Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Mathturbation -- Richard Saumarez joins the circle

Amazingly, Judith Curry's appetite for group mathturbation remains unslaked. First Frank Lemke, and now yet another electrical engineer comes forward with a mathematical trick to blow open this whole "global warming" scam (which he claims to have no opinion about -- but unfortunately is lying.) Observe the smoothness with which he slides past the whole "not a scientist" thing:
As Professor Curry asked me to give some biographical detail, I should explain that after medical school, I did a PhD in biomedical engineering, which before BME became an academic heavy industry, was in an electrical engineering department.
What was that last part, Richard? I think you mumbled a bit at the end. When pressed about the whole not-a-climate-scientist thing, Richard gets testy:
Should we have a point of view? You apparantly think not. Interesting. I wonder how satellites work, how measuring instruments work, how computers work, how the internet works? I wonder how the lights turn on when you throw a switch? I wonder how much of the mathematical techniques used in climate modelling stems from engineering analysis of physical problems. Clearly engineers have had no input in this and are unqualified in every respect.
Shades of Socrates, no?
At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom . . .

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