Several claimed to be rational, educated fellows who regret the shrill anti-intellectualism of Fox News. Yet, they still defend the core notion underlying the anti-HGCC (human generated Climate change) movement -- the premise that virtually 100% of the thousands of scientists in a given field can be suborned, corrupted, or intimidated simultaneously into supporting a nonsensical, baseless theory. A baseless theory that thousands of "skeptics" happen to be able to see through, all at the same time.
"We skeptics just want to get our questions answered," one person wrote. "Until then, of course, society should do nothing rash."
That sounds so reasonable, who could refuse?
Well, in fact, after two decades of seeing "let's not do anything rash" used as a talking point excuse for doing nothing at all? No, it doesn't sound reasonable.
But let's focus on the core matter at hand.
What factors would distinguish a rational, pro-science "skeptic" - who has honest questions about the HGCC consensus - from members of a Denier Movement who think a winter snowstorm means there's ni net-warming of the planet?
Is such a distinction anything more than polemical trickery?
Well, in fact, it happens that I know some people who do qualify as climate change "skeptics." Several are fellow science fiction authors or engineers, and you can quickly tell that they are vigorous, contrary minds, motivated more by curiosity than partisan rigor. One who I could name is the famed physicist Freeman Dyson.
(In fact, if truth be told, there are some aspects of HGCC that I feel I want clarified -- that seem to be poorly-justified, so far. I am an ornery, contrarian question-asker, of the first water!)
After extensive discussions with such folk, I found a set of distinct characteristics that separate thoughtful Skeptics from your run of the mill, knee-jerk Denier dogma puppet.
Here's the first one:
--- WHO IS AN EXPERT?----
Skeptics first admit that they are non-experts, in the topic at hand. And that experts know more than they do.
Sound obvious? Especially regarding complex realms like atmospheric studies, or radiative transfer, or microcell computer modeling. But this simple admission parts company from...
... Deniers, who wallow in the modern notion that a vociferous opinion is equivalent to spending twenty years studying atmospheric data and models from eight planets.
(Note: this is important. Since the Neolithic, human civilizations have relied on specialists, a trend that accelerated across the 20th Century. Want an irony? As coiner of the term "age of amateurs" I've been helping to push a new trend toward more distributed expertise and citizen-empowerment! Yet, I also avow - as "Skeptics" do - that a nation has to start by respecting knowledge and those who have it.)
--- THE NEWS I NEED FROM THE WEATHER REPORT --
Next, the Skeptic is keenly aware that, after 4,000 years of jokes about hapless weathermen who could not prophecy accurately beyond a few hours, we recently entered a whole new era. People now plan (tentatively) as far as 14 days ahead, based on a science that's grown spectacularly adept, faster than any other. Now, with countless lives and billions of dollars riding on the skill and honesty of several thousand brilliant experts, the Skeptic admits that these weather and climate guys are pretty damn smart.The Skeptic admits that this rapid progress happened through a process of eager competitiveness, with scientists regularly challenging each other, poking at errors and forcing science forward. A rambunctious, ambitious process that makes Wall Street look tame.
Deniers also share this utter reliance on improved weather forecasting. They base vacations and investments on forecasts made by...
...by the same guys they call uniformly lazy, incompetent, corrupt hacks. Miraculously, they see no contradiction.
--- A LITTLE HUMILITY ---
Skeptics go on to admit that it is both rare and significant when nearly 100% of the scientists in any field share a consensus-model, before splitting to fight over sub-models. Hence, if an outsider thinks that there appears to be "something wrong" with the core model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider is to ask "what mistake am I making?" -- before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong.
In contrast, Deniers glom onto an anecdotal "gotcha!" from a dogma-show or politically biased blog site. Whereupon they conclude that ALL of the atmospheric scientists must be in on some wretched conspiracy. Simultaneously. Uniformly. At the same time.
--- THE YOUNG GUNS OF SCIENCE ---
Now dig this. The Skeptic is no pushover! She knows that just because 100% of those who actually know about a scientific subject are in consensus, that doesn't mean the consensus-paradigm is always and automatically right! There have been isolated cases, in scientific history, when all of the practitioners in a field were wrong at once.
