Neverending Audit

You’re shifting from the conceptual to the rhetorical, Mosh.

On the rhetorical level, sounding more business-like might be a better strategy in congress, if only to create an aura of INTEGRITY (tm). But your observation still carries that prescription: if you want to have INTEGRITY (tm) in congress, try to sound business-like.

On the conceptual level, this business-like strategy only hides the prescription. Compare (1) AGW is real and we should seek to implement a carbon-tax with (2) AGW is real; a carbon tax might reduce its long-term effects. The conceptual difference between (1) and (2) is not that (1) is normative, while (2) is not.

The question we should ask ourselves should be this one: on what authority can you say (1) or (2)? All this is in Toulmin’s Uses of Argument. This is very basic.

John NG says something along these lines there:

http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2013/02/scientific-meta-literacy/

Here’s Hansen’s 1988 testimony, btw:

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Environment/documents/2008/06/23/ClimateChangeHearing1988.pdf

I don’t see any carbon tax there.

Dear Gretel,

Here are the breadcrumbs so far:

I said that the “science ain’t a democracy” has no bite. You replied: yes, but reproducibility.

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(Source: judithcurry.com)

Richard Drake,

First, it is a pity that you seem to take offense in my using Lindzen’s diminutive to address you. I called you Dick because it helped my last sentence to ring like “More Omertà, Nick?”, a sentence the Auditor used against a critic to burden him with commitments he did not have in the discussion.

For the sentence, see

http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/8195679480

For the overburdening of a commitments of a commenter, see Jean Goodwin’s analysis of this chasing technique at Steve’s:

http://scientistscitizens.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/debate-in-the-blogosphere-a-small-case-study/

This is a frequent “trick” (TM — Climate Science), so deserves due diligence.

I won’t use Lindzen’s diminutive again to refer to you.

Perhaps inspired by this diminutive, and despite his avowed ennui, Richard Drake now acts like a gatekeeper.

Gatekeepers should be very prudent with their readings of the people they want to throw out of the auspices they want to protect.

First, I am not claiming affinity with that sorry chap Richard Drake browbeaten a bit yesterday. What I could say, though, is that Richard’s responses does seem to make him claim the affinity. If he does, he should own it, and not burden me with an affinity he projects.

Second, this distracts us from the comparison between a murderer and a sorry fellow who was both a Nazi and an eugenist. To mention in passing a scientist who worked at Auschwitz to refer to people who, like Mike, should be sidelined, just a bit after having browbeaten someone who associated climate scientists with a murderer, takes a very lenient sense of duty as a gatekeeper.

However biased they might be, institutions should beware of such flagrant double standards.

Fourth, I in no way claimed that Richard Drake was a censor. I stated that our beloved Bishop did censor some comments yesterday. Unless another person is responsible for curating this blog, this is a fact. It is the prerogative of a curator to censor at his heart’s content, and even most of the time justified. In exchange, that precludes him from brandishing YesButRcModeration:

http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/YesButRcModeration

Gatekeepers should pay due diligence to facts.

Fifth, it was never my impetus to intimidate Richard Drake. I am quite pleased to see him pursuing this discussion. More so that he succeeded to remain silent on everything relevant we put forward in our last comments.

It is not impossible to remain topical even while having to defend against constant personal attacks. It is even easy when the whole point of our intervention is to show when words are hurled to hide a decline to discuss what is really being conveyed by a propagandist, and how this comedy is enforced by gatekeepers.

Institutions are judged by the way they open their gates to other voices. That includes establishments like RC, whose editorial practices I do not wish to defend. (I rarely read that blog and have other interests than defensive ones.) But that also includes contrarian institutions, with all their biases.

Considering how all the institutions maintain topics beyond discussion (i.e. in our case, that our beloved Bishop’s might be licking his chop a bit too loudly for prudence’s sake), that there is silence among us here, right now, does not imply that any of us is a lamb. And contrary to what Feynman might have idealized in an overblown address to budding scientists, only a few can claim the integrity they pretend. Such pretence does not matter much to science, which in the end always have to progress in spite of it.

The honour Steve defends in his personal vendetta does not transfer to his mutualist niche.

(Source: bishop-hill.net)

The problem is that, like it or not (and in case you haven’t guessed, I categorically do not) engagement with climate sceptic arguments is once again being forced upon environmentalists and green businesses.

I like this way of spelling out “the problem”, even if it’s not ze problem. There is no such thing as ze problem. Thinking in terms of ze problem is a problem.

Look how ze problem is stated. Nothing in that editorial directly supports this. Exactly what engagement is being forced upon environmentalists?

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(Source: planet3.org)

Tomcat,

Thank you for your unsollicited advice a bit earlier. Answering questions someone asks is certainly a good suggestion. But you have to admit that your advice misses some details:

Joshua never was under any obligation to satisfy Latimer. It is obvious that Latimer can’t ever get no satisfaction. He can follow the thread of the conversation, but this task does not seem obvious to him. And to top it all, Latimer is acting like a pest.

This leads to an interesting Procrustean game:

Step 1. Ask questions in the most annoying manner.

Step 2. Until you receive an answer, act like a pest.

Step 3. If you do receive an answer, tell (interlocutor) you’re not satisfied, then go to 1.

Let’s call it the Can’t Get No Satisfaction algorithm.

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(Source: judithcurry.com)

VeryTall,

I will confide that I am quite ambivalent with all this.

On the one hand, there is the feeling to do Philosophy the Old Skool way. This does not give me the impression to chase rabbits, but to play on the third or the fourth line of an hockey team:

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(Source: judithcurry.com)