tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post4841630406991864340..comments2024-03-27T05:47:21.295-07:00Comments on Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature: Objectivism & Politics, Part 36Daniel Barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06359277853862225286noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-22396540995412767362012-10-14T23:42:41.850-07:002012-10-14T23:42:41.850-07:00Also the claim that Met office results released la...Also the claim that Met office results released last week showed that there had been no warming in the past 15 years is false. The article engaded in a misleading choice of the interval stating with a year with temperatures above the log term trend and ending with a year with temperatures below the long term trend. I both cases the reasons were known. It was the Southern Oscillation and it transfers heat back and forth between the ocean and the atmosphere and has nothing to do with the long term trend.<br /><br />Here is the Met Office reply to the article.<br /><br />http://www.skepticalscience.com/nuccitelli-et-al-2012.html<br /><br />I have been able to take the time to understand climatology and evaluate much of the metodology. I find it explains what is happening and the opposition lacks credibility. We are in deep trouble and need to act urgently. Claims otherwise are wishful thinking. Unfortunately there are too many who are so paranoid about political opponents that they blind themselves to natural dangers if acting on those dangers would mean that they would have to come to an accomodation with political adverssaries.Lloyd Flackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00832519369660328832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-52284988442758029802012-10-14T21:29:09.468-07:002012-10-14T21:29:09.468-07:00Not in the least. There are many things we don'...<i>Not in the least. There are many things we don't know, or know only imperfectly. The fact that somebody can't explain X does not make your explanation of X true. </i><br /><br />You miss the point about multiple lines of evidence. If an explanation is erroneous every time a new line ove evidencce becomes available there is a good chance that it will be inconsistent with the erroneous explanation. The more time that an explanation passes when it has achance to fail the less likely it is to be in error. This sort of accumulation of evidence is haow things work in science. Science seldom gives yes - no answers with complete certainty. It confirms hypotheses with increasing confidence as more evidence becomes available. And in a mature theory with huge numbers of types of supporting the chance of being wrong on fundamental matters becomes negligible, not because of any sing overwhelming proof but becaus of the sheer breadth of support. Climatology is in that situation as far as the climate being highly sensitive to CO2 forcings goes. We can treat the chance of current emission rates being safe as negligible.<br /><br />And the claim of there having been no warming for fifteen years is false. The data sets that I have seen show continued warming, especially when you take into account factors that will cause short term temperature changes.<br /><br />Here are a couple of relevant links.<br /><br />http://www.skepticalscience.com/nuccitelli-et-al-2012.html<br /><br />http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/<br /><br /><br /><br />Lloyd Flackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00832519369660328832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-62505085471236088752012-10-14T18:07:55.660-07:002012-10-14T18:07:55.660-07:00In an observational science if multiple lines of e...<i>In an observational science if multiple lines of evidence are consistent with your proposed explanation but not with other proposed explanations then you should have confidence in your con conclusions.</i><br /><br />Not in the least. There are many things we don't know, or know only imperfectly. The fact that somebody can't explain X does not make your explanation of X true. <br /><br /><i>What you have is attempts to raise doubts that are mostly politically motivated.</i><br /><br />And acceptance of the theory is not politically motivated as well? It is almost certainly politically motivated among those using this climate prognostications as a rationalization for certain public policy choices. <br /><br /><i>Your attempt to dismiss the appeal to authority is wand waving. You need reasons to do this, reasons that you can only get by spending the time to actually look at what is being done.</i><br /><br />You don't seem to understand what's at stake here. I don't have time to become enough of an expert in climate science to be able to judge their claims. I have to take what they say on their authority. Now before I'm willing to accept any authority, that authority must have a credible track record. If they don't, I'm going to be skeptical. <br /><br />My skepticism is not entirely without basis, even among climate scientists. After it came out last week that no global warming has occurred in the last 15 years, Professor Judith Curry, head of the climate science department at Georgia Tech, suggested that the computer models used to predict future warming are ‘deeply flawed’. Even Phil Jones, the professor at East Anglia whose emails were hacked in 2009, admitted: "‘We don’t fully understand how to input things like changes in the oceans, and because we don’t fully understand it you could say that natural variability is now working to suppress the warming. We don’t know what natural variability is doing." With such admissions, why shouldn't I be skeptical of those claiming to be certain about the climate 80 years down the road?<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />gregnyquisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13653516868316854941noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-16801335833819587472012-10-06T18:45:43.667-07:002012-10-06T18:45:43.667-07:00Greg,
