Global Warming, Evolution And The Big Bang - Staggering Number Of Americans Doubt Accepted Science.

originally posted by: seeker1963
a reply to: smurfy

BS the poor to pay to breath!

They'll call it the "Carbon Tax;" the bigger the family, the bigger the tax. Good way to control the population numbers as well. ?

I take polls like this with a heaping tablespoon of salt. Especially when you can't see the actual questions asked, the people who were asked, and other details about the poll. Perfectly reasonable responses by reasonable people can be taken out of context. For instance:

Marsha Brooks, a 59-year-old nanny who lives in Washington, D.C., said she’s certain smoking causes cancer because she saw her mother, aunts and uncles, all smokers, die of cancer. But when it comes to the universe beginning with a Big Bang or the Earth being about 4.5 billion years old, she has doubts. She explained: “It could be a lack of knowledge. It seems so far” away.

All she is saying is she's not sure. Who would expect a 60 year old nanny to have the scientific background to say with certainty that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old or the the Universe was created in with the Big Bang? How many times has the age of the Earth been pushed back by new scientific findings? How do we know that scientists won't up that age to 6.8 billion years after new data is analyzed? In fact, it is her first answer that's questionable. It's purely anecdotal. If they all her relatives had red hair and died of cancer she might conclude that red hair causes cancer.

How long has the Big Bang theory been around? We've barely left the Earth, and we're sure how the Universe was created? For all we know, 50 years from now scientists might look at people that believe in the Big Bang the way we look at people the believe the Earth is flat today.

Scientific theories aren't meant to be blindly accepted by those without a scientific background. They are meant to aid in our understanding of the universe around us. If a theory explains what we observe, it is useful and we keep it. If it doesn't explain what we observe, we go back to the drawing board and modify it.

Atomic theory seems to explain many things, it's useful, so we keep it. However, no one has ever seen an electron, so it's still just a theory. If some theory comes along that explains things better, then it's back to the drawing board.

originally posted by: smurfy

originally posted by: Bilk22
a reply to: smurfy
Maybe you need to research global temperatures over the last 10,000 years. Then get back to us.

Who's us? Anyway, here's one I drew earlier..no I didn't, I made it up.

Now go and get your own version..see how these things work?

So what does that chart tell you? It tells me where nowhere near warm, historically speaking of course, but it could get a lot warmer. It also tells me that anthropogenic global warming is mythical. The Earth warming is natural and cannot be stopped.

This is the chart that global warming alarmists like to present. It's accurate but it's also deceiving as it leaves out a whole lot of Earth's history. Wouldn't you agree?

originally posted by: Wrabbit2000
Hmmm... I can't agree with the media here. They want to give the impression that Global Warming or Climate Change 'their way' is as settled as the 1st law of thermodynamics. Well... Saying so don't make it so and it isn't made by a country mile.

The rest sounds reasonable tho. ..Well.. Except for the age of Earth. No..I'm not one of those 6,000 year people. Silly..since we have man in habitation back at least 11,400 years. It's that Millions or Billions and how many of which one I kinda smile on the assumption we can get anywhere near right with current methods.

I guess we'll never get that Pics or it didn't happen on the Big Bang...but I'll take that wee detail on faith until or unless a better theory floats down the creek.

Exactly Wrab, the whole thing is about science done good, and other stuff, then throwing creationism into the mix, but as if there is no relation except in what you believe, and as if all the subjects mentioned are done and dusted, when clearly they are not. What you believe, may or not be a consensus, but what we are so often asked to believe, is some other bodies consensus, when in itself is riven with doubt, and I have to say, fabricators. IMHO, Americans come out pretty smart in that poll.

a reply to: theantediluvian

No, not at all. I can't even see how you could infer that
from what I wrote.

My post was not about climate but about the OP's
stance that normal people are skeptical of science.

Scientists are skeptical by nature. I would expect that
laymen would be skeptical as well.

The face of science is ever-changing as we add to our
baseline of knowledge. Science has been wrong in the
past and will be wrong in the future--a flat earth as the
center of the universe was only debunked very recently
in our brief human history, for example.

And in the future the Big Bang theory, black holes,
dark matter, the constancy of the SOL, among others,
may be found to be incorrect.

