"Well, it hasn't happened"
Earlier this year, my sister kept trying to wind me up over the usual predictions of a busier Atlantic hurricane season than usual. Every year like clockwork, and she falls for it every time.
It's turned out a bit of a flop so far, leading this "climate expert" to explain why you should still totally believe us, you guys, the next time we try to rev you up. See, it didn't happen for us in the Atlantic because, ironically, the temperatures were too low. But they were high in the Pacific, and it's been pretty active out there! So we were in the ballpark, and besides, climate change can mean that it's colder, or hotter, or dryer, or wetter. Because science. Favorite line: "This is a good example of how climate change can change from place to place," a sentence construction that our Vice President might admire.
I was taught that a hypothesis that didn't pan out was disproven, but apparently the new model is for the hypothesis to be retained while the empirical evidence is set aside as coincidence. "If the water had warmed as we predicted, our other hypothesized predictions would have come true as well."
ReplyDeleteAnd they still cower away from putting climate change in its temporal context.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
My husband I were just discussing this. Years ago, the climate science said that global warming would produce more hurricanes. That didn't happen: we got fewer but one or two big ones. So then the climate science said now their models predicted fewer hurricanes but bigger ones. My PoliSci stats professor used to refer to that as torturing the data until it confessed.
ReplyDeleteIt's much like the con art practiced by horoscope sections in the newspaper. Do they still have those, or have they all gone to work as climate pundits?
ReplyDeleteIf the astrologists had gone to work as climate pundits, the climate predictions would be more accurate. :+)
ReplyDelete