Living With an EV for a Week - Day Six (Don't Honk at Me, I'm Saving the Planet)

"3. Belief in manmade global warming requires some faith despite the evidence which favors it. There is a mountain of evidence for Christianity, too, but most people reject it anyway. Religion is tricky business." Ummm, no. Faith is not required when one is presented with sufficient evidence. There is sufficient evidence that has convinced 97% of scientists that anthropogenic global warming is true. There is NO evidence for Christianity or any religion for that matter. Why do you think it takes faith to believe in that nonsense? If there was evidence it wouldn't require faith.

My opinion as a potential Leaf buyer about saving the world is "It would be nice if it happened, but it's really not going to." I haven't seen anything approaching a suggestion for dealing with airborne concentration of CO2 that has any chance of being effective. There are barely even any ideas about reducing the *increase*. I would buy a Leaf or other EV because it suits my lifestyle, because it has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions, and because it's overall a cool vehicle. I actually am kind of a tree hugger (even if my job is to design roads), but that mostly manifests in trying to reduce use of things. I don't think of it as some crusade. I think of it as a neat car that would suit me and probably be a bit economical.

@Ubermensch I'm sure you believe that the theory of evolution explains how and why turtles have shells and birds have feathers. You believe this despite any lack of real evidence that evolution has never really been observed and the sparse physical evidence. So you pretty much believe it on faith. Much of what passes for evolutionary theory sounds more like Kipling's Just So stories to me. (I'm not religious so don't come back to me calling me a religious nutbag.)

@Rick T. Yikes. Epically uniformed doesn't even begin to explain what your opinion is. "Sparse phycical evidence" LOL, wow! Have you even even picked up a Biology textbook or visited a natural history museum? You can start here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ That so people think the way you do in this country makes me sad and explains why much of the rest of the world is leaving us in the dust.

Ubermensch, it appears you do not understand the actual definition of "faith" and the necessary (!) role it plays in science. Faith is a confidence, not merely an unsubstantiated belief. We never would have built the Large Hadron Collider if we did not first believe (i.e., have confidence or faith) that it would produce the desired results despite the fact that we had not yet witnessed (i.e., had proof of) those results. Faith is what leads people to test hypotheses. Faith is a cause of action, not a justification of a conclusion. It is the starting point, not the finish line--even in religion (!). Indeed, faith is not the opposite of proof--rather, it is the opposite of doubt.

@redav I understand faith as the word is defined: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions 2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust 3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs The word simply is not used in the world of science except possibly as a clunky substitute for belief, hope, or trust. Testing a hypotheses does not require faith, it requires a desire to discover the truth whatever that may be. Faith has nothing to do with it. I never said that faith is the opposite of proof, I said that it is what is required to believe something if there is a lack of evidence. When there is sufficient evidence faith is not required. The word really has no meaning in the world of science because science is completely dependent on evidence. I think you are confusing the idiomatic use of the word 'faith' instead of the actual meaning.

@Ubermensch No, you can read (and copy-paste), but you do not comprehend. You do not look at the breadth of definitions available (M-W is only one source) nor do you interpret the meaning of the quoted definition. Go to onelook.com for additional insight. For example, from American Heritage: "Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing" Note that here evidence (as well as God/religion) is irrelevant. You can have all the proof you want, and still have faith. That is a point you failed to grasp--evidence increases faith, not replaces it. Whether you believe the word is used "in the world of science" does not change whether the concept the word describes actually exists there. You suggest that scientists are merely curious and are thus apathetic/disinterested in the outcome. If you actually understood the "world of science," you would know that is not the case. The reality is that science is not casual tinkering around in a garage. Finding something truly new requires doing what has not been done (and thus not seen) before. It also typically requires extensive work, effort, cost, and trial & error (and failure). Indeed, stick-to-itiveness is a nearly-universal characteristic of any scientist worthy of note. And what do you think that stick-to-itiveness requires? It takes confidence (i.e., trust) that their theory will work, commitment (i.e., loyalty) to the work, and certainly a firm belief that their theory is true/valuable. Confidence, commitment, belief--would you agree that "faith" is a good term to summarize that? Einstein spent half his life working on a grand unified theory but never saw any fruits (proof) of that effort. Why would he do that? Edison is said to have tried a thousand different configurations for a light bulb before gaining evidence that it would work. The Large Hadron Collider cost around $4 billion, yet there was no proof that it would deliver any different results than other colliders, yet it was approved & built. Would you say these men believed in something despite there being a lack of evidence? Do you suggest that this type of work is not science? However, the most interesting thing in your response might just be this: your dogmatic adherence to a rigid, preconceived notion that faith does not exist in science, regardless of what the evidence supports. However, if a curious & fact-driven scientist would embrace the truth regardless of the outcome, then there would be no reason for him to resist the notion that science requires confidence, trust, and commitment to concepts, ideas, & theories before proof is found. The logical conclusion is that you do not represent the code you suggest of a scientist, and thus you are not qualified to speak for them.

