Some thoughts from Judy Curry on the pretense of knowledge, which is akin to the fatal conceit.
Category Archives: Science And Society
The Ruiling In The Mann Lawsuit
I think he pretty much gets it right.
Mark Steyn And Me
Happy holidays to us. The appellate court basically mooted the flawed rulings against us from last summer, and the new judge (who actually seems to understands the law and the respective cases) will rehear them. Thanks to ACLU, the media organizations and others for their amicus briefs which, while they didn’t address the merits of the case, were helpful in getting this decision. I suspect that it won’t be a happy holiday for Professor Mann.
[Update a while later]
What’s amusing about this is that Mann sort of screwed himself by amending his complaint against us after we’d filed our appeal. That gave the appellate court an excuse to just pass it back to the Superior Court, with the new judge who will likely be much less sympathetic to him.
MRSA
…has escaped the hospitals.
In the book, I talk about how potentially useful research in this area on the ISS is being held back by NASA’s obsessions with safety.
Creativity
Most people, and particularly teachers, don’t like it much.
I hadn’t thought about it before, but I think that this is one of the reasons that people can’t let go of the Apollo cargo cult. They see doing it in any other way as too risky, even though it has been thoroughly demonstrated that the big-rocket approach is unaffordable.
Fountain Of Youth
Wow. Looks like they’re going to start human trials of that mouse-rejuvenation treatment next year.
The societal impacts of this would be enormous.
Rejuvenating Mice
This looks like a pretty amazing breakthrough.
Climate Models
They seem to be modeling some other planet:
Christy compared the outputs for the tropical troposphere of 73 models used by the IPCC in its latest report with satellite and weather balloon temperature trends since 1979. “The tropics is so important,” Christy explains in an email message, “because that is where models show the clearest and most distinct signal of greenhouse warming-so that is where the comparison should be made (rather than say for temperatures in North Dakota). Plus, the key cloud and water vapor feedback processes occur in the tropics.”
When it comes to simulating the atmospheric temperature trends of the last 35 years, Christy found, all of the IPCC models are running hotter than the actual climate. The IPCC report admits that “most, though not all, of [the climate models] overestimate the observed warming trend in the tropical troposphere during the satellite period 1979-2012.” To defend himself against any accusations of cherry-picking his data, Christy notes that his “comparisons start in 1979, so these are 35-year time series comparisons”-rather longer than the 15-year periods whose importance the IPCC downplays.
Why the discrepancy between the IPCC and Christy? As Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry notes, data don’t speak for themselves; researchers have to put them into a context. And your choice of context-say, the year you choose to begin with-can influence your conclusions considerably. While there may be nothing technically wrong with the way the IPCC chose to display its comparison between model data and observation data, Curry observes, “it will mislead the public to infer that climate models are better than we thought.” She adds, “What is wrong is the failure of the IPCC to note the failure of nearly all climate model simulations to reproduce a pause of 15-plus years.”
There is too much that they don’t, and at least for now, can’t capture. And it would be economically insane to base policy on them.
Coal Versus Eco-Bullies
It has to engage in an all-out, unapologetic war.
Yes, call them out for the unscientific ideologues that they are.
The EPA On Trial
An amicus brief has been filed against the agency. Bottom line: the purpose of the Clean Air Act was to deal with local air-quality issues, not mythical global ones. The SCOTUS’s previous ruling was a terrible one, based on what can now be seen to be junk science.