DAWG Denyin'

I wish to clarify my position on climate change. If you've heard it, skip to the link and enjoy John Fund's brutal takedown of VP Gore.

If you're new 'round here, please accept my argument with the proponents: they do not use accepted scientific methods to evaluate their theories and resolve differences. One of my heroes is Dr. Karl Popper. His writings on philosophy and politics are superb, but he is best known for his scientific epistemology. Popper is - among many things -- the codifier of what we know as the scientific method.

To be accepted by the scientific community, a theory must display predictive power. Most famously, Albert Einstein's Special and General Relativity both predicted complex phenomena that could not be verified by the instruments of their day. Yet, as atomic clocks, and rocket ships, and radio telescopes were invented, underpaid graduate students used those devices to test Einstein's assertions. So far, they have all come true, and Einstein's theories are well accepted.

But it's worth noting that Einstein's theories are still not completely accepted and that a scientist who questions them is not shunned as "A Relativity Denier." He better have something to back up his claims, but his claims can be heard.

Not so to one with the temerity to suggest that Global Warming is not Anthropogenic and Deleterious. Nope, then you're a denier. Segue to John Fund (which must be read in full). VP Gore will not debate Vaclav Klaus, who doubts the W; Bjorn Lomborg, who questions the D; or Dr. Willie Soon of Harvard who asks what VP Gore hopes to accomplish.

At the Wall Street Journal's ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, California, Mr. Gore was initially scheduled to appear with Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a noted skeptic on global warming. Mr. Gore changed his schedule so he could appear the previous day. President Klaus told me this week that the major reason he agreed to travel from Europe was the chance to interact with Mr. Gore. "I don't understand all of this reluctance to engage with others," he told me.

Back to Popper, and real science: the heroes are the iconoclasts who buck "consensus" and say the Earth is not flat, the Sun does not revolve around the Earth, and a four pound stone does not fall four times as fast as a one pound stone. "Eppur Si Muove."

Deleterious Anthropogenic Warming of the Globe Posted by John Kranz at March 11, 2009 12:52 PM