Alan Robinson

Hi, I haven't posted here for quite a while, but in the meantime, it seems to me nothing has changed with respect to probability in statistics. The controversy is maybe a century old or more. Basically, there are those who hold that probability can only be used with respect to roulette wheels and such things, while others maintain they can state the probability of something occurring that never has happened before. These two camps are often called "determinists" and "Bayesians", and the arguments between them have at times been heated. As far as I know, they still haven't reconciled their differences. Science however presses on regardless making predictions based on mathematical techniques that mathematicians cannot agree upon. Does anyone have anything to say about probability in climate science?

New research? The term is dubious and I rather think it more appropriate to speak of "continuing research". We are overdue an academic revolution as described by Thomas Kuhn. Meanwhile, I still keep my hand-made barograph, and it strikes me that the atmosphere where I live has been extraordinarily passive in 2014. Taking the mean long term atmospheric pressure to be 101.3 kPa (I am a stickler for SI Units) the area between the barograph and 101.3 kPa for the year (integrate from 1st Jan to date) is far less than in recent years. Does anyone know of research into this phenomenon?

For many years, it has been a problem attracting bright young people into science, technology and maths. And it cannot surprise, when we have SI units, that the young shake their heads at knots, mph, and dare I say it, Hpa. Let's (k)not throw the baby out with the bathwater, but for heaven's sake, SI units really are superior to Imperial. I thought we had done away with old units ages ago.

It concerns the tendency in the contemporary Scientific Method towards metaphysics. It concerns the question of whether something is discovered or invented. It concerns whether or not science in all its complexity is these days a matter of faith for most of us, because we have to take someone else's word for it that something is factual. It prompts the question, why should I believe what I am told? These questions go part way to explaining why this thread was opened in the first place, namely, not everyone is convinced by what passes for science these days.

Oh really Spark, that is too much. Didn't you ever hear of axioms? And I use axiom in the traditional sense of self-evident truth requiring no further proof. Euclid is full of them. Invention indeed! Perhaps that is the biggest problem with maths teachers, they don't grasp that learning maths is a long sequence of realizations, revelations and penny-dropping ....... and perhaps many pupils didn't realize that either and relied on rote.

Pete, I don't think for one minute that what we know as QP had anything to do with the development of microwave ovens. Microwave technology is an offspin of the development of radar, which in turn developed out of 19th century radio technology, predating Max Planck's quantum hypothesis of 1900. However, it is gratifying to read that science confirms the engineers got it right.

Well no. I entered this debate by criticizing peer reviewing, which seems to have become fashionable. I then renounced geoengineering, and highlighted the way in which The Scientific Method has changed so dramatically over the years. I criticized the modern tendency to playing mind games such as relativity and cosmology, preferring the classic approach of experimentation being performed pretty much anywhere and everywhere, and always ending in near enough the same results - which is clearly not the case with mind games. I put that science seems to me reconvenging with philosophy by becoming increasingly metaphysical. In all this I brought up imaginary numbers, which I claim are a human invention rather than a discovery, and as it happens, Dr Jackie Stedall of Queen's college, Oxford is on the BBC radio archives saying exactly the same thing, that imaginary numbers are exactly that, namely a human invention. I haven't questioned pure mathematics, but my view is that it has much in common with philosophy, in that both are primarily directed towards intellectual satisfaction. As mentioned, while mathematicians fiddled with complex numbers (as you rightly put), it took engineers to find a use for i. I'd just like to add that perhaps peer reviewing is a feature of the contemporary Scientific Method; but I deplore the likes of the American Psychiatric Association, who incredibly hold conferences where specific cases are presented, and the delegates vote, yes VOTE upon whether or not there is talk of mental disease. If weight of numbers is the backbone of science these days, then heaven help science. No, I am content to leave relativity and quantum physics up there on Planet Zog, and I'll stay down here with my Newtonian ideas. After all, engineers have to make things that people use, and we cannot leave things to chance.

I'm guessing that you refer to quantum physics. They are guessing too when they have to resort to probability. Sorry, but I am stuck in the dark ages as far as scientific method goes, because in my view, scientific theory should allow us insights into natural phenomena, not give us something to bet on. As an engineer I'll stick with my Newtonian stuff, because as people use what we make, we cannot afford to make things that might work.

I don't. For well over a thousand years people were bound hand and foot by Euclid. It was simply inconceivable to do anything that seemed to contradict Euclid. I seem to think it was Georg Cantor and David Hilbert who really upset the applecart, but De Moivre and the others in Newton's time were very enthusiastic about doing away with the old. Until the Renaissance there were only what we call real numbers, and with them of course positive * positive = positive and negative * negative = positive. No real number multiplied by itself gives a negative number. But in that age of invention, thinkers said "but what if there was a number which when squared gives a negative number?". They were bold enough to disregard tradition, and they declared that i^2 = -1. The fact is, imaginary numbers ARE an invention, every bit as much an invention as Einstein's so-called thought experiments with trains passing through railway stations at close to the speed of light. And furthermore, these brain games stretch all the way back into antiquity and Plato's realm of concepts, where there is a perfect version of everything we can imagine. And it was Aristotle that turned out to be the more influential of the two, because Plato's world of concepts played second fiddle right the way up to the Renaissance. No doubt too that academics can have a field day debating why real numbers are called real, but it seems pretty clear to me that because all the rationals can be written as a ratio of the natural numbers (that we use for counting), real is a very clear distinction to imaginary numbers, which as far as I know have very limited practical application with electrical engineers finding phase angles. What mathematicians do with imaginary numbers is beyond my scope, but I suspect it is just more mind games like Relativity.

