Wayne in Maine wrote:Bootstrap wrote:I am afraid that people will confuse Mennonites with culture warriors, the very people we should not want to be associated with.
Would you rather they confuse Mennonites with Social Justice Warriors?
No, and that's not happening here either. I think there are reasons that we don't have a lot of threads discussing Donald Trump right now.
Wayne in Maine wrote:Hmmm... some Mennonites might be expert enough to share their "scientific" insights with other Mennonites. What's wrong with that? Some Mennonites might even want to persuade their fellow Mennonites to move beyond their belligerent ignorance - through discussion and reading and understanding.
Sure. Then let's have a real conversation where people respond carefully to the things that are posted, regardless of point of view, try to understand the data together, and approach things the way scientifically minded people do when they are looking for truth.
Wayne in Maine wrote:Indeed, like the rhetoric that claims there is a 97% consensus among scientists on global warming which e are supposed to believe means that 97% of scientists agree with the IPCC's projections and recommendations. It takes hard work to ferret out the facts and expose the truth about global warming.
Let's start with that. Here's
the claim:
Surveys of the peer-reviewed scientific literature and the opinions of experts consistently show a 97–98% consensus that humans are causing global warming.
That's really quite different from saying that 97% of scientists "agree with the IPCC's projections and recommendations". There are credible ways to come up with figures in the low 90s, but there's no credible way to make the claim that mainstream science does not support the scientific claims of the IPCC. In fact, the scientific report of the IPCC is nothing more or less than a literature review, a summary of mainstream science done by mainstream scientists. Where there is dissent, the dissent is documented. We have been through this many times, but the same talking point surfaces again as though nothing has ever been said.
And the IPCC actually reports a range of projections, from optimistic to pessimistic, assigning probabilities to each. In these threads, I get the impression that I may be the only person who has actually read much of the IPCC's publications. It would be hard to get an accurate impression of what they say from posts in these threads.
Is anyone interested in taking the time to carefully read the IPCC publications, understand the process, understand the data, etc? I would normally expect that on a scientific forum, not here. But that's what it takes to have credible opinions on the IPCC.
C'mon Boot, you may not realize how much you have driven this sort of thing. It almost seems that whenever someone like Robert posts a credibly sourced response to your political opinion you want to shut down the discussion.
Please, read the first few pages of this thread. I've never been the person who starts threads on this topic, I just respond to what others are saying. That's not driving. It's odd that the people who bring this up act like I'm the person who is driving it.
When I find a credibly-sourced paper, such as the Nature paper, I read it. But so often, the paper says something quite different from what he implies it says. A discussion focused on credibly sourced papers would be a great improvement. Especially if we would take the time to actually read papers, summarize them, compare them to others ...
Asking someone where a graphic comes from and where I can find a description of how the data was gathered and represented shouldn't shut down a conversation, it should begin a conversation. At least when we are looking at a scientific subject.
Is it biblical? Is it Christlike? Is it loving? Is it true? How can I find out?