Still, the skeptic admits that such events are rare. Moreover, a steep burden of proof falls on those who claim that 100% of the experts are wrong. That burden of proof is a moral, as well as intellectual geas, as we'll see below.
The Denier, on the other hand, knows no history, knows nothing about science, and especially has no understanding of how the Young Guns in any scientific field... the post-docs and recently-tenured junior professors... are always on the lookout for chinks and holes in the current paradigm, where they can go to topple Nobel prize winners and make a rep for themselves, in very much the manner of Billy the Kid! (Try looking into the history of weather modeling, and see just how tough these guys really are.)
This is a crucial point. For the core Denier narrative is that every single young atmospheric scientist is a corrupt or gelded coward. Not a few, or some, or even most... but every last one of them! Only that can explain why none of them have "come out." (And note, Exxon and Fox have even offered lavish financial reward, for any that do.)Oh, I admit that it's easy to see why the Denier can believe this. He imagines that all of the Young Guns are either cowed, intimidated, or suborned by greed for measly five figure grants... because that is the way things work in the Denier's own business and life!
He has no idea that most scientists are propelled by adventure, curiosity and sheer macho-competitive balls, far more than they are by titles or money. If all the post-docs in atmospheric studies have timidly laid down, then it is the first time it has happened in any field of science. Ever.
Oh, but the Denier thinks they are all just greedy, conniving little putzes. Sure, this is a natural human mistake, to assume that others are like yourself. But it is a mistake.
* Sorry... but this is a point to reiterate: I am not saying that all young scientists are noble and brave. I've known plenty who weren't. But I have served in almost a dozen scientific fields, and I know that the best of the Young Guns would be screaming now, if all those "holes in the theory" were real.
They have the knowledge, the tools and the ambition. Their failure to "bark in the night" means something! Their acceptance of the HGCC model means something. It means a lot more than any number of glib spin-incantations from Sean Hannity. *
The Skeptic realizes all of this. She takes it into account. She adds it to the burden of proof borne by the other side. But let's move on.
The Denier claims that the corruption of 100% of the experts -- (upon whom he relies for his weather report) -- is propelled by "millions pouring into green technologies"... without ever showing how a space probe researcher studying Venus at JPL profits from a contract going to a windmill manufacturer in Copenhagen. But I'm repeating myself, so hold that thought for later.
In contrast, our Skeptic, still fizzing with questions, hasn't finished "admitting things" first.
--- WHO ARE THE MORE LIKELY CONSPIRATORS? ---
For example, the Skeptic openly admits that he knows who the chief beneficiaries are, of the current status quo.
Those who pushed a wasted decade, delaying energy efficiency research and urging us to guzzle carbon fuels like mad. The guys who benefit from keeping us on the oil-teat are... foreign petro-princes, Russian oil oligarchs, and Exxon.
The Skeptic admits that these fellow have Trillions (with a T) staked on preserving that status quo -- on preventing America from moving toward energy efficiency and independence. He admits that a conspiracy among fifty petro oligarchs seems a lot more plausible than some convoluted cabal to "push green technologies" -- a supposed conspiracy involving tens of thousands of diverse people, most of them nerdy blabbermouths, squabbling over far smaller sums of money.
--- THE TOBACCO CONNECTION ---
Consider some eerie parallels of methodology with the Great Big War over Tobacco. Some of the very same consulting groups who formulated Big Tobacco's "deny, delay, and obfuscate" strategy - that gave that industry ~40 years to adjust to growing societal awareness of its problems - are working on the Energy Denial Front today, with precisely the same agenda. As one analyst recently put it:"I think that the main driver for this movement is that when you compare the US economy "before" and "after" acceptance of human-induced warming contributions, one of the most significant differences will be the value of owning particular stocks. It's impossible to dump onto the market a trillion dollars or more worth of stocks in industrial sectors that generate much of the CO2, without those stock prices dropping through the floor. But with enough smokescreens raised to delay public acceptance, there is far more time to gradually unload stock, and perhaps even reposition the companies in the most vulnerable industries.
