Alastair McDonald wrote:
>> That hardly has any relevance for practical decision making, though. I
>> see no plausible mechanism whereby anything we do over the next 100
>> years (let alone the next decade or two) could result in a 20C
>> temperature rise, even as a future commitment let alone 2100 climate.
>
> But have you looked for a plausible mechanism? If not, then it is not
> surprising that you have not found one.
OK, more pedantically, "No-one has presented any plausible mechanism..."
>
> In your previous post you wrote:
>
>> While I would be the first to admit that subjectivity necessarily plays
>> a part in scientific judgments, the more traditional approach (at least
>> in theory) would normally be to examine the evidence first, and base
>> one's beliefs on that, rather than starting from the belief and
>> searching for something to prop it up with :-)
>
> With an attitude like that you are not going to make any surprising
> discoveries. The scientific method includes asking questions,
> proposing solutions and searching for evidence to prove or
> disprove them. According to your method no one should ever propose
> a hypothesis, they should only present incontrovertible theories.
No, it is completely reasonable to propose hypotheses that may be wrong,
and to look for evidence that speaks to them. Such evidence may either
support or falsify such hypotheses and their alternatives - some strict
Popperians might say that we can only really falsify, but IMO the
reality is a bit more flexible.
> But worse, you seem to equate beliefs with scientific judgments.
No, I was actually objecting to Coby's statement of belief *in advance
of any scientific judgement*. In a strict sense, the existence of a
prior belief is necessary given a basically Bayesian approach, but in
that case it had better be pretty vague. If your belief is not amenable
to being influenced by scientific evidence, then you aren't being
scientific.
James
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated
venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of
global environmental change.
Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the
submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not
gratuitously rude.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
