James McGinn
2018-03-13 06:57:18 UTC
Humans have a deep-seated emotional need to believe they understand their world and there is a lot of money to be made fulfilling that need. And since most science consumers don't have the time or the education to put much effort into it, the most money can be made giving these educated science consumers excuses for why they don't actually have to literally understand it. And so--for reasons of fiscal necessity--many sciences have dumbed down their models to go with the flow of what people want to believe. The thinking goes as such. Everybody has sat in their car, windows closed, on a hot day. Therefore everybody will find it easy to believe that CO2 traps heat, hence the greenhouse effect. Everybody has seen a pot boiling on a stove produce a mushroom cloud of vapor, like a thunderstorm. Therefore everybody will find it easy to believe the water in the atmosphere acts the same way, hence the convection model of storm theory.
One consequence of this is that certain assumptions that are associated with the models have to be concealed, ignored, or effectively dismissed by the people that maintain them. And it is for this reason that there are certain concepts in every discipline that are sacred. Their validity is beyond dispute and cannot be contradicted without the person being shunned by the larger discipline. Or, more simply put, certain subjects are taboo. You won't find a meteorologist willing to field questions about or participating in a discussion about the implications of the fact that the boiling temperature of H2O is much higher than that in the ambient environment. They are members of a discipline that is fundamentally obsessed with maintaining its public image. Likewise, you won't find a climatologists willing to discuss the known fact that the overall thermal effect of CO2 on the atmosphere is miniscule compared to H2O.
And so, by appealing to the emotional need of science consumers to believe they understand what they actually don't, the discipline of meteorology (for purposes of its own survival) effectively panders to the lowest common denominator of the science consuming public with dumbed down models that gives some of the more ambitious but equally gullible members of the populace all the ammunition they need to shout down and drown out anybody that points out the parts of their models that are cartoonish nonsense. (Like the surreal belief (superstition) that H2O magically becomes gaseous at temperatures/pressures far below its boiling temperature/pressure.)
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
One consequence of this is that certain assumptions that are associated with the models have to be concealed, ignored, or effectively dismissed by the people that maintain them. And it is for this reason that there are certain concepts in every discipline that are sacred. Their validity is beyond dispute and cannot be contradicted without the person being shunned by the larger discipline. Or, more simply put, certain subjects are taboo. You won't find a meteorologist willing to field questions about or participating in a discussion about the implications of the fact that the boiling temperature of H2O is much higher than that in the ambient environment. They are members of a discipline that is fundamentally obsessed with maintaining its public image. Likewise, you won't find a climatologists willing to discuss the known fact that the overall thermal effect of CO2 on the atmosphere is miniscule compared to H2O.
And so, by appealing to the emotional need of science consumers to believe they understand what they actually don't, the discipline of meteorology (for purposes of its own survival) effectively panders to the lowest common denominator of the science consuming public with dumbed down models that gives some of the more ambitious but equally gullible members of the populace all the ammunition they need to shout down and drown out anybody that points out the parts of their models that are cartoonish nonsense. (Like the surreal belief (superstition) that H2O magically becomes gaseous at temperatures/pressures far below its boiling temperature/pressure.)
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes