Neanderpundit

Heard this on the radio, and realized…Shit.

When did this happen to me?

Let’s talk about the scientific method a bit, which you clearly do not understand. My demand for a time machine is specific and important, for reasons I will describe.

Let’s say, taking one of your examples, of “Fossil thermometers”- for instance, that there’s a specific type of seashell that INVARIABLY stores a specific amount of a specific isotope at specific temperatures.

In a lab, over and over again, you have proven that there is an accurate correlation between this shell and the temperature, and it can be described by the formula t=n*7.6, where T is the temperature, and N is the amount of isotope in a sample of a predetermined size.

First of all, what happens in a lab rarely happens in the real world, so the next thing to do is test this hypotheses (because that is ALL that it is) in the real world. And once you have tested the hypotheses in the real world, you can come to the reasonable conclusion that the formula stands for the real world under those conditions.

Now: Assuming the statistical probability for error in the original lab study, and assuming the statistical probablility for error in the real world study, we can apply this information to the fossil r4ecord, right? Nazzo fast, guido.

The fossil record is exactly that. A fossil. And because it is a fossil there is only so much information that can be gathered from it. Here are only a very few of the possible opportunities for error:

1: the amount of the isotope N present is changed by the fossilization process itself
2: The PH of the water in which the shell grows was different at the time of the growth of the organisim and this modified the amount of the isotope N that was stored.
3: the salinity of the water in which the shell grows was different at the time of the growth of the organism and this affected the way that the isotope N was stored.
4: the very DNA of the organism that grew the shell was different at the time the shell was formed, and this affected the way the isotope N was stored.

I could go on for DAYS. And since the lifespan of those organisms is geologically infinitesimal, it is impossible to assign meaning to those temperature measurements which are based on unproven and unprovable theory, and not fact.

Data can best be collected only by direct observation. Without direct observation, you have hypothesis. Without a time machine to confirm that the hypothesis is correct, you have incomplete and flawed data. Period.

As to trees, grapes, growing periods:

When plants (wine grapes, oak trees) with very specific and well known temperature requirements can be shown by physical evidence to have grown in a given area at a given time that is hardly hearsay. It’s solid scientific evidence.

As anyone who has ever been in a court of law can tell you, unless there was an accurate recording of data AT THAT TIME AND PLACE by someone qualified to make that recording, in posession of instruments calibrated to make accurate recordings, the data is hearsay- anecdotal. “It was real warm when I was a kid” that data doesn’t mean a thing, period.

But let’s for a moment assume that we had accurate records and data for the entire liferspan of humanity (which, of course, we do not, and without a time machine, we will never have) that is still a one million year sample from an estimated 4.7 billion year old planet. Again, statistically utterly insignificant.

The scientific process,,whcih I have not ignored, and never do, involves:

Observation
hypothesis
predictions
test predictions based on hypothesis
lather, rinse, repeat.

We can only observe what we can observe. In other words, we cannot observe the temperature at any time other than the present, or a previous time when someone with calibrated instruments made direct observations. you cannot accept observations made by proxy as data, because of the inability to know what other forces come into play. The “data” in the rings of trees (and the oldest wood on record is only a few thousand years old) is only a comparison made to a direct observation and since we cannot possibly know under what conditions a 3000 year old tree grew, we can only make GUESSES. And GUESSES are not data.

No, Charles, I have a firm understanding of the scientific process. And I have used it unrelentingly. To point to a few shells or a couple of tree rings or a large wine producing time in history is not science, and it is beneath you. I know you’re a LOT smarter than that. “Extrapolating” is by defintion in error- as much as i hate to refer to Wikipedia,

extrapolation is the process of constructing new data points outside a discrete set of known data points. It is similar to the process of interpolation, which constructs new points between known points, but its results are often less meaningful, and are subject to greater uncertainty.