On 10/25/06, Alastair McDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It sounds like you are accusing me of having made up my mind and
> of using science selectively.
I wasn't thinking about you, Alastair. I was thinking about me, frankly.
> >> Advocacy isn't science. That's the problem.
>
> Denying the evidence that the Greenland ice sheet has passed its tipping
> point and that rapid climate change may be about to happen when the
> Arctic sea ice disappears, because they are too horrific to contemplate
> is not science either.
Actually, I approximately agree with that. (I would say that we don't
know whether Greenland has passed its tipping point. My intuition says
not, but at this point we are just arguing intuition.)
I am not retracting what I originally said in this thread. I am just
noticing how, if it is the first thing somebody sees about me, they
might get the wrong idea about how I think and what I thnk about. I am
trying to correct it.
This is an example of why most professionals go through life saying
nothing at all. I don't choose to do that.
I have no children, by choice, and can afford to take chances. My
position in the scientific world is tenuous as a consequence both of
my firm ethics and of my somewhat lapsed competence. These two are
connected in interesting ways, but it's not a story I care to dissect
publicly. Anyway, I seem to have some ability to frame the issues
well, and that being the case I feel it is my responsibility to try to
do that. This is not without risk or cost.
I looked over some work I did in my 20s, ca 1978, and I am frankly not
up to that standard right now, at least insofar as depth goes, and
haven't been for at least a decade now. The scientific world doesn't
much value breadth without depth. There's still some chance I can
manage to maintain the first and revive the second, and I'm eager not
to blow it.
As Kinky Friedman said recently, "truth is my religion".
I won't repeat the rest of the quotation here. It is even more
interesting and much funnier than the snippet I offer. I would point
out, though, that Kinky wasn't thinking specifically about Alastair
either.
mt
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