Falsification is a philosophically motivate...Greg,<br /><br />Falsification is a philosophically motivated attempt to create a criterion for empiricism. It is too stringent to be used in practice.<br /><br />You are right to want testability. Where you are wrong is in insisting that this can only be done reliably by controlled experiments. Climatology, like similar, sciences relies on systematic use of observations. Yes, you need more lines of evidence before you can be confident of your conclusions than you would in an experimental science. but you can be confident of you conclusions id you have enough evidence. We do have enough evidence, more than enough.<br /><br />In an observational science if multiple lines of evidence are consistent with your proposed explanation but not with other proposed explanations then you should have confidence in your con conclusions. How else do you think we know evolution is correct? It does not come from any single killer proof. You will not find them in complex things like climate. Modern climatology is capable of explaining most of what is happening now and what has happened in the past. There is ahuge volume of evidence supporting it. Those who are trying to doubt it do not have explanations for paleoclimate. I have never heard them try to explain the glacial cycle. Denialists (and the term is justified) are not seeking explanations. They are trying to sow doubt instead. Scientific theories should be tested fairly. Seeking reasons to believe that something that you want to believe is true. Does not lead to honest tests.<br /><br />What you have is attempts to raise doubts tat are mostly politically motivated. And those that are strongly politically motivated seem to have difficulty understanding that other people might find other things more important than politics. People get into science because the want to figure out how the Universe works. If your primary motivation is political then you are unlikely to do very good work. And since it is continually tested against nature poor work will show up.<br /><br />Your attempt to dismiss the appeal to authority is wand waving. You need reasons to do this, reasons that you can only get by spending the time to actually look at what is being done. You haven't. Most importantly you are under the false impression that everything relies on the climate models. It doesn't. There is much more evidence than that. Look at the links and references that I gave and spend some time. If you are to challenge those who have put a lot of effort in then you have to put quite a bit in yourself.Lloyd Flackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00832519369660328832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-48025694899136396782012-10-06T11:28:26.407-07:002012-10-06T11:28:26.407-07:00You do not use the same methodology for all scienc...<i>You do not use the same methodology for all sciences. for complex systems and subjects with a historical component you usually rely on systematic observation rather than experimentation. It is harder to obtain the same degree of confidence in your conclusions this way, but with enough different types of evidence it can be done.</i><br /><br />This is actually the point I'm trying to make: that where you cannot test one's conclusions, you cannot have the same degree of confidence in those conclusions. Where effective testing fails, reliability of the knowledge claims drops, sometimes dramatically. The "science" I'm most familiar with is economics. The prognostications of economics are notoriously unreliable. I've seen some stats suggesting that economists are wrong on their prognostications around 70% of the time. Why should we assume that climate science is any different? After all, unlike astronomy or experimental physics, climate scientists don't have a track record. Why should we trust speculative claims based on computer models that are used to rationalize political and economic policies that would probably be more catastrophic than the consequences of the prognosticated global warming?<br /><br /><i>You are trying to use philosophy to prescribe what science should be.</i><br /><br />No, not in the least. You just don't get it. The issue is not about how you or I or anyone else defines science. You can define science any way you please. The question is what sort of knowledge claims can we accept solely on the basis of authority. Climate scientists are making an <i>argumentum ad verecundiam</i>. Is their authority justified? When it comes to their prognostications (as opposed to their observations), I would say no. At best, their prognostications are educated guesses; at worst, politically motivated hyperbole.