Consensus climate science: What would Thomas Huxley say?

16 04 2009

Guest Post By Paul MacRae

“The evidence … however properly reached, may always be more or less wrong, the best information being never complete, and the best reasoning being liable to fallacy.”

-Thomas Huxley, Science and Christian Tradition, p. 205

Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895) was one of the first and most vigorous promoters of modern scientific thinking. He is perhaps best-known as “Darwin’s bulldog”-no one did more to fight for Darwin’s theory of natural selection in the face of theological opposition-but he also almost single-handedly introduced science into the British school curriculum at all levels.thomas-huxley

Huxley was a formidable philosopher of science, anticipating many of the principles of scientific inquiry that Karl Popper would make a mainstay of scientific thinking in the 20th century, including the need for falsifiable hypotheses and non-dogmatic, continuous inquiry.

In short, in the history and philosophy of science, Huxley is someone to be reckoned with.

So what would T.H. Huxley have thought of today’s “consensus” climate scientists, with their claims that the issue of man-made climate change is “settled,” that there is no need for further debate, and that those who challenge the hypothesis of anthropogenic warming in any way are, in effect, heretics?

Three of Huxley’s books-Science and Hebrew Tradition (SHT), Science and Christian Tradition (SCT), and Hume, a biography of Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776)-present Huxley’s philosophy of science very clearly. How well does “consensus” climate science bear up in Huxley’s crucible?

Science is never certain

The pretension to infallibility, by whomsoever made, has done endless mischief; with impartial malignity it has proved a curse, alike to those who have made and it those who have accepted it.

-Science and Hebrew Tradition, Preface, p. ix

Just as Huxley fought against religious certainty in his time, so he undoubtedly would have questioned the consensus claim that the evidence for human-driven climate change is “overwhelming” and therefore beyond question. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Science

Busted: Catlin Arctic Ice Survey “Didn’t Expect” To Find First Year Ice

16 04 2009

The farcical account of the Catlin Crew continues. You don’t even have to dig deep anymore to find as many holes in their stories as they say they are drilling. In addition to what Steve points out, our own “Charles the moderator” provided the video framegrab below, notice anything interesting? You can watch the Quicktime video showing how they do “drilling and measurement” on the Catlin website developer, Indigopapa.tv,  is here .

catlin_ice_measurement_technique

Click for larger image

In case you don’t see it, the answer for the clip above is at the end of the article. – Anthony

Guest post by Steven Goddard

In the April 15 Catlin blog, they made the following statement:

Wednesday, 15 Apr 2009 12:39

The Catlin Arctic Survey has now released its first set of ice and snow thickness measurements, showing the floating sea ice cover it has travelled over in the early stage is predominantly new ice, with an average thickness of 1.77m.  The findings were obtained by manual drilling and are currently being analysed by science partners.

Finding ‘First Year Ice’ in this part of the Ocean was not what the Ice Team had expected at this stage of a route chosen, in conjunction with science advisors, to begin in an area where there would be multi-year ice. It suggests that the older, thicker ice has either moved to a different part of the ocean or has melted. This First Year Ice will only have formed since September 2008 and, being thinner, is less likely to survive the annual summer thaw. It points to an ever-smaller summer ice covering around the North Geographic Pole this year.

This is interesting, because according to the NSIDC map of ice age, their start point was squarely on first year ice – as measured by NSIDC in February.  I overlaid the NSIDC February map on top of the Catlin route map – seen below.  NSIDC shows multi-year ice as shades of red and orange, and their start point was more than 100km away from the edge of the multi-year ice.

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Categories : Arctic, ridiculae, sea ice