Nasif S. Nahle - a look at Science in a Vacuum

{edited 7/16/14 evening}

Back on October 23, 2012, {Before creating WUWTW to funnel my "virtual dialogue with climate science denialist" types into}, I wrote a post about Nasif Nahle over at citizenschallenge.blogspot.com a biologist by training and experience.  The man's interests extend beyond biology to a whole spectrum of our planet's processes.  He's a guy I can identify with, you know that spirit of curiosity encompassing all of this creation we inhabit.

But Nahle has taken his passion a step further and we have our differences.  He occasionally comments, though always saying pretty much the same thing.  His most recent comment,

7/13/14 - It's not my own reality. Science has to do with experimentation. If you're a scientist, you could REPEAT my experiments and then report your results. As long as you don't do it, you'll be lying. (At Nasif S. Nahle... Google "Scholar"... and atmospheric CO2 cooling )

has inspired me to bring his conversation over here.  Like myself, Nahle has lots of conviction and we've invested a good deal of our lives soaking up all the information we can, devoting time to "specialize" here and there as we fancied.  Like myself among a certain crowd we've attained a degree "authority."  Even within our-own-eyes we feel we have attained an above average level of understanding and deserve some of the trust a few have in us. 

Now, here's where the difference comes in,
and it has to do with that all important "ego thing"
The big question: How full of our selves are we?

Myself, I believe in my understanding.  I do so because my decades long skeptical pursuit of information is a process, a life's adventure.  I am open to new information and validating that info is the game.  I have had my ego bruised and battered, publicly and privately by having my presumed understanding shown to be way out of date, or way off the mark.  But that's part of the fun - like getting bruised while cavorting on canyon lands slickrock, it's part of the game of life and learning, otherwise we wouldn't be out there in the first place.  

I appreciate that my understanding is provisional, always vulnerable to newer or better information.  Thing is, when proven wrong while the bruises heal whole new realms of understanding and appreciation have opened up to us.  I love it!  To me that's what life and growing and being witness to this incredible creation we were born into is all about. 

I also understand that folks who have spent years and live's focused on studying specific issues know way the heck more than I do.  Experts are experts for a very good reason!  And though at times I might think I know plenty and them mistaken - I'd never imagine that my fragmentary knowledge could trump their professional understanding.  Only fools could ever presume to achieve expert status with the ease of a bit of dedicated part-time study. 

And only a fool can't accept that the higher math of science is a "For Members Only" affair - if you don't comprehend it, you don't comprehend it and should butt out.  Making sweeping and earth-shattering claims with fragmentary understanding belongs to the realm delusion.

Yet, here we have a jack of all trades claiming to contradict decades worth of the generally accepted physics of atmospheric Carbon dioxide and Republican/Libertarians are eating it up.