"This strategy became especially crucial for them, when their earlier gambit - investing Social Security trust funds in the stock market - fell through. This would have allowed brokers to unload half a trillion dollars in failing assets on millions of naive new stockholders. We now know retirees would have lost hundreds of billions."
This parallel with Big Tobacco is not only eerie, but puzzling. In the end, Tobacco faced fierce ire and severe liability judgments that they escaped only through fast-footed political maneuvers. This raises a fundamental issue.
If the Denier Movement obstruction leads to billions in losses and millions of refugees, will the top Deniers then be liable, under common and tort law, for damages?
This appears to not have been discussed anywhere that I know of. But it makes the Skeptic/Denier distinction crucial.
Those who merely ask scientific questions WHILE helping push for energy independence will be safe enough. On the other hand, those who directly and deliberately obstructed reasonable precautions and progress toward efficiency may face a very angry and litigious world, if the expert forecasts prove right. Preventing action upon expert advice is legally culpable.
In effect, they are betting everything they own.
--- THE ROLE OF PROPAGANDA MEDIA ---
Further, the Skeptic admits something pretty darned creepy and suspicious -- that the main "news" outlets pushing the Denier Movement are largely owned by those same petro-moguls. (Just one Saudi prince holds 7% of Fox, while other princes own smaller shares, plus a lot of Rupert Murdoch's debt, stock and commercial paper. Russian oligarchs and international oil companies own more.) Because of this, the Skeptic has moved away from getting any of his news or sense of "reality" from propagandists who are paid to keep America divided, weak, passively addicted to dependence, respectful of aristocracy, and mired in "culture war."The Denier, in contrast, suckles from the Fox-Limbaugh machine. He shrugs off any notion that oil sheiks, Russian oligarchs or Exxon moguls could possibly have any agenda, or ever, ever connive together. They are pure as driven snow... compared to weather scientists. Right.
Elaborating a bit: the Skeptic has noticed that the Denier Movement is directly correlated with a particular "side" in America's calamitous, self-destructive Culture War. The same side that includes "Creation Science." The same side that oversaw the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, based on mythological asset bubbles and magical "financial instruments." The same side that promised us "energy independence" then sabotaged every single effort, including all of the energy-related research that might have helped us get off the oil-teat. (And that research gap is a bigger smoking gun to pay attention-to than carbon credits.)
While the Denier sees this association of parallel anti-intellectual movements as a good thing, that enhances the credibility of the Denier Movement, the Skeptic has the mental courage to be embarrassed by it. Even while remaining a conservative, she is pulling herself away from all that.
--- WHY IT'S HARD TO GET THE SCIENTISTS TO ANSWER ---
Having admitted all of those things, the Skeptic now feels sufficiently distanced from madmen and reflex-puppets to express legitimate curiosity about a scientific matter much in the news.
Moreover, he knows that this is his perfect right! We do not live in a society where elites are gods. Not the rich or even scientists. The Skeptic refuses to get caught up in the reflex anti-intellectualism being pushed by the faux-right. But he also knows that amateurs can be smart, and that curiosity was God's greatest gift to man.
Moreover, our Skeptic feels like a smart guy! He's generally pretty well-educated and good in his own field. Above all, he is a free citizen of the greatest and most scientifically advanced republic ever! And so, by gum, having admitted all that stuff (see above), he now wants his curiosity satisfied! He wants the atmospheric experts to answer hard questions about some things that SEEM contradictory between the data and the model.
Fair enough.
--- A FINAL MILESTONE ---
Ah, but there is one more thing our poor Skeptic has to admit, if she truly is honest and ready to start peppering the experts. She needs to acknowledge that atmospheric scientists are human.
