Thursday, January 28, 2010

That Was Then; This Is Now

UPDATE: below

June 26, 1997 -- President Bill Clinton, addressing the United Nations:
The science is clear and compelling. . . We humans are changing the global climate.
November 25, 2009 -- Carol Browner, Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, at a White House press gaggle:
[W]e have 2,500 of the world's foremost scientists who are in absolute agreement that [warming] is a real problem and that we need to do something and we need to do something as soon as possible.
January 24, 2010 -- Professor Christopher Field, new co-chairman of the IPCC working group on climate impacts, quoted in the Times (London):
The 2007 [IPCC] study should be seen as a snapshot of what was known then. Science is progressive. If something turns out to be wrong we can fix it next time around.
Conclusion: Climategate made the data debatable. Now, the syllogism's shifted. As Glenn Reynolds says:
The science is settled, until it isn’t anymore.
So, the result remains--whether settled or snapshot, climate science is forever un-falsifiable.

MORE:

In his State of the Union address, President Obama himself favored non-falsifiability:
I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But here's the thing -- even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future.

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