Rhymes With Cars & Girls


Comment: I
February 15, 2008, 4:33 am
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Fire Megan McArdle continues to simply RIP Megan’s capillary to shreds with another great argument. This time, they deftly rebut Megan’s (semi tongue in cheek) post musing about ways to cool the atmosphere with what is essentially an argument from ignorance: the atmosphere is too COMPLEX to possibly know how doing anything will affect anything! Chaos, you see!

The person who I take it is supposed to be considered FMM’s resident scientist even cited the ridiculous Jeff-Goldblum-in-Jurassic-Park character as if that was supposed to lend credence to what he is saying, but I’m trying - I’m trying real hard - to let that slide. (Will his next post brag about how he can recognize a “UNIX system”?)

Anyway, I detected a slight inconsistency in this ‘we can’t possibly model the atmosphere it’s so COMPLEX’ point of view coming from someone who evidently believes1 in the predictions made by scientist-crafted computer models of the atmosphere, and said so.

1CORRECTION: The author of the piece Nutella claims to be a skeptic about claims of model-predicted climate change, so I seem to have misrepresented his views. I got the wrong impression from the fact that (despite the skepticism he claims to have) he writes as if climate-change claims are correct and reducing CO2 output is a worthwhile goal in itself. My mistake.



Feedback!
February 6, 2008, 2:14 am
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Yay! I’ve gotten some feedback about comments I made in the this thread. The blog seems to be devoted to, well, firing Megan McArdle (I’m more in favor of firing Joe Morgan myself, but I do applaud the passion behind this sort of thing either way, just on general principle ;-) ) so do click on over to Fire Megan McArdle and read what they have to say, and if you’re Megan McArdle’s boss, maybe they will even convince you, with their blog, to do just that.

P.S. I have no particular response to their criticism of my comment because, I am sad to report, it is devoted to arguing against things I did not say and a rebuttal to the things I actually did say does not seem to have been attempted. Pity. I like arguments.

UPDATE 2/6: You can see me tangle with them here. The context is their vicious, substantive charge against Megan McArdle that she is - gasp - and I quote - “not an econo-blogger”. (That is brad’s ongoing “thesis”, you see.) Tough stuff. They really know how to go for the capillary over at Fire Megan McArdle, don’t they?