A Racketeering Gimmick
> If the argument was that No skeptic could get published, then counter examples could be effective. Again with the search for a deductive argument. There are other effective ways to construct arguments than building deductive ones. Nordhaus does not exactly provides a counter-example anyway, only as his own testimony of how things work in climate science economics in general. But enough with that. It’s futile if I have to deal with unjustified disingenuousness. Let’s try this other way: Nordhaus has written an op-ed which, in my opinion, easily and completely bests the Sweet Sixteen’s. The Sweet Sixteen’s op-ed is just a notch above very crude propaganda. Just a notch. Nordhaus’ construction is not deductive. It’s an op-ed. He allowed himself liberties that he would need to complement were he to make the same argument in a more formal setting. So it’s not a KO. Just a wash out. Now, try to imagine the Sweet Sixteen’s op-ed in a more formal setting. I bet you can’t. Were it possible, ALL THE ARGUMENTS would have to be rewritten. Their op-ed was rude, argumentative, petty, and crass. It reminds me of semi-pro leagues of hockey, where the showcase is based on fights: > The LNAH has the unofficial reputation as the world’s toughest hockey league; a New York Times article stated that the league averaged 3.2 fights a game during the 2010-2011 season, compared with 0.6 fights in the National Hockey League. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligue_Nord-Américaine_de_Hockey *** The only solution I see to stop this incessant slug fest would that more writers of the quality of Nordhaus enter the debate. The same happens when John Nielsen-Gammon drives by: > Nick, thanks for hanging in there, and guaranteeing that somebody on this thread is mostly right. I’ll try to go all the way, with another example. [...] Lastly, I didn’t get any of this out of an applied statistics journal, so feel free to ignore it. http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/07/marcotts-dimple-a-centering-artifact/#comment-411240 Removing that article from the first page of CA took a few days of alketone plots. *** The most important matter in that Nordhaus-Sweet Sixteen’s exchange is that Nordhaus provides one of the most conservative economic model to evaluate the costs of climate change. He’s used by the members of the Guild of Honest Brokers all around the world. Nordhaus is one of yours, Denizens. (Go team!) As far as I am concerned, he’s your best archetype for the limits of justified disingenuousness you should seek. Perhaps the best bet you’ll ever get. Everything below his position risks being disingenuous simpliciter. (Hi Richard.) *** Now, perhaps it’s time to mention my own position about peerreviewlichurchur. I don’t care for it. For me, ArXiv is enough. Here’s an article that was posted on ArXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/math.DG/0211159 Here’s the background: > In November 2002, Perelman posted the first of a series of eprints to the arXiv, in which he claimed to have outlined a proof of the geometrization conjecture, of which the Poincaré conjecture is a particular case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman Now, I understand that we need some kind of QA for articles. In fact, having one’s article read and criticized should be considered a privilege. But anyone who has experience in fields where writing properly matters should attest that scientists might never have experienced what it is to deal with an hostile reviewer. We should stop quarrelling about commas and sucking up deep meaning for words written by people who were not trained to write. Parsomatics is fun, but it’s too easy. Here’s my friendly advice: continue on that path and you’ll get crushed. (Hi Lucia.) *** Anyway, the whole model sucks. Not because of the reviewing system, but because the whole publishing system should be revised. A racketeering gimmick, I say. So, we need to change everything. But how to proceed? I don’t know. All I know is that what’s happening right now won’t be it. *** Thank you very much for your concerns, w