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.
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.
But, then, orthodoxy always hates criticism, a point Huxley underscored by quoting from David Hume’s “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.” In “Dialogues,” Hume has the religious Cleanthes, who believes that because nature is harmonious there must be a Supreme Designer, say to the skeptical Philo:
You [Philo] alone, or almost alone, disturb this general harmony. You state abstruse doubts, cavils, and objections. You ask me what is the cause of this cause? I know not: I care not: that concerns me not. I have found a Deity and here I stop my inquiry. (Hume, p. 178)
Against this view, Huxley wrote: “No man, nor any body of men, is good enough, or wise enough, to dispense with the tonic of criticism” (SCT, “Science and Pseudoscience,” p. 93).
But, of course, the consensus climate science orthodoxy, as expressed many times by believers like Al Gore, Goddard Institute director James Hansen, and Canada’s Andrew Weaver and David Suzuki (who once stormed out of a radio interview because the interviewer dared to suggest the global warming issue is “not totally settled”)(1), is that “abstruse doubts, cavils, and objections” that don’t fit within the consensus paradigm should not be aired lest the public’s faith in anthropogenic global warming be weakened.
For example, in refusing to debate skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg , Gore said: “We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ issue. It’s not a matter of theory or conjecture.”
Canada’s leading climate computer modeler, Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, in explaining his reluctance to publicly debate the question of global warming on a CBC radio program, has written:
There is no such debate in the atmospheric or climate scientific community, and … making the public believe that such a debate exists is precisely the goal of the denial industry. (Keeping Our Cool, p. 22)
Why not debate with climate skeptics? Why not crush the abstruse doubts, cavils and objections, as Huxley did many times in publicly debating opponents of Darwin?
For example, in 1860, in one of the most famous debates in the history of science, Huxley demolished the arguments of Anglican Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, who was defending religious doctrine against Darwin’s theory of evolution. Huxley’s attitude wasn’t, like Weaver’s and Gore’s, “I’m right, the other side is wrong, and therefore I don’t need to debate them.” Huxley knew the public needed to hear both sides, not just one, to make up its mind.
For his part, Bishop Wilberforce must have felt he shouldn’t have to defend what he considered immutable religious truth against the upstart scientific heretics. Yet, unlike Weaver, Gore, and most others in the climate consensus, Wilberforce had the courage to publicly debate his views.
Why don’t Gore, Weaver, et al., feel the same need to put their “truths” to the public test? Perhaps because they fear that they and the climate orthodoxy would lose the debate, and quite rightly. The few times warming believers have publicly debated skeptics, the believers have lost.(2,3)
The facts must fit the theory
An inductive hypothesis is said to be demonstrated when the facts are shown to be in entire accordance with it [italics added].
–Science and the Hebrew Tradition, “Lectures on Evolution III,” p. 132
What would Huxley think of the claim that the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is based on empirical facts (i.e., is an inductive hypothesis), when the facts no longer support (are no longer in “entire accordance with”) that hypothesis? Probably not much given that, despite increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the planet has not warmed since at least 2001 and perhaps earlier than that.(4)
Theory must account for previous experience
The more a statement of fact conflicts with previous experience, the more complete must be the evidence which is to justify us in believing it.
–Hume, p. 158
What is the planet’s “previous experience” in terms of carbon dioxide and temperature? The geological evidence of the past 600 million years shows the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature is tenuous at best (see Figure 1. The black line is carbon dioxide; the blue line is temperature).
Note particularly 450 million years ago, when the earth’s temperature was as cold as today’s-i.e., the earth was in an Ice Age-while carbon dioxide levels were more than 10 times today’s levels. Clearly, high levels of CO2 weren’t keeping the planet warm then.
There are other periods, such as 100 million years ago, when the temperature remained high but carbon dioxide fell. If, as consensus climate science claims, carbon dioxide is the main driver of climate, why didn’t the temperature start to fall until tens of millions of years after CO2 did?
The consensus view, which closely links high carbon dioxide levels and high temperatures, had no validity in “previous experience” (the geological past). Why should we accept that view now?
Science must be able to predict phenomena
.
The true mark of a theory is without doubt its ability to predict phenomena.
– Science and Hebrew Tradition, “On the Method of Zadig,” p. 20
Huxley didn’t pen these words, although he heartily approved of them. They were written in 1822 by Baron Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), one of the founders of biological classification, and have been repeated by philosophers of science every since.(5) To be valid, a scientific hypothesis must be able to predict phenomena. An hypothesis that can’t make valid predictions is guesswork, not science.
