Of course there is a discipline of science. It includes many branches of expertise in different kinds of knowledge. They all share the systematic exploration and integration of objective knowledge. That is why we have an objective concept of "scientist". It doesn't mean that any scientist is an expert in all the branches, let alone that smooth talking ideological evangelists like Nye understand any of it or what it takes to attain scientific knowledge.

Scientific knowledge certainly is truth. The systematic, objective pursuit leading to scientific truths is the highest example of seeking and finding truth. It does not mean "omniscience" and truth does not mean the "absolutism" of mystical insight.

Faraday and Maxwell did not refute Newton; they knew they were investigating new phenomena that Newton's mechanics made no claim to explain. The progress of science is an accumulation of knowledge as the scope and depth of the context of knowledge expands, not a succession of exploded fallacies.

You are confusing science with the philosophy of Pragmatism with its "tools" and truth as whatever "works".

Most likely the greatest long distance background effect of gravity shows up as the cause of inertia. Even though gravity reduces by the square of the distance between two bodies as does electromagnetism, it is an affect that has no distance limit or absorption die out by other matter within the age of the Universe. At any place, there is a gravitational field which is the result of the matter at the observable past positions of all the bodies in the observable Universe. It is somewhat like being within a shell of matter where the average field strength within the shell is zero. But what ever is gravity will be felt by a body within the shell as inertia when moving relative to all matter composing the shell or similarly when one applies a force to the body.
Gravity would be greater at the top of a mountain due to the greater mass causing it or if gravity is due to a shielding affect from some particles in empty space then, too, there would be more gravity but atmospheric pressure would not work as that type of gravitational pressure would act.

What bothers me about those TV guys and gals who make such error filled statements both about science and other topics is that no one interviewing them has the guts to challenge them in any way on air. All the challenges seem to be in political shows with most likely similar error filled comments.

You lucked out because you could not hear that at all? LOL!

We still don't know what it is. Sure, we can observe it, measure it, apply math to it and account for it in practice but we still do not understand whether it is a separate force or one that is the results of electromagnetism or something else.
What is becoming clear lately is that the system, (solar, galactic or universal) is Not a gravitational one.
Gravity effects best that which it effects close. Kinda like the American government was supposed to work.

I have to laugh at those TV science guy idiots saying that gravity is nothing more than the weight of the atmosphere upon you...well, why is gravity different across the surface of the earth, why is gravity generally greater at the tops of mountains where there is less atmosphere above you?

The Church was never an active supporter of science and did burn people for heresy. Creationism is not science.

I lucked out. All I could hear of the video was the 24 hour a day tinnitus. I installed a high def video card with HDMI and could not get sound to the large screen TV for my UBUNTU Linux operating system. Finally got the sound through to the TV, but now no sound from the built in analog sound to my speakers for my computer monitor. Right now I have more understanding of gravity than the difference in the TV digital and computer analog sound systems.

Do you mean by "Gravity is one such law we fail to have a handle on." that it is not possible to control gravity as one can do with an actual force or do you mean that not much is known about gravity's source other than an overview and math through General Relativity? Whether gravity is a real force due to gravitons or a fictitious force due to space itself is to be discovered. At present, General Relativity gives all the handle that is, with current knowledge, usable.

Actually, what you have is one person operating from talking points and another who (emotionally) is responding. The audience member is trying to use the argument that consensus = science and the real scientist is pointing out that truth = science, not consensus. The 98% thing the audience member keeps coming back to is from a list of people who collaborated to promote the idea of AGW - it is far from a peer-reviewed paper backed up by an actually working model. What currently exists are a bunch of hypotheses of which none successfully or accurately predicted the past 20 years. To me, if a hypothesis isn't born out by observation, it's a bogus hypothesis.

The panel member then properly pointed out that the inter-governmental panel was not a scientific endeavor, but rather an ideological one. That's an accurate and entirely relevant argument to make.

The argument about the relative success on sustainable energy started as an attempt to establish the aforementioned bona fides of the inter-governmental panel by citing a statistic on renewable energy use. The audience member obviously sees that as a point in favor of recognizing the legitimacy of the panel and therefore bolstering her use of the conclusions of the IGP. The panel member pointed out, however that her metrics were critically flawed: that the only way to see the policy on renewable energy use as a success was to ignore the economic effects of that policy and others from the same government which have resulted in widespread poverty, astronomical unemployment rates, and high taxes. The audience member then responds that those are all acceptable to her ideology, to which the panel member then points out that they are temporary at best, pointing out the end results of these policies as demonstrated by Greece.

