Now Mann can prove us all wrong. This is the beauty of the scientific method. He can call out the future temperatures and, like Babe Ruth, tell the audience exactly where the ball will go. Well let’s see if he can do it.
Actually, no, he can’t. Nobody can.
In philosophy of science, there is always a tension between even the best science and Humean skepticism that denies anything is ever proven. Will the sun rise in the east tomorrow? Well, it always has, according to certain rules, so the odds are pretty good, but *certain*?
Science is perhaps at its best when it can accurately “predict” the past. Of course, that is description, analysis, not prediction. And then when it does make predictions and these are confirmed, then we’re pretty pleased with it, and may come to *use* the predictions and trust it as much as we trust anything.
But if you PROVE that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, well, the strength of the proof still must be confirmed by events.
Sooooo after this pedantic little rant, so what? Well, after sufficient brush fires in Malibu, residents start taking precautions. Doesn’t take any rocket science to drive the action. And, you see, that’s why the great unwashed can buy into this global warming thing, I guess, because we *have* seen some warming, we *have* seen some CO2 increases, so now they are ready to act on PAST events – and are not even looking at the “science”. But that same Humean skepticism tells us, “Hey, wait, maybe the past evidence is only of something that’s *over*”, just as some Malibu resident is always able to argue with himself, “so, um, maybe I *don’t* have to reroof with tile instead of wood shakes, maybe there won’t be more brush fires, …”.
OK, have I confused everyone sufficiently? Good! Then you are on the road to becoming a scientist. But I should really have composed this offline to make my points a little better. Bottom line is I got uncomfortable by the suggestion AGW could ever be really “proved”, not the way Algore talks about things, that kind of proof just does not occur in (good) science.
