Scales of Justice
[image credit: Wikipedia]
Unless there are accepted ways of testing for attribution of climate effects (e.g. human-caused, natural variability or a measureable mixture), who can be sure they know the truth? Reliance on climate models, known to be strongly biased towards levels of warming that are not observed, can’t be the way forward.
Some seem to think man-made global warming is proven. Others believe there’s no evidence for it.
Neither is correct, argues John McLean at American Thinker.
Evidence exists, but, as people familiar with courts of law will know, what’s submitted as evidence is not automatically proof.
Firstly, a judge might decide that what is submitted as evidence is inadmissible because it’s not evidence at all (e.g., irrelevant, opinion, hearsay, obtained by unacceptable methods) or of negligible value.
Secondly, lawyers for the two parties ask questions that test the credibility of the evidence, and the witnesses are compelled to answer those questions. Finally, it’s up to the jury to decide if the evidence is conclusive.
None of this happens with scientific “evidence.”
Chapter 1 of the IPCC’s 2013 climate assessment report describes evidence as “data, mechanistic understanding, theory, models, expert judgment.”
Regarding the IPCC’s claims of man-made warming, I don’t think these amount to much at all. Many of the data are uncertain, the “mechanistic understanding” says only what might be happening, and the theory might not be true in the real world.
Models are not evidence, especially when they have not been verified, do not accurately include all factors, and are weighted toward the prime “suspect.” Expert judgment is merely opinion, and opinion is usually accepted as evidence only when applied to very specific issues in court cases.
Some people seem to think the IPCC’s evidence is conclusive proof. This would be like the police presenting evidence and then the judge jailing the person, with no court case in between to test the evidence.
Other people seem to think they are capable of evaluating the scientific evidence for man-made warming. In reality, probably less than 5% of the population has the appropriate education to understand the issues, and even fewer have the interest in exploring climate matters in depth.
With no examination of the evidence, we don’t know the truth of the matter. It makes no sense to dismiss alternative ideas or to label someone a denier when the truth hasn’t been established, but that’s what has happened.
The IPCC can’t examine the evidence it gathers because the organization’s charter is to report on the human influence on climate and what might be done about it. It was told to consider just one “suspect,” so, naturally, it tries to find evidence to support a case against that suspect.
Continued here.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
March 28, 2019 at 02:52PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 