William M Connolley wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Sep 2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > Hansen actually criticises the IPCC explicitly in this paper:
> >
> > "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (10) assumes negligible
> > contribution to 2100 sea level change from loss of Greenland and
> > Antarctic ice, but that conclusion is implausible."
>
> This is a weird thing to say. The 2001 report had Ant and Gr just about
> cancelling out. That wasn't at all implausible, it was what the science says.
> Fairly recently has come some evidence for more melt. Is (10) a ref to 2001 or
> 2007?
William, do you recall a similar question being asked elsewhere?
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. "
Mr. Clinton went on to say: "... if 'is' means is and never has been,
that [would have been a lie]. If it means there is none, that was a
completely true statement [at the time it was made]....
Yes, he was weasel-wording, because the question was about his past
conduct, not about what he was doing right at the time the question was
asked.
Maybe you're just illustrating how hard it is to be clear in writing
about science, but -- is it really _that_ unclear?
If Hansen had written: "...[Reference 10] assumes negligible
contribution .... but that conclusion [was] implausible." -- you'd
understand him to have meant "was at the time written" -- in 2001.
Right?
You wouldn't imagine that Hansen might have meant the IPCC's 2001
conclusion "was" implausible last month, when Hansen wrote his recent
paper, or last April, when he circulated the draft.
Hansen in fact wrote "... [Reference 10] assumes negligible
contribution .... but that conclusion is implausible."
This may simply be illustrating the truism that nonverbal speech
conveys 90 percent of the meaning and we fill in from our own
background what's missing when we read text -- a boon to novelists and
a bane to scientists.
But ... it boggles me to see this level of disagreement about what the
meaning of "is" is, in this context.
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