So what would Huxley (much less Cuvier) say of the failure of climate computer models to predict the flat-lining of temperatures over the past decade?
Figure 2 shows the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s predictions for the next two decades in red, orange and yellow. The blue and green lines show the actual temperatures as measured by Britain’s Hadley Institute and the University of Alabama at Huntsville climate monitoring centres.
Figure 3 shows the predictions of climate alarmist James Hansen in 1988. The blue line is Hansen’s scary Scenario A prediction; the orange line is the actual temperature. The only point of contact between the two is 1998, the year of an unusually strong El Nino warming.
Both predictions-indeed, all of the consensus climate model predictions without exception-have been higher than observed temperatures.
But, then, the IPCC itself said, in its 2001 report: “In climate research and modelling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”(6)
Extreme claims require extreme proof
.
It is a canon of common sense, to say nothing of science, that the more improbable a supposed occurrence, the more cogent ought to be the evidence in its favor.
–Science and the Christian Tradition, “An Episcopal Trilogy,” p. 135
Huxley addressed, a century ago, the question of how much credence we should place in extreme claims of the type that Gore, Hansen, Weaver, and others present as scientific fact.
Not much, if we are also to believe astronomer Carl Sagan, who has written, in the same vein: “Apocalyptic predictions require, to be taken seriously, higher standards of evidence than do assertions on other matters where the stakes are not as great”(7). Sagan’s comment often appears online as “extreme claims require extreme proof,” but Huxley said it first.
Among these extreme claims is Andrew Weaver’s ominous prediction of a “sixth extinction” that will wipe out “between 40 per cent and 70 per cent of the world’s species” should the global temperature rise above 3.3 degrees Celsius” (a rise that is, for Weaver, entirely humanity’s fault) (Keeping Our Cool, p. 218). He has also called for a complete ban on fossil-fuel use.(8)
Hansen warns of sea level rises of five metres in the next century, 20 metres over the next 400 years (New Scientist, July 25, 2007). And, of course, we should all be familiar with Gore’s apocalyptic predictions (New York under water soon, no Arctic ice by 2014, etc.) if we fail to follow his draconian political and economic program.
Curiously, at least so far, none-not one-of the environmentalists’ apocalyptic predictions, from Thomas Malthus to Paul Ehrlich (mass starvation in the 1970s) to Suzuki, Weaver and Gore, has come to pass.
Or, as the CBC’s Rex Murphy notes:
So much of what the alarmists promised was supposed to be happening now isn’t happening. So many events are running counter to their near-term projections, they’ve decided to go all Armageddon with their long-term ones, projections for a future that none of us will be around to check.(9)
By any standard, the claims of Gore, Weaver, Hansen, et al., are extreme. Yet we are expected to accept these extreme claims with very little public debate, scrutiny, or criticism (after all, the debate is settled and the climate scientists are the experts), and based on almost no empirical evidence (unless mathematical models are considered the equivalent of empirical evidence).
Instead, climate alarmists abandon scientific principles of evidence, fall back on the precautionary principle (if it could happen we must act as if it will happen)(10), and try to silence anyone asking for proof more convincing than the flawed predictions of computer models.
Science doesn’t operate by consensus
My love of my fellow-countrymen has led me to reflect, with dread, on what will happen to them, if any of the laws of nature ever become so unpopular in their eyes, as to be voted down by the transcendent authority of universal suffrage.
–Science and Christian Tradition, p. 252
Huxley was worried that citizens would decide to vote against, for example, the laws of gravity. Undoubtedly, he would be equally concerned if scientists declared that a scientific assertion was true because, after a vote, a majority of them had agreed it was so, i.e., proof by “consensus.”
Just as a vote of citizens doesn’t make a scientific fact true or false, neither does a vote of scientists make a fact true or false. Only empirical evidence does that. And the empirical evidence for anthropogenic warming isn’t there.
Dealing with absurdity
When you cannot prove that people are wrong, but only that they are absurd, the best course is to let them alone.
–Science and Hebrew Tradition, “On the Method of Zadig,” p. 13
It would be nice to leave the consensus climate alarmists alone. After all, the hypothesis that anthropogenic gases might cause warming is not unreasonable. It may even be true, although so far the evidence (or lack of it) argues otherwise.
What takes consensus climate science into Huxley’s realm of absurdity is its dogmatic insistent that all other hypotheses are not just wrong, but so wrong that they should not be debated or, better, not even heard by the public or other scientists.
