What an utter and total distortion of what I said anywhere about science. Where once did I intimate that science should lie? What are your ideological driven motives that you would suggest the same?

Let me ask you point blank about the following:

Are observed CO2 levels rising in the atmosphere? Are the Keeling data accurate?

Is there anything wrong with the data that shows we are now spewing 8 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere right?

Are the data concerning the observed rise in global temperature accurate (you said that they were in your article)?

So, as you point out correctly in your article, we have a correlation of known facts. And yes we shouldn’t assume causation from that. But at the very least, as reasoned thinkers, shouldn’t we entertain the fact that our actions might be one of the causal factors? Can you bold-faced argue that you know for sure that we aren’t contributing to global fever? If you say, “yes” to that one, you my friend are distorting the facts to suit your agenda. Because, as you rightly point out in your article, scientists are not sure at present.

Given these facts, “naysayers” have the larger ethical issue to contend with. By distorting the data and the state of current knowledge and suggesting that, “Houston, we don’t have a problem and thereby leading public policy into a position of “do-nothing till you hear from me” you might be exacerbating what most researchers in the field agree is a serious problem threatening our survival.

Aren’t you in the least curious to see how the experiment might turn out, if we attempted to find cleaner sources of energy, thereby halting the progress of CO2 emissions? And aren’t you curious to see whether, in time, we could lower the global fever? Or are you firmly wedded to your current position that there is nothing to worry about and that all the hype is nothing more than a hoax perpetrated by the greens (socialists?)? Despite your stance on the sanctity of your scientific motives, that would be most unscientific of you.

Barry

But that wasn’t what you were suggesting, Barry. When you wrote this …

“I wholeheartedly agree with the point you make that investing time and energy going down the wrong line of investigation is a waste of time and resources. I am unclear, however, what the difference would mean in behaviour change should we decide that the planet is warming and/or that the planet is being polluted (and you haven’t argued that we aren’t having an impact on the quality of air and water globally). The strategy for change would be the same…”

… you were suggesting that raising a false alarm about CO2 would be a good thing because it would induce changes we should be making anyway.

That is wrong on two levels, ethical and programmatic. The ethical problem is twofold. First, your method seriously corrodes the integrity of science. You’re suggesting that scientists lie about a problem with CO2 in order to induce the population to sustainability. Once scientific integrity is gone, how do we get it back? After all, if scientists can lie about your agenda, why can’t they lie about another’s? We’ve all gotten wroth about George Bush’s government attempting to jigger the science about abortion. But they are presumably just as sincere about their ends as you are. So, how do you justify your lies and not yield the ethical ground to them as well? And how will you convince the population the second time around, if there is a real crisis, that this time, you’re not lying?

We’ve seen time-after-time that large-scale disputes involve science — about silicone breast implants and disease, about vaccines and autism, about abortion and later fertility, yes, about smoking and cancer, evolution and creation, and on and on. If scientists are caught lying about CO2 and climate, and the integrity of science has been hijacked, how will such critically important disputes be adjudicated?

Second, is you’re proposing that lies are acceptable in service of the greater good. But what is the greater good? Who decides? Your method is exactly that ends justify means. And if you argue that in your particular case this tactic is justifiable, that excuse rests entirely on your subjective judgment that the outcome of the lies will be as you predict they will be. But there are always unexpected consequences, and your powers of prediction are unlikely to be correct because the wrong answers greatly outnumber the right ones. Further, actions taken in the context of an untruth are hardly likely to be the correct actions for a real problem with decidedly different parametric solutions.

The programmatic problem is that reducing CO2 emissions, apart from reducing coal burning, will have very little impact on pollution abatement. Burning oil, gasoline, and natural gas is not especially problematic because the sulfur and the NOx are already removed from the exhaust stream. Instead, large amounts of money will be spent on expensive alternative energies with their own environmental problems (conveniently overlooked presently), and on sequestering CO2. These will remove the surplus prosperity that could have been used to abate real pollution.

And so as I see it, your ends justifying means approach is actively destructive, both to our civil society and to the global ecology.

You wrote, “And where are you going with the conclusion that this reasoned position leads the horrors of Nazism? This seems to be the height of fear-mongering.”

