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To: LLCF who wrote (15271)	7/5/2006 2:19:56 PM
From: CusterInvestor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78416

LLCF, very thoughtful response, I agree with a lot of what you said. Perhaps my point was not clearly stated: comparing a goldbug predicting gold going to 2000 to a climatologist being concerned about global warming is not a valid comparison. Climactic, economic, and biological (health) systems are all poorly understood systems that are non-linear and virtually impossible to find repeatable causality for many of the variables deemed important. It's becoming clear that there is SUBSTANTIAL DOWNSIDE in this undue dependence on "the scientific method" the way currently practiced... that downside was made crystal clear by the tobbacco companies successfully arguing for decades that smoking was "safe" using the inability of the scientific method to show cause and effect in a complex (biological) system as their 'proof'. Ahh, there's the rub. There are a couple points to make here. One is that the tobacco companies had internal evidence that tobacco was harmful, but they suppressed it. Economic interest involved after all. Second, who was proved right in the long run re: risk of smoking? The scientific process did win--yes it took years for irrefutable proof--but think of the lives that could have been saved if the early warnings were heeded (first warning from surgeon general in 1964 I believe) and the companies with vested economic interests if not being suicidal by stopping production, at least ceased from stirring the pot with their campaigns against the early research pointing out what was later proven to be true? edit: my point is do we ignore the facts that are accumulating and look at various scenarios, or do we consider options for each scenario and prepare best/worst case contigency plans, if possible? Sadly, the belief that PHD's are always able to do this is a BIG problem IMHO. Agreed, never said they can always do this or do it right. I know several PhDs, some are sharper than others. One needs to look at the accumulated body of evidence, look for trends, and ask "what if?". Respectfully, bp

To: LLCF who wrote (15271)	7/5/2006 2:34:27 PM
From: koan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78416

DAK, scientific research is exactly the opposite of what you portend. My SIL and I discussed that last night. Scientists are so scared of being wrong that they UNDERESTIMATE problems not overestimate them! The global warming issue facts keep turning out to be more dire than predicted, not less. I told my SIL that I felt the reason was because of the above statement. I worked with a scientifc crew many years ago in the Bearing Sea tracking crab populations. I was doing some simple statistical work. There are two species of tanner crab, bardi and opilio. It looked like there was also a hybrid. I could see pretty clearly it was a hybrid, but the scientists waited for years to declare it so. Most scientists are so careful. I can hardly get my SIL to take any solid stand on many issues concerning gloal warming that I think he feels are pretty solid. Like the increase in hurricanes which I said we only need a correlation of .05 not .001-lol. And he says the methane problem is not as severe as one would expect with the melting of permafrost in the artic for some reason. I think eventually it will be a huge problem. Scientists understate, not overstate!