Moreover, the consensus climate science alarmists, and their environmentalist supporters, refuse to leave the rest of us alone. Instead, they wish to impose economy-crippling measures based on a global-warming hypothesis that becomes more and more surreal with each year that warming does not occur.
Conclusion
So, how well does consensus climate science meet Huxley’s conditions for real science?
Huxley: Scientific certainty does not exist. Consensus climate science: The evidence is so overwhelming there’s no need to discuss it any further.
Huxley: A strong theory must be “in entire accordance” with the data. Consensus climate science: Dismiss data (such as the current cooling) that doesn’t fit the theory (the planet should be warming).
Huxley: Data not in accord with previous experience should be regarded with suspicion. Consensus climate science: Ignore previous experience (such as the geological record showing little correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature) if it doesn’t fit the theory.
Huxley: Theories must be able to predict accurately. Consensus climate science: Nothing, so far, predicted accurately.
Huxley: Extreme claims require extreme proof. Consensus climate science: If the proof doesn’t exist, fall back on the precautionary principle.
Huxley: Science doesn’t operate by consensus. Consensus climate science: Yes, it does.
How, we might wonder, would Huxley fare in a public debate with consensus climate believers like Al Gore, James Hansen, or Andrew Weaver, assuming they had the courage to take him on?
As Bishop Wilberforce discovered, they wouldn’t know what hit them.
Notes
1. Barbara Kay, “David Suzuki vs. Michael Crichton.” National Post, Feb. 21, 2007.
2. See, for example, Marc Sheppard’s “No wonder climate extremists refuse to debate” at http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/no_wonder_climate_alarmists_re.html. For a list of the few debates that have occurred, and their outcomes, see Climate Depot, http://www.climatedepot.com/a/39/Climate-Depotrsquos-Morano-debates-Global-Warming-with-former-Clinton-Admin-Official-Romm.
3. Losing a debate to skeptic Marc Morano prompted Joe Romm to write, in his blog Climate Progress: “While science and logic are powerful systematic tools for understanding the world, they are no match in the public realm for the 25-century-old art of verbal persuasion: rhetoric.” To say that consensus climate scientists like David Suzuki, Andrew Weaver and James Hansen, much less ex-politician Al Gore, don’t have the rhetorical skills to match the skeptics is absurd. What Romm lacks, what consensus science lacks, and what Bishop Wilberforce lacked, is an argument that makes sense.
4. Meteorologist Richard Lindzen argues that the most recent cycle of global warming ended in 1995. See the Watts Up With That website, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/30/lindzen-on-negative-climate-feedback.
5. Georges Cuvier, Recherches sur les Ossemens., Paris: Chez G. Dufour et d’Ocagne, Libraires, 1822, p. 292.
6. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 01, Chapter 14, Advancing Our Understanding, Section 14.2.2.2.
7. Carl Sagan, “Nuclear War and Climatic Catastrophe: Some Policy Implications,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1983/84, pp. 257-258.
8. Andrew Weaver, “Environmentalists’ are abandoning science.” Vancouver Sun, March 24, 2009.
9. Rex Murphy, “Armageddon theory: Vancouver,” Toronto Globe and Mail, Jan. 10, 2009.
10. For example, environmental writer Jonathan Schell has written: “Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced” [italics added]. “Our Fragile Earth,” Discover, Oct., 1987, p. 47.
Works Cited
Huxley, T.H., Hume: With Helps to the Study of Berkeley. New York. D. Appleton, 1896.
Huxley, T.H., Science and Christian Tradition. New York, D. Appleton, 1896.
Huxley, T.H., Science and Hebrew Tradition. New York: D. Appleton, 1896.
Weaver, Andrew, Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2008.
Paul MacRae is a former editor with the Toronto Globe and Mail and former editorial writer and editor with the Victoria Times Colonist. He teaches professional writing at the University of Victoria and is currently finishing a book on global warming entitled False Alarm: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Global Warming is Misleading, Exaggerated, or Plain Wrong. His blogsite is: paulmacrae.com.
DAV (07:19:00) >>
Yet nearly all of your firsthand understanding about how the world works is statistical in nature.
Is it? Much of my a priori knowledge (such as the sun rising every day) is statistic, but all my a posteriori knowledge about how the world works is simply related to the fact that I’ve read/heard about it and accepted it as a fact.
This doesn’t mean that complex systems can be predicted by statistic methods.
For example, I suspect most people agree that predicting the outcome of a football game through statistic models or predicting the value of any stock att Wall Street in a year is impossible.