<br /><br />The political side of this should be of especial concern. Research in social psychology finds that confirmation bias and arrogance about knowledge claims are built-in features. Popper's "philosophy of science" is merely a strategy to try to deal with enormous problem of confirmation bias. The falsifiability criterion is not a naming convention — you can call anything you want science — but simply a way of demarcating more reliable sources of knowledge from less reliable sources of knowledge. I personally have no problem rejecting the scientific status of economics, for example. Given the role which mainstream economics played in rationalizing our dysfunctional financial system, it doesn't deserve the prestige associated with that label. But again, we're talking semantics: it's not the name used, but the thing itself that is important. <br /><br />Now these issues of confirmation bias and the reliability of knowledge claims are not deduced from speculative philosophical principles: they are the product of observation about how human knowledge works (or rather how human knowledge <i>doesn't</i> work). Scientists are very smart but often very arrogant. If their theories are not constantly checked against experience, their arrogance can easily lead them to lamentable error and unjustified pretentions. This is fundamentally the theory at the bottom of my skepticism toward catastrophic global warming. It's not based on speculative metaphysics or philosophy; indeed, it's little more than Human Nature 101.gregnyquisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13653516868316854941noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-36429842502626040792012-10-06T03:47:43.277-07:002012-10-06T03:47:43.277-07:00The characteristics of science are that it involve...The characteristics of science are that it involves the study of natural phenomena, that it integrates observations though theoretical constructs and these constructs are subjected to empirical testing.<br /><br />Popper's falsifiability criterion is intended to be a litmus test for whether a hypothesis is empirically testable or not. It is too stringent because theories are not in practice rejected because of a single discordant observation. This criterion is too simple and would throw out too much valid science with the invalid material.<br /><br />But Greg went further. He claimed that that the inability to run controlled experiments disqualified climatology from being a true science. This criterion would disqualify all observational sciences. You cannot force them into the same mould as the experimental sciences. You do not use the same methodology for all sciences. for complex systems and subjects with a historical component you usually rely on systematic observation rather than experimentation. It is harder to obtain the same degree of confidence in your conclusions this way, but with enough different types of evidence it can be done.<br /><br />You and Popper are making the same mistake as Rand. You are trying to use philosophy to prescribe what science should be. And working scientists are giving the finger to such attempts.Lloyd Flackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00832519369660328832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-65769879343798648872012-10-04T18:46:22.648-07:002012-10-04T18:46:22.648-07:00Staying well out of the global warming debate but ...Staying well out of the global warming debate but a few quick notes around the Popperian approach:<br /><br />Lloyd:<br />>I say failed because no one actually uses Popper's falsifiability criterion. <br /><br />If people don't choose to use a logically sound method, that is a sales dept failure, not an intellectual one...;-). An interesting discussion of the falsifiability criterion is <a href="http://www.criticalrationalism.net/2012/08/13/what-does-poppers-falsifiability-criterion-achieve/" rel="nofollow">here.</a><br /><br />>There is no hard and fast dividing line between science and other studies. <br /><br />This is the Critical Rationalist 2.0 position. Popper learned this the hard way via some strong criticism from Bartley and eventually came around. However, this was one step back but two steps forward as it ended up reinforcing the basic logic behind Critical Rationalism.<br /><br />>You are looking for simple logical proofs. Sometimes they cannot be there and you have to rely on the cumulative effect of lots of lines of evidence that are not, in isolation, conclusive.<br /><br />The logical proofs are *never* there for theories based on empirical observations. This is Hume's problem (of induction).<br /><br />>It is the complete picture which matters.<br /><br />True. But it is the complete picture that, sadly, no-one has.<br /><br />cheers<br />Daniel<br />Daniel Barneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06359277853862225286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-23555117609299861362012-10-04T00:27:05.401-07:002012-10-04T00:27:05.401-07:00Greg,