I didn’t write that, Barry. I wrote that ends justifying means is the method of ideologies, including Nazism and Socialism. Here’s what I wrote, “The rights of the proletariat was the end that justified the peacetime murder of about 150 million people during the 20th century. Not to mention the torture of millions more in gulags. Nazism was horrid and Socialism, if anything, was worse. Both were ideologies, and in both ends justified means.”

So, it’s not that ends justifying means leads to Nazism, it’s that ideologies always use ends justifies means. Ideologies always provide all the justification for any means to self-aggrandizement.

A second response to your sentence above is that your position is not reasoned. It’s merely justified.

You wrote, “We can make good decisions in the absence of all the facts and we can be cognisant that we aren’t being swayed by destructive ideologies. You raise here a straw man argument at best.”

We can indeed make decisions absent all the facts. We cannot, however make good decisions absent any good reason. Even if a given decision turns out to be correct, it will have been so on the same grounds someone makes the correct decision to buy some particular lottery number. Fortunate happenstance.

You’ve ignored the point about the relict Medieval forests, Barry. You’ve ignored that Roman-age artifacts are now found at the edges of some Alpine glaciers.

U. E. Joerin, et al. (2006) “Multicentury glacier fluctuations in the Swiss Alps during the Holocene” The Holocene, 16, 697-704

Partial Abstract: “Subfossil remains of wood and peat from six Swiss glaciers found in proglacial fluvial sediments indicate that glaciers were smaller than the 1985 reference level and climatic conditions allowed vegetation growth in now glaciated basins. An extended data set of Swiss glacier recessions consisting of 143 radiocarbon dates is presented to improve the chronology of glacier fluctuations. A comparison with other archives and dated glacier advances suggests 12 major recession periods occurring at 9850- 9600, 9300-8650, 8550-8050, 7700-7550, 7450-6550, 6150-5950, 5700-5500, 5200-4400, 4300-3400, 2800-2700, 2150-1850, 1400-1200 cal. yr BP.”

Those last two date ranges encompass Roman and the Medieval times.

You’ve ignored that climate models have been tested and found unable to reproduce Earth climate. How is your position reasoned?

I have looked at your rather long entry above, and while I am not going to respond to each and every item, I will provide some comments on points that I think you’ve got it wrong.

My suspicion of your motives in presenting a thoroughly confusing article on climate change, in a popular general circulation magazine, was nothing more than my built in cheater-detection mechanism going off. Perhaps not scientific, but their it is. I wanted to know the answer to a basic question; when so many agree in the general trend within the science, why does someone disagree?

Some possibilties:

1. They are a paid informant – someone is paying for a favourable opinion. And it’s not like this doesn’t happen in this field on a regular basis.

2. The person has really found something here. I didn’t reject this possibility in looking at the argument, seems reasonable that the model might be inaccurate. I’ve reserved judgement on this one (my son is in the earth science program at Waterloo so I’ll pass the article along to some of his profs who are studying climate change to get their opinions). I rejected, however the claims being made on the findings; that is that the whole of the body of findings needs to be discarded as junk science. How did we get here from there? More reasonable is the position that maybe the paradigm needs to be corrected and the models re-tested.

3. The person is really committed to being right. This too is a problem for us humans. You’ve levelled this one my way a few times in this discussion – the old ideology argument.

4. The person has some cognitive or psychological difficulties that make it difficult for them to test reality. This one is not likely at issue in this case.

Pat, I asked you a fair question given the nature of your article, its complexity and the sweeping conclusions being made. I want to know if you were being funded to write the paper. Your refusal to answer, rather than provide a straight answer, got my suspicions raised even further. Had you said Exxon, I think it would have meant people would have to be more cautious about the conclusions being drawn in the article. I know that you’ve said that isn’t very scientific thinking, but there’s where you are mistaken. This type of evaluation of data is entirely within the reasonable approach for lay-people suggested by Carl Sagan in his Baloney Detection Kit – know the sources and is there corrobaration.

Inductive versus deductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning: we start with observations and build hypotheses. From specific instances we infer trends and general principles. Since Carl Popper this approach has gotten a bad rap, but it is still acceptable a one approach of many to many scientists.

Deductive reasoning: we start with a hypothesis and look for a test that can falsify it. If the data falsify it, then the hypothesis is incorrect and, therefore, can be rejected.

