Category Archives: Science And Society

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Problem With The Mann Judge’s Ruling

13 Comments

I noticed this at the time as well:

Interestingly, it appears that Judge Combs Greene has mixed-up the defendants in the court’s ruling, attributing actions taken by the Consumer Enterprise Institution to Mark Steyn and National Review.

I have no comment. I also have no comment on these comments.

[Wednesday-morning update]

In fairness to the judge, the people most likely to comment at a site like that are going to be people unhappy with her rulings — it’s less likely that someone should show up to laud her, regardless of the quality of her work.

Also, Phil Plait has more, with several links. He’s very happy, of course.

It’s very frustrating to not be able to make any substantive comments on this.

[Update a couple minutes later]

This at the always misnamed ThinkProgress is hilarious: “Mann has been vindicated yet again!”

Yes. Right.

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Climate Skeptics

3 Comments

…and the scientific method:

…how can criticisms of sceptics as politically motivated be squared with science’s commitment to findings always being provisional and open to challenge? At what point can we judge that a scientific question moves from a position of “doubt” to being “settled”?

Both climate change sceptics and advocates of climate policy see this question as important; sharing a faith that scientific evidence is the basis for public policy. However, such a faith omits the possibility that science is not suited to such a role, and that “solving” climate change does not flow linearly from agreement on the science. The attentions of sceptics may or may not be improving the practice and knowledge of climate science. However, if sceptics’ never-ending audit is really damaging policy, that may be more a reflection of an overly scientised policy process than a basis for denying them a voice in debate.

Yup.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

CAGW Skepticism

53 Comments

“My personal path“:

…being English I knew all about the vagaries of the weather, but the warnings about CAGW always seemed to be made in the most certain terms. Was it really possible to predict the climate so assuredly? The global climate must be an extremely complex system, and very chaotic. I had recently heard about financial institutions that were spending vast sums of money and picking the very best maths and programming graduates, but still were unable to predict the movements of financial markets with any confidence. Predicting changes to the climate must be at least as difficult, surely? I bet myself climate scientists weren’t being recruited with the sort of signing-on bonuses dangled by Wall Street. I also thought back to the ice age scare, which was not presented as an absolute certainty. Why the unequivocal certainty now that we would only see warming, and to dangerous levels? It all started to sound implausible.

The whole thing also seemed uncertain on the simple grounds of common sense. Could mankind really force such a fundamental change in our environment, and so quickly? I understood that ice ages could come and go with extreme rapidity, and that following the scare of my childhood, no one seriously claimed to be able to predict them. So in terms of previous natural variability, CAGW was demonstrably minor in scale. It seemed obvious that if natural variability suddenly switched to a period of cooling, there would be no CAGW no matter what the effect of mankind on the atmosphere. Even more fundamentally, how could anyone really be certain that the warming then taking place wasn’t just natural variability anyway? The reports I read assured me it wasn’t, but rarely in enough detail to allow me to decide whether I agreed with the data or not.

The other thing that really got me thinking was seeing the sort of people that would appear on television, proselyting about the coming tragedy that it would imminently become too late to prevent. Whether from charities, pressure groups or the UN, I knew I had heard their strident and political use of language, and their determination to be part of the Great Crusade to Save the World before. These were the CND campaigners, class war agitators and useful fools for communism in a new guise. I suddenly realised that after the end of the Cold War, rather than slinking off in embarrassed fashion to do something useful, they had latched onto a new cause. The suggested remedies I heard them espouse were always socialist in approach, requiring the installation of supra-national bodies, always taking a top-down approach and furiously spending other peoples’ money. They were clearly eager participants in an endless bureaucratic jamboree.

And remain so.