Every one falsified.

So far there have been a lot of hypotheses about various religious claims put forward, like about healing, prayer, sticks turning into snakes, etc.

Every one falsified.

Next step: No longer giving even a small voice to the denialists because it is nothing but a joke at this point. Not censorship, mind you. Just not longer bothering to listen.

You find logic astounding? Why am I not surprised? But stay tuned, we might actually get to the point where you admit that it’s possible to be skeptical about the IPCC, or even “Climate Change” without being a denialist.

Next step: There isn’t really any such thing as a skeptical atheist, it’s a contradiction in terms. The correct term is denialist. The only appropriate religious position for a skeptic is agnosticism.

(Besides, the “Holy Spirit” most certainly does exist. The key question is whether it exists as anything more than a mass delusion. But even a mass delusion can have real world consequences and affect the real world.

(Hows that for astounding logic?)

Is that the main gist of this post?

My point is that denialists simply don’t believe proxies because they are indirect and use information that does not have a real time analog, but that disbelief is based on a false dichotomy.

So therefore Steve McIntyre isn’t a denialist. He’s actually very skeptical of the use of certain proxies because of statistical issues in resolving that indirectness. Not because they’re indirect. (And you won’t delete my link to his site because he’s not a denialist.) Right?

Could be an open source project.

Especially for maintaining currency. Which could be done with something like a wiki backended by a database. It still would take some effort to turn into a nice graphic for showing the results, up to some point. If I were Warren Buffett, I’d throw a bit of money at it.

Oh yeah?

I’m only interjecting that there is another dimension, that does have importance when reconstructing the natural past, in that all the measurements are of necessity happenstance rather than designed.

There may be a difference between designed and happenstance, but, I think this is still partly a false dichotomy. How was the resistivity thermoeter invented? If engineers sat down and said “material science tell us that this could work, let’s design a thermometer” then the design was engineered. If engineers sat down and said “something is broken here, or unexpected” and discovered resistive-conductive interactions with temperature, then it was initially discovered.

Then, when you go to build such a thermometer later, yes, it is designed, by my glancing around at trees and birds is not, it is what happens to be there.

But in between we have people sitting around and saying … “We need a proxy for temperature in arid regions of Jordan because right now I’ve got dick”

and somebody else goes

“Are there springs there?

“Yes”

“Well, use the spaleotherms! I don’t know if it will work, it’s never been tried, but you could do yadayadayada”

… 6 months later …

“Hey, I brought back samples form my site in jordon, not only natural springs but also stuff from the foundation of an irrigation structure”

“OK, let’s apply the science we thought up last many. I’ll design a sampling probe while that guy over there designs the protocol for the mass spec, while she works on the statically model”

… ti ti ti ti ti ….

Then suddenly we have a temperature proxy working for arid regions of Jordan.

What I’m saying is that this scenario, which actually happened, is not much different from discovering that some material changes property when it cools or heats, and making a thermometer from that.

So, I concede your dichotomy but I mess with your context.

Which gives me a thought. It would be neat to have a wall chart whose horizontal dimension is time into the past, logarithmic, and that lists vertically all (well, many) of the different techniques for measuring the age of stuff, and then draws a line for each showing the range to which it has been applied, with some kind of cross-lines for showing where different techniques are checked against each other. Anyone know of such?

I’ve seen those, used those, made those, but a) they never looked very good and b) I know of nothing current AND detailed. It would be a great project. I tried to get my intro to arch students to interdependently invent something like this last year but they did not manage it. Something like this might work best as a high res graphic that could be scanned in a browser or used in a PDF file that you would never actually print out.

Could be an open source projec.

A gnatt chart may be a good format to use?

I’m only interjecting that there is another dimension, that does have importance when reconstructing the natural past, in that all the measurements are of necessity happenstance rather than designed.

Which gives me a thought. It would be neat to have a wall chart whose horizontal dimension is time into the past, logarithmic, and that lists vertically all (well, many) of the different techniques for measuring the age of stuff, and then draws a line for each showing the range to which it has been applied, with some kind of cross-lines for showing where different techniques are checked against each other. Anyone know of such?

Likewise with temperature measurements. Mercury thermometers work by assuming the rate of volume expansion with temperature is constant. This is a good approximation for temperatures between -20 and +100 C but obviously doesn’t work below mercury’s freezing point (about -40 C) or above its boiling point, and there are circumstances within this range where you can’t use a mercury thermometer (e.g., biological systems, since mercury is toxic). So other means were devised to extend the measurable range and calibrated against mercury thermometers in the range where both are valid. For parts of the temperature range you need to cascade standards because phase transitions and other nonlinearities intervene. We now understand, thanks to quantum mechanics (a 20th century development), why these standards work, and we can devise a fully consistent systematic approach to measuring temperature. In the 19th century people knew this was possible but did not know how to do it.