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Reblogged: AGW "Demonstration" Iced

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Jack Kelly writes of a ship of AGW alarmist fools that is icebound in the Antarctic:

Aboard the vessel were 22 scientists headed by Chris Turney, a professor of climate change at the University of New South Wales, four journalists and 26 tourists.

By comparing their measurements with those taken by Australian explorer Sir Douglas Mawson in 1913, they hoped "to prove the East Antarctic ice sheet is melting," noted the
Australian
, a newspaper in Sydney.

...

There's more sea ice around Antarctica than at any time since the U.S. Snow and Data Center began keeping records in 1978.

"Mawson's ship was never icebound," the
Australian
noted. [minor format edits]

Kelly duly notes what this expedition was an obvious attempt to gloss over: that weather conditions taken out of context prove nothing one way or the other about climate change. As this attempt to dramatize a contention about climate blows up in the faces of its perpetrators, it seems opportune to point out something else they like to paper over: Even if it were smooth sailing for this ship of fools, that would in no way mean that their individual rights-violating political agenda logically follows. The solution to such a problem, as the joke might go, isn't "more government" any more than it is to "What are two and two?"

-- CAV

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  • 2 months later...

Disappointingly typical of the genre – driveby anti-science smear propaganda offered as foil to objective science.

 

While you may critique that particular voyage as overhyped or sceintifically unserious, the group was not out "to prove the East Antarctic ice sheet is melting", at least not according to their own claims before and after. That quote is what the conservative publication the Australian described the trip as, in order to better lampoon it. The state of Antarctic sea ice was known, and getting trapped in ice is a standard risk of any polar expedition. 

 

It is, perhaps, a summary of what is wrong with "objectivism" that anti-science smear factoids are considered more consistent with a commitment to objective rationality than the scientific method itself is...

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It is, perhaps, a summary of what is wrong with "objectivism" that anti-science smear factoids are considered more consistent with a commitment to objective rationality than the scientific method itself is...

 

Try reading that blog again. 

 

It doesn't matter to any of us either way if what climate scientists claim is true or not.  

What we do know is that the government is the tool of plutocrats and vainglorious politicians who couldn't solve the problem even if they wanted to. 

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Naive anarchism. Rent seeking is of course a major hazard, and a reason to restrict government, but there is a proven track record that environmental issues can be successfully addressed (to net gain, and net increase in liberty). Given the stakes here, there isn't a rational alternative, though market-friendly brainstorming should be central (capitalists do themselves no favors by lining up in the irrelevant anti-science ranks.)

 

What part of the blog do you think I missed?

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Naive anarchism. Rent seeking is of course a major hazard, and a reason to restrict government, but there is a proven track record that environmental issues can be successfully addressed (to net gain, and net increase in liberty). Given the stakes here, there isn't a rational alternative, though market-friendly brainstorming should be central (capitalists do themselves no favors by lining up in the irrelevant anti-science ranks.)

Now you're addressing global warming, rather than the post itself? You believe global warming is a major problem and caused by human beings?

What part of the blog do you think I missed?

Chris Turney's own reasons for the trips, as he has stated on his own web site. Do you mean to suggest this was a simple tourist sight-seeing trip? If not, forget the stated motivation stated by so-called anti-science blogs, and instead figure out your own best assessment of his motivation. Then, consider if your polemic is an over the top smear.
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Now you're addressing global warming, rather than the post itself? You believe global warming is a major problem and caused by human beings?

Chris Turney's own reasons for the trips, as he has stated on his own web site. Do you mean to suggest this was a simple tourist sight-seeing trip? If not, forget the stated motivation stated by so-called anti-science blogs, and instead figure out your own best assessment of his motivation. Then, consider if your polemic is an over the top smear.

 

My comment is clearly in reply to the prior post - government plutocrats "couldn't solve the problem even if they wanted to". But yes, the post is about global warming.

 

Regarding what you think I missed – that was my point, the blog does not refer to Turney's own reasons for the trip, it refers to a description of these reasons by the conservative news source the Australian. If you have a citation of Turney on his web site saying the trip was "to prove the East Antarctic ice sheet is melting", I will have to withdraw the claim that this is embellished. (Generally, scientists use satellite gravimetric analysis to assess the state of ice melt on the ice sheets; there is of course net melt on both poles.)

 

To make it a better mocking point for the ideological keyboard warriors, it needs to be about scientists out to verify that the ice is melting, then getting stuck in the ice (so funny how foolish scientists are!)

 

Turney's own words look more like this: "investigate the circulation of the Southern Ocean and its impact on the global carbon cycle and the potential for new records of past climate change using tree ring and peat sequences on the subantarctic islands", i.e. normal climate science talk.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/science/antarctica-live/2014/jan/04/antarctic-expedition-was-worth-it-chris-turney?CMP=twt_gu

 

Hence, "It is, perhaps, a summary of what is wrong with "objectivism" that anti-science smear factoids are considered more consistent with a commitment to objective rationality than the scientific method itself is." I think this was clear in the original post.

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