Spindoc

You have responded before my reply to your 9 points, no matter.

A. You have misunderstood my response, see point 9.

B. You keep wanting absolutes, see 4, 5 below. Is light a particle or a wave?

C. Spin it all you like spindoc, a zero sum game is as I described – did you not understand the cake?

D. “Your position ... Can you please explain?” I did, under the point of circular argument and by example. Our current dialogue is another.

E. “This scientific debate ...” I agree with you.

“If there were scientific certainty there would be no debate” –again you demonstrate a need for absolutes and again, science doesn’t work like that..

F. Computer stuff: you know very well my meaning of on/off.

G. Ammo? That's sick.

1. I assume you are very well aware of the “significant” bodies, institutions and academies of science that overwhelm the likes of the OISM’s so called “petition project”, touted by ‘deniers’ and promulgated by organisations like the Heartland Institute, the Lavoisier Group, Institute of Public Affairs, and a plethora of “denialist” blog sites (Marohasy, WUWT etc) and propagandist columnists (Bolt, Booker et al).

If you mean the latter (rather than the former) distort and misrepresent the science, I agree.

2. This point perplexes me. What exactly are you “in, or out” of? As a self proclaimed “agnostic” I would have thought you were not ‘in’ or ‘out’ of anything.

Anyway, please see my previous post on ‘binary reasoning’.

I do not understand the point you are making about “research data, scientific interpretation, scientific modelling, media, politics, and public commentary”. Can you please explain precisely what you are trying to say?

3. I think I understand what you are saying and tend to agree, albeit I would prefer the term ‘trust’. I only say this because a lot of people can’t distinguish science from religion. A “belief based value system” is premised on unconditional faith (in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for example). Trust in your local GP.

Cont’d

Cont’d

4. Science is never conclusive or absolute, it’s about probabilities – I (and others) have tried to explain this numerous times. If you cannot understand this, then like you say, “sadly we have no common ground”. Pro or Anti (or binary) has got nothing to do with it.

5. Spindoc, you keep rabbeting on about “proof”, “science is inconclusive”, etc. when time after time, here and elsewhere, the scientific process has been explained. It’s obvious you only have the capacity to think in terms of absolutes, a binary world (see previous post). This is unfortunate.

Let me try to explain it this way:

The CO2 molecule absorbs infra-red radiation with a roughly logarithmic relationship to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. This can be observed and measured as a vertical temperature gradient in the atmosphere. In other words, stratospheric cooling is a result of less energy lost to space – it’s a little more complex (adiabat) but I am sure you can understand that.

I will change my mind about AGW when the observed (and measurable) fact of stratospheric cooling disappears.

I don’t know what you mean by an “intellectual or academic croaker”, but I agree (and have said so many times before you appeared on OLO) that politics and economics are muddying the waters. What else do you expect, really?

Scientists can only ever deliver the message. It is up to politicians, economists and captains of industry to deal with the message. It is no longer about the science.

6. Please explain this more clearly (not the binary bit, addressed elsewhere). I haven’t a clue what your point is.

7. I couldn’t agree more.

8. To clear the air, you think I have been vindictive towards you. I apologise if I have shown some malicious ill-will or intent to harm you. Nevertheless, I thought you would have seen the difference between my response to you and rpg & MO’s response to me.

9. Congratulations, exactly my point (see my previous post on “binary reasoning”.

Spindoc,

You are correct about there being division in the scientific community about AGW, but are exaggerating its extent. This survey from the January Eos (an earth science journal) shows that the more people know about the science, the more likely they are to believe that AGW is highly probable. Active climate scientists like Q%A were 97% in agreement.

http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

If we need 100% agreement or absolute proof before we can take any action, then nothing will ever happen (analysis paralysis). A good analogy might be with what Thabo Mbeki's government did in South Africa. We now know that antiretrovirals can keep the HIV virus at bay and prevent transmission from mother to baby. However, there were a few scientists who thought that the HIV virus was not the cause of AIDS, most prominently Peter Duesberg, a molecular biologist. Mbeki ignored the medical establishment and relied on the mavericks, withholding antiretrovirals from his people. The result was lots of dead bodies. There is no absolute proof that the bulk of the climate scientists are right about AGW, but they are in a better position to know than anyone else.