There is nothing wrong inherently in using inductive reasoning as one of the approaches. It only becomes a problem when you don’t do deduction as well. Your criticism of my approach as inductive, is just name calling. I know you’ll say you didn’t call me these things that you were just labelling the behaviour etc. But there is a tacit implication being made in the way you bandy these things around.

Pat, you have suggested quite frequently here that by drawing the conclusion that increased CO2 production, observed climactic changes and observed ecological events (ice-caps melting etc.) are anthropogenic, people are being ideological. Can you explain why with the same set of observations, your conclusion that global warming is NOT due to our use of fossil fuels, is not also an ideological stance? I would argue that it is even more ideological than the conclusion of most climate researchers. It is a view that is being held DESPITE the evidence.

You seem to hold the ideological belief that climate researchers who hold the view that global warming is man-made are chicken-littles, that they are misleading us or that they have ulterior “green” (socialist?) motives. I know you haven’t come right out and said that in so-many words, but the feeling tone of what you write is that you think there is some large scale deception going on.

By the way, your off-hand characterization of Saul’s work as , “fatuous sociological cherry-picking” is contemptuous. I tried to convey some of the thesis of a 300 page book and I perhaps didn’t do it as well as I might in two paragraphs. He would agree with you that ideology keeps us from being clear-sighted, he further observed that corporatism is the new ideology and I can assure you he has a firm grip history through his study of the classics.

Now, I really have to get back to cleaning the garage before my wife gets home. And let me head off a criticism that is likely to come my way sooner or later. My field of study is psychology and I almost reacted to the “sociological cherry-picking” personally. I know you folks in the so-called “hard-sciences” like to look down on us in the social scientists. But I’m hardened to it, my son the earth scientist daily likes to remind me that what I study is”pseudoscience”.

Barry

What’s this need about correcting people’s grammar in blog posts all about?

You have written quite a bit of stuff here. I don’t have time to reply in detail to it. Your article has provided the impetus to do a lot more reading on the subject, so I thank you for that. In the scheme of things, though, I’ll be surprised if Pat Franks’ article in Skeptic magazine will make much of a dint in the climate science community – for the most part I suspect they are quite aware of the limits of their methods. That is not to say that the science is junk-science, only that there are methodological problems in any science.

I think we have gotten off track here so let me review some of the observations in climate science that are causing people to be a tad concerned about that state of planet earth.

Observed Climate Changes:

1. Greater number of warm spells (heat waves) in N.A. since 1950.
2. Fewer cold spells in last 10 years since records have been kept.
3. Increased numbers of severe amounts of precipitation in recent decades.
4. Regional droughts on the rise throughout N.A.
5. Substantial increases in the number and intensity of tropical storm activity – increased sea temperature the likely cause
6. Northward shift in the tracks of strong low-pressure areas over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. (This trend is covered well in Calvin’s book and indicates that global warming is shifting the patterns of ocean currents.)
7. More extreme height of waves in Atlantic and Pacific oceans, likely due to increased severity of storms.

Major Indicators of Global warming:

1. The average observed surface temperature of the earth (measured on land and sea) has increased by 0.6 in 20th century.
2. 20th century likely the warmest century in 1000 years.
3. Temperatures have risen more rapidly in last 8 km of the atmosphere (where you’d expect to find greenhouse effect and not greater sun intensity as the likely causal factor).
4. Global snow and ice cover has decreased substantially in past substantially (both alpine and polar ice decreases) since the 1960′s
5. Increase in sea levels by .1 and .2 meters in 20th century.

Increased of CO2 emissions

1. Rise from 312 ppm in 1958 to 375 ppm in 2005. That is a 20% increase in 4 decades. The data comes from Dave Keeling’s research at Mona Loa. It’s referred to as the Keeling curve and is a well documented finding. To suggest that a) the CO2 rise is “natural” and that it has nothing to do with man’s activity and that it won’t likely result in global rises in temperature is to run counter to the established theory of greenhouse warming. Simply put, you increase the levels of CO2 (or any greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere and you will heat things up.

2. Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels have increased exponentially between 1850 and the start of the 21st century (see Marland, G., T.A. Boden, and R. J. Andres. 2007. The increase is from near zero in 1800 to 8 billion metric ton in 2004, with the biggest rate of increase occurring since 1950. This just happens to coincide with some of the climate changes noted above. It’s frankly absolute nonsense to suggest that there isn’t a link here and that it doesn’t need to be taken very seriously.

3. It is here where Pat’s observations about the model of temperature change have some relevance. One of the approaches that has been taken in the field is to effect a comparison between various data projections. What would the trend line look like with or without man’s contribution (after all us pumping 8 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year may indeed be trivial). The findings of the modelling have shown that the best fit model is that the rising of the earth’s temperature is best predicted when man’s contribution is left in the equation. Pat I think that what you are saying is that the models confuse precision with accuracy and that we should therefore reject the findings out of hand. But I think that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

We still have the observed man-made production of 8 billion metric tons of CO2 per year to account for, and we still have various climactic and ecological changes happening that are changing the balances of which life on the planet depends. Imply that I’m an ancient if you like, but at a crime scene like this, I’m going to start my investigation with the guy with the carbon stained hands. Yes, your observations about the model are important and we need to correct the methodology, but we don’t abandon the investigation when we have a prime suspect in the room.

Barry

Barry, you wrote, “I’m sorry that you have taken offence with my remarks.

I didn’t take offense, Barry. You have no personal knowledge of me and so your personal disparagements are groundless. I was dismayed that after so much conversation, you would end at your start position, namely with an unfair and prejudicial claim that my conscious intent is to obscure.

“My intent was to look as rationally as I could the issues being presented through the articles in Skeptic magazine.”

Was it? Then how did you end with an irrational view of my intentions? And on what rational grounds did you maintain it after our conversation here? In your first post, you wrote that you understood the “argument about accuracy and precision” in my Skeptic article. If you understood that, then you should have understood that the IPCC is misrepresenting precision as accuracy. And that didn’t give you rational pause?

“(By the way, I have corrected the name to “Center” from “Project”.)”

You wrote, “To be honest, I think that both your article and Calvin’s article fail in that they are written by people who are not experts in the field being reported on…

I can’t speak for Calvin, of course, but my article was on error analysis, not on climate science as your argument would require. I am quite qualified to write something on sources of error and their magnitude. Virtually all scientists would be so-qualified.

“…and neither of the articles were accepted for publication through peer review.”

Did you read the Acknowledgments? It lists all the people who volunteered to review the article prior to submission. At least five of them were highly qualified professionals; three of them were climate physicists. Not only that, but Skeptic sent the article to two further climate scientists who reviewed the article prior to a decision for acceptance. I was required to produce a detailed response to their comments, and did so. The Skeptic article was as well peer-reviewed as most articles published in science journals.

“…In Calvin’s article, however, there has been some attempt to review data presented by scientists who are experts in the field.”

It’s an involuntary irony you should write that, given the extensive references to the climate science literature in both my article and in the SI. Look again. Was that selective blindness an indication of your rational intent?

You wrote, “I have maintained in this discussion from the outset that I have not been convinced that whether the models of global warming are accurate or not makes much of a difference on the ground.”

I know. You make complex conclusions based on inductive generalization. Just as the ancients decided that the sun rotated around Earth, because, after all, it ineluctably floated across the sky. The moon, too. And the planets, and the whole universe.

But science doesn’t work like that. In science, evidence takes its meaning only from a falsifiable theory. I’ve pointed that out to you several times. It’s not a mistake, and it’s not a triviality. It’s the central part of the methodology. And you continually ignore it, presumably because it’s so easy to grasp the linear trend of CO2 and temperature (except, of course, that this so-compelling trend has been missing in action for 10 years now).

The entire basis to suppose excess CO2 is dangerously warming the climate rests on climate models. But if climate models are unreliable then there is no reason to suppose they are right in making that connection. And if there is nothing in the observable behavior of Earth climate to suppose that anything untoward is presently happening, then your entire alarm is empty.

Your position is indistinguishable from chicken-littlism, Barry. It has no rational merit.

“Direct observations of what is happening to things in the real world are much more relevant to what, in practice, needs to happen.”

And how do you interpret what is happening by “direct observations“? Is preferential assignment by Barry Cull sufficient? Because that’s all it is, Barry.

“You have called this an ideological view and quite frankly I think this is patently unfair.”