Furthermore, having tried for twenty years to use logic, reason and data to deal with a screeching, offensive and nasty Denial Movement, these human beings are exhausted people. Their hackles are up. They have very, very important work on their plates. Their time is valuable and, frankly, they see little point in wasting any further, trying to reason with folks who:
-- deny that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas --
-- then deny human generated burning of carbon fuels has increased greenhouse gas content in the atmosphere --
-- then claim the increase won't affect temperatures --
-- then claim there is no warming --
-- while the US Navy is furiously making plans for an ice-free arctic --
-- then claim humans have no role in the warming --
-- then admit we've caused it, but claim it's already too late, and anyway they'll have a longer growing season in Alberta --
-- then shout that "we can't afford" efforts to wean ourselves of greenhouse emissions...
...even though the things that would address HGCC happen to be stuff we should be doing, anyway, to gain energy independence, increase productivity, reduce the leverage of hostile petro powers, and a dozen other important things.
Mr. or Ms. Skeptic, can you see how wearing it has been, dealing with a storm of such BS? Can you admit that the professionals and experts may not, at first, be able to distinguish sincere skeptics, like you, from the maniacs who have been chivvying and screaming at them (on puppet-orders from Fox and Riyadh and Moscow) for years?
HGCC "Skeptics" like you are saddened to see that many of the scientists are prickly, irritable and sullen about answering an endless stream of rehashed questions, only a few of which aren't blatant nonsense. But you Skeptics - the smart and honest ones - understand what's happened.
And so, you'll cooperate about helping the experts feel safe to come out and share what they know. And maybe then they will answer some of the Skeptics' inconvenient questions.
--- SO WHAT'S A SINCERE AND ENLIGHTENED SKEPTIC TO DO? ---
This is when the honest Skeptic recites what I suggested earlier.
"Okay, I'll admit we need more efficiency and sustainability, desperately, in order to regain energy independence, improve productivity, erase the huge leverage of hostile foreign petro-powers, reduce pollution, secure our defense, prevent ocean acidification, and ease a vampiric drain on our economy. If I don't like one proposed way to achieve this, then I will negotiate in good faith other methods that can help us to achieve all these things, decisively, without further delay and with urgent speed.
"Further, I accept that "waste-not" and "a-penny-saved" and "cleanliness-is-next-to-godliness" and genuine market competition used to be good conservative attitudes. But the "side" that has been pushing the Denial Movement - propelled by petro-princes, Russsian oligarchs and Exxon, hasn't any credibility on the issue of weaning America off wasteful habits. In fact, it's not conservatism at all.
"And so, for those reasons alone, let's join together to make a big and genuine push for efficiency.
"Oh, and by the way, I don't believe in Human-caused Global Climate Change! But in case I am wrong, these measures would help deal with that too.
"So there, are you happy, you blue-smartypants-eco-science types? Are you satisfied that I am a sincere citizen-skeptic, and not one of the drivel-parroting Deniers?
"Good, then now, as fellow citizens, and more in a spirit of curiosity than polemics, can we please corner some atmospheric scientists and persuade them to enter into an extended teach-in, to answer some inconvenient questions?
"(Oh, and thanks for the vastly improved weather reports; they show you're smart enough to be able to explain these things to a humble-but-curious fellow citizen, like me.)"As I said earlier, when I meet a conservative HGCC skeptic who says all that (and I have), I am all kisses and flowers. And so will be all the atmospheres guys I know. That kind of statement is logical, patriotic and worthy of respect. It deserves eye-to-eye answers.
But alas, such genuine "skeptics" are rare.
--- WHY IT'S ALL FOR NOTHING ---
Alas, I really have wasted my time, here. Because, while the species of sincere, conservative-but-rational HGCC skeptics does exist - (I know several, and kind-of qualify as one, myself) - they turn out to be rare.
For the most part, those calling themselves "skeptics" are nothing of the kind. More often than not, they are fully-imbibed, koolaid-drinking Deniers, who wallow in isolated anecdotes and faux-partyline talking points, egotistically assuming that their fact-poor, pre-spun, group-think opinion entitles them to howl ""corrupt fools!" at 100% of the brilliant men and women who have actually studied and are confronting an important topic...
...the very same people who the "skeptics" now count on to help them plan activities as far as two whole weeks into a future that used to be murky beyond two hours' time.