[One nasty spin by Divergence against Thabo Mbeki, whereas Al Gore himself led the campaign from Congress to prevent generic AIDS medicines, especially needed in poor countries like South Africa. Such a coincidence: surely Divergence didn't just read my posting at the cross-thread http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8920#142233 ? Keep exposing your own black marks, carbon-dioxide folk...]

Q&A: "Science is never conclusive or absolute, it’s about probabilities".

That's about one of the most “absolutist” and conclusive statements I've ever read anywhere.

Imagine a Johannes Kepler or Albert Einstein fronting up to the examiners with: “Look, guys, it's just my own, subjective, personal, woolly-headed liberalist interpretation on the universe. I'm not claiming any insight into a "truth" or anything like that, so don't take it TOO seriously”!

So what "probabilities" does Q&A mean? Ah, a numbers game of “peer review” perhaps? Or the “probabilities” as asserted by IPCC? Or just some bookmaker's hunch on some scientists' and economists' form? Well, despite its ridiculous nature, the latter becomes more and more feasible under such a spineless ideology, as yet higher stakes and prices turn “The Science” into just another room in “The Casino”.

However its determination, the probability-instead-of-truth point reveals the hypocrisy and corruption promised by the combined weaknesses of liberalism and modernism. That is a big problem throughout the academy, made worse the more politicized a field becomes.

If, for example, the IPCC could not be “conclusive” about AGW, why then did it draw *conclusions*? And if, for another example, the IPCC could not be “absolute” about AGW, why then help initiate an *absolutist* economic tyranny basing itself on something so *absolute* as a valuation of the unknowable i.e., “carbon credits”?

Spindoc: the problem is not keeping “the science” out of the political-economic debate; it's about keeping the corrupt politics and the even more corrupt monetarist economics out of the science.

Mil-ob,

See this London Times article on Mbeki and his government's response to AIDS

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5235539.ece

You can find many more such sources if you do a search on "Mbeki AIDS denial". See also the Wikipedia article on "AIDS denial" for fuller account:

"Former South African president, Thabo Mbeki's government was widely criticized for delaying the rollout of programs to provide antiretroviral drugs to people with advanced HIV disease and to HIV-positive pregnant women. The national treatment program began only after the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) brought a legal case against Government ministers, claiming they were responsible for the deaths of 600 HIV-positive people a day who could not access medication.[89][77] South Africa was one of the last countries in the region to begin such a treatment program, and roll-out has been much slower than planned.[84]

At the XVI International AIDS Conference, Stephen Lewis, U.N. special envoy for AIDS in Africa, attacked Mbeki's government for its slow response to the AIDS epidemic and reliance on denialist claims..."

Of course this doesn't excuse the Western drug companies for their own bad behaviour in Africa, but the issue is more complicated than your simple picture of baddies and goodies. I must admit that I don't read all of your posts, as I find them quite tiresome, with constant unprovoked insults and abuse, plus your tendency to impute the very worst of motives, on no evidence, to anyone who disagrees with you.

Thabo Mbeki's domestic publicity merely tried making the most of a bad situation to deflect attention from the horrible squeeze Big Pharma held his country in - a situation of extortionate, imperialist cruelty against South Africa's poor in particular, and against the developing world in general.

Your posts aren't "tiresome" at all; just predictably misleading as their only sources are such propagandistic imperial fluff as The London Times.

Yeah, not tiresome, but boring nonetheless. I'll always have the time and energy to bury them and genocidal crypto-racists like your vile self.

Have a NICE day.