@Ubermensch redav, You are trying to redefine terms to suit a particular usage of that word. The religious connotation of the meaning of the word faith and your clunky usage of it as a substitute for hope, perseverance, belief, etc... is not even remotely the same. Rick T. was trying to equivocate religious faith to belief in scientific methods that are based on facts, data, reproducible results, etc... as a kind of 'faith'. The two are very different as the former doesn't require any evidence whatsoever. You can disagree with the accepted definition all you want but it doesn't change the meaning of the word.

Redav, Ubermensch reminds me of a new religious convert who is zealous about their newly found faith, but knows little about it’s doctrine. They first refer you to the elders in the church ("I would suggest you take this "argument" elsewhere where it can be properly eviscerated by actual scientists"). When that falls, they answer all reasonable arguments with a single verse of doctrine they know; to the point where they sound like the robot in Lost in Space (Logical fallacy! Logical fallacy! Logical fallacy!). When that fails, but still not fully understanding their beliefs, they refer you to a secondary source like Wikipedia instead of the holy texts. Finally, they try to shut down the argument (the definition of the word faith.) Of course it takes an element of faith to move forward in science and technology. It takes zero faith to believe in the laws of nature (like the laws of gravity, motion, and thermodynamics) because they are observable and repeatable. I have never seen anything float away into space that was not be acted upon by an opposite force to gravity; and I never expect to. That makes it a law, and requires no faith at all to understand nor believe it. To put forth a theory or hypothesis does require an element of faith. I would never put forth a theory that man can fly to the moon merely by flapping his arms because I have no faith that it is true (there’s a common non-religious usage of the word). But evolution and global climate change are both theories, and not laws. I have no problem at all with anyone putting them out there; though I choose to believe neither; even if 99.99999% of the world’s population believed it. Once again, I have a problem with government and individuals making millions on a theory through taxes, onerous laws, and mechanisms like carbon credits. Evolution cannot be proved, and neither can global climate change. Take that ozone hole. We observed an ozone hole, we believed the ozone hole was caused by CFCs, we banned CFCs, the hole went away. Case closed. But the problem is, the ozone hole phenomena is not repeatable, nor was direct cause proven. The Earth’s ozone layer was not know about, nor observed, until recently. There may have been lots of ozone holes in the past that we never knew of. We could at least meet the repeatable bar by allowing CFCs, seeing if the ozone hole appears again, ban CFCs again, and see if it goes away. We still have not proved causation, but we at least have repeatability. Global climate change will likewise never be treated as a law because it cannot be observed, tested, and repeated. We can take temperature measurements, we can postulate that they are rising, we can put forth a theory that it is caused by man’s actions; but we cannot prove it. We cannot accurately measure, much less control other factors affecting the earth’s climate such as the sun, oceans and seas, plants and animals, and volcanoes. We cannot hold all those things still, and simply adjust man’s inputs to see how it effects the earth’s climate. People have built elaborate computer models that try to model all these systems; but their completeness and accuracy can be and are questioned; and that, like the fossil record, is still just secondary evidence. It cannot be tested and proven in the real world. Scientists can and do make mistakes, and has he said, theories and technology evolve as they learn. He can label early doctors "quackery and folklore"; but it was the best they had with the knowledge of the day. My dad had ulcer surgery in the 1960s; they cut him open like a baked potato. Nowadays, ulcers can be treated without surgery; but that did not make the doctors that operated on my dad quacks; it was the best they could do with the knowledge they had. Very learned scientists in their day carefully argued that the sun revolved around earth, man cannot fly, and yes, that the earth is flat. Dinosaurs are cold blooded, slow moving creatures; now they are warm blooded and have feathers. How old mankind is depends on the latest fossil find. And part of what undid the global warming movement and the United Nation’s climate-study scientists was that much of what they published was NOT subjected to peer review. A group of 40 auditors -- including scientists and public policy experts from across the globe -- released a report card on the U.N.'s climate-change research report. Thousands of sources cited by the report had been nowhere near a scientific journal. Based on the grading system used in American schools, 21 chapters in the IPCC report received an F for citing peer-reviewed sources less than 60 percent of the time. Four chapters received a D, and six received a C. Ubermensch is an atheist and a secular humanist. He looks down with disdain on those who profess a faith in a superior being, and believe in some form of religion. But his belief system only elevates himself to a god, and science to a religion, both infallible and above all arguments. In all my years of living for God, I have first hand observed way more documented miracles than he will ever first hand observe anthropogenic climate change. He has his faith, and I have mine. In the end, he said it best: When one side fails to engage on a rational level it all becomes a pointless exercise. Now, let’s let our resident god give his infallible response.