There are words for such such people. But none of those words are "skeptic."
David
Brin
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239 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 239 of 239neil speaks right out of Karl Rove's playbook by saying:
However in the overall scheme of things it is important that such money is available from governmen, but only for the "right" result, Profesor Jones, for example has got $20 million whereas Stephen McIntyre got no government money - can anybody say that that decision was based on the scientific competence of each?
Government money makes all pro-AGW studies suspect, but oilco money an order of magnitude higher doesn't reflect upon the honesty of the anti side?
Picking one data point (1998) as if it disproves an entire trend isn't "cherry picking", but treating the single data point as an outlier is "cherry picking"?
Yeah, it's obvious which political side's talking points you are echoing. The sad thing is that, just like Joe the Plumber inveighing against Obama raising his taxes when in fact his taxes would have been LOWERED, you'll keep on fronting for Rupert Murdoch's right to all of the money and Exxon's right to make the earth uninhabitable right up until the moment you run out of cash or breathable air.
A dark, evil part of me really does hope the human race does go extinct just to know hear Republicans gasp with their dying breath of nitrogen-sulphide, "Who could have possibly known?"
LarryHart said...
"A dark, evil part of me really does hope the human race does go extinct just to know hear Republicans gasp with their dying breath of nitrogen-sulphide, 'Who could have possibly known?'"
but then they'd learn nothing :)
Of course, in fairness to the GOP, many of them are not like Neil here, especially historically speaking (the GOP has been hugely important in the past to the environment). The problem just seems to be that the GOP's ultra-right wing is presently dominating the party, and people like Murdoch are arrogantly presuming to speak for every conservative who has every lived.
As for Neil, I wouldn't bother. It should be clear by now that you can't convince him, his lack of ability to present science makes him completely unable to really convince anyone else, and so you kind of have to settle for reading what he says, having pity on him, and moving on.
Of course, if he wasn't so extreme, he'd have a point in a sense. Government money might produce a bias if it could be shown that governments had a pre-disposition to show warming, but of course, as it costs them to deal with the problem, that's unlikely. No solution should ever be producing net revenue for a government specifically BECAUSE that could produce that bias, which is why if something like a carbon tax was enacted, the revenue should be re-distributed back to the public (either on a merit based system for those who cut emissions, or just as a general tax cut). Obviously it's desperate and rampant paranoia to say "all government money funds alarmism", but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be weary of the danger of producing a conflict of interest for government.
On the flip side, while oil companies DO have a pre-disposed interest to say that AGW is false no matter what, it shouldn't be taken as far as to say that every scientist who's ever received oil funding is wrong in everything they say by default. That's an ad hominem attack. Instead, the very careful attitude should be that oil funding can explain WHY they say wrong things in certain instances, but the science must still be addressed on its own to avoid ad hominem reasoning. Richard Lindzen isn't [likely] wrong about the sun's influence because he's received three quarters of a million from oil (that's personal income mind you, not money for his research or to his employer), he's wrong because the science doesn't match up, because the solar forcing doesn't match the temperature record for recent decades.
In fact, skeptics/denialists are actually quite right that the sun is a VERY powerful influence on climate (obviously?). The solar forcing DOES correlate to to some notable temperature changes. It just doesn't explain the last century very well as the sole cause (nor do the natural causes as a whole based on our present understanding).
So, while I'm sure you already understanding this distinction, in general it IS worth saying that scientists aren't wrong because they're funded by something like oil companies, it just explains motives of why they might say things that are proven wrong on their own (like the "it's the sun" claims).
Of course, in fairness to the GOP, many of them are not like Neil here, especially historically speaking (the GOP has been hugely important in the past to the environment). The problem just seems to be that the GOP's ultra-right wing is presently dominating the party, and people like Murdoch are arrogantly presuming to speak for every conservative who has every lived.
Of course, of course.
When I preface a comment with "There's a dark, evil part of me who hopes...", I don't mean that it's a particularly well thought-out point of view, or that I'm particularly proud of it. More like Popeye's "That's all I can stands! I can't stands no more!"
