patrick.net

“Only people who don’t understand science take the 97% statistic seriously,” he said. “Survey results depend on who you ask, who answers and how the questions are worded. In any case, science is not a democracy. Even if 100% of scientists believe something, one person with good evidence can still be right.”

It's a shame he used that so early on in the article. It should have been the summary. Because you get to that, and you pretty much validates what we 3%ers knew all along.

The reality is 99.99% of scientists have never even taken a single science course related to the matter that would qualify them to have a valid opinion on the matter. I have a lot of experience in quantum mechanical calculations of individual molecules. The sad reality is, you can take a molecule as small as 4 atoms and the models don't quantitatively result in what you would hope. Qualitatively, they work really well.

I've also done some work on molecular dynamics simulations. PIcture a nanoscopic box of water....maybe 100 molecules bouncing around in the liquid phase. The models, which are all based on rock solid physics still are incredibly inaccurate. Moreover, a detailed calculation could take months via supercomputer.

Now...let's apply that complexity to a planet, not of 10 molecules, but of a mass of 5.97 x 10^24 kg worth of molecules. A large percentage of that mass sits below the Earth's surface...where we have sparse data on what goes on down there. Trying to even come up with any mathematical model that would be accurate to predict things decades or centuries out is completely ludicrous from a complexity standpoint. There is no solution to a three body problem...yet we can predict what the gazillions of molecules on the Earth will collectively do? This is why the 12 year threshold that people keep talking about is laughable. Even if you did have any sort of viable model...the idea that it would be this precise is laughable from a statistical analysis standpoint.

OccasionalCortex says

Fuck that, he quoted an Israeli's opinion in a positive context!