October 16, 2004

"Tim K." wrote:

almost elegant in their simplicity, approaching the level of

natural beauty. All you do is claim superior knowledge to everyone in
soft science domains (environmentalism, biology, ecology)

What is a "soft science" exactly?

I just gave you several examples.

If I design a study of vegetation (and I
have) and I use a fully random design and non-parametric statistics to test
hypotheses, and write a mathematical model to explain the variation in
species composition along an environmental gradient, what exactly is "soft
science" about it?

Your claim of explanation.

And what would you consider "technical"?

Hard sciences.

of which we as
a species and a civilization know almost nothing about, in global scale,
certainly on cosmic scale.

There's that ego again - if *you* don't understand it, "we as  a species and
a civilization know almost nothing".

My claim wasn't based upon my understanding of any particular thing, rather that
our totality of understanding of the cosmos and the planet Earth is extremely
limited, a claim that is trivially supported by the evidence

Even more disturbing is that you are using initial estimations - before
hardly any checks had been cut or any bills for repairs had been submitted.

That isn't necessary to support the conclusion, a simple perusal of the evidence
clearly supports the claim. Your nearly anal insistence on absolutism is
disturbing, however, but I'm used to it by now.

That is, you are using an estimation of an estimation, to do an absolute
comparison.

The hurricane season isn't over yet, and a relative comparison is implicit.

The key words are activity and intensity. Now ask yourself, what do tropical
cyclones do, that we can measure and estimate? Pick any metric, and then try to
support the initial claim that the 2004 Atlantic basin hurricane season has been
relatively mild.

Physical, economic and social metrics all appear to agree, that this.particular
hurricane season activity has been relatively intense.

But inquiring minds still want to know, what evidence to you to enlighten us and
to support your claim that aliens do *NOT* exist? That would be unprecedented,
if true.

Your arguing in support of the claim that this hurricane season has not been
relatively intense, and that aliens do *NOT* exist, clearly puts you in the
realm of crackpots, and we all know that debating crackpots like you is
scientifically unproductive, but the commentary is somewhat entertaining. So
please, keep posting, we love you Conchy Joes, and we love Florida. Our prayers
are with you.

Thomas Lee Elifritz
http://elifritz.members.atlantic.net