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OT - new carbon tax 3-Mar-2011 At 3:07:47 PM billk

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On 3/03/2011 maxdacat wrote:
>On 3/03/2011 big g wrote:
>>>To the non-beleivers in science I suggest you jump on youtube and watch
>>Tim Minchin's 'Storm'. It says what I think quite eloquently.
>
>science proceeds on the basis of proving falsifiable theories. Climate
>change claims are not falsifiable ie what is the control group? How do
>you build another world without carbon emissions to test the claim?
>
>People who say how can you ignore THE SCIENCE obviously don't understand
>much about the field. It is true that scientists are largely responsible
>for the body of study but I am sure even they wouldn't argue correlation
>equals causation.

Most of the time correlation DOES equal causation. However, on its own a correlation doesn't tell you which direction the causal arrows point in.

Science proceeds on the basis of building theories that contain falsifiable knowledge claims and these knowledge claims are tested emprically. You cannot prove an entire theory, you can only derive testable claims from a theory and ultimately reject theories that produce too many falsified knowledge claims.

BTW: You don't throw out a theory as soon as you get an unexpected empirical result (more about that in a minute).

Any number of climate change knowledge claims are testable and falsifiable. I would suggest that the vast bulk of conventional climate scientists are out there diligently testing the theories week in week out.

Most of the climate change skeptics, however, seem to concentrate their efforts very strongly on trying to punch holes in other peoples' work - seeking out unexpected empirical findings and flawed studies, then arguing that ANY unexpected findings or flawed studies bring down the entire edifice of conventional climate change science.