Raymond, climate

[simo]

On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 07:51 +0000, Sam Liddicott wrote:
> The position of science is as terminally damaged as politics because 
> science can't prove that the scientists are honest, but at least the 
> ordinary man can scrutinize the politics.

If you think science is religion, ie a dogma, that may be true.

But for anything to be considered "science" you need to be able to
reproduce results.
Science is not the "revealed truth", even good science can lead to wrong
results at times.
The force of science is that through the "scientific method" you can
keep questioning any result and come to better explanations that can fit
the data.
And if you can reproduce results, it will come out soon enough and a new
theory will be made.
Science is ultimately about prediction. If a theory can correctly
predict how a natural phenomenon works, then you have a good theory.
That doesn't mean that theory is the ultimate immutable truth, luckily
science is *not* religion.

If you do not keep this in mind you can certainly easily get
disappointed by science. But that would be only your fault.
You had the wrong expectations.

And now please move this thread on climate elsewhere. This list is ab
out free software, not free off-topics.

Simo.