re: #247 SixDegrees

Yes, and I’ve made that point explicitly many times, in response to folks who took my criticism of coding style and data management practices as support for the position that the information produced was, somehow, wrong. Despite being extremely careful to state that it’s impossible to tell from the limited sample of code I’ve looked at exactly what it does, let alone whether it’s correct. And I’ve provide a reasonable - and completely speculative - explanation for the code that’s caused so much consternation with it’s comments about “fudge factors” and other remarks: it looks to me like a piece of plotting code, with the data scaled by three-quarters to make it fit in the graphing window.

Finally, I would not call the flaming twits on the side of AGW scientists. I would call them flaming twits. Ludwig is an excellent example, who claimed just a couple days ago that science can never be questioned in any way, that it is beyond examination or investigation - about the most unscientific attitude it is possible for me to imagine.

No I never claimed that. I claimed truthfully that we know what we know and that some things are actually settled. You then went on a stupid, misguided smear like you are doing now. I know it is easier for you to make stuff up about me and shout insults then look at the science, but I’m not going to let you get away with it.

So let’s look into this idea of yours that science is never settled and put it to rest once and for all.

The Earth is round. This is settled science.

You see once data gets sufficiently dense, you run itno the issue that all the predictions made by the model that came true, well, still have to be tru by whatever would come and replace it.

When you think about it, the amount of evidence that we have that the Earth is round is so much, that for it lo and behold not to be, but still in the new paradigm explain everything we know that pointed to roundness, becomes nearly impossible.

I mean sure, we might not be on the Earth at all, we might be in the Matrix… then indeed, the Earht, which was never real was never round… But it really is at that point with the science. Only something like invoking the Matrix could consistently with everything else we know, make the Earth not round.

You foolishly wrote about Einstein replacing Newton too.

Did you know that Einstein did not replace Newton?

Really, Newton’s equations are contained by Einstein’s. In the weak field limit, they are all that is left. Newton is still right. He just didn’t get the whole picture - and unless you are near a really big honking gravitational field you need not pull out Einstein. Newton is quite sufficient to get to the moon and back. Does this mean he was wrong suddenly or that science replaced him, like you would like to claim?

No not at all.

There is a reason that we still teach Newton after all of these centuries in science class, but Aristotle is reserved for the philosophy dept.