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Hide The Decline

A.A.Alfie said:
I need a laughing dog.:D

Not at all, but if you want the point it's yours - it bothers me not.
But isn't this thread supposed to be about the very, very funny video? I was just trying to steer the conversation back to the OP, in my own fashion.
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Satire is supposed to use the truth to make a point. There is not one thing in the video that is true.
 
a_unique_person said:
Satire is supposed to use the truth to make a point. There is not one thing in the video that is true.
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I thought it was more like sarcasm, ridicule, parody or irony. It doesn't matter what type of humour you think it is; it remains really, really funny.
 
Unabogie said:
Read a little more of this, and my god, is that just ignorant tripe. They're complaining about inefficient code, which is valid, except that they're making it sound like bad code is the same as willful fraud. How the hell do you make that leap? Have you ever done code in a large group? You break up tasks and when they code comes back, sometimes it's done in a weird way, but time is tight, money is tight, so you test it and if it works, it stays. Who the hell has time to refactor everything? Especially in academia, where lots of work gets done by students?

If the code is flawed or clunky, rewrite it and submit a patch.

To suggest that this debunks climatology as a science is just beyond stupid.
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Yes, a colleague forwarded this to me, too. It looks like typical academic code that you'd see in any other discipline - including computer science.

The coding approach is obviously not commercial best practices, but this is different than the question of whether it produces inaccurate results.

I haven't seen anything that even resembles an attempt to show that the code in question produces inaccurate results, actually.

It's a perfect example of a red herring argument, which skeptics dismiss as terrible arguments in any other context.
 
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A.A.Alfie said:
I thought it was more like sarcasm, ridicule, parody or irony. It doesn't matter what type of humour you think it is; it remains really, really funny.
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Once again, irony relies on something being unintentionally true. Ridicule, yes, it ridicules. That's been the stock standard of deniers all along, just look at climateaudit. I find nothing funny about it.
 
BenBurch said:
Deniers are not actually Skeptics...
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Well, that's a 'no true skeptic' argument, unfortunately. It's hard to say that Shermer is 'not a skeptic.'

My observation is that every skeptic has one blindspot, and some have two blindspots. A few skeptics are hyperlibertarian AGW deniers. It seems unfixable.
 
blutoski said:
Well, that's a 'no true skeptic' argument, unfortunately. It's hard to say that Shermer is 'not a skeptic.'

My observation is that every skeptic has one blindspot, and some have two blindspots. A few skeptics are hyperlibertarian AGW deniers. It seems unfixable.
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Well, certainly not functioning as skeptics when they are in denial.

A "scotsman" is a category you cannot enter or leave except by birth and death, respectively, a "Skeptic" is a description of your behavior, and especially your epistemology, and you can be one and then not be one...
 
blutoski said:
Well, that's a 'no true skeptic' argument, unfortunately. It's hard to say that Shermer is 'not a skeptic.'

My observation is that every skeptic has one blindspot, and some have two blindspots. A few skeptics are hyperlibertarian AGW deniers. It seems unfixable.
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There's a difference between AGW-denier and AGW-and-therefore-a-massive-catastrophe-is-coming-justifying-massive-governmental-regulation, the latter of which could effortlessly cause more harm as actually measured by the quality, number, and length of human life.

Both sides, as you present it, seem to accept that if AGW is true, then massive government intervention is justified.

But your conclusion is correct. This part seems unfixable.


Breach of rule 11 removed.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Cuddles

Oh, and I do agree that most of the verbiage in those emails is definitely out of context.
 
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BenBurch said:
Well, certainly not functioning as skeptics when they are in denial.

A "scotsman" is a category you cannot enter or leave except by birth and death, respectively, a "Skeptic" is a description of your behavior, and especially your epistemology, and you can be one and then not be one...
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Meh. My opinion is that skeptics are defined by paying respect to a critical thinking and scientific thinking approach, coupled with specific knowledge about thinking errors.

But every single one of does it inconsistently or has value judgements that are applied to incomplete data to produce different conclusions. This is on account of being human.

I don't think there are two skeptics in the world who agree on everything.

If a person is either a skeptic or isn't, then there are no skeptics.

I maintain that every skeptic has at least one blind spot, if not many. Part of being a skeptic is insight into personal limitations.




I observe through personal experience that skepticism attracts some particular elements, including iconoclasts and narcissists, which is where the AGW deniers seem to be coming from. They seem to start from an assumption that authorities automatically are corrupt or incompetent and secondly, that despite zero expertise in these complex and specialized fields that they can nevertheless overthrow convention.

For a few that are more moderate and credible, there is a middle ground, which is that they at least observe their limitations in expertise, but nevertheless seem to have a peculiar approach to identifying expert legitemacy in the disciplines in question.

A colleague of mine just said: "Skeptics had an opportunity to promote a scientific worldview when it really mattered. We have failed."
 
blutoski said:
Well, that's a 'no true skeptic' argument, unfortunately. It's hard to say that Shermer is 'not a skeptic.'

My observation is that every skeptic has one blindspot, and some have two blindspots. A few skeptics are hyperlibertarian AGW deniers. It seems unfixable.
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I wouldn't call Shermer a denier.

http://skepticblog.org/2009/09/29/economic-triage-for-global-climate-change/

Global warming is real and primarily human caused.
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That in itself says all I need to know about his acceptance of science and the acknowledgement of the primary issue. As to the rest, that is open to discussion, as it should be.
 
BenBurch said:
I find it very odd because he is nearly a non-entity to scientists working on this.
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Amazingly, some people hadn't even heard of global warming before Gore's book came out. I remember hearing about it in 1990 when Gore was still a senator and long before he had written the book, so I don't know what caves those people were living in.

FYI I think the emails are on wikileaks.
 
godless dave said:
Amazingly, some people hadn't even heard of global warming before Gore's book came out. I remember hearing about it in 1990 when Gore was still a senator and long before he had written the book, so I don't know what caves those people were living in.

FYI I think the emails are on wikileaks.
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I knew about it in the 1970s. Its not like the prediction was a secret.
 
BenBurch said:
I knew about it in the 1970s.
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We covered the ice ages in my geography 'O' level, and some of us got worried about another ice age happening. My geography teacher told us that, with the amount of CO2 we were putting into the atmosphere, we should be more concerned about the world warming than cooling.

I took my 'O' levels in 1969. I win. :D
 
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