Cloudscape

Often, different scientists have come to the same discoveries simultaneously. This shows that these discoveries were not only made by the scientists themselves, but by the scientific community as a whole. Their discoveries were based on discoveries that were already there, and they merely built further on those discoveries. Not long before they were made, and so it is also for most other discoveries, another discovery was made that would prompt them, be that discovery one of scientific or technological nature.

Everything in a system grows from the same substrate that determines that system. This substate will be all the more uniform the more it is connected, and this substrate becomes more and more connected as it grows. Only if one can get far ahead of this substrate can one achieve something of particular significance.

Wisdom is like a landscape that emerges as the seas of ignorance retreat. Where a plateau is reached, the same discoveries will be made several times or nearly so. Only the mountains make a true difference.

There have been thousands of researches into global warming, and for some reason, they all contradict one another. This may mean three things about part of these researchers: either they're careless, they're biased, they're frauds. According to recent research 2% of scientists admit having falsified data, while as much as 34% of scientists admitted having omitted data contrary to their assumptions. Since we cannot know which of the three it is, and we can hardly do our own research all by ourselves, the best thing we can do is to combine the results from all these researches and take the average from their results. It's surreal that we can trust scientists so little that we have to resort to such primitive methods, but it's the best we can do. If the disparity in these results shows us anything, then it is that we should not be too quick to trust researchers. Either how, we can best trust the results that have been replicated the most.

Look up graphs of global temperature, gather a large number of them together, study them carefully and compare them. You will find some sources that claim the last ten thousand years have been exceptionally warm, others that say the last ten thousand years have been exceptionally cool. You will find some sources claiming that the Middle Ages have been warmer than now, others that claim that it is warmer now than in the Middle Ages.

Furthermore, you will find sources that place today's temperature on graphs of the past millions of years, and you will find graphs that show only the past hundred-and-fifty years, so that in either case you cannot tell if man was the cause.

You will also find sources that compare solar activity with temperature claiming it to prove that the increase in solar activity causes the increase of temperature, but either minimize or ignore the deviations in temperature, while you will also find sources that show only temperature, while ignoring solar activity.

And finally, you will find sources comparing temperature with carbon dioxide concentrations. Some will selectively choose periods in which the increase of temperature follows the increase of carbon dioxide as a proof that carbon dioxide is the main cause of temperature increase, while other sources will selectively show periods in which the increase of carbon dioxide increases temperature, claiming this to be proof that carbon dioxide does not increase temperature at all.

If, like these scientists, you are biased, then you will choose whichever source you want to believe and ignore all others. If you are a seeker of truth, then you will search a compromise between these sources. The truth is most likely to lie somewhere in between, as it usually does.  The world is not doomed to turn into inferno, nor is everything perfectly fine.

The average, most replicated results are most likely to be correct, while the extremer, rarer results are the most likely to have been influenced by bias. This is a direct accusation of the scientists that brought these results, and I believe that they should be given any credence (or, for that matter, a license). I write this to warn anyone who does research on any field whatsoever to consult different sources, and conclude that their evidence is correct only if there are no other sources presenting evidence to the contrary. Meta-analysis is highly useful. Some meta-analyses calculate averages between the data of different studies, which likely provide the most accurate and reliable results.

Studies that combine data from different studies indicate a relatively mild increase of temperature — not high enough to portend doomsday, but high enough to be a reason for concern, in that it will have a major impact on the diversity, richness and beauty of the biosphere, and therefore as well as on the quality of our own lives.

Either how, all studies thus far have reveal that anthropogenic greenhouse gases (AGGs) are responsible for the increase of temperature, even the studies that claim the opposite. Some studies have been able to minimize the increase of temperature due to AGGs with the popular "3 watts per square meter" number, but none have come to an actually low number — 3 watts per square meter is actually quite a lot if one does the math, enough to cause an increase in global temperature of 0,9 kelvin (see article below).

That they arrived at this number, without realizing its significance, shows that it is likely to be correct, as these results are not distorted by bias towards the idea of global warming.

See also:

Holocene Extinction Event

Some interpretations in physics dispense with causality; in that these interpretations are no longer scientific, since science is nothing but the investigation of causality, of why things are as they are. Physics without causality is no longer science, but mysticism. Believing something to be as it is without needing any explanation in physics is as unscientific as believing this in religion. Scientists who say that the occurrence of a physical event needs no cause are no better than creationists who say that the existence of God needs no cause, and surely polytheists believed the same in the past about their gods; but we only give up finding the cause of something and say that it "just is" when we are confused about it. Some things about modern physics are very confusing, but that does not give us an excuse to descend into despair to explain them.

As any system inherently controls itself, any system can also inherently be controlled: we need only to know how it controls itself to control it. There must be some interaction between the system and part of the rest of the universe as the existence of the system would otherwise not be relevant. By controlling that part of the universe we could control that interaction, and in this way, interact with this system. If we find out how to do this, we can fully control the system, and any phenomenon that is part of it. With that knowledge, we can control anything. The only barrier to omnipotence, then, would be a barrier to omniscience.

It follows that anything in the universe can be controlled, merely because the universe itself can control itself, and we are part of that universe. If it is connected to our universe, it can be controlled - if it isn't connected to our universe, it doesn't really exist to us. There is therefore no limit to what we can achieve except for the limit to what the universe itself can achieve - that is, the limit to what exists in the universe. If the complexity of the universe is infinite, so the complexity of our knowledge of it will become, and therefore so will the complexity of our technology.

The idea that there is no limit to technology is known as the sans ceiling hypothesis.

For a discussion on whether or not the universe can be infinite in complexity, see the Infinity Principle:
http://cloudscape.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/04/28/the-infinity-principle.html

Related entries, on the eventual "theosis" (deification) of intelligent species such as ourselves:
http://cloudscape.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/04/28/god-theory-part-i-analytical.html
http://cloudscape.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/04/28/the-god-theory-part-ii-holistic.html