House of Eratosthenes

Memeorandum is silly. There’s this story up about Michael Mann, the scientist who figured out a way to graph the global mean temperature in such a way that some kind of detonation looked imminent. The “hockey stick graph” has become a visual, colorful engine to help drive the effort toward a global command economy. On a sane planet, we’d be debating whether that would change the outcome, or whether some global-climate catastrophe is a possibility with regard to, or regardless of, whatever we do.

On this one, we’re debating whether Mann has to do what you had to do in high school: Show his work.

I say they’re silly because they’re headlining Mann’s victory this way:

Score Another Victory for Scientists, Michael Mann and the Freedom of Inquiry

Of course, that’s from the ThinkProgress piece itself. But after borrowing that bit of silliness, they then supplement it with another story from Nature News Blog called “Climate scientist wins his day in court – November 01, 2011.”

Cool, so Michael Mann is right and the conservatives are wrong. A court said so. But what happened?

ThinkProgress comes to the point in the second paragraph:

Yesterday in a Virginia courtroom, Michael Mann—who is quickly becoming the Galileo of climate science—triumphed over the conservative American Tradition Institute, and ongoing attempts at scientist-harassment.

More specifically, Prince William County Circuit Court Judge Gaylord Finch both allowed Mann to join the case that ATI is pursuing against the University of Virginia to get Mann’s emails, and allowed UVA to back out of an agreement with ATI to let it review some of Mann’s emails that the university is nevertheless claiming are exempt from disclosure.

Nature News Blog, to its credit, reveals it in the first:

Pennsylvania State University climatologist Michael Mann stepped out of a courthouse in Manassas, Virginia, on Tuesday with a smile on his face. After a surprisingly contentious hearing that lasted most of the day, Prince William County Circuit Court Judge Gaylord Finch had granted his petition to join his former employer, the University of Virginia, in fighting a lawsuit seeking access to thousands of emails Mann sent as a professor there between 1999 and 2005.

Prof. Mann did indeed win a victory, but it is a victory for opaqueness. Contrary to what a reasonable but casual reader of news might infer from the big-font headlines, it is not the sort of victory that settles science or proves a scientist’s viewpoint on things to have been the right ones, nor does it prove his methods were even sound. Quite to the contrary: It is the sort of victory that would diminish in importance, were the practitioner using such sound methods, laboring under honest motives.

To Mann and his cheerleaders, it is all-important.

Draw your own conclusions. I’ve drawn mine.

American Tradition Institute issues the following press release, which is not linked on Memeorandum:

ATI welcomes Dr. Mann to the case. Now he will have to defend his email content before a neutral court and offer more than slurs and innuendo to support his contention that he can hide his behavior and his emails from the public who paid for them in the first place.

ATI opposed Dr. Mann’s intervention, but not because ATI doesn’t “like” him. Rather, like so many other elements of this case, it gives ATI the opportunity to help the court clarify the law. Although the trial court did not state the interest Mann has in this case, on appeal the court will have to explain what basis exists for a faculty member to intervene in a FOIA case between citizens and a university.

“This is a cloudy area of law and ATI seeks clarity on the matter,” said Dr. David Schnare, director of ATI’s Environmental Law Center. “Dr. Mann now must offer to an appellate court citations to cases and statutory law to defend his position.”

So, having heard from both sides we see this has absolutely nothing to do with the science & whether it says the earth is heating up. Not that anybody quoted here, ever said it did. This is a procedural decision, with Mann prevailing in his efforts to maintain secrecy, and his opponents arguing unsuccessfully for transparency.

Hmmm…in global-warming-land, that’s the kind of victory that brings high-fives back-slaps and fist-pumps? Just weird. Progressives seem to be constantly cheering on their own efforts, for the benefit of an audience of dimwits who don’t actually read things. Across the issues, they’ve got all these bumper-sticker-slogans that, when you take the time to read further, you find are supported only in letter but not in spirit. Hey, whatever they gotta do…but Memeorandum does nothing to retain its own credibility, by joining them in the effort, even if they’re doing so only by copying these sneaky, deceptive headlines.

I’m told that lawyers have an adage: when you’ve got the facts on your side, argue the facts; when you’ve got the law on your side, argue the law; when you have neither the facts nor the law, obfuscate.

Sounds like we’ve got a lot of 2 mixed with an unhealthy dose of 3 here. Science has nothing to do with it.

And honestly, when has science had anything to do with it? I don’t understand the science; you don’t understand the science; the various leftist whackadoos who are always going on about “science!” sure as hell don’t understand the science (they’re all poetry majors at Bong State). Real climate science involves all kinds of math classes that start with words like “topological” and “algebraic” and “multivariate.” I can’t even spell “multivariate” three out of four tries.

All any of us non-scientists has to go on is horse sense and an appreciation of human nature, and on that score, we “deniers” win hands down. When I look at the global ~~cooling~~ ~~warming~~ climate change arguments, all I see is an unfalsifiable proposition tied to a shitload of cash and a whole mess of politics, garnished with some good old fashioned leftist self-righteous narcissism. If it’s warmer, that’s climate change; but if it’s colder, that’s also climate change; climate change causes everything from changes in bird migration patterns to McDonalds forgetting to supersize your fries.

There’s nothing that can’t be labeled “climate change” if you try hard enough. Which is, ahem, dogma, not science.
- Severian | 11/03/2011 @ 05:33
There’s nothing that can’t be labeled “climate change” if you try hard enough.

I think this sums up the mentality of leftist intellectualism. Taking pride in the ability to argue that ^A=A.

Like … water flows uphill and stuff.

And for the science challenged (that’d be Gore Snortin’ Michael Mann supporters) … science is about skepticism and subsequent peer review and then reproducible results … which, of course, can’t be reproduced if we don’t know what you did in the first place.

Science isn’t about taking somebody’s word for it because he’s got a business card that says “Scientist” on it because we like what he says.

^A=A

A=^A

Those pushing for actual review are “anti-science”, while those trying to make it impossible to review are “scientists”. QED.
- philmon | 11/03/2011 @ 18:27

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Thursday, November 3rd, 2011