BarkellWH -> RE: Black Hole eats sun (Aug. 22 2017 14:42:48)
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By suggesting that a metaphorical Black Hole ate the sun during the total eclipse, I didn't mean to rekindle a scientific argument about global warming, but in any case allow me to join the fray. There is no debate about global warming. It is a scientific fact with sufficient evidence to quell any of the arguments on the other side: the annual increase in average temperatures, the accellerated melting of the polar ice caps, and a dozen other phenomena point to global warming. Stephen was correct in that the only question is the extent that global warming is anthropogenically caused and the extent that we may be going through a warming phase that appears to occur every 300 or so years. The accellerated nature of the increase in warming, though, leaves little doubt that much of it, if not all, is caused by human activity. The amount of ignorance among those who reject science today, even among so-called "intelligent" people, is appalling. Take the "anti-vaxxer" crowd who are convinced, with no evidence whatsoever, that the MMR vaccine causes autism in children. The greatest concentration of these science-deniers are found in the wealthy, educated enclave of Marin County, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. The anti-vaxxers can point to no sound scientific, statistical, or historical evidence to support their position. Their arguments are always anecdotal which, at best, may suggest a correlation, say, between vaccines and autism (e.g., "My friend has an autistic child who was vaccinated.") They fail to distinguish between correlation and causation and commit the logical fallacy "Post hoc ergo prompter hoc," i.e., since event A was followed by event B, event A must have caused event B. Their argument makes as much sense as noting that the cock crows every morning followed by the sun's rise. Therefore, the cock's crow must cause the sun to rise. The anti-vaxxers' case is not helped by the fact that there are a significant number of conspiracy theorists among them who believe the U.S. Government and "Big Pharma" are conspiring to "peddle" vaccines at the expense of children. This, too, is nonsense. Of course pharmaceutical companies make money off vaccines. But vaccines go through a rigorous testing regime before they are put on the market. Most people are capable of detecting a conspiracy theorist's argument as lacking credibility. Ironically, it was Andrew Wakefield, the thoroughly discredited British physician whose fraudulent study started the whole anti-vaxxer movement, who accepted a considerable amount of money from a law firm who had planned to sue pharmaceutical companies over vaccines using Wakefield's now discredited study. And yet many among the anti-vaxxers still consider Wakefield credible. Bill
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