Beware Of Science!

 Dr. Doom  ( Phd. Cantab )

I believe it was an aide to the Australian PM who just recently said that Climate Change was a UN hoax dreamed up by scientists "in cahoots" with that New-Worldian-Order organization.

Although unstated, I got the distinct impression that the scientists who were working with the UN were the Dr. Doom and Doc Ock types, leading to reflection on what Dr. Sheldon Cooper first pointed out: the prevalence of advanced degree holders in the legions of evil!

Actually, scientists err usually on the side of caution, rather than haste, for we are still in the grips of our old-timey-geological-era ways of looking at things: like, the mills of the gods grind fine, fine... but they do grind slow, slow..., slow.

As I have written before, such is not always the case, and may be rarely the case in chaotic or near-chaotic regimes.

For example, consider a CNN report on climate:
New temperature records highlight global warming's continued rise
By Ben Brumfield, CNN
Updated 3:38 AM ET, Sat May 9, 2015
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/09/world/global-warming-record-quarter/index.html

(CNN)New climate change records have come along to remind us that Earth's thermostat is steadily pushing upward.

More exactly, there are two global high temperature records and a smattering of climate change low points.

March 2015 was the warmest March since record-keeping began in 1880, says the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association. And the first quarter of 2015 was the warmest first quarter on record in those same 136 years.

That gives 2015 a stab at trumping the hottest year on record -- which was 2014.

The uninterrupted continuation of the warming trend is no surprise. The 10 warmest years on record have occurred in the past 17 years... 

 yadda, yadda, yadda; ice caps melting and whatever.


The article emphasizes the slow but steady progress of change...
However, remember the year 10,000 died in Europe from a heat wave, and the scientists who issued the definitive report remarked that they expected such results, but not so soon!

Perhaps the CNN article should have emphasized the slow but steady progress of change and compare it to that of a sandpile, rising from a table top as individual sand particles are dropped slowly... until a point is reached when it avalanches.
Then everything changes quite rapidly.

We never know all the parameters; our knowledge is never perfect.

Consider another CNN story from the same day:
American doctor declared free of Ebola finds the virus in his eye months later
By Faith Karimi and Joshua Berlinger, CNN
Updated 11:23 PM ET, Fri May 8, 2015
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/08/health/ebola-eye-american-doctor/index.html

(CNN)American doctor Ian Crozier was treated for Ebola in Atlanta last year and declared free of the virus in his blood. But he had no way of knowing it still lurked in his eye.

At the time, his eyes were the least of his worries.

"There were lots of things sort of higher on the food chain," he told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." "I was struggling to learn to walk again."

But not long after, mild burning and light sensitivity afflicted his eyes.

Less than two months later, he was back at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta; testing showed the virus was still living in his eye...

Now, did you really see that one coming at us?  Something like that could avalanche into a whole new pandemic.

Maybe that Australian bloke has a better view of Doc Ock:

--