It's the 21st century...
The status quo believes that carbon dioxide causes CATASTROPHIC global warming.
Galileo is "pulled" out of the sixteenth century and put on the stand.
Armed with science he goes against the status quo.
Would you burn Galileo...
"Places everyone!" Interrupted the director again. "Goin' live in five, four, three, two," he pointed at camera three, its red light went on.
The Inquisitor turned to the camera, "Welcome back world! We were just getting along here marvelously. This denier, who calls himself Galileo however, still will not listen to science!"
"Look here young man, I am just asking questions, that is what science is. Science is not coming to foregone conclusions, and it is definitely not declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true. That is called a 'pseudoscience.'
"If something is unfalsifiable, it is unscientific. Do you understand that?
"I mean, if we go around building 'perfect' arguments, that is arguments that nobody may disagree with, well that simply isn't science — that's religion.
"You can't just say 'my argument is perfect,' and keep pointing only to things which support your argument. You have to look at everything, and ask the uncomfortable questions, and yes, you must actually try to defeat your own argument. Only then do you become really logically sound, let me give you an example:
"It is still common among my peers to believe in astrology. Now astrology is a perfect 'pseudo-science'. The astrologers build 'unfalsifiable arguments'. For example, my astrologer friend makes the statement, 'People born of the sign of Scorpio are secretive introverts.' I countered him and said, 'That's funny, I am Scorpio, and have never in my life been accused of secretive introvert- ism!'
'Well,' he countered, 'You have to look at the ascendant too, and your moon-sign. In which constellation is your moon?'
'My moon is in the constellation of Gemini.' I replied.
He immediately had his answer, 'You see my friend. Geminis are extroverts! That explains it.'
But this does not explain anything except my friend's own bias. You cannot make an argument, and then to every contradiction say 'don't look there, look here...' Do you see how that does not prove anything except for the person's own bias?"
"Who are you?" asked the Inquisitor without answering his questions. "You speak like a lawyer, but you are dressed like a clown. And how dare you question science?"
Galileo sighed, betraying his exasperation, "Young man, don't you understand? Science is asking questions. That's all I'm doing is asking questions and trying to get to the truth."
"Take our pseudoscience astrology again. My colleagues were indeed successful in showing that more people are born in September than any other month. Therefore we argue that there are more Virgos than any other star sign, simple, right?
"This can be verified by simply counting the number of September births, and the number of Virgos in our population. So this they did, but this only verified the number of Virgos among us.
It did nothing for the reason there are more births in September:
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"There were many postulations as to why there are more September births, but not one single plausible explanation, let alone proof. And by plausible explanation, I mean something that shows causation, and not just the opinion of my colleague, or his favorite mentor.
"Now you are doing the very same thing with your carbon argument. You have verified some things, but you have not shown a causal link yet.
"You have a marvelous graph here, verified by the ice- cores, sound science I would say, but then you tell me of 'tipping points' and other things which are not on the graph. So let's stick to what you have verified OK?
"OK," said the Inquisitor, confident of his eventual victory.
"Now show me , where is the 'good warming', and where is the 'bad warming'?"
"What?!" The Inquisitor shrieked in his falsetto again, his eyebrows all screwed-up.
"Yes, you said earlier that all global warming is bad. So here on the graph we see multiple warming and cooling periods. Now show me which ones are bad and which ones are good."
"Uh...that doesn't make sense!"
"Exactly! You ask me to blindly believe your group of scientists about what is good, and what is bad. I say, if they were real scientists, and interested in the truth, they would be asking the same questions I am."
