What a terrifically intellectual discussion this has devolved into. So-n-so lied. So-n-so didn't! How brilliant, how insightful ! Did it ever occur to either of you that the truth or falsity of statement by some non-researcher, non-primary source is of no relevece to the underlying issue of climate change ?
Every time I post, as a matter of fact. But mhaze has moved the debate away from the science by claiming that the scientists are lying. I have to agree with you that this seems like use of rhetorical devices to avoid discussing the facts, but I have little control over what s/he posts. I'll bring it to your attention that I and others have been pointing this out for quite some time. I suppose if you're gonna wrestle with a pig, you gotta figure you're gonna get some mud on ya.
I'm regularly disgusted by illogical arguments, and one of the first signals that things are going off the tracks is when people referring the the "Insert name" theory of such-n-such instead of briefly explaining the fundamental point.
So from this, I get two statements by you:
1. Any scientific theory that requires an IQ greater than 90 to understand, or requires an explanation that takes more than two sentences, is BS.
2. You don't want to talk about scientific theories by name; it's illogical.
Have I got that right?
It's a great debater's technique for inserting a massive and therefore difficult to rebut body of work into a discussion without going to the effort of laying a foundation. It's really only valid when the audience all understand and agree on the definition of the idea.
So basically you don't want to talk about science, when you talk about climate. OK, that's fine, but I have to ask you, why are you posting on a forum titled, "Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology?" Politics is over there ->.
NASA recently released the source code for Hansen's model. I performed a brief review and I have toi say the quality of the code is very poor.
It's crufty. That's why it has all those tracers and diagnostics sprinkled all over it. What's the matter, never seen scientific code before? They aren't, after all, professional software engineers. I didn't have any trouble following it. Are you saying you did? That would be consistent with your attitude on scientific theories.
It contains the sort of organizational problems that I used to see in undergraduate homework programs in the 1970s (before better tools and languages avoided many of the problems)
Well, gee, considering it was originally written in FORTRAN, in the '70s, THAT'S a big surprise, huh?
That is not to say the model is wrong, but personally I'd be hesitant to make any major claims based on such a low quality tool. The possibility of error in the code is significant and I wonder what sort of test cases were used to give confidence to the results ? I don't see any test verification suite for the units.
They test them with the diagnostics and tracers in the code that you apparently overlooked. In fact, according to the documentation, it's only recently that it was modularized. I bet that was fun. Almost as good as hitting yourself repeatedly in the chest with a pickaxe. No wonder it's got cruft all over it.
And with all that trouble you have with scientific theories and stuff, I bet you have a great deal of trouble figuring out what numerical simulations do, because it's mostly math- kind of like scientific theories are.