With regard to the strength of the dollar, there are potentially two arguments being made here and I actually think both participants are making separate arguments rather than arguing two sides of a different argument. I think both are right: the audience member is appropriately skeptical about the strength of the US Dollar in comparison to its historical strength. In that she is probably taking into account the US' massive debt and attempts at Quantitative Easing (which is quite ironic given her previous arguments). The panel member is looking at the strength of the US Dollar in comparison to the strength of the Euro as a follow-on to her assertion that the EU is a failing experiment. Anyone can look at the conversion rates and see that since the inception of the Euro its value against the dollar has dropped substantially.

Personally, I think that the panel member needs to respond less to the personal attacks (though she was absolutely correct in calling them out) and stick with the facts. The audience member clearly needs to do more homework, as she's presenting talking points as facts instead of coming armed with real science.

While I certainly agree that science is not a democracy and consensus does not determine reality I am reluctant to call science "a search for truth". "Truth" conveys a sense of absolutism that is not available to scientists. For example, is Newtonian mechanics true? It certainly works in a broad range of circumstances but as Faraday and Maxwell showed there are conditions where it fails. This is excusable because electrodynamics was unknown in Newtons time so he had no reason to include it in his theory. Newtonian dynamics shows that there is a tight relationship between gravitation and momentum. his theory is calculable, observable and testable. And, most important of all, it works, at least most of the time. Einstein provided a reconciliation of Newton and Maxwell in his Special theory of Relativity. In my mind science provides a set of tools that allow us to pursue understanding of the behavior of the world around us. We need to recognize that that understanding will probably never be complete. It will always be subject to modification as new information becomes available. I think that the difference between truth and understanding is more than a semantic one. The search for understanding is an unending quest but the search for "truth" implies that omniscience is achievable. That seems unlikely.

Thank you for a great post! I could have inserted a hearty "LOL!" after several points. Yeah, Bill Nye, "The SCIENCE GUY!" -- ooh I bet he even has a Master's degree - IN SCIENCE! LOL! I looked up Bill Nye on google and his only earned degree is a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell. After that, the article listed about half a dozen or so HONORARY doctorates. Which really means nothing, except that he gave a few speeches, and he popularized "science" on his kids shows. I'm sure he understands "science" at least at the level of setting up a free-body diagram for analyzing static forces, and probably took a good junior-level 3D dynamics class, but advanced numerical simulation of the complex processes in global climate simulation? I doubt it - he just regurgitates whatever Al Gore tells him. Actually, if you want to know about how fission or fusion produces electricity for the grid, you talk to a nuclear engineer. Or, in the case of fusion, if you want to talk about how it MIGHT produce electricity in the future, you talk to a nuclear engineer/plasma physicist. :-)

Most devoted idiots cannot let go of their idiocy no matter how much logic you apply to their unscientific statements. The amusing thing is hearing them re-affirm their nonsense by quoting additional nonsense from equally idiotic "authorities." Just for the amusement of this forum, when I put the initials W.F.A. standing for World's Foremost Authority after my name, I am questioned as to the meaning of the three letters, but never (so far) of the explanation.

Gravity Sucks.
Once you have learned that fact you will better understand life.
Liberalism Sucks even worse than Gravity but has none of the benefits that Gravity provides.

Loved it. But, I always enjoy a good fight and a cogent takedown of a liberal idiot. The Irish lady at the table is not a scientist as was assumed. Her name is Ann McElhinney and she's an activist journalist and documentary producer who fights against the climate change hoax.

My "crickets" in my ears tinnitus interfered with whatever those shrill female voices said.
I did laugh when those two guys got up to leave early on.
It reminded me how when talking heads on Fox News get excited and all start talking at once, I pick up my remote and start pushing buttons.
And I even have captions to read! They do trail behind, though, when people talk fast.

"Does it have every scientist who ever lived!?"

It's important to note that there really isn't a discipline called "scientist." People who don't know much about science as a discipline throw the word around while having a vague mental image of someone like the Professor on Gilligan's Island, who could make a fusion reactor from three vines, a handful of sand and a coconut.

In reality the term "scientist" could and does encompass a whole range of specialties.

If you want information on climate, you talk to a climatologist.
If you want to discuss evolution, you talk to a biologist.
If you want to talk about nuclear fission or fusion, you talk to a physicist.
If you want to talk about stellar formation and the age of the universe, you talk to a cosmologist.