I was looking at your discussion with Nulli...Greg,<br /><br />I was looking at your discussion with Nullifidian. He was right. You are trying to prescribe what science should be on the basis of a failed philosophical approach.<br /><br />I say failed because no one actually uses Popper's falsifiability criterion. It would chuck out too much useful science, especially in the early stages of the development of a theory.<br /><br />There is no hard and fast dividing line between science and other studies. And the methods that are useful if simple systems where you can do controled experiments are not useful in the observational study of complex systems. You are looking for somple logical proofs. Sometimes they cannot be there and you have to rely on the cumulative effect of lots of lines of evidence that are not, in isolation, conclusive.<br /><br />In fact scientists never like single proofs. What they want is consilience, the convergence of evidence. Since there is aconsistent set of natural laws behing the phenomena the tru explanation will be consistent with the results from many different fields of study. The more different confirmations there are the happier scientists are.<br /><br />Planned observations can substitute for planed experiments and do in observational sciences such as geology, paleontology, astronomy and climatology. To properly understand what is going on in climatology requires looking at a lot of things. It is the complete picture which matters.<br /><br />Some useful links for climatology are:<br /><br />www.skepticalscience.com<br />http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm<br />www.realclimate.org<br /><br />Por a description of the difference between science and other studies I reccommend<br /><br />Nonsense on Stilts buMassimo Pigliucci.Lloyd Flackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00832519369660328832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-9481518776827983322012-09-30T08:36:05.736-07:002012-09-30T08:36:05.736-07:00Another reason is that many free market advocates ...Another reason is that many free market advocates are dishonest when it comes to external costs. The market cannot deal with them by itself. Government action is needed either through regulation or through imposing the cost. But many free market advocates in their hostility to government action try to avoid its necessity by looking for reasons to believe that the external costs aren't real. In other words to stop something that they see as a danger to their liberty they deny responsibility for any harm that they might do.Lloyd Flackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00832519369660328832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-8247123579291906002012-09-29T08:04:22.065-07:002012-09-29T08:04:22.065-07:00From my experience, the reason environmentalism an...<i>From my experience, the reason environmentalism and anti-capitalism come hand-in-hand so often is simply because the same values and reasoning lead people to feel strongly about both issues</i><br /><br />And those values amount to grievance and hatred of capitalism (although they are often dressed up as compassion for the poor).<br /><br /><i>Capitalism exploits the poor and increases inequality etc</i><br /><br />Capitalism "exploits" the poor? Then how come the poor are better off under capitalist than under non-capitalist systems? And what is this mania for equality? I was born without the capacity to envy and have difficulty understanding it.gregnyquisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13653516868316854941noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-59101842449112295782012-09-29T04:58:52.962-07:002012-09-29T04:58:52.962-07:00"... the most prominent and real motive of th..."... the most prominent and real motive of the global-warming hysteria is hatred and grievance against capitalism"<br /><br />I have to say I don't agree with that at all.<br /><br />From my experience, the reason environmentalism and anti-capitalism come hand-in-hand so often is simply because the same values and reasoning lead people to feel strongly about both issues: <br /><br />Capitalism exploits the poor and increases inequality etc., and the poor are the first and hardest to be hit by global warming (for which there is already empirical evidence of, for the record.)<br /><br /><br />http://atlasembraced.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-rational-russian_25.htmlJoel M-Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09162183253555135534noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-30480650107054883542010-01-18T20:11:37.160-08:002010-01-18T20:11:37.160-08:00I think Berlinski does show that Dawkins et al. ha...I think Berlinski does show that Dawkins et al. have gained an unfair advantage by continually framing the issue of evolution's correctness as a matter of Darwinism vs. Creationism. I wish Berlinski was a clear writer with a more structured agenda than general skepticism, so one could see more clearly where he parts ways with Darwinism. But it's clear that if Berlinski is faithful to the sources, that claims about the incontrovertible correctness of Darwinism are to some degree parasitic on molecular biology and genetics if those fields can be distinguished from evolutionary biology.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845776740665082229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-50023638731773777362010-01-17T12:58:57.985-08:002010-01-17T12:58:57.985-08:00Laj: "You mean this:
http://www.2think.org/l...Laj: "You mean this:<br /><br />http://www.2think.org/letters.shtml"<br /><br />Yes.gregnyquisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13653516868316854941noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-43779723616579047512010-01-16T17:31:18.638-08:002010-01-16T17:31:18.638-08:00Greg,
You mean this:
