwinian theory actually pursuing the anomaly on the basis of the scientific method?

UPDATE 2/13: The following link has been updated to reflect the progression of the discussion:

I argue it is not.

I argue that the Darwinian theory is instead a metaphysical research program.

The discussion is ongoing, and will be updated soon.

Harrisburg Affair: Link to Fr. Harrison's Essay

I apologize for the hiatus in new posts lately, I am engaged in a really amazing series of exchanges at the TalkRational site, which will be the subject of a future post when concluded.

Today I received a comment from Kurt, over on "Harrisburg Affair Pt 2: The Timeline" and I reproduce it here, along with my response, and a further update received directly from Dr. Sungenis.

First, Kurt's comment:

I found a pretty good response to Father Harrisons defense of Robert Sungenis at this site,

http://sungenisandthejews.blogspot.com/2008/09/fr-harrison-and-rsatj.html

http://sungenisandthejews.blogspot.com/2008/09/fr-harrison-and-diocese-of-harrisburg.html

I think that they were very respectful and made a lot of good points. And I see that you didn't provide a link to Fathers article. It seems to be off-line. Are you sure he still stands behind it?




My reply:


Kurt: I find a useful correlation between your post and the kind of "argumentation" advanced in your link.

Insinuation is the order of the day:

"I see that you didn't provide a link to Fathers article. It seems to be off-line."

Now, Kurt, let me ask you. If the article were to be on-line, would this have anything at all to do with whether it were true?

If it were to have been online and then taken off-line, would this have anything at all to do with whether it were false?

Of course not.

The only utility such an observation would have, would be to afford the opportunity to advance an insinuation, designed to implant into the mind of the reader that, maybe, just maybe, the author didn't, or doesn't, or might, or might not, really mean what he said?

The logical fallacy is clear, but then some folks aren't very logical.

You are one of them.

We know this from your next statement:

"Are you sure he still stands behind it?"

Kurt. On what possible basis would you advance such a ridiculous question?

Do you have any evidence that he does not stand behind it?

No.

That's because there isn't any.

But if you don't have evidence, perhaps you can employ insinuation to suggest that perhaps, just maybe, a logical connection exists between internet availability and truth content.

Now let us situate this discussion on the basis of logic, and not insinuation.

Fr. Harrison's words are posted above.

You wish to suggest he no longer stands behind them.

Post your evidence.

I will save you the time.

There isn't any.

That is because, of course, he still stands behind them.

Thank you for providing us yet another insight into the techniques of character assassination which have been developed so elaborately on the Get Sungenis blog.

If you wish to take a shower after reading the Get Sungenis blog, and then return here and post whatever "good points" you insinuate but do not bother to demonstrate exist in its content, I will be happy to examine them.


UPDATE 2/9: I contacted Dr. Sungenis, who told me the essay, which was on his website way back in 2008, was removed as a matter of course, since the issue had been fully aired and, as far as he was concerned, fully addressed.


He has now put it back up, and anyone interested in reading it (highly recommended!) can do so:


Here!