The Scientific Method has changed time and again through the centuries. What once passed for science is replaced with new ideas. At one stage not all that long ago, it was held that science and philosophy had gone their separate ways. The key element of science at that time was that experiments proving or disproving hypotheses must be reproducable pretty much anywhere and everywhere so that everyone could see for themselves the results, which should always be pretty much the same. These days it seems to me that much of what is called science is in fact metaphysics. In particular, cosmology is a sinner, though I have my private suspicions that sooner or later, relativity and quantum physics will also be scoffed at for being as preposterous as earth, wind, fire and water. Not everyone will agree with me about this, but perhaps it explains why "some people get put off the subject when the words meanings escape them" as you put it. There is a huge distinction between discovery and invention, and the debate on what is real goes all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. In that connexion I give you complex numbers; mathematicians invented the imaginary parts and entertained themselves with surfaces and heaven knows what, but it took electrical engineers to find any useful purpose for them. People are also skeptical when science is so complex that either just a very few people grasp the matter in question, or if elaborate instrumentation and infrastructure is required. Under those circumstances, science becomes a matter of believing someone else, which I am sure you will acknowledge would have been laughed at in Newton's time. With respect to the meaning of words, perhaps it would benefit what passes for science these days if people would stop using theory when what they in fact mean is hypothesis or conjecture.

Mike, that argument can be applied to many other species. Where I live, there is a plague of slugs. They apparently come from Spain, and arrived - as one can easily work out - with fresh produce carried by road. They are hated by Danes who call them "killer slugs" because they compete very successfully against the indigenous slugs. I think people should reflect upon the real problem, which is the one you pointed out, namely imbalances in nature. Happily, in my kitchen garden I am not very bothered by the Spanish slugs because I have made 2 water holes which are inhabited by toads and frogs that eat the slugs with relish. However, round about, farmers have transformed the landscape into a barren wilderness for not only amphibians, but all manner of insects and mammals. It is a wonder we have sea eagles here.

With respect to the oceans and CO2, Tom Segalstad together with his one time colleague Zbigniew Jaworowsky were hounded out because of their views, but it seems the establishment is after all coming round to acknowledge Segalstad's points. http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/

Geoengineering is one of the most controversial ideas I've ever come across. What gives a few people the right to take such drastic and dangerous action without first getting the entire world's consent? Because what they propose affects the entire planet. And controversial, because it is certain that there will be no world-wide consensus. Deary me, we cannot even get consensus on an internet debating site, let alone at the UN. I still cannot grasp why politicians haven't publicly connected the climate change arguments with peak oil. Surely it makes sense for those who are convinced of manmade climate change to argue that the remaining oil reserves ought to be eeked out for as long as possible; this is because all alternative energy technologies are utterly dependent on hydrocarbons. When there is no more oil and gas, we cannot make steel, cement, glass, composite materials for wind turbine blades, electrical cable insulation, paint, we cannot get what little copper there is left out of the ground to make cables, we cannot make tyres for vehicles. Eeking out the remaining oil reduces emmissions, and allows the inadequate alternative technologies longer life. It is about time someone respectable began telling the world that the only way ahead is for everyone to switch things off and consume less energy. Irrespective of climate change, going on as we are will only bring unavoidable and substantial changes sooner rather than later.

Where I live there are sea eagles, and wolves have apparently reached Jutland from Schleswig Holstein. The sea eagles are persecuted, and there was recently an uproar about the wolves, with farmers demanding compensation for killed livestock, and a determined cull of them. Now neither the eagles not the wolves do much damage at all, and it just goes to show that many Homo sapiens detest raptors and predators. Re-introducing wolves, bears and lynx to Britain would surely provoke some persecution of the wild creatures. Neither does it help to keep the animals fenced in anywhere. In Les Alpes Maritimes, wolves have crossed from Italy into south east France and in the Mercantour park there is established an enclosed wolf reservation, where exhibitions explain the whole issue. It hasn't meliorated the wolves' plight at all, and moreover, I thought it distressing that those wonderful animals were penned into such a small area, unable to roam as nature would have it. It must be awful for them to hear the free wolves howling as they pass by. Because of persecution, I am against the reintroduction.

The problem with science is that its definition changes. Okay, from Aristotle until the Renaissance, science was purely an intellectual activity. Then comes Francis Bacon accompanied by Gallileo et. al. , turning science into something completely experimental. Only Baconian science too is under constant revison, Newton is thought myopic and Einstein's planet Zog stuff is suddenly in vogue. But Einstein is at irreconcilable odds with the quantum people. Next we get karl Popper telling us we ought to try to DISprove hypotheses, and then Kuhn explains that in fact, The Scientific Method goes from revolution to revolution, each science sect at odds with their predecessors. I have to say that I sympathize with both Popper and Kuhn, and it seems to me correct that generation after generation of "scientists" merely take aboard what they have been told by others. It takes a very rare individual indeed to shake things up and help scince out of its rut. I'd say science has been in a rut now for a long time, and what's more, probably over a century ago we experienced Peak Discovery (a parallel phenomenon to peak oil). Engineering too has had Peak Innovation, for nearly all "new technology" is merely an application of well-known principles. As for poor old science, much of it these days seems to me so metaphysical that a plain old engineer like me can hardly call it science. The study of climate change is so complex that - like meteorlogy - it cannot be properly performed by individuals in isolation. The number of specialist subjects involved is staggering, and moreover, the stratosphere and the oceans are very difficult environments to investigate, added to which is their huge size. Yes, I'm with Cyclonic Happiness in all this. I'll just go with my gut feelings, and they tell me to keep an open mind, and await with interest the next version of The Scientific Method.