http://www.2think.org/lette...Greg,<br /><br />You mean this:<br /><br />http://www.2think.org/letters.shtmlUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845776740665082229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-12243661071330654462010-01-16T09:38:53.092-08:002010-01-16T09:38:53.092-08:00"If you've read the Commentary article, l..."If you've read the Commentary article, let me know what Berlinski's books add and I'll likely get one."<br /><br />The book I'm reading ("The Deniable Darwin") contains the Commentary article (the "title" essay of the book). It's not so much that particular article that impressed me (in fact, I was more impressed with the critical responses to it, which are included in the book), but with Berlinski's response to the criticisms, which is far and away the best I've ever read along those lines—a tour de force of skepticism.gregnyquisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13653516868316854941noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-22844559734532716202010-01-13T19:45:33.349-08:002010-01-13T19:45:33.349-08:00Laj, I have no read Coyne's new book. Does he ...<i>Laj, I have no read Coyne's new book. Does he actually address Berlinski's specific arguments?</i><br /><br />If the arguments are similar to those that Berlinski made in Commentary Magazine in 1996, I would say yes, but not in any direct or point for point manner, and Berlinski is not even in Coyne's index or bibliography. <br /><br />For example: Some of the points Coyne made about how dating/age of fossils supports the evolutionary timeline were not obvious to me before reading his book. When Berlinski writes something like "The theory of evolution is incapable of ruling anything out of court", I can't quite square that with scientists who claim that rabbit fossils in the Pre-Cambrian era would clearly debunk evolutionary theory.<br /><br />There are many other claims that Coyne makes about the relative sparsity of the fossil record, but I'm sure that some skepticidm can be raised about them. I was just wondering whether you had read Coyne's book and had come to the conclusion that too much was missing. IF you've read the Commentary article, let me know what Berlinski's books add and I'll likely get one.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845776740665082229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-13277012144345725692010-01-13T17:25:23.435-08:002010-01-13T17:25:23.435-08:00Laj, I have no read Coyne's new book. Does he ...Laj, I have no read Coyne's new book. Does he actually address Berlinski's specific arguments?gregnyquisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13653516868316854941noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-75116838140690427772010-01-12T03:43:14.595-08:002010-01-12T03:43:14.595-08:00I'm not sure which sound empirical conclusions...<i>I'm not sure which sound empirical conclusions are being referred to here. Although I've tended to be sympathetic to certain strains in Darwinism (particularly as developed by Popper and Hayek), I've been reading Berlinski lately and find much of his skepticism warrented. Knowledge is fundamentally practical; it must prove its worth in experience. Where the speculative side of knowledge begins to outweigh the empirical, the experimental, the practical, the level of uncertainty tends to rise. Passing off this speculative element as "science" will hardly remedy the circumstances.</i><br /><br />Greg, have you read Jerry Coyne's new book and if so, what do you think of it?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845776740665082229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-5387676293432165932010-01-11T21:01:01.231-08:002010-01-11T21:01:01.231-08:00"As a practicing scientist, albeit not in cli..."As a practicing scientist, albeit not in climatology, I have to say that this strikes me as an almost positivist approach to the philosophy of science."<br /><br />Why "positivist." It would seem to me very much non-positivist, even anti-positivist, since I am questioning the idea that we must believe any claim made by any clique calling themselves scientists. I'm sorry, but not all claims made on behalf of science are "equal." <br /><br />"It's not like 'complex mutual dependence among causal factors' is unique to climatology."<br /><br />But complex mutual dependence is not the deciding the factor: it's when such mutual dependence leads to the inability to isolate variables in experiments. I've studied the methodology of social sciences for over twenty years, and I know of what I speak. We still don't know, for example, what effect the economic stimulus had; nor can we ever know. The best we can do is make educated guesses. This is why there is no consensus in economics on the issue. <br /><br />Without the ability to run experiments, claims can't be empirically tested. They are not falsifiable, which, if we followed Popper's criterion, would place them outside of science.<br /><br />"Climatologists can predict the degree of climate change within a reasonable margin of error."<br /><br />They can? Since when? And what is meant by "reasonable margin of error"?<br /><br />But this doesn't quite get to the heart of the matter. What empirical tests do they have demonstrating the precise (or near precise) relation between carbon emissions and global warming? What do they have besides computer models?<br /><br />"It gets even worse in biology, where the number of interacting parts and pathways number in the tens of thousands in any given individual. We cannot isolate and test them all, nor can we separate genes from development from the environment, and yet we are still capable of making sound empirical conclusions."