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Advice to Climate Alarmists

July 30, 2008, 11:28 pm

If you are going to lecture skeptics on science, it is probably a good practice not to begin with an analogy that gets the most basic physics incorrect (hint:  the fact that falling objects of different masses fall at the same rate has been "settled science" since the late 1500s).  Also, using the children's book "If you give a mouse a cookie..." as proof of the existence of positive feedback loops will not be very persuasive to practitioners of big-boy physical sciences and other non-post-modernist researchers.

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Category: Climate
  • http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/ Speedmaster

    I'm reading Climate Confusion by Roy Spencer now. Highly Recommended!

  • http://hertzlinger.blogspot.com Joseph Hertzlinger

    If you give a mouse a cookie?

    A better analogy: If you give an environmentalist movement a regulatory agency...

  • Anon

    Come on Coyote, you know darn well that air resistance makes all the difference in the world. Since the original article was discussing snowballs, we can assume that there was an atmosphere.

    The real world is a heck of a lot more complicated than Physics 101, as I'm sure you learned from those ME courses at the E-Quad.

    And I'm by no means a climate alarmist. I just think that in your enthusiasm to make fun of climate alarmists, you stretch a bit too much.

  • Anon

    And before someone jumps on my case, no, I do not think the original article was some model of scientific correctness. It was muddled, etc. I just don't think it was so wrong that it makes a worthy target of ridicule. Because of that, your ridicule itself is a bit off the mark, and so then falls flat.

  • Mesa Econoguy

    The mouse-cookie analogy is most appropriately an economic multiplier example, not a physical feedback example.

    Thank you for re-positing on this, as I did not feel appropriate commenting on that thread on the skeptic site.

    It turned into a fantastic discussion of actual science. Perhaps the debate has finally begun…

  • L Nettles

    And do you think Al Gore is likely to stop using that lame frog in the pot of water myth? http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2006/09/the_boiledfrog_myth_stop_the_l.php#more