One of the biggest mistakes the media (and many, many people) is finding some knucklehead who has a vaguely science-y sounding degree and trotting him out as an expert on a whole range of issues. Like Bill Nye, for example, a mechanical engineer; there's no reason to think he knows his ass from his face about climatology, or biology, or physics.

When you combine bad science with force guess what happens. Is it good or bad? Over a beer I can fill you in.

Interesting point... But there are controversies in science. The vast bulk go unnoticed. Even people who jump and down about global warming are unconcerned about continental drift, string theory, or the on-going biotic creation of petroleum.

That never happened. No one was burned at the stake for saying that the Earth is not flat. We can argue Galileo all day, but the fact is that the Church was an active supporter of astronomy and by the time people were really being burned at the stake over religion, most everyone who cared to think about it accepted that Earth is a "sphere."

Gravity, like any other law of nature or creation, (existence if you prefer) are our only source of Truth as we define it, (never changing-not relative). However, our relationship to the truth depends upon our understanding of those laws. Gravity is one such law we fail to have a handle on.

Empirical doesn't mean what it used to anymore. Apparently consensus can trump empirical if the money, desire for fame and notoriety, and/or the potential for power is sufficient.

"we all know Ohm's Law"
Ohm's law is like the basis of everything.

"Whatever else may be true seems open to debate and discovery."
The debate notion seems like a psychological defense mechanism (or maybe it's political; I don't know) against information we do not like.

We don't like the implications of evolution --> teach the controversy.
On vaccines, let's hear from doctors and anti-vaxers.
On GMOs,let's hear from scientists and from local/organic food advocates.

It works for reporters. If they just want to report the news, getting "both sides" of the story, even if there only is one real side, at least lets you avoid the controversy and leave it to readers. If their audience is people looking for an "epic takedown" video, then it really works. It doesn't even matter whether we're jumping from washing machines, to global warming, to nutrition programs, to the price of tea an China; as long as it's yelling.

The video is two people yelling at each another in a disjointed and irrational way. When my 6- and 8-y/o act like this I've learned not to try to understand what the rant means but rather to get them to calm down first.

I'm curious if they're acting like that for a reason, but all I can do is listen to what they say.
Person A: [Ad hominem attacks and swearing about gender issues]
Person B: You said 98% of scientists say global warming is a major problem. This means there must be a list of qualified scientists and a subset of those who agree. That's LOGIC! (impressed with herself) Do you have a list!?
Person B: Science does not operate on consensus.
Person B: People can discover new things in science, e.g. that the earth is round. (I think she's contradicting herself, saying there can be a consensus, but it can be overturned by new evidence.)
Person B: The list of scientists who question that global warming is a problem is growing, but that doesn't matter because my mind's already made up regardless.
Person A: Here is a list of climate scientists you asked for.
Person B: Does it have every scientist who ever lived!? (She's just like my 6 y/o. LOL)
Person A: It's an inter-governmental panel...
Person B: That's governmental, not a scientific org?
Person A: Some panel members are from the EU. (nothing to do with B's claim)
Person B: So what?
Person A: EU has a great record on sustainable energy. (This is totally begging the question, using a form of what she's trying to prove in her proof. I think it's trolling.)
Person B: Spain has 20% unemployment! (LOL, nothing to do with this discussion)
Person A: Spain has good healthcare and nutrition programs. (LOL, absolutely nothing to do with the discussion.)
Person B: Ad hominem attacks
Person A: The US dollar isn't doing well. (Huh,WTF? USD is the reserve currency of the world.)
Person B: Only 1 person in a million (0.0001%) believes that, so it is not true. (Apparently she does believe in knowledge by consensus.)

The most interesting thing to me is anyone could listen to this and think, "That was a very interesting discussion." They yell at and insult each other, jump topics at random, are simply incorrect in half their statements, and don't make any cogent points.

I actually wonder if this is a satire of popular science in our time. Take an interesting topic. Yell and swear irrationally about a hodgepodge of unrelated issues. Slap the lurid title "Epic Takedown" on it as if it were anything more than people mindlessly yelling. Get 1.5M people to watch it.

In my mind, the bigger issue is that in saying the earth isn't flat, one probably risked being burned at the stake. We're getting back to that. In my circles (science) we often joke how we have to look over out shoulders and make sure nobody might overhear us with some of our conversation. Consensus isn't just wrong a lot of the time, it's downright dangerous.