<br /><br />I'm not sure which sound empirical conclusions are being referred to here. Although I've tended to be sympathetic to certain strains in Darwinism (particularly as developed by Popper and Hayek), I've been reading Berlinski lately and find much of his skepticism warrented. Knowledge is fundamentally practical; it must prove its worth in experience. Where the speculative side of knowledge begins to outweigh the empirical, the experimental, the practical, the level of uncertainty tends to rise. Passing off this speculative element as "science" will hardly remedy the circumstances.gregnyquisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13653516868316854941noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-80703249306108116302010-01-11T17:47:39.280-08:002010-01-11T17:47:39.280-08:00Nullifidian,
How certain are you about the correc...Nullifidian,<br /><br />How certain are you about the correctness of AGW theorizing?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845776740665082229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-5054317390124105262010-01-11T15:42:57.798-08:002010-01-11T15:42:57.798-08:00Personally, I think it's a mistake to use the ...Personally, I think it's a mistake to use the term "denialists" to refer to AGW skeptics. That term should be restricted to those who deny conclusively proven facts, like the Holocaust or the shape of the earth. <br /><br />Whatever one thinks of AGW, it is obviously not in that category. It remains a controversial and unproven theory dependent on questionable computer models and heavily manipulated data. (Note that I'm referring to AGW, not just GW; it seems clear enough that there has been some increase in global temperatures since the 19th century -- maybe 1.5 degrees F. or less -- but the cause remains controversial.)<br /><br />The real import of the East Anglia emails isn't the snarky comments made by the scientists, but the accompanying code, which show that the data had been massaged to the point where the original figures could not even be recovered. Some of the code writers even complained about this in asides embedded in the data files. <br /><br />At any rate, Greg's larger point -- that enthusiasm for AGW regulations goes hand in hand with hostility to capitalism -- is patently obvious. One might even say it's "undeniable."Michael Prescotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12963295565160636175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-82118795675584558322010-01-11T10:05:50.179-08:002010-01-11T10:05:50.179-08:00Although there is certainly a large scientific asp...<i>Although there is certainly a large scientific aspect to climate science, much that passes for climate science is not scientific in the same sense that chemistry and physics are science. Because of the inability to isolate variables and run experiments in a meaningful way, we have know exact knowledge of how climate works. If we did, we could predict, with a high degree of accuracy, climate change (or at least predict it in relation to how much "greenhouse gases" are emitted into the atmosphere). We can't even predict the weather with any high degree of accuracy.</i><br /><br />Climatologists can predict the degree of climate change within a reasonable margin of error. People just aren't listening to them when they do so, but that doesn't mean the predictions don't exist.<br /><br />This is completely unrelated to predicting the weather, because weather is not climate.<br /><br /><i>To anyone who understands scientific methodology and the limits of the human mind wherever you have very complex mutual dependence among causal factors coupled with the inability to run empirical tests isolating these varied factors, the claims of anthropogenic global warming are simply not credible.</i><br /><br />As a practicing scientist, albeit not in climatology, I have to say that this strikes me as an almost positivist approach to the philosophy of science. It's not like "complex mutual dependence among causal factors" is unique to climatology. There are canonically conjugate variables in quantum mechanics which are not separable, and hence cannot be isolated for empirical study, one cannot isolate a "naked quark" but quantum chromodynamics is still science. It gets even worse in biology, where the number of interacting parts and pathways number in the tens of thousands in any given individual. We cannot isolate and test them all, nor can we separate genes from development from the environment, and yet we are still capable of making sound empirical conclusions.<br /><br />If climatology is "simply not credible", then neither is evolution, quantum mechanics, relativity, and much of chemistry on the same basis.<br /><br />It seems to me that you, here, are in the same boat as Ayn Rand. You're criticizing a discipline from the outside on a philosophical basis that would have been old-fashioned and idiosyncratic even 50 years ago.