Tête-à-Tête-Tête

was not reported in the popular news, and some reasons why things always work this way.

[rollingeyes] Yeah, the world is really lacking in unquestioned global warming news.

Al Gore was mostly right

Mostly?
Odd, since the “debate is over”, one would think that the predictions and pontifications would be 100% correct. Veddy intedesting. So, “mostly” is now part of the “science”. Stored into long-term memory. I’m guessing this is how the now-getting-close-to-9-years-from-point-of-no-return-commandment is weaseled away.

How’s the left handling the ‘carbon offsets purchasing is “mostly” a scam’ story?

Mostly?
Odd, since the “debate is over”, one would think that the predictions and pontifications would be 100% correct. Veddy intedesting. So, “mostly” is now part of the “science”.

First, we are talking about Al Gore - he’s playing the role of a communicator, not a scientist. He only communicated the science “mostly” correctly (and in this case the case would have been stronger if he had made it more correctly).

But, funnily, yes… Mostly is all science ever does. There is a popular conception that it is like theology - that it confers absolute certainty. It is unlike theology in that regard, because it only ever confers degrees of certainty with an implicit contingent. It is also unlike theology in that it justifies that certainty empirically.

How’s the left handling the ‘carbon offsets purchasing is “mostly” a scam’ story?

I’ve not seen a convincing case made on this score. I’ve heard some political ideologues claim it to be so - often without making an effort to understand the idea behind carbon offsets - but I’ve not been exposed to any strong arguments in favor of the view that they are “mostly” a scam.

Here’s a realclimate article on carbonfund.org, an offsets trading company.

First, we are talking about Al Gore - he’s playing the role of a communicator, not a scientist.

I thought the debate was over? Not “mostly” over, but OVER. Now, it’s “mostly”?

Mostly is all science ever does.

No, my friend, science isn’t consensus, which is why this has been overblown from the beginning. Pointing to consensus & calling it “science” leaves one in the later position of saying “well, he was MOSTLY right, so that’s good enough”. What’s a few hundred billion here or there as long as they got most of it right (and did bupkis while they were in the admin for 8 straight years)?

I’ve heard some political ideologues claim it to be so - often without making an effort to understand the idea behind carbon offsets

The WSJ (among the most liberal papers but with the single most conservative editorial page…go figure) did a story on it about a week ago. Most of it have proven to be pretty much bogus & renders little more than good feelings for those paying for the non-existent offsets. Feeling, whoa, whoa….:)

No, my friend, science isn’t consensus, which is why this has been overblown from the beginning.

I will reiterate: Mostly is all science ever does. The phrase “the debate is over” is a means of communicating the fact that all the sources of data we have now have been sufficiently analyzed, and there is enough independent verification already, that scientists can see no point in debating it further. If/when new sources of data emerge, the debate will doubtlessly restart.

That’s just as true of the quantum physics that make your computer work as it is of climate change.

It’s something people just have to get used to. Science isn’t a voice from on high speaking eternal truths. It’s something that you just have to understand. I can refer you to any number of scientists who will say the same thing.

No, science isn’t consensus (though as I mentioned before, it plays a role)… The importance of consensus is not to science, but to me and you who are trying to figure out what the scientists have learned, and what we can have confidence in. Take something like relativistic time dilation for instance. Chances are you and I know next to nothing about it except what we might have picked up in our general physics classes or read in popular literature (both of which, in turn, rely on some group of scientists for their information). We certainly don’t have the means at our disposal to empirically verify the effect. Our options are very limited. We can remain completely agnostic about time dilation, shrug our shoulders and say, “that’s for better minds than me”… Or we can have a certain amount of certainty that there exists such an effect… ONLY because we can identify a consensus of scientists who say they have verified it.

Time dilation isn’t very important except to scientists. It makes no difference whether we acknowledge it or fail to acknowledge it: our lives will be the same either way. The same isn’t true of climate science. In that case, shrugging our shoulders and remaining agnostic may be bad for us. Of course it may also be bad for us to take our other option and trust the scientific consensus… but we don’t have a third option. And, historically speaking, over the past 200 years after a scientific consensus emerges on an issue under study, the betting man will recognize the odds favor trusting it.

All of this is beside the point under discussion, but very important to understanding what we are talking about when we talk about science. It has nothing to do with Al Gore being “mostly” correct. I stress again that he communicated the science mostly correctly - and it was his communication, not the science, that was “mostly” correct in the post I made. Al Gore’s mistake was probably an order of magnitude greater than the uncertainty in the actual climate science - and still small enough not to make a difference.

Sorry, it was the Financial Times, of all places.