Yet, some of these people find it acceptable to predict the complex climate system by this method, even though the method has failed so far.
Not really. You don’t need deep understanding to suppose the sun will rise tomorrow after setting tonight. Previous civilizations reached this conclusion using faulty understanding to boot. You may argue that is from observation but nearly all models rely upon statistical premises for prediction.
You are contradicting Yourself here.
The knowledge that the sun rises each day is a priori – achieved through observation and/or experience. The same thing is easily achieved by tossing a coin or throwing a die.
If You calculate the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow, after observing that it has done so 100% of each observed morning throughout Your life – You have of course deep understanding around the fact that the sun usually rises each day.
However – if You have lived in a cave all Your life, You have never seen the sun and You really don’t even know that it exists until You one morning exit the cave and see it rise – how would You even begin to calculate the probability then?
You are mixing math with observation and further implying that mathematics is provable by observation. Placing two apples on a table does not prove the conjecture that 1+1 always equals 2. At best it shows it can happen once. Incidentally, one does not, in fact cannot, prove a definition. “Two” has a definition. There are two apples by definition.
This reads a bit like You believe that I’m saying that mathematics can be empirically proven. I’m saying quite the opposite. 🙂
Science and mathematics arrive at conclusions by effectively opposite means. You’ve got it backwards. It is science which is unprovable simply because you can never be certain that the next observation will not completely contradict all preceding ones. Mathematics, on the other hand, is provable with every proof traceable to the initial assumptions. Statistics is a branch of mathematics (although some mathematicians may argue otherwise).
Well, in a way You’re right. Mathematics is 99.9999% logical in it’s own realm – that is true. However, there is no way to empirically prove mathematics. Empirical proof comes from observation.
Excuse any bad English. I’m still Swedish. 🙂
OT:
EPA to say Greenhouse gases a danger to public
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=awGVNSF64rdU&refer=home
With such notable “climate scientists actively publishing in the field” as Mann, Wigley, Hansen, Santer, etc. …Should it be surprising that 64% of the poll respondents view The Inconvenient Truth as being a “very reliable”?
I wonder if a poll of astronomers in the 15th century would have turned up a 99% consensus for the Ptolemaic Solar System.
Doran’s “polling” published in EOS is very illustrative of the “Ruling Theory” phenomenon…
“2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
[…]
Results show that overall, … 82% answered yes to question 2. In
general, as the level of active research and specialization in climate science
increases, so does agreement with the two primary questions (Figure 1). In our survey, the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change) are those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change (79 individuals in total).
[…]
The two areas of expertise in the survey with the smallest percentage of participants answering yes to question 2 were economic geology with 47% (48 of 103) and meteorology with 64% (23 of 36).”
Geologists, particularly sedimentary geologists, are essentially paleoclimatologists and paleogeographers. Meteorologists have the best understanding of weather processes. So…It shouldn’t be surprising that 53% of geologists and 36% of meteorologists surveyed are skeptical of AGW. Also bear in mind that this survey was largely focused on academics…Most geologists and meteorologists have real jobs…So the survey would have missed them.
This bit is downright hilarious…
“It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”
The “debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among” only “those who” rely on the Method of the Ruling Theory and consensus science.
Here’s a link to Doran’s paper…http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
Flanagan 08:43:16
[snip – Flanagans comment has been deleted]
MattB 08:45:41
A decent point, and one which echoes some of Steve McIntyre’s thoughts. But I think you underestimate the distance science and politics have progressed along the trend line from belief in CO2=AGW to understanding that we truly do not understand what determines climate. The bleatings of skeptical lambs, now becoming the bellowings of doubting bulls, have impacted just enough industrial state Democrats to delay Cap and Trade from this year to the next, and with the current trend to skepticism, it will be even harder next year to force unnecessary price increases in energy on an economically struggling populace.
You are still trying to make the Argument to Incorrect Authorities. Face it, the models have failed. Time to re-examine the assumptions underlying them.
================================
I apologize for the snips, but I don’t want to have this thread turn into a free for all about religion and evolution. Such topics tend to get out of control. While I realize the article touched on such things, let’s focus the comments toward the scientific method that Huxley championed. – Anthony
MikeN (22:11:53) wrote:
“Chris Colose has posted a paper that says that decadal coolings are not unusual during global warming.”
Mutatis mutandis:
Multi-decadal warmings are not unusual during global meandering.
Multi-millennial warmings are not unusual during global cooling.
Etc.
Which trend is your friend?