The philosophy of science is to arrive at the truth, but
in practice it is about arriving at the best possible guess
at the time...even our set-in-stone Newtonian laws of
physics breakdown at the quantum level.

As to climate, my best guess is that humans are contributing
to a rise in temperature globally.

Whether or not that is of any consequence has yet to be
proven.

It's funny... SCIENCE clung to the "Earth is the center of the universe" theories of Astronomer Ptolemy for 1200+ years. The Church is mocked for holding the belief as sacred for another 100 years... but science's dirty little secret is every scientist for the preceeding millenium went to their grave fully believing it as well.

Science blamed disease on an unballcing of the four humors (blood, mucous, green bile and black bile) for every single year man has lived except the past 150. Contagious disease was believed to manifest itself from bad air, doctors never advocated hand washing nor washed their own hands, and science's only reason to disregard feces was that it smelled bad. Louis Pastuer was the first mainstream scientist to theorize that there were germs and viruses and that were transmitted via physical contact and were responsible for illnesses.

Science was certain that an object's weight dictated how fast it fell. Galileo was the first measured scientist to theorize that there was a constant force unrelated to an object's mass that was at work.

In the 1970's, concensus of science was that the Earth was cooling and we were at risk of an ice age.

Mid 1980s, global health agencies held the "Cholesterol Consensus Conference" of scientists and doctors to determine the best course of action to combat the growing issue of high cholesterol around the globe which was causing heart attacks and strokes to rise to concerning numbers. From the CONSENSUS came government advocacy of low fat diets (the consensus was that high fat diets were the cause here). For 20 years it was heralded that the low fat diet was the panacea of health... until society woke up to the fact that the low fatters were fatter than ever and even more heart unhealthy than they were before the fad began.

Alchemy was, for a very long time, held by scientists as the greatest secret of the universe. Great sums of wealth were thrown at scientists to figure out how to make gold. Hell, for much of that time scientists believed the elements of Earth were air, water, fire, and wood and everything (including mankind) was made of particular combinations of the 4.

Consensus means jack squat, hell nah on that statement, since modern science became a huge dollar industry and climate change a multi billion dollar ponzi scheme consensus means less that jack squat. It's so worthless, you'd have to pay me to take it, as if it were a bag of garbage being removed from one's curbside by the trashman. Logic would seem to dictate that, throughout our lives, we've had damn hot summers and cold, grey summers... cold as hell winters and mild, warm Christmases... the only thing predictable about the weather is the same as it has always been, most predictions will turn out wrong. Climatologists? Really? How many weekend camping trips have you experienced in which, based on the Wednesday forecast you were expecting mid 70s and abundant sunshine... only to spend all weekend with it pouring rain and never touching 60? They can't accurately predict yesterday's weather tomorrow... half the time they couldn't spell CAT if you spotted them the C and the T, yet we're supposed to take their predictions on events tens or hundreds of years in the future as the gospell of Christ Himself?

What a ridiculous concept... The consensus of a large group of ignorant jackasses is still exactly that, the opinion of jackasses. It's like Raider fans, sure they can pack 75,000 of them into the Colleseum on Sunday, all wildly cheering and espousing their consensus that Oakland will win, but at the end of the game they'll still watch their team lose and realize the consensus impacted reality in exactly NO way.

a reply to: burdman30ott6
Yes - that was funny.
...and very well said.

originally posted by: Dapaga

originally posted by: seeker1963
a reply to: smurfy

BS the poor to pay to breath!

They'll call it the "Carbon Tax;" the bigger the family, the bigger the tax. Good way to control the population numbers as well. ?

So the current thinking then is tax the 5% of the worlds population for 100% of the worlds contributors? The bigger the family the bigger the tax, China, India, Russia. How is it working in other countries? Where is this pot of money to tackle global Warming/Climate Change?

So we take a planet, some say millions of years old that has warmed and cooled in cycles throughout it's life, make future predictions of it's warming and cooling with computer equipment just 40 years old, by scientist programming in a language learned 20 years ago, and temperature reading equipment just 100 years old and you call this accurate science? Then not all the scientist agree with the predictions, the computer models are in question, but we are going to tax you just incase some of those scientist are right?

And I am a right wing kook because I don't believe.

First of all climate is controlled by Sun Spots. 2nd creationism and evolution goes hand and hand. First beings are created or genetically manipulated then they slowly evolving on a micro evolution scale.