And my ire was particularly directed at TODAY's rabid brand of Republican, not at the entire history of the Party of Lincoln.
As for Neil, I wouldn't bother. It should be clear by now that you can't convince him, his lack of ability to present science makes him completely unable to really convince anyone else, and so you kind of have to settle for reading what he says, having pity on him, and moving on.
You're right of course. But it burns my a$$ to see that tactic used so blatantly and so often by that side of the aisle (not just by the one guy). In this particular case: They know that what THEY are about to say IS "cherry picking" and will righfully be criticized as such, so they first poison the well by accusing YOU of "cherry picking." While that charge makes no logical sense, it does have the effect of making it sound as if your own (perfectly legitimate if not self-evident) charge of "cherry picking" against him is just he-said/she-said name-calling and that "everyone is probably wrong."
It's not just neil. The tactic is used constantly on the right--at least as far back as the Swift Boat campaign against Kerry. They got everyone questioning whether Kerry really served in Vietnam, and somehow Bush's non-service was no longer an issue. In the same way, corporatist attempts at impoverishing and enslaving We The People are diverted by accusations that the GOVERNMENT (i.e., We The People) wants to impoverish and enslave us all. It's a tactic that is used over and over again by that side of the aisle, and once it is seen, it can't be un-seen.
Believe me Larryhart, I understand and fully agree.
I have found that the tactic you describe can be found in almost every right-wing propaganda endeavor. They avoid/delegitimize criticism by taking the things THEY do and accusing the other side of it first just like you say. It's a huge part of the Karl Rove playbook, and it works so well because people want to have everything reduced to easy-to-digest soundbites, pre-cut and easy to chew.
They don't want lengthy explanations, so the right-wing figures if they can just make sound-bite explanations muddy enough, and come up with good enough 1-liners, then it doesn't matter how blatantly wrong they are, because no one will notice in the faux two-sided argument they create. What this does is create a tactic where if the right wing can't win with a legitimate point, they'll use dirty tactics and try to settle for a stalemate.
We could always choose to fight like them, but as the left has proven over and over, they just don't have it in them to go that low. Hell, just look at 2004 and 2008. NO ONE can sink as low as the GOP did during those elections; it's not possible.
I'm not sure we'd want to either. So, given that fact, maybe all we can do is try to move the conversation away from soundbites, and then get people interested enough to listen. The GOP manipulates people so easily for the rich and powerful to run their lives precisely because the people don't care enough. Fix that, and we fix America :)
As for how that relates to this conversation, Neil has thrown out claims of cherry picking, distortion of data, and untrustworthy scientists who can't be listened to. On the surface, he really just sounds like the other side of my argument (even though he never debates actual science), creating that faux argument, where he can stalemate things where he can't win with prefabricated talking points.
So, without trying to sift through all the discussed science (where I acknowledge my position as probably and Neil insists his is absolute), how does one tell who's being the honest debater and who's being the propagandist?
Well, just look at how he defines "alarmist" versus how I define "denialist", even if they look like similar accusations on the surface.
First, I have a class of legitimate "denialist", called skeptics, and I acknowledge that they do good work. Neil, on the other hand, claims that *anyone* who ever says AGW is likely real is a liar, and that none of them can ever be doing legitimate work. Secondly and more to the point, I judge a scientist as wrong by looking at and addressing their SCIENCE, saying that if they make a point that I can prove wrong with hard data or plausible explanation, that they're probably wrong in what they're saying. Neil, on the other hand, judges anyone as wrong who says AGW is real, without looking at and addressing their science. It doesn't matter if the science can't be refuted by him, because if their conclusion doesn't match his, then they're lying automatically.
So how can you tell who's being the propagandist? Like Obi Wan said, "Only the Sith deal in absolutes" :D
Hey, Corey. Since this thread is so old that no one is visiting any more, I don't mind hijacking it just to bi--I mean criticize the other side. ;)
I have found that the tactic you describe can be found in almost every right-wing propaganda endeavor. They avoid/delegitimize criticism by taking the things THEY do and accusing the other side of it first just like you say. It's a huge part of the Karl Rove playbook, and it works so well because people want to have everything reduced to easy-to-digest soundbites, pre-cut and easy to chew.
