12/26/2009

Person Who is Never Wrong Does Not Know Basic Logic or Science

"Who's never wrong about anything" is the way the London Telegraph describes James Delingpole, who recently wrote one of the most inane, and manipulative posts, ever to have graced the online pages of a major "news" source.

Here is Delingpole's assertion, as he shows why climate gate, is the "scientific scandal" of the modern era.
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
So what is the evidence of these "private doubts?"

First, let's consider what is meant by "warming up;" nanmely, is climate change real. Now let's look at his "evidence" from one of the hacked emails:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Did the person who is "never wrong about anything" ever take a science class in high school or college? Did he pass it? Of is it just that his ideological bent has annilihated his ability to exercise basic scientific understanding or rudimentary logic when it comes to what is clearly an ideological issue to him (just read his popular post, linked to twice above.)

Sadly, that seems to be what is happening, in America (and apparently in our little puppy England) as we continue our march toward becoming more and more ill informed, as we become more and more ideologically driven.

Consider the paragraph that is cited as his "evidence." It claims a disappointment with the ability of a model to predict something, and has almost nothing to do with the underlying isssue of warming.

Some scientist is bummed because he can't accurately model exactly what is happening in the climate, and that's a relevant portion of what he requotes as the "scientific scandal of the modern era"?

This is what happens when the debate no longer revolves around what is going on, and what is the most sensible thing (if anything) to do about it, but between those who are essentially interested in understanding science when dealing with the physical world (which is what defines science), and those who are so driven by their "wants" "beliefs" "desires" and preconceived notions of the way that things should be, or that they want them to be, that their ability to spin (thus convincing themselves at the same time as others) increases commensurate with their precipitiously decreasing ability to objectively reason.

The rest of his examples are also similarly misplaced or well overblown.  And even if by "trick" and "hide" these scientists did not mean what most scientists normally mean (rounding out errors) and meant what non scientist mean by these things, so what. It's about as consequential to the underlying issue of climate change as........ [you fill in your own analogy; ours was too ribald to permit the printing thereof].

In other words, irrelevant. Because it's not their data that drives this. It's not their estimations that drive this.  Without any of it, the entire basic underlying science is the same. The physics never changes.  The known fact of net emissions increases in GHC and how much those are, never changes. The fact that heat trapping gases do drive climate, never changes.  And even the observable data, the only non essential part of this equation (although it has tended to corroborate early predictions decades ago) doesn't change; that is,data produced by some of the most reputable organizations on the planet, including NASA and the NOAA, and not some scientist at climate center East Anglia.
And the London Telegraph publishes his tripe, and perpetuates and promotes such idiocy.

Hopefully Delingpole lives in a big house near the sea, where he plans on staying a long, long time.