That’s a mischaracterization. I reacted to this, in your previous post: “I wholeheartedly agree with the point you make that investing time and energy going down the wrong line of investigation is a waste of time and resources. I am unclear, however, what the difference would mean in behaviour change …The strategy for change would be the same,…”

I called that an ends justifies means view, and so it is. And then I pointed out that ends justifying means is typical of ideologies. I didn’t write your inductivism is ideological. I didn’t even write that your views were ideological. I wrote that your implicit ends justify means argument is one that is used by the ideological. Please be more careful.

And by the way, the strategy of removing CO2 will not be the same as a clean-up of pollution. The former will involve sequestering CO2, which will be enormously expensive, it will involve forced emission reductions, which will be impoverishing, and it will involve cap-and-trade which will reward inefficient economies and enrich the financial class. None of these are calculated to do anything to abate pollution, and we already know that poverty exacerbates both pollution and population.

“There is little controversy that glacial ice is melting both in the alpine and polar regions of the world, weather patterns are becoming more erratic and the biosphere is losing species at an alarming rate.”

If that’s due to warming, and the warming isn’t due to human-produced CO2, then what should be done about it? And, of course, we have it on good grounds from your fiat judgment of the meaning of direct observations that the warming is due to human-produced CO2. Does it worry you at all that glaciers melted back during the Roman Warm Period, too? In the Alps, at least as far back as they are now; perhaps more. In the Andes as well. And we’ve already been over the relict Medieval forests in the Canadian Far North. Presumably, that knowledge doesn’t bear your rational consideration.

“This isn’t ideology, it is observable and it is really happening.”

Ideology shows up in the interpretation, not in the facts. How are you coming to a judgment that human-produced CO2 is causing these facts?

“In addition to these things, the amount of CO2 production has increased because of global levels of industrialization. We know that increased CO2 levels result in more heat energy being trapped within the atmosphere.”

“Are we 100% certain that all of the rise in global warming is due to man’s activity? No. Are we reasonably certain that at least some of it is and that by reducing our dependence on Big Oil and Gas we can stabilize and perhaps reduce some of the delirious effects? Yes.”

That last is also “No,” Barry. Here’s an expert view for you: D. H. Douglass, et al. (2007) “A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions” International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc 1-9

They tested the predictions of 22 state-of-the-art climate models, looking for the predicted signature of AGW in the tropical atmosphere. Here’s a bit of their conclusion: “We have tested the proposition that greenhouse model simulations and trend observations can be reconciled. Our conclusion is that the present evidence, with the application of a robust statistical test, supports rejection of this proposition. … [T]he models are seen to disagree with the observations. We suggest, therefore, that projections of future climate based on these models be viewed with much caution.”

Did you notice that sentence? “The models are seen to disagree with the observations.” So the models that predict human-caused global warming predict things that are not observed. You’re the “direct observations” guy. What now? Believe anyway?

Here’s another one: D. Koutsoyiannis, et al. (2008) “On the credibility of climate predictions” Hydrological Sciences–Journal–des Sciences Hydrologiques, 53(4) 671-685. This, from their abstract: “Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that models can perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported.”

That is, climate models are unreliable. They are unable to say that human-produced CO2 will do anything noticeable to climate. They are unable to predict the evolution of climate. Climate is not well understood and the relatively small energy inputs from increased CO2 could go somewhere else than in temperature. And in fact, there is nothing particularly anomalous going on with Earth climate. That means there is no objective basis whatever for your claims about human-caused climate warming, for Al Gore’s claims, or for the alarmist bugling from the IPCC and its allied scientists.

You wrote, “Where we perhaps disagree Pat, is on the value of science as an endeavour.”

Science is your only hope to objectively establish your claim about CO2 and climate, Barry. If you disparage it, you’re left with nothing except personal subjective opinion. Is your personal opinion meritorious enough to change the course of civilization?

“I think the matter is taken up well by Ricard and Thuan in their book “The Quantum and the Lotus”. In discussing the relationship between the scientific and the Buddhist world views, the authors point out that our understanding of the world is enhanced through the application of the scientific method. Ricard, the Buddhist philosopher, brings the question of what we know back the central question of how it serves our ability to improve the quality of our lives. Using scientific data in a way that insists that we must be 100% certain before we act may ultimately make us more sure of what we know, but if we fail to act in a crisis of global proportions, how has it served us?”