Or possibly, they honestly can't conceive of the other side thinking and behaving differently from themselves.
I don't know if you're a comic-book fan like myself, but there's an old issue of "Superman" where Lex Luthor has his people investigate an unknown connection between Clark and Superman, and feeds all of their information into a computer, which spits out the conclusion "Clark Kent IS Superman." What does Luthor do with this information? He angrily discards it as self-evidently impossible. If HE had the power of Superman, he'd use it all the time to make himself superior to everybody else. It's inconceivable to him that someone with Superman's powers would hide them with a human "secret identity."
Likewise, the authoritarian crony-corporatists can't conceive of anyone in office not behaving the way they do.
LarryHart said...
"Or possibly, they honestly can't conceive of the other side thinking and behaving differently from themselves."
You know, that's an interesting concept. I honestly hadn't thought of that, but in a sense it makes sense.
That would explain something I've been puzzling over with ultra-conservatives lately, including participants in this discussion: If they have to resort to lies and blatantly dishonest debate tactics, then isn't that self-evident of the fact that something must be wrong with their point of view?
Perhaps it really is a sort of crusade-style thinking, where one's "truth" is so absolute, and of such paramount importance, that it doesn't matter what one has to do to get people to believe it, because it must be true no matter what. It would preclude the sort of self-examination that would lead one to question whether or not a proposed truth is valid even when you have to lie to make people believe it, such that it would make one willing to lie about any particular aspect ("it's been cooling since 1998" or "John Kerry didn't earn his silver star") because it'll push some supposedly greater truth ("AGW is a scam" or "the GOP must run America").
Of course, a sociology teacher I had in high school always used to say that it's impossible to follow the logic of the insane to understand why they do what they do (and that one would go insane trying), so maybe it's impossible to determine why American hardcore right wing elements do what they do, but it sure is fun trying :D
Of course, a sociology teacher I had in high school always used to say that it's impossible to follow the logic of the insane to understand why they do what they do
Not "impossible" surely, but it does take a certain type of personality to be able to accurately posit another's point of view. The type of personality that writers have, for example (especially sci-fi authors).
And while your professor seemed to be talking about how difficult it would be to intuit the thought processes of the insane, that doesn't imply that it's impossible to determine certain aspects of their thoughts and behaviors by observation and deduction.
(and that one would go insane trying),
That's always a danger, isn't it? Wasn't it the Jack Graham character in "Red Dragon" (to which "Silence of the Lambs" was a sequel) who feared the part of himself that could understand the killer's POV because he slipped into the role too well?
so maybe it's impossible to determine why American hardcore right wing elements do what they do, but it sure is fun trying
Because they hate America? No, really, isn't that another one of those things they accuse US of doing ("Love it or leave it", "Go back to Russia", ...) so no one will notice that THEY, for all their jingoistic flag-waving, are consitutionally opposed to the idea of a free people governing themselves without evrything being considered the natural property of a hereditary ruling class?
It's not that it's "impossible" to determine what drives them, but sometimes we have to abandon certain deep-seated assumptions in order to do so. I hate to favorably quote Ayn Rand again, but "If there seems to be a contradiction, examine your premises." If we abandon the assumptions such as "The conservatives are the grown-ups in the room" or "Conservatives love America", some of the contradictions that seem "insane" might drop away
On Saturday in response to Corey's claim "YOU have given a point of view that all scientists must be involved in a global "alarmist" conspiracy" I pointed out that this is the exact opposite of the truth in that my position has always been that very few people with a claim to be scientists are involved in CAGW alarmism & have inded challenged thousands of people, Mr Brin included, to name 2 scientists independent of government who support it. Nobody has been able to do so.
I therefore called on Corey to withdraw that ridiculous claim or anybody normally supporting him to dissociate themselves from it.