The left wing are just trying to cash in top dollar by pushing the global warming agenda and evolution junk to get their grants.

The real pity is that an amazing number of Americans accept as fact scientific ideas that are only THEORIES.

None of these ideas - global warming, evolution, or the big bang - are, in fact, fact. They are all THEORIES.

the·o·ry - ˈTHēərē,ˈTHi(ə)rē/
noun
1. a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, esp. one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.

These are suppositions, systems of ideas built to explain things that are not understood. Pity the nation of sheep that believes anything anybody with a white coat and a diploma spits out.

Sorry, OP, the ATS motto is:

DENY IGNORANCE!!!

... not ...

BAAAAAA!!!

DENY IGNORANCE means to not let other people (even the high priests of science) think for you.

I see what they are doing there. Packaging bullsh*t with legit, well founded and solid theories, then claiming the rejection of the BS is the same as rejection of the legit stuff. Nice try, climate Nazis.

I do think that people who reject evolution, the big bang, and the old age of the earth on purely religious grounds, because some bronze age mythological book of fairy tales says otherwise, and can easily write them off as having the minds of brain-damaged children. However, there are completely non-religious people question these bits of "accepted science" because realistic alternatives have been proposed by scientists who are actually doing what a good scientist should be doing: forever questioning the very boundaries of knowledge, and re-examining current knowledge. After all, the Big Band and our current understanding of evolution are hardly written in stone like, say, the laws of motion and gravity. They are theories that at this point, make the most sense with what evidence we have on hand currently. But remember, what evidence we have on hand is still scant at best, when compared to what there is to be known. We have barely even scratched the surface of the fossil record, and can only see in space as far as our telescopes will let us. We haven't even gotten past our own moon on foot, yet we are going to claim that we have settled how the universe was formed? That is very unscientific. There is still so much unknown, so many gaps, we haven't begun to understand just how little we know. The possibility for new discoveries to completely change what we know and understand about current theories is still there. New discoveries are constantly being made that put a question mark on old ones. To say anything is settled is the epitome of ignorance.

Man-made global warming and climatic catastrophe is a very good example. We have only been keeping detailed weather record for little over 100 years, and we still haven't gained a full grasp on the seemingly complex dynamics of weather. Much of what we understand now about the weather has only surfaced in the past 60 or so years. The climate alarmist models I have seen base their scare models only on about 150 years of weather. The earth is like 4 billion years old. But even the scant amount of data we have collected shows that climate change is a very common occurrence, and even in the short span of human history, we have records of weather and climate conditions very different from those of today. We don't even fully agree on what caused past climate changes, yet we are going to take it on faith they know the current climate change is somehow bad and dangerous....on what basis? Computer models? REALLY? Any code junkie can get a computer model to spew out whatever the hell they wanted to.

And thus, I tend to hold climate change cultists with the same contempt I hold religious fanatics, because they hold their dogma of man made climate change with the same blind, militant belief of religious nuts, and with only marginally more evidence to back their claims. And I am suspicious of anyone who wants to force any belief or agenda down my throat in such a manner. If it's such an infallible truth, then it should be self evident, and not need the sort of militant fevor to push this theory on me.

The problem with man-made global warming is that several other possible solutions have been presented that not only better fit the facts at hand, they also explain things the AGW crowd can't. I accept evolution and the big bang theories as they are now, because no one has provided a better explanation that is supported heavily by evidence. When AGW can do the same, and eclipse all other theories through the sheer weight of evidence behind it, then I will accept it as fact.

Until then, it is far from settled.

originally posted by: Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
After all, the Big Band and our current understanding of evolution are hardly written in stone like, say, the laws of motion and gravity.

I don't know, Duke Ellington could heat up a room to the point anybody would believe the globe was getting hotter and leave you thinking about getting a little evolution underway with the lady you're dancing with, if you follow me. The cat was a master in the laws of motion and made clothes obey the laws of gravity.