Sorry to say, that argument is a red herring. The central issue is that science never claims 100% certainty in anything, including in factual truths. Hence reported uncertainty limits. And if there is a crisis of global proportions, what good does it do to close off debate about the cause through an insistent ignorance? That’s what’s going on with respect to AGW. No one knows but many, including you, have jumped to an insupportable conclusion. And willy-nilly, you’re so sure of your mongered conclusion that any polemical excess is enmoralized in pursuit of your end.

In other news, in every venue including the opportunity for creative introspection and the production of humane values, science has improved the quality of our lives better than has any religion, including Buddhism, and the religions had a several thousand year head-start.

You wrote, “And Pat I agree with you that unwavering adherence to ideology is dangerous.”

I’m glad to read that. So, explain to me again how it is that after our long conversation, and my attempts to clarify the analysis for you, you ended up concluding that my conscious intent is to obscure and confuse? Was it not-ideology that induced your not-change of mind?

“A number of years ago there was a wonderful book written by John Ralston Saul called “The Unconscious Civilization”. The central theme in the book is that as a society we no longer foster disinterested observers (perhaps one of the philosophical trends in the “enlightenment” that led to the creation of universities). In fact, Ralston Saul argues that the ideology of “corporatism” has made disinterest a hard philosophical position to take. Big corporations have big interests at the heart of all decisions that they make. I’m not suggesting a conspiracy here by the way, people within the corporations may indeed have the best of motives in mind – the fact is the survival of the corporate entity just takes over. Corporatism, it is pointed out, makes it nearly impossible for us to make decisions that are in the public good. We can choose between Pepsi and Coke, but are unconscious to the decisions that really matter in our lives.”

Corporations, in the sense you and John Ralson Saul apparently mean, are merely human organizations motivated by a common economic agenda. But corporations are much broader than economics. They are any group of people organized to a common agenda. Armies are incorporations. So are Temple-states. So is Greenpeace. So was the Roman Senate. So is the Roman Catholic Church. So is Iran’s Mullahcracy. Every single organized human group with a specific group-end is a corporation. Every single one of them works for self-preservation. Every one of them rewards group-think. All of them corporately put public good second to their own survival.

Modern economic corporations are bringing nothing socially new to modern life, except the increased efficiency of advertising and mass communication. But every ancient stele boasting of the glory and conquests of King Ishblah carried the same intent, less efficiently done.

Corporations don’t control people’s thinking, no matter that they try. Most people act in their own perceived best interest. They always have and always will — so long as Earth is populated by wild-type humans. Frankly, Saul’s thesis, presuming you have conveyed it accurately, is mostly fatuous sociological cherry-picking. It’s as though human organizational history didn’t exist.

You wrote, “There is another ideology that is problematic, I think. Let’s call it the ideology of scientism.”

“The basic ideology here is that somehow science can be applied to all areas of our understanding.”

Just for fun, apart from your own personal experience, relate to me some understanding you have and can communicate without benefit of science.

“This is, of course, just not so – there are things that are unknowable,…

Are you telling me that you have an inventory of all that is knowable, and can pronounce about what is out of bounds? Because that’s what your assertion means. To suppose that some things are unknowable is to claim to know the intrinsic bounds of knowledge. But no one can know that. No one can know even if such a possibility exists.

“for example, how did the universe get here?”

Suppose I answered that I don’t know. Would that indicate such knowledge is forever unattainable? More generally, at what level can ignorance be said to be irremediable? As we are always speaking from ignorance concerning what we do not yet know, how is it possible to claim that further knowledge concerning those things is forever unattainable? It’s ignorance speaking to ignorance. Your proposition of the inherently unknowable is unsustainable on analysis. The entire proposition of the knowable is necessarily open-ended.

And the universe? Quantum mechanics says that it began from a spontaneous fluctuation below the Planck limit, as allowed by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Limit theory. Try googling Andrei Linde and the Kandinsky Universe.

“I’m not suggesting that we fill the void with speculation or fanciful religious myths, we just have to realize we can’t know the answer.”

As noted above, that position is ignorance arguing for continued ignorance. It’s intellectually unsustainable.