I regret that, for reasons we can only speculate on, this has not appeared & I therefore repeat my call.
You know, at this point I'm pretty sure we could actually make a Pokemon game out of Neil's varied responses here.
The battle dialogue would look something like this:
"Neil used Red Herring Attack!"
"it's not very effective..."
"Neil is hit with recoil from not addressing any science!"
@Larryhart:
I don't think I disagree with what you're saying, it's just that I'm not sure where that leaves us. Yes, it's true that if you toss out the assumption that conservatives act in with the best interest of America in mind, certain contradictions disappear (as addressed in a recent post by Brin, the second to latest), but the problem is that I don't really know where that leaves us.
If not the betterment of America, then what is their goal? Maybe Brin's right? If so, where does that place the voters? They're probably not complicit with an agenda to start a civil war or reduce America's intellectual capacity to make us easier to rule, and yet are responsible for allowing such an agenda, so how does one judge them?
Once you get to this point, you're at more of a conspiracy theory than any kind of hard, addressable set of facts, and I have to admit that I'm not sure what to do with that. So, in the end, I have to admit that I only go so far in trying to psycho-analyze ultra-conservatives, and focus more on refutation right now.
Corey:
If not the betterment of America, then what is their goal? Maybe Brin's right? If so, where does that place the voters? They're probably not complicit with an agenda to start a civil war or reduce America's intellectual capacity to make us easier to rule, and yet are responsible for allowing such an agenda, so how does one judge them?
My tendency is to think they're authoritarians first and anything else a distant second.
By "authoritarian", I don't mean that they all believe themSELVES to be the authority. But the GOP mindset seems (to me) to be all about using free will to decide who most deserves to be king, and then following that king. The Democratic mindset, OTOH, seems (to me) to be about using free will to decide every little bit of minutea (sp?) individually.
Both sides believe in and value "freedom", but they use it in entirely different ways. That's why you can't get 60 Democratic Senators to pass a bill, but 41 GOP Senators can bring government to a halt and 51 can pass an entire agenda.
How do I judge the Republican Party? I think of them as that old guy in "Life of Brian" who hangs on the dungeon wall, all the while going on about what a great race the Romans are.
Use Firefox; it has a spellchecker build in :D (it's 'minutiae', incidentally, but I wouldn't know that if the browser didn't tell me).
As for the GOP, they're very difficult to pin at times. Historically, they've seemed to stand for civil libertarianism, which you're now associating more with the democratic party it seems, and, indeed, it does seem like these days it's the liberals who want a smaller role for government in SOCIAL affairs.
Of course, while it seems that way, maybe the authoritarian attitude is just a general movement we're seeing the in the US right now, as, indeed, I'm witnessing a lot of general attitude that the government should control all sorts of aspects of our lives, even to a point that has a die-hard socialist like me say "whaaa?".
I mean, economics are one thing. Society grants the opportunity for the individual to obtain wealth ("rugged individualism" wouldn't mean squat if you were born to a poor famile in a place like Ghana), so society has some entitlement to the wealth gained so as to continue to provide that opportunity to others, but when control over money has extended to an attitude of control over other aspects, I have to admit some confusion on where government is becoming empowered to do these things.
The GOP wants the NSA to have 13 hidden microphones in every room of your house, because they're willing to trade all of our freedom and privacy for a small measure of security, but state governments on either side are implementing things like mandatory seat belt laws nationwide (every state but NH now?), telling us how much we should and shouldn't protect ourselves on the road, or passing laws that tell people what kind of pets they should own, and I have to admit, I can't really pin these things to either philosophy all that well.
Maybe I'm just out of touch with the times, but it seems like in general we have a government that's very confused about everything, with a hardcore identity crisis going on with both sides of the spectrum. Of course, I still think the present GOP contains the biggest nuts of all, but the things they do are way beyond the scope of simple differences in attitude on government (from illegal torture to blatant anti-environmentalism).
Corey,
Thanks for your thoughts. On the social sciences side, you might not have been exposed or come across developmental psychology and how it relates to the development of individuals through stages, and the development of cultures through stages, across the world