Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #629
2 hours ago Guest Blogger
The Week That Was: 2025 02-01 (February 1, 2025)
Brought to You by SEPP (
www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea.” — Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist (1998)
Number of the Week: 70%
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: This Week begins with questioning whether climate science is a physical science, then continues with a presentation of EPA’s Endangerment Finding. An essay from Howard Hayden asserts climate science is not a science comprehending the greenhouse effect. TWTW discusses essays by Edward Calabrese et al, noting that the linear-no-threshold model used by the EPA is not based on physical evidence. This Week continues with brief discussions on suppressing research, coral bleaching, and the high cost of unreliable generation of electricity.
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A Physical Science? The Trump Administration has opened the Endangerment Finding to questioning. Therefore, this issue will begin a series on the Endangerment Finding, asking among other questions “Is Climate Science A Physical Science?” If Climate Science does not meet all the standards of a physical science, then the Endangerment Finding is politics, not science. The standards used in this series are embodied in The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist by Richard Feynman (1998). Particular emphasis is placed on the chapter entitled “The Uncertainty of Science.” For example [Boldface added]:
“The third aspect of my subject is that of science as a method of finding things out. This method is based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not. All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea. But ‘prove’ used in this way really means ‘test,’ in the same way that a hundred-proof alcohol is a test of the alcohol, and for people today the idea really should be translated as, ‘the exception tests the rule.’ Or, put another way, ‘The exception proves that the rule is wrong.’ That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong.”
Of course, physical experiments are part of observation and when possible, carefully controlled experiments which eliminate as many contributing influences as possible are the finest form of observation. Thought experiments, speculation, are useful; however, as they must be tested by observation. Otherwise, they remain speculation. This series begins with a discussion of three issues: 1) The Endangerment Finding; 2) A provocative essay “What ‘Climate Science’ Is NOT About” by Howard “Cork” Hayden; and 3) A published paper by Edward J. Calabrese & Dima Yazji Shamoun discussing the development of the Linear No Threshold model used by the EPA.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/02/03/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-629/
