On Thu, 2 Apr 2009 16:44:05 -0400, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:
"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 1 Apr 2009 17:49:39 -0400, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:
wrote in message
...
It doesn't give me confidence when we have NASA's chief climatologist
is acting like a zealot and anyone who disagrees is branded a heretic.
He's a special case. g He is also generally recognizes as one of the
world's top experts on the subject. But the science is the point. How
deeply
have you dug into the reports, summaries, white papers, and position
papers
of the dozen or so top scientific and political organizations that are
involved?
Hansen is top Climateer.
Algore is recognized by (far too much of) the world as a Nobel Prize
winner on Climatology.
Thompson's Water Seal is the top selling deck waterproofer.
These are perfect proof of the Peter Principle, politics, and savvy
marketing in action, are they not?
They reaffirm that your focus is on the extremes, which is fine for dealing
with the politics but not very good for dealing with the science, unless
you're an expert and can truly evaluate the claims.
My focus is on the mainstream science, because I want to see what I can
learn about that, before I start making claims about any of it. And I'm
convinced that I won't be able to evaluate original sources, which means I'm
unlikely ever to have an opinion that goes beyond my judgments about whether
mainstream science is being reflected in the claims made by the advocates.
Ed, I think my largest mistake was to take the easy way out (avoiding
long discussions after even longer research episodes) and NOT stop you
from thinking that the only gripe I had was with science. It's not.
I should have corrected you when you thought that I knew nothing about
basic Global Warming theory, but I was too angry at you for that at
the time.
In any case, my frustration with the world over AGWk is that the scare
mongers are skewing scientific data, politicians are again padding it,
then basing their policies on that. This is already costing lives
daily.
Scientists state Dataset A, with a + or - 3% variance, using a
modeling program (which is improved monthly and still has a long way
to go. After all, it's only a tool, not Crom's own instruction
manual.)
Politicians or activists (Gore, Hansen, etc.) take the worst case
scenario from that statement and omit the range (maybe adding 10 or
25% for good measure) then repeat the horrors via the media until it's
believed.
CO2 is killing the world, according to these folks, but they're still
backing the use of coal-fired electrical production at a cost of
billions of tons of CO2 annually. (Or was that weekly?)
In other words, people like you and me are stuck with evaluating secondary
sources. That runs against my grain, but there are many subjects about which
we can't do anything else. So now it becomes a matter of what experience we
have with different types of secondary sources.
We're likely to have only secondary sourcing to -most- things in life,
Ed. Sest lavvy, wot?
-- big snip--
In any case, the action, as far as I'm concerned, is in the mainstream
science. It's much more cautious and equivocal than you imply, although,
when it's boiled down to a single policy position and recommendations, it
falls strongly on the side of fairly high levels of danger resulting from
human-produced CO2. That's one of the problems with basing policy on
science: you only see the simplified conclusions, unless you make an effort
to see what they're saying when they have more space and time to discuss
their work.
Right, and that's why I've attempted to find and watch every video by
these scientists that I can find online during my research. The one I
won't watch is Algore's complete bull****, and it's one of the heavies
in the policymaking. Do you know how much he stands to earn in the
carbon credit scheme it it's introduced? Gee, I wonder if he thought
about that before making the movie...
But look at my example above and ask yourself "Is this policy being
based upon solid science, or is it politicized (being based upon a
trumped up scare derived from filtering science out and padding
figures, as in the specific examples by Hansen and our ex VP)?"
P.S: I find your discussion with piezoguy -quite- interesting. It
appears that you and I are not nearly as far apart as it would seem
when you're railing against my posts, Ed. Very interesting.
I'm not sure what parts you're focusing on but he's probably the only one
here who has a real understanding of modern, computer-based modelling, and
the vagueries of applying numerical values and mathematical equations to
complex events. Unfortunately he's an engineer and they tend to dismiss
anything that doesn't fall neatly within engineering parameters. d8-)
So I dismiss all scientists and you dismiss all engineers? What a
pair we are.
--
You can't do anything about the length of your life,
but you _can_ do something about its width and depth.
-- Evan Esar