Apologies, reports of Andrew Huxley’s death are greatly exageratted. Still alive and well and 91
Gary (07:54:13) :
You are right. Try the following experiment: Take 50 grams of soybean cake, put it in a solution up to one liter water where sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide has been added up to pH=9, heat it about 90°C for an hour, then strain the solution. You will have a solution where the soybean protein has been solved, and decomposed into its “pieces”(aminoacids now reacted with the alkali, as sodium or potassium aminoates).
Then take this solution and add hydrochloric acid to reach pH=4,5-4,6. You will see the protein being formed again and smell its characteristic odor. Where was the “memory” of soybean protein structure saved?
Did some googling. Andrew Huxley signed the The Heidelberg Appeal.
Revised in 2005, the Heidelberg Appeal was publicly released at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. By the end of the 1992 summit, 425 scientists and other intellectual leaders had signed the appeal. Since then, word of mouth has prompted hundreds more scientists to lend their support.In spite of this spontaneous and growing support from the world’s scientific community, . Neither a statement of corporate interests nor a denial of environmental problems, and a recognition of scientific progress as the solution to, not the cause of, the health and environmental problems that we face. The Appeal expresses a conviction that modern society is the best equipped in human history to solve the world’s ills, provided that they do not sacrifice science, intellectual honesty, and common sense to political opportunism and irrational fears
http://www.bloggernews.net/14589
Yes I totally agree, but often the market, driven as it is by short-term profit and outlook, needs a kick up the backside. One can argue the toss over the size and form of that kick however, but the facts are clear that at present the US gives trillions of dollars over to distasteful regimes and they then lend it back (at interest) by buying treasury bonds, effectively holding UST by the balls (the same is true in my country). This mutual dependency is bad for both in my humble opinion.
But my main point doesn’t change even if I acknowledge the correctness of your outlook: removing our dependency on fossil fuels will be good, but whether doing so at the expense of the integrity of the scientific process, is not clear to me. This is what concerns me and it’s something I don’t hear debated enough.
Joel Shore wrote:
“It is also interesting to note that 64% see “The Inconvenient Truth” as being a very reliable (26%) or somewhat reliable (38%) source of information on global warming,”
This indicates that believers are ill-informed about the arguments on the other side (which undermines their credibility), as elucidated for instance in this article by Monckton, “35 Inconvenient Truths: The Errors in Al Gore’s Movie”, here:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html
Do what ya gotta do, Anthony. I don’t want to talk about religion, either, but sometimes I’m provoked. I used to say that Steve McIntyre is the only editor I’d accept, but I cannot quarrel with you and your magnificent gang of moderators. I certainly know about boards that degenerate into garbage.
Flicks dog poop off shoulders, and a banana skin from forehead.
=========================================
Joel Shore says:
“It is also interesting to note that 64% see “The Inconvenient Truth” as being a very reliable (26%) or somewhat reliable (38%) source of information on global warming?”
If that is the case then the intellectual rot in the scientific community has gone deeper than I thought. Gore’s film is a propoganda flick designed to promote a political agenda and getting the facts correct was a secondary concern.
Flanagan (07:48:53) :
– In 2007, Harris Interactive surveyed 489 randomly selected members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union for the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) . The survey found 84% say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring, and 74% agree that “currently available scientific evidence” substantiates its occurrence. Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming.
It’s all in how the question is worded. I agree with that question. The cause is deforestation, land use changes, urban heating, etc.
So, obviously researchers in the field think there is enough certainty to do something. Why do all these bloggers think they’re actually better informed and have a better vision on the climatologic system than those guys?
My major prof was fond of saying: Tim, it doesn’t matter what you major in, dumb people are dumb, and you’re not.
MattB, if it were merely a matter of scientists arguing with each other, you would probably be right. When this supposed “consensus” drives political policy, resulting in a crushing of our economy, I doubt that there will be all that many scientists who will stand up and say, “I was wrong. I was part of what caused economic disaster. Mea Culpa.
More than mere argument between scientists is happening.
Matt B
After a mosquito-abatement program using DDT in Sri Lanka, malaria effectively disappeared with only 17 reported cases in 1963. Its use was discontinued following the Silent Spring scare. Within 5 years the number of cases exceeded half-a-million.
And please don’t quote Wikipedia as a reliable source on anything to do with Global Warming, Environmentalism or any other subject that it is even vaguely to do with anything Green.
I’m pleased your latest post is marginally less angry but you still are not putting forward any coherent argument to combat the two incontrovertible facts:
1. that there has been no global warming for the best part of the last decade and that the current trend is cooling and I agree that that is too short a timescale to draw conclusions EXCEPT THAT
2. the GCMs say that cannot happen and that as long as CO2 increases temperatures MUST increase along with it.
