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Sunday, April 15, 2012

Snow on the ground in April in Alaska?

This is awkward in ways that only a man who has too little knowledge but far too much confidence can be.

Being a skeptic doesn't mean we will ignore evidence for the sake of taking a contrary position. Doing so doesn't make anyone a skeptic, it makes them uninformed, and quite possibly uninformable.

Cf. Real Climate or, if you are, like me, less "trained as a scientist" and more "likes to watch videos" (not un-mutual conditions, please note), there's some very accessible critiques on blogs and YouTube which cover this exact subject. and is occasionally covered by the Bad Astronomy blog.

Granted, it's difficult to understand subjects as complex as this as a whole unless one is very well-read (and it's obvious from Medred's writing that in spite of his "science training" he just isn't). It's very easy to find denialist talking points like these everywhere on the web (this doesn't grant them any merit). So this so-called "skepticism" is ubiquitous. And, like creationist talking points they have been refuted in some cases for decades.

And so I find articles of this sort frustrating.

When Craig wants us to be real and accept that his statistical and climatological illiteracy gifts him with an ability to  represent reality, I don't see any reason to take him seriously.

(Yes, I updated. I'm still really busy, but, as ever, I'm a little more actively blogging over at Cyrillic Typewriter.)