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.@Roddy_Campbell it is a dreadful prospect: climate change will make us lose the knowledge of dike building, first mastered 3000 years ago

Making Science Public » What’s behind the battle of received wisdoms?

[Ben Pile] And those who shout most loudly about science turn out to be advancing an idea of science which, rather than emphasising the scientific method, puts much more store — let’s call it ‘faith’ — in scientific institutions. Hence, the emphasis on the weight, number and height of scientific evidence articles, and expertise, rather than on the process of testing competing theories.

In spite of all the criticism levelled against him, then, Andrew Neil, in just one show, has done more to promote an active understanding of climate science and its controversies than has been done by the Carbon Brief blog, academics at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and elsewhere, Bad Science warriors, and a legion of Tweeters who claim to speak for science have done in their entire existences. Along the way, it is possible that Neil made some inconsequential technical mistakes. But by contrast, the uncritical reproduction of scientific orthodoxy is a far more egregious error: it denies that error can be observed from without the consensus. So much for ‘science’.

No Consensus among Three Global Precipitation Datasets | Bob Tisdale – Climate Observations

Without knowing how precipitation has varied in the past, how then can climate modelers hope to be able to project changes in the future?