Monday, December 19, 2016

Solid Reality

In a 1946 essay, George Orwell wrote that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” It’s not just that we’re easily misled. It’s that, by “impudently twisting the facts,” we can convince ourselves of “things which we know to be untrue.” A whole society, he wrote, can deceive itself “for an indefinite time,” and the only check on that mass delusion is that “sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality.” Science is one source of that solid reality. The Trump Administration seems determined to keep it at bay, and the consequences for society and the environment will be profound.
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/donald-trumps-war-on-science

I hate to even give this bit of tripe any attention, but I love the quote above - the sword cuts both ways.

The author goes on to say that it has been warmer every year since 2013 or so, but of course ignore that there's no way to know why that may be happening (or that the amounts are so small they are within the margin of error).

One should never deny objective reality, nor should one dismiss those things elevated to the point of theory by the scientific method.  Interestingly, folks like to pretend that AGW is both of those, when it is neither.  AGW cannot be tested by controlled experimentation in a lab, therefore, only an accurate model or models can prove that it is more than a conjecture.  The models today are not even close to accurate.

There's no denying these models, because they prove nothing, over and above that we don't yet know about why the climate changes.  It could, for example, be due to the sun, bad measurements, or the fact that things have been warming since the 1850s.

Science tells us not to trust scientists.  We don't have to deny a lack of scientific proof with regard to AGW, since it simply does not exist.

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