The logical falacy common to many science deniers

In Biology Size Does Matter

J. B. S. Haldane's famous essay On Being the Right Size.

The most obvious differences between different animals are differences of size, but for some reason the zoologists have paid singularly little attention to them. In a large textbook of zoology before me I find no indication that the eagle is larger than the sparrow, or the hippopotamus bigger than the hare, though some grudging admissions are made in the case of the mouse and the whale. But yet it is easy to show that a hare could not be as large as a hippopotamus, or a whale as small as a herring. For every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitably carries with it a change of form.'s famous essay On Being the Right Size.

Hill’s Criteria applied to climate change

In What climate skeptics taught me about global warming Seth Miller writes that:

Long before research exposed evidence that humans cause global warming, science made another sensational claim — that smoking caused lung cancer.

That case has been proven beyond doubt. But there is a science story from this era that is mostly forgotten: The battle against cigarettes taught science how to prove.

Before linking cigarettes to lung cancer, science had no established method to prove that one thing caused another. The fields of epidemiology and statistics were new, and while they had some prior successes, the questions were so evident — think about mercury causing madness — that proof did not require the level of meticulousness that modern science expects. The need to establish a link between cigarettes and lung cancers — and the backlash that ensued — changed this. Epidemiology and cigarettes grew up together.

...

And I unearthed a notion that is rarely mentioned in the global warming debate: Science actually has a method for establishing that one thing causes another. Scientists don’t have to vote on the issue — the 97% consensus of climate scientists who believe that humans cause warming is telling, but only one part of a broader process. And for those who want to honestly weigh their skepticism in context of the evidence, there is a way.

...

The battle against smoking was the first bare-knuckles public policy debate driven by science. So over years of defending his work, Hill had to think deeply about what constitutes ‘proof’, and how to overcome the intelligent rebuttals of the world’s Ronald Fishers.

In 1965, he formally proposed a solution.

Hill recognized that there are more ways to support causation that finding that two variables track. In fact, Hill identified nine separate strands of ‘proof’, each of which makes an independent case for or against causation. The list of nine aspects — and I’ll go into details below — are now called Hill’s Criteria.

You don’t need strong support from all of the strands to prove a result. But when independent strands tell the same story, with no contradictions, the case is strong. Perhaps as importantly, by using fixed criteria, we can categorize not just data we have, but identify what data are missing as well. And with all of the possible evidence in mind, we can effectively draw a conclusion using classic, human judgment.

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And while Hill’s Criteria are not commonly used outside epidemiology, they should be. The criteria take an impossibly large and complex pile of data and break them up into chunks. They make the evidence understandable. And they make the case for causality transparent — each piece of evidence is categorized, and weighed in the context of the whole. If evidence is challenged, it becomes clear just how devastating or inconsequential that challenge is. We lose any presumption that somehow a single set of data could prove the entirety of scientific understanding to be in error.

What happens when we apply Hill’s criteria to the question:
Are humans, by adding CO2 to the air, causing the planet to warm?

Miller then goes on to test this question against Hill's Criteria.

This is worth a read.

Some anti-science troll tactics

Michael J. I. Brown in What I learned from debating science with trolls highlights some of the tactics used by anti-science trolls in social media.

Why is the Southern Hemisphere getting drier?

In Southern Hemisphere Rainfall Is Decreasing, Leaving Scientists Searching For An Answer the Huffington Post is reporting on a possible reason for decreased rainfall in autumn in southern parts of Australia:

Since the 1970s, southern Australia — and other areas of the Southern Hemisphere —have seen decreased levels of rain between April and May, which is autumn in that part of the Earth. But what's causing this extended drought?

Previous research has pointed the finger at a southward shift in storm tracks and weather systems during the late 20th century.

But a study published today (Oct. 4) in the journal Scientific Reports takes the explanation one step further. Its findings suggest that changing storm patterns and the ensuing droughts are due to a southern shift in the Hadley cell, the large-scale pattern of atmospheric circulation that transports heat from the tropics to the subtropics.

The southward march of this circulation pattern has been greatest in the autumn, and has disproportionately affected southeastern Australia, according to a release describing the study from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

In Australia, it's led to a shift in the "subtropical dry zone," a region that stretches around the world and receives little rain, by 125 to 250 miles (200 to 400 kilometers) to the south. That's bad news for ecosystems in the area, which rely on fall rain to recharge.

As yet scientists do not know what is cause this phenomenon.

Those opposing wind power

Mike Seccombe has written a two part series on the people and organisations behind much of the opposition to wind farms in Australia:
A field guide to the war on wind power and A field guide to the war on wind power (part two)

Sandi Keane also looks at the same people and how some residents are fighting back in Waubra Fights The Anti-Wind Bullies.

Agnotology

In Smoke and mirrors Matthew Reisz writes about

'Agnotology', the art of spreading doubt (as pioneered by Big Tobacco), distorts the scepticism of research to obscure the truth. Areas of academic life have been tainted by the practice, but some scholars are fighting back by showing the public how to spot such sleight of hand

So much for the Singularity

Wikipedia defines a technological singularity as:

the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human superintelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which events cannot be predicted or understood.

The blog Cognitive Social Web has a post arguing that The Singularity is not coming. The post argues that a singularity requires an exponential rate of progress in science. In actual fact, according to the post, science advances in a linear fashion, not an exponential one. This happens because each area in science faces diminishing rates of return as their field progresses.

I would like to simply argue that scientific progress is in fact linear, and this despite the capitalization of past results into current research (“accelerating returns”), and despite an exponentially increasing population of scientists and engineers working on advancing it (resource explosion). And since I don’t want to argue in the realm of opinion, I am going to propose a simple, convincing mathematical model of the progress of science. Using the same model, I’ll point out that a hypothetical self-improving AI would actually see its own research progress and intelligence stagnate soon enough, rather than explode —unless we provide it with exponentially increasing computing resources, in which case it may do linear progress (or even better, given a fast enough exponential rate of resource increase).