“Scientism suggests that we will gain 100% certainty in our understanding of things through objective means.

So far, I have seen no signs that view is not true, with the necessary caveat about 100%. Science is methodologically modest. And after reading complaints about scientism in many places and times, I’ve decided that its motivational force, largely among philosophers, is a resentment that philosophism has been overturned by objective knowledge, and among Humanists, its motivational force is largely a recrudescent hostility in evidence from the earliest days of science. I suspect Humanist resentment arises partly because the opportunity for egotistically felicitous opinion-spinning has been so thoroughly curtailed by the advent of fact-based thinking.

“I have a limited knowledge of quantum physics, but I understand we are increasingly learning that subjective realities play a large part in altering the nature of “reality”.

That understanding is wrong. Apart from the physical imposition of political and personal action, subjective realities play zero part in the evolution physical (what you call natural) reality. Most such claims rest upon ignoring that quantum processes can go backwards in time.

You wrote, “Science is a human endeavour ultimately. Let’s not reify it and try to make it something that exists outside of that context.”

Science is a human endeavor, it’s true. However, objective knowledge lies outside of subjective human meanings. Objective knowledge carries its own autogenic meanings. As a practical matter, if that were not true nothing would work. As a theoretical matter, theories written in mathematical language, or using strict terminologies, are invariantly monosemous. So far our examination of the universe, out to about 13 billion light years now, shows this to be true.

“It is little more than a method of knowing – the application of reason to a problem.”

It is much more than application of reason to a problem. You applied your reason to AGW and have come up with an entirely incorrect conclusion. The lesson is that your assumptions are wrong. You assume inductive generalizations produce reliable conclusions, and that correlation proves causation. Reasoning from that, you have made serious conclusory mistakes.

Look at the reasoning applied by Thomas Aquinas. It’s a hugely rational corpus, nevertheless full of deductive nonsense. Reason alone is not enough. Reason needs analytical (not naive) falsification to make it into science. Analytical theory means a logically self-consistent rational construct, using necessary approximations, that makes falsifiable predictions. Not the ad hoc assertions of an invented claim (i.e., the moon is made of green cheese), but the deductions from a self-coherent and testable hypothesis. All the approximations are open to refinement or disproof. Likewise the ladder of logical steps in the hypothesis.

Science is open to the cold winds of entirely unanticipated fact. Its potential propositions cannot be deduced from initial premises. It has no initial premises or axioms. It does not assume the universe is understandable or orderly. It merely proceeds methodologically. It is an open system and is not limited by Godel’s Theorem.

“ But it is still a human activity and any findings need to be considered in light of questions about who is interested in the outcome of the findings.”

And what findings in light of a falsifiable theory are governed by someone’s desires and expectations? Can you provide a single example of such a case? Go ahead and ask anyone you like for an example of expectations governing a falsifiable result in science.

“This is especially important when the findings will influence public policy. Of course, all the other safe-guards within the scientific method need to be met as well such as replication of the results and peer review etc.”

You need to distinguish between fraud and science, Barry. Fraudulent science is subject to suspicion of the kind you mention — who benefits. There have been far too many examples of scientific fraud. But valid science is as indifferent to who benefits, as nature is indifferent to who lives and who dies.

You wrote, “(By the way Pat, just one more issue I should raise here. It says in the Skeptic by-line that you are the author of more than 50 peer-reviewed papers. Don’t you think this is a tad misleading when your field of study is not directly that of climate change?”

How is that any more misleading than the biography you have on your web-site? Did you mention your professional expertise to misleadingly give your essays a spurious import? If not, why should you suspect me of such a motive for providing mine? Skeptic always asks for an author biography. That’s mine. If anything, it was comparatively brief.

“I suspect that if your field of study were, indeed, climate change, we’d have seen some of those articles referenced in the paper.)”

The Skeptic article is about error analysis not about climate. Your qualm is irrelevant. It would be irrelevant in any case. Science is not Humanities or hermeneutics in that it does not produce ratiocinations dependent for standing on the reputation of the author.

Scientific arguments are judged on their own merits.The Skeptic article deserves no less than that, and I expect no more than that. So far, in the criticisms I’ve encountered, that standard has rarely been met and not yet at all here.