8 Responses to “NARN Today”

1. Mitch Says:
   February 3rd, 2007 at 9:23 am

   651 289 4488 .

   Call and ask him yourself, inasmuch as I’m not the one hosting the interview.

   If you’re like most people who leave comments with supposedly incendiary questions, you won’t, of course.

2. Yossarian Says:
   February 3rd, 2007 at 12:40 pm

   If you showed the guts you accuse me of lacking

   That’s cute, coming from a commenter with more than three different aliases.

3. Paul Says:
   February 3rd, 2007 at 4:12 pm

   donkeyman1 said:

   I was pointing out an irony.

   Yup, of the strawman variety.

   If the Weekly Standard, and neo-cons stand against taking action on global climate change, it’s because it hasn’t been proved via The Scientific Method, which removes cultural and political bias from the process:

   Recognizing that personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena, we aim through the use of standard procedures and criteria to minimize those influences when developing a theory. As a famous scientist once said, “Smart people (like smart lawyers) can come up with very good explanations for mistaken points of view.” In summary, the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of bias or prejudice in the experimenter when testing an hypothesis or a theory.

   The scientific method has four steps:

   1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

   2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.

   3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

   4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

   If the experiments bear out the hypothesis it may come to be regarded as a theory or law of nature (more on the concepts of hypothesis, model, theory and law below). If the experiments do not bear out the hypothesis, it must be rejected or modified. What is key in the description of the scientific method just given is the predictive power (the ability to get more out of the theory than you put in; see Barrow, 1991) of the hypothesis or theory, as tested by experiment.

   Part III has an interesting passage:

   As stated earlier, the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of the scientist’s bias on the outcome of an experiment. That is, when testing an hypothesis or a theory, the scientist may have a preference for one outcome or another, and it is important that this preference not bias the results or their interpretation. The most fundamental error is to mistake the hypothesis for an explanation of a phenomenon, without performing experimental tests. Sometimes “common sense” and “logic” tempt us into believing that no test is needed. There are numerous examples of this, dating from the Greek philosophers to the present day.

   Everything published about global climate change I have read stops at Step Two or argues that the industrial age is the start and therefore the cause, without ever completing Steps Three and Four. The fact that global climate change is incendiary at all means that there is a consensus, not proven fact.

   Remember, scientists have to eat, breathe and pay taxes like everyone else, making them capable fraud, deceit and political agendas like everyone else.

4. gmg425 Says:
   February 4th, 2007 at 9:40 pm

   You actually thought the Bears could score 42 points? Were you thinking this was a best of 7 series? LOL Just remember that there’s always next year.

5. Kermit Says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 9:04 am

   What was that sound? Rex Grossman tripping over a Clot?

6. Mitch Says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 9:41 am

   What was that sound?

   I mean the one at Winter Park?

   Oh, yeah – NOTHING!

7. Yossarian Says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

   First, in 1992, scientists predicted rapid melting of Greenland’s fresh water ice fields – that has occured without question. Second, they predicted thawing of permafrost fields in the northern hemisphere, and also decreasing impacts of the Gulf stream currents on Europe (especailly Northern Europe). Both have occured, the latter so much so that you can track the cooling impacts in western siberia easily.

   Uh huh, PB, and I’m sure in those instances it was conclusively proven that human-influenced global warming was the culprit, rather than natural global warming. Right? There’s some demonstrable proof there, right?

8. Mitch Says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 3:24 pm

   Getting lectured from the right on scientific method is about as ironic as having the left lecture people on tolerance in speech.

   Except that the right is occasionally qualified to do it, since being conservative requires actual thought.

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