February 2010
January 2010
Another week of GW News, January 17, 2010 : A Few... →
An interesting idea: listing week’s links, by topics.
“The Met Office needs to be cut back to weather forecasting and privatised, it is...”
– geronimo repeats the advocacy meme.
“And it’s not some esoteric “style” criticism, Steve. You just don’t even do...”
– You know who has a point
“My position then, and my position now is that nothing in the mails could change...”
– Steven Mosher adapts fast.
“IPCC Chairman Pachauri was making public comments on a dispute involving factual...”
– Roger Pielke Jr.
2 tags
“Maybe the most appropriate way to recognize Jones’ contribution to climate...”
– Steve, adamantly concluding about CRU after arguing about CRUtemp.
More Groupthink
An interesting exchange here:
http://bit.ly/duIv8Y
The main post is about Fox coverage of the “Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), issued in 2007 by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)”.
In AR4, scientists wrote that :
[U]p to 40 percent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation […] it is more...
“Like all human endeavours, the IPCC is not perfect.”
– RealClimate recycles an old fallacy.
2 tags
“As well as being complementary, the two books are complimentary about the...”
– Steve, flattered.
“Amazingly, the Catholic Church is now more “progressive” on two...”
– Overheard on Demon-haunted world
“It’s not the scientists but the process that is designed to reduce bias. Bias is...”
– shewonk
2 tags
“I’m going to defy Internet convention and respond to this in complete...”
– Ken Arromdee warns friendily.
“Recent NASA MODIS pictures of the United Kingdom look like an ice age.”
– Motl has a knack for dramatic caption.
“I am simply passing it on.”
– Ron Cram knows his function.
Neil Fischer has a Point
Whilst I certainly agree that Steve has previously said he doesn’t want to debate these points, I have to disagree with you about it being “a question” vs the “real question”. We can calculate many things, some simple, some esoteric, some pertinent, others not. We should not waste time calculating – and then arguing about – things that are not pertinent, IMO. If any particular metric does not...
“Just because Schmunk says something doesn’t mean it’s true.”
– Steve, nicknaming.
“Frankly, you do not seem to have much of an understanding of the science behind...”
– RomanM, a retired math university teacher turning into a virtual bully.
“I’m an engineer, so I tend to be skeptical when journalists hyperventilate...”
– Foster Freiss, explaining his hyperventilation.
IPCC types read Lindzen-Choi 2009 →
Lubos Motl’s take on Lindzen and Choi: one wonders why it has not been subject to a talk. Maybe we should start a kind of copycat strategy.
“But big words don’t change the fundamental message, do they?”
– Lucia rhetorically asks, but what if the fundamental message was precisely the big words?
“If you have a hundred observers read a single thermometer and record the...”
– bender dabs into measurement theory.
“I’m not a scientist. I’ve not played one on TV.”
– Steve E will soon become my favorite.
1 tag
“One WWF is about a well choreographed battle between the forces of good and evil...”
– Steve E
2 tags
“A recurrent theme in literature is what should the crew do, when the captain is...”
– justbeau entertains an analogy.
“It’s quite a cult mentality.”
– MarkB
“bunker mentality”
– Calvin Ball almost lose by indirectly referring to nazism.
“Making lists is always a good idea.”
– Steve, orchestrating his readership’s participation into the UK Parliamentary Inquiry into CRU
“It is true that the scenarios are not falsifiable in their entirety, and neither...”
– Eugene V. Koonin
“Given the public reliance on Mann’s curve, I would have thought that Cubasch’s...”
– Steve was the same Steve we know now back in 2005.
“If one gets to revise the prediction/projection methodology after data are...”
– lucia, spanking Tamino
“So, the short answer is: I can’t answer that question and don’t want to even...”
– lucia cuts the crap.
1 tag
“I just wish people would stop trying to solve the problem with taxes and...”
– jeff id lets his motivations in plain sight.
3 tags
For Standards of Science's Sake
Integrity can refer to data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_(computing)
Integrity can refer to moral soundness:
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=integrity
Not only the two concepts can be distinguished (one is moral and the other epistemological), one does not entail the other either: Shaviv and Cram agree with that already. As said above (http://bit.ly/7aMxOa), the...
“So for those who are not sure what to believe, here is our round-up of the most...”
– New Scientist has a title that attracts my attention.
“AGW truly is an inconvenience.”
– Jonathan Abrams, telling the story of his conversion.
2 tags
“Ah, yes, Luke Warmer and his father, Denialist Vader”
– dhagaza made me laugh.
1 tag
“Grossly misrepresent the work of a scientist. Use that misprepresentation to...”
– MarcB, outlining a tactic.
3 tags
Ad Hominem and Eristics
In the text by Nir J. Shaviv, linked below, two sentences are directly related to our discussion of the fallacy ad hominem.
The first sentence is:
[U]nethical or even fraudulent behavior is not relevant in a real scientific debate, something which incidentally the alarmists are avoiding.
Notwithstanding the last part of the sentence, which is debatable, this position seeems to correspond...
“The FOI mass action that occured in that particular instance was a clear abuse...”
– Jim Edwards
1 tag
“[W]e all say “it’s not useful to speculate” … and then we turn around and...”
– bender hinges on human nature.
2 tags
“Well, I’m having a little fun.”
– Steve was having fun two years ago.
1 tag
“[U]nethical or even fraudulent behavior is not relevant in a real scientific...”
– Nir J. Shaviv,, not seeing the incompatibility of the two sentences when the “argumentation” is something more rational than what we usually witness over the blogosphere.
3 tags
From Ethics to Science
The original post is about the evidence needed to choose one scientific hypothesis over another. This question was illustrated by Claude Allègre’s recent change of mind. The questions, at the end of the post, were related to the evidence needed to choose a “scientific camp”, i.e. a network of research and hypothesis. The original post made an analogy with an acid test. This conveys the idea that...
3 tags
Demon-haunted world: Top Ten Ways Climate Deniers... →
1 tag
“Do you want to know who did it?”
– WillR, gentlemanly asking.
“This kind of thing is hardly going to help.”
– Bishop Hill masters understatement.
“In the traditional scientific method, theories are never proven to be correct....”
– Frank invests too much in falsificationism.