What was Willard thinking?
He and I had spent the last couple of days spar-o-matically hyperfine sparring over evidence vs testimony vs opinion vs science vs What Is Science and other wurdz that if you’re already bored by, you needn’t bother reading on.
This afternoon, for no patent reason, Willard decided to retweet what may just be the Consensualist School [for the Hard] of Thought’s minimum opus. I refer of course to a certain mental gimp’s limp attempt to pretend Oreskes et epigones have never been, and would never be, cretinous enough to try to pass off consensus as evidence. (Or, as John Cook’s adolescent idiolect would have it, ‘proof.’)
My reply suffices.
Testimony is evidence in a courtroom, but only if one is bearing witness to facts seen and/or heard. Opinions and claiming facts not entered into evidence by direct observation gives rise to objections that exclude such statements.
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Ron, I didn’t want that “testimony” Tweet to appear anyway. I just wanted the 2 tweets, without repetition. Any suggestions?
Anyone know how to isolate a tweet of interest?
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But I like the testimony tweet. Climate science is comprised of a group of people who cite each other’s papers as evidence of opinions each one expresses. It is evidence all right, proof that they are a circle of jerks.
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Can’t help you with tweeting. I don’t do it for fear of becoming a twit.
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Urban dictionary defines “twit”: The kind of person that makes a retarded chimp look smart. They often can be found leaving definitions for their own name or the names of their friends on urbandictionary.com.
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Just don’t think too much about how to conjugate the related verb
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Twat, tweet, twit, twot, twut. Take your pack, peeck, pick, pock, puck.
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Is a twut the New Zealand way of saying anything?
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The New Zealand way of saying anything has no universally-agreed rendering but it would be a bit like Innythung.
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I paid tribute to Omar Khayyam a few years ago at CliNur:
The Moving Finger, having twat,
Cannot untweet a jot
Of what it twot.
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Re consensuss …Prof R.S. Lindzen Paper, ‘Climate Science:Is it currently designed to answer questions?’
‘Perhaps the most impressive exploitation of climate science for political purposes has been the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by two UN agencies, UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program) and WMO (World Meteorological Organization), and
the agreement of all major countries at the 1992 Rio Conference to accept the IPCC as authoritative. Formally, the IPCC summarizes the peer reviewed literature on climate every five years. On the face of it, this is an innocent and straightforward task. One might reasonably
wonder why it takes 100’s of scientists five years of constant travelling throughout the world in order to perform this task. The charge to the IPCC is not simply to summarize, but rather to provide the science with which to support the negotiating process whose aim is to control
greenhouse gas levels. This is a political rather than a scientific charge. That said, the participating scientists have some leeway in which to reasonably describe matters, since the primary document that the public associates with the IPCC is not the extensive report prepared
by the scientists, but rather the Summary for Policymakers which is written by an assemblage of representative from governments and NGO’s, with only a small scientific representation10,
11.
10 Appendix 1 is the invitation to the planning session for the 5th assessment. It clearly
emphasizes strengthening rather than checking the IPCC position. Appendix 2 reproduces a
commentary by Stephen McIntyre on the recent OfCom findings concerning a British TV
program opposing global warming alarmism. The response of the IPCC officials makes it
eminently clear that the IPCC is fundamentally a political body. If further evidence were
needed, one simply has to observe the fact that the IPCC Summary for Policymakers will
selectively cite results to emphasize negative consequences. Thus the summary for Working
Group II observes that global warming will result in “Hundreds of millions of people exposed to
increased water stress.” This, however, is based on work (Arnell, 2004) which actually shows
that by the 2080s the net global population at risk declines by up to 2.1 billion people (depending
on which scenario one wants to emphasize)! The IPCC further ignores the capacity to build
reservoirs to alleviate those areas they project as subject to drought (I am indebted to Indur
Goklany for noting this example.)
11 Appendix 3 is a recent op-ed from the Boston Globe, written by the aforementioned
John Holdren. What is interesting about this piece is that what little science it invokes is overtly
incorrect. Rather, it points to the success of the above process of taking over scientific
institutions as evidence of the correctness of global warming alarmism. The 3 atmospheric
scientists who are explicitly mentioned are chemists with no particular expertise in climate.
While, Holdren makes much of the importance of expertise, he fails to note that he, himself, is
hardly a contributor to climate science. ”
‘Given the above,’ says Prof Linzen, ‘it would not be surprising if working scientists would make special efforts to support the global warming hypothesis.’ … And they do, via cli-sci model projections, their basis for greenhouse concerns, and when necessary, bringing the observed data into agreement with the models , giving a hole new meaning to the concept of testing…tsk!
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Beth
on what basis do you impugn the ‘testing’ done by climate scientists?
They do what any scientist does: compare hypothesis & reality.
Admittedly, reality hasn’t managed to pass the test yet, but that’s not their fault. We don’t live in a perfect world.
Well, OK, in theory we do. But in practice, a long and incremental process of millimetrical adjustments makes perfect!
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Well, Brad, since reality is imperfect, compared to the beautiful model, best go with yr beautiful model,
oh Galatia!
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all realities are wrong but some are useful
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For those who haven’t read it, Beth’s comment quotes from one of the best analyses of clisci theatre ever. It’s a few years old but (since clisci is incapable of improvement) it’s still as relevant as it ever was. Thanks for reminding me of Lindzen’s piece, Beth
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Yer welcome, Brad. And further to models…)
https://collections.artsmia.org/art/72493/pygmalion-honore-daumier
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Guess MY model was constructed outa’ bristlecones.
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at least your model didn’t do too much coke before the show and go stripbark in front of the press—that kind of cortex malfunction, seen by millions, can end a model’s career
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Sciences, like the daughters of Propoetus, have much to answer for. Pygmalion driven to create his most beautiful model with a life of its own sees you prostitute yourselves before it.
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