by yesplease » Wed 01 Aug 2007, 17:56:24
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('shortonoil', 'E')ven a professor from Cambridge can not get a paper published in Nature based on speculation.
Ehm, just about everything in the sciences is/was speculation. The exception is mathematics, since that's built on itself and is constructed by us. In the case of something like physics, someone will use math to attempt to describe something via a theory aka speculation. Once it becomes widely accepted, it may become a law. But... laws do not always hold true, and can be broken under certain circumstances. In the case of paleoclimatology, everything is a theory/speculation. It can be based on a logical foundation, but unless we can travel back in time to actually verify whatever, it's still speculation. Not that there's anything wrong with that, a theory can gain widespread acceptance because there's not much in the way of contradictory evidence, and a good amount of supporting evidence. However, unless we can devise a relatively sure fire way to verify something, which can be done in physics/etc, it's still theory/speculation.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('shortonoil', 'T')his is a very serious, and terrifying subject, and it could be perhaps, the most serious in the history of humanity. We have one of the great minds of the last century informing us that it is highly possible that most of humanity and perhaps all of civilization, as we know it, could perish in the next two decades.
Ah yes, we can destroy civilization in an all out nuclear barrage with the push of a few buttons, but this is more pressing? We can be wiped out by way some obscene pathogen, a sufficiently powerful burst of Gamma radiation, Comet, Asteroid, black hole, or something we know nothing of. But somehow, your mixed up interpretation of Elderfield's paper combined with Lovelock's book is the most serious and terrifying subject in the history of humanity? Sure buddy...
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('shortonoil', 'T')o have it obfuscated and trivialized by a pubescent data mining troll, that obviously doesn’t even understand the significance of the data they are mining, is not in the least disturbing.