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Below (verbatim, with HTML markups intact) is a comment I made on another FR thread on global warming:

"...director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change..."

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Braaaaacckkkk!!!! (Alert klaxon)

There is a title with a foregone conclusion!

It should be something like,

Tyndall Centre for Climate Study..."

... or "Measurement" or "Analysis", etc...

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Once an "investigator" (or organization, or movement -- or half the whole world -- gets on a mission to "PROVE" something, (rather than search for unadulterated evidence to refine current understanding) they cease to be scientists (or theologists)-- or, even, truthful...

And, by "truthful", I include being "truthful" to themselves...

I have precisely the same objection to the "GoreBull Warmists" who are twisting facts to PROVE that humans are destroying Earth as I do to the "YEC" proponents who are out to "PROVE" that their adherence to Ussher's [mis]interpretation of Genesis outweighs all the true scientific observation that has ever been done.

IMHO, aside from mathematics or trial law, the concept of "PROOF" has no place in honest, rational discourse.

(BB & A-G, can you recall the last time one of us claimed we had "PROOF" -- of anything?)

(BB & A-G, can you recall the last time one of us claimed we had "PROOF" — of anything?)

Goodness, you never heard that word coming out of my mouth! I strongly doubt my dearest sister in Christ, Alamo-Girl, ever uttered the word "proof" either, except to note that "proof" is a word that pertains to the domain of logic/mathematics. Certainly I have never heard it from you, TXnMA!

Anyhoot, human beings living their lives are not mathematical objects. In the sphere of human life and action, there are never any "proofs"; moreover there is never perfect certainty about anything.

"Proofs" are only available where deductive methods are employed. Deductive reasoning starts from a general case assumed to be true, and moves down to specific instances, which are then tested against it. But the scientific method is just the reverse, inductive: One starts with the specific instances (evidence), and then tries to move to the general case (what the evidence shows).

I totally agree with you here:

Once an "investigator" (or organization, or movement — or half the whole world — gets on a mission to "PROVE" something, (rather than search for unadulterated evidence to refine current understanding) they cease to be scientists (or theologists) — or, even, truthful....

And that's a FACT!

Thanks ever so much for your wonderful insights, TXnMA, for pointing us to the "loaded language" involved in the Tyndall Center's self-description — and how the language itself helps to shape the public debate towards a preconceived conclusion.