It is not happening: therefore the models are wrong: therefore it is possible that the sceptics are right: therefore there IS a debate to be had whether Gore, Hansen, et al like it or night.
Joel Shore (07:51:11) You only point out the poor state of education these days.
Patrik (08:49:56) : DAV (07:19:00) >>”Yet nearly all of your firsthand understanding about how the world works is statistical in nature.” Is it? Much of my a priori knowledge (such as the sun rising every day) is statistic, but all my a posteriori knowledge about how the world works is simply related to the fact that I’ve read/heard about it and accepted it as a fact.
That is why I said firsthand. What you’ve learned from education is obviously otherwise. Just the same, many of those facts are likey models which use a statistical basis for either prediction or validation or both.
You are contradicting Yourself here.
How? I maintain that predicting tomorrow’s sunrise requires no understanding of any underlying principles. All that’s needed is the knowledge that it always has as far as you know. I wouldn’t call that deep knowledge.
Well, in a way You’re right. Mathematics is 99.9999% logical in it’s own realm – that is true. However, there is no way to empirically prove mathematics. Empirical proof comes from observation
Correct! In fact it is not even desired. Mathematics proceeds through deduction. That means it is shown from initial principles (effectively the “cause”). Mathematical hypotheses (conjectures) are proven using logic.
Science, OTOH, proceeds from observation and forms a “best guess” or “most probable” cause given the observations. This guess is always tentative and subject to revision based upon subsequent observation. Because of this, a scientific hypothesis can never be proven but is instead disproven (Popper called it “falsification”). Scientific theories gain strength through statistical consistency but at no time can anyone state that they are “proven.” Note the reliance upon statistics.
If you are trying to say that mathematics iself has no connection to the world but is useful for embodiment of world models, then you are correct. However make no mistake, it is mathematics which is provable — not science.
Excuse any bad English. I’m still Swedish. 🙂
I dunno. It’s infinitely better than my Swedish. 🙂
Paul MacRae, unfortunately was no longer with the Globe and Mail when I sent in an article to the paper a few years ago that was rejected as at odds with a series they were publishing on coming horrors of global warming. Among my geological questions was “What caused over 50 million cubic kilometres of ice to melt at the end of the last ice age when we numbered only a few million people?” Wouldn’t Huxley have wanted one to look for such a cause before striding forth with AGW theories.
Robert Wykoff (22:08:38) :
“Sorry for OT…Anthony, did you see that you were mentioned by Lord Moncton in his letter to congress??
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/markey_barton_letter.html
REPLY: No I didn’t, but thanks for the heads up. – Anthony”
Anthony, why don’t you publish the letter?
It’s a fine piece of work.
The more it’s published the more pressure is put on the politicians who have it on their desks.
David Ball (23:22:29) : on Rex Murphy
David, as a fellow Canadian, I share your amazement that Rex has not been axed by the CBC – one factor may be that on-line comments to his realist and skeptic columns show more and more support… – and, the supportive ones distinguish themselves from the ad hominem attacks and slurs by the warmers (this is my un-scientific opinion – no statistical relevance implied…)
DAV (11:01:30)>> Ok, I think I understand and agree with most of what You’re writing there.
However, I do believe that I disagree with Your sun-analog.
The deepest knowledge needed to make predictions about sunriseinthemorning=true or sunriseinthemorning=false is that one needs to have experienced or read or heard that it has risen every day since day 1.
But; the deepest knowledge needed to predict the outcome of a football game, a stock or the climate is extremely more complex.
Forget for a moment the expression “deep knowledge”, let’s just call it experience.
The experience needed to predict the sunrise is very simple and straight-forward.
The same cannot be said about a lot of other real-world stuff, for example the climate.
Am I wrong? 🙂
It’s a brilliant analysis of the state of play as I’ve read so far I think. It’s definitately worthy of more publicity.
David Ball — EVERY scientists goal is to have their research accepted into the mainstream, so what was your point?
My point was that the author equates consensus in this case with conspiracy.
And note flanagan’s post claiming 97% of the scientists who are working in this field all seem to think the same thing. Surely this must represent the mainstream.
Must be a conspiracy.
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Being a skeptic, I’m all for skepticism. However, I don’t think it’s wise to simply dismiss the mainstream *because* it’s the mainstream. And I really dislike equating mainstream thought with conspiracy and so on. It gives skepticism a bad image.