<br /><br />The leaked e-mails that you tout as evidence of widespread fraud are simply what scientists are like when speaking to other scientists. They're dismissive of climate change denialists in the exact same way that I am dismissive of creationists or my colleagues in physics are dismissive of those who try to disprove relativity. Being involved on a day-to-day basis in the science gives you a shorthand with your colleagues that can be susceptible of misinterpretation, especially by ideologues on a mission. The climate change denialists don't like, for example, that someone suggested boycotting a journal they took over? Tough luck. I boycott some 'journals' of dubious repute in my own field, like <i>Rivista di Biologia</i>, because of their reputation too. That's what we all do. Where you publish is almost as important as what you publish. If the only place you can sell your idea is in a crackpot journal, then you're going to look like a crackpot by association. And yet when someone dares speak this obvious fact, they're treated as if it's a conspiracy to "gang up" on the poor little abused climate change denialist faction.Nullifidianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15207390447020990907noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-1344260323903919512009-12-27T19:28:53.841-08:002009-12-27T19:28:53.841-08:00Keith: Members in Congress like Joe Barton sure se...Keith: <em>Members in Congress like Joe Barton sure seem to. Barton has objected to the entire idea of "climate control" or what have you on the basis that you "cannot regulate god". There are quite a few like him.</em><br /><br />There's an important difference the science of "climate control" and actually attempting to control the climate. Being against the latter does not mean one is against the former. It is a serious error to conflate the two. <br /><br />Although there is certainly a large scientific aspect to climate science, much that passes for climate science is not scientific in the same sense that chemistry and physics are science. Because of the inability to isolate variables and run experiments in a meaningful way, we have know exact knowledge of how climate works. If we did, we could predict, with a high degree of accuracy, climate change (or at least predict it in relation to how much "greenhouse gases" are emitted into the atmosphere). We can't even predict the weather with any high degree of accuracy. The best we can do is make educated guesses based on scientific data. That's a great help, but we need to understand the limitations of human understanding, which in many domains of experience are very great (particularly when it comes to making predictions). <br /><br />To anyone who understands scientific methodology and the limits of the human mind wherever you have very complex mutual dependence among causal factors coupled with the inability to run empirical tests isolating these varied factors, the claims of anthropogenic global warming are simply not credible. We don't know enough to make any exact judgments about these issues. The most we can do is make educated guesses. This is why any talk of consensus (which doesn't exist in any case) is irrelevant. There can no more be a meaningful consensus about anthropogenic global warming than there can about the effectiveness of the economic stimulus.gregnyquisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13653516868316854941noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-14561505306567953012009-12-25T17:04:57.619-08:002009-12-25T17:04:57.619-08:00Who on the right is against getting climate contro...<i><br />Who on the right is against getting climate control science correct?</i><br /><br />Members in Congress like Joe Barton sure seem to. Barton has objected to the entire idea of "climate control" or what have you on the basis that you "cannot regulate god". There are quite a few like him. I think this is an unfortunate result of the politicization of Climate Science that has not been helped by an association with Al Gore.Keithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10430415450418374362noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-38760582574438545922009-12-25T16:55:54.339-08:002009-12-25T16:55:54.339-08:00"Have you actually read some of the emails an...<i>"Have you actually read some of the emails and some of the problems with what those scientists did (e.g. how the "hockey stick" was created)? It was very obviously fraudulent. Whether Global Warming is man-made or not is an open question given the invisible nature and the complexity of causation, but empirical data distortion masquerading as science is fraud."</i><br /><br />I have! I thought the emails were initially very troubling actually. I've also been directed to consider these however:<br /><br />http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/east-anglia-cru-hacked-emails-12-09-09.pdf<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXesBhYwdRo<br /><br />http://throughagreenlens.com/2009/12/06/climategate-what-you-need-to-know/<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P70SlEqX7oY<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJFZ88EH6i4<br /><br />http://www.pewclimate.org/what_s_being_done/in_the_congress/7_27_06.cfm<br /><br />This whole situation strikes me as a call for greater transparency in climate science more than anything else. I still think the FOIA denials are hard to defend though and that an investigation (which is being undertaken by the U.N. currently) should be done anyway. I'll be reading it when it comes out so I can rely on something other than what self-appointed experts on blogs or in the newsmedia are saying.Keithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10430415450418374362noreply@blogger.com