(In other news, when you compare religious people to "brain damaged children," you make a generalization that is distastefull and arrogant. Hypocritical irony is frequently the worst enemy of the self righteous.)

accepted science?

global warming:
the ice thats normally gone this time of year is still three feet thick out in the bay
evolution:
where exactly do things like GMO corn and spider goats fit into that theory?
medical science:
1 in 68 are on the autism spectrum?
economics
check the price of gas or hamburger lately?...whats the value of a buck?
atomic age:
fucushima...chernoble
the space race:
the challenger disaster
security:
the current president can't legally prove he is old enough to get into a bar

the big bang theory (huge hair bands went out in the 80s )
hey look!
whatcha watching?
TV
cool hey look! its a drug commercial!

Most people who deny mainstream science, never studied it in the first place. That makes it all the easier to believe in controversial theories because you have nothing to measure them against. If you really think that science has been lying to you, you might consider learning enough about it in order to be able to argue against it. That would be rather scientific... don't you think?

originally posted by: charlyv
Most people who deny mainstream science, never studied it in the first place. That makes it all the easier to believe in controversial theories because you have nothing to measure them against. If you really think that science has been lying to you, you might consider learning enough about it in order to be able to argue against it. That would be rather scientific... don't you think?

I understand what you're getting at, someone once told me that dog crap taste great and I should try it, so I decided to make of study of dogs to be sure I wouldn't be making a mistake. My scientific study concluded if it didn't pass the smell test I wasn't going to put it in my mouth.

I just can't allow scientist to overcome my common sense without a credible amount of evidence, of which Global Warming/Climate Change has little. It has never passed the smell test.

a reply to: charlyv

And that is what is known as an AD HOMINEM ATTACK. It is employed by people who have no factual leg on which to stand in a discussion. The idea is to draw attention away from the weakness of your argument by launching a personal attack on those who oppose your point of view. Won't work on me. You have just proven that you cannot make a valid argument to defend your point of view.

This thread is hilarious.

For example, the old "scientists were wrong about " argument that is invoked whenever somebody wants to give the appearance of creating credible doubt. Can you imagine a defense attorney trying to use this to refute DNA evidence in a courtroom? "Scientists used to believe that the Earth was the center of the universe and now they tell us that it isn't, so how do we know these scientists are correct about this DNA nonsense? Sounds pretty iffy to me!"

The fact that prior to Copernicus most people believed the Earth was the center of the universe says absolutely nothing about the validity of lay person's unqualified opinion nor does it imply that every fringe hypothesis scores extra credibility points by virtue of not being accepted by the mainstream. If anything it's a testament to the fact that science does it's job and in modelling a heliocentric solar system, Copernicus effectively kicked off the scientific revolution. Since the time of Copernicus, for every step backward science has made, it's made a leap forward. All opinions should not be given equal consideration — some people are experts and their opinions in their respective fields of expertise trump those of non-experts by a huge margin.

Pertaining to climate change:

- There are no major scientific institutions that express doubt in anthropogenic climate change.
- Numerous studies of peer reviewed works in addition to professionally conducted surveys of climatologists have consistently born out the same result — approximately 97% of these experts believe in the existence of anthropogenic climate change.

Unfortunately, there is a coordinated effort in conservatively-biased media to insert doubt where none exists. The same thing was done by tobacco companies to convince the public that there was some sort of doubt over whether or not cigarettes caused cancer. In fact some of the exact same people and organizations have been involved in both of these disinformation campaigns.

Some of you would do well to divorce your view of science from your politics because the Koch brothers already own too much real estate in your brains.

a reply to: theantediluvian
And.... Yet another ad hominem. They seem plentiful here tonight.

There is absolutely no reason to believe in any of these theories, unless you're willing to put your faith in the priesthood--I mean... trust the experts.

BBT is a mathematical prediction (post facto, I suppose) that only works if you plug another prediction (dark matter) into the equation. It all depends on different aspects of itself like some narcissist's theory of causality.

There are so many unknown variables throughout human evolutionary history I find it odd that any self-respecting Scientist would stake their career on any one particular theory or the other. Aliens could have experimented with monkeys and... voila! People. They have no idea. Terence McKenna thought primates accelerated their evolution by eating "funny" plants. Who the hell knows where we came from and what happened along the line to get us here?

I won't even get into "global warming". If it exists, changing your light bulbs won't help. The entire civilization would have to restructure itself to fix it. And civilizations don't restructure themselves...

...they collapse.

a reply to: theantediluvian
My grandfather died at 90+ years of age.
Smoked incessantly from the age of 13.
No Cancer...