Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Nobody expects the Inquisition!

Following my rant on the two professors bemoaning the potential loss of faith in science caused by over-egging the climate change hypothesis, there is a nice article on a similar theme by Michael R. Fox on the Hawaii Reporter.

The practice of science has historically been driven by positing a hypothesis, making observations of the real world, then determining whether the hypothesis explains the observations.

It doesn’t make any difference who the theorist is, how smart he is, or how powerful he is, or how many awards he’s won, if the hypothesis can’t explain the real data observed in the real world, it is false, and must be revised or abandoned.

That doesn't happen with climate change science, though. The hockey stick is still used even though it has been demonstrated to be flawed. When anyone dares to challenge the AGW hypothesis they are usually met with criticism - not for their science - but for who they are.

For example, Professor Tim Ball recently received death threats for his skeptical statements regarding global warming on Hannity and Colmes program the week of March 12 (http://tinyurl.com/2p46f4).

The ad hominem attack is not only not nice; it is a logical fallacy with little integrity. It goes:

Person A makes claim X

There is something objectionable about Person A
Therefore claim X is false


That's how it works. That's what they do. Fox points out that there is now a McCarthy style witch hunt against sceptics with suggestions of "Nuremberg style trials for "deniers"!

Read it all.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you noticed that he has not shown them, and has not gone to the police?

hmmm

Sure generated a lot of good press for him.

Stan said...

Ball, you mean?

How do you know he hasn't gone to the police?

What has that got to do with whether he has a right to put forward a counter argument to the AGW hypothesis?

Why are you making a personal attack on him, but not his science?

Hmmmmm?

Anonymous said...

Yes. And Ball seems to be the one making the charges that those convinced of global warming are threatening his life. If it happened, it was obviously some idiot. Like the racist (and worse) comments we have seen made about Suzuki with special mention of climate change. Does that mean that all those not convinced of climate change are racist? They certain are pouring on the personal attacks. To hear or see personal attacks, check Can Free Press, Freedominion, etc., or attend a talk by Ball.

Anonymous said...

Ball's "science" seems to have been covered at a number of places, most favorably here. Will you look? Doubt it.

http://www.kantor.com/2007/02/05/timothy-ball-opinion-without-evidence/#comment-8834

Stan said...

That would be the Suzuki who's behind desmogblog - the supposed "climate change" blog whose favourite tactics is to launch ad hominen attacks on anyone who dares to challenge the anthropogenic global warming "consensus" - emphasis on CON, of course.

Presumably you didn't actually check out the sites that the chap who posted the comment linked to? If you had done - and had read in particular the piece from WCR you'll have noticed that Ball was right about CO2 and Mauna Loa. Perhaps you need a quick crash course on how to read graphs. If I was you, I'd pay particular attention to scales, because they influence the graphs appearance significantly.

Look again at this graph and tell me there wasn't a sharp drop in 1992.

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/wp-images/maunaloa1.JPG

Look at it again and notice that the more significant growth was prior to 1980 - and yet temperature cooled.

Finally,look at this graph - from the same site that the poster used and you'll notice that it suggests surface temperature are, indeed, on the decline.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/a/af/Short_Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

And that from a site that is pro AGW.

So you see. I have looked and looked closely. I have been looking closely for some years now and there is NO evidence to suggest that warming is a) a long term trend or b) caused by man.

What there is is a lot of propaganda dressed up as evidence and leading that is the IPCC.

Will you look yourself? I doubt it.

Anonymous said...

So that was you, was it, Stan? Google suzuki yellow western standard

Stan said...

Was what me?

What am I supposed to be looking for if I google suzuki yelow western standard?

Sorry - I don't do uninformed googles. You never know what might turn up! Post a link and then I can at least point my finger at you if a porno site pops up while the missus is watching over my shoulder ;-)