13 Feb 2007 The Hard Look Applies Ockham’s Razor

The Hard Look blog applies Ockham’s Razor to climate change:

If Franciscan friar William of Ockham were alive today, he would reject the IPCC report and instead point to the work of Dr. Henrik Svensmark, who presents hard data showing variations in solar activity control nearly all global warming and cooling.Ockham argued that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or “shaving off”, those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. (Hence, Ockham’s Razon, which shaves away the unnecessary assumptions.) As applied to the IPCC Global Warming report, Ockham would shave away pretty much everything between the two covers dealing with anthropomorphic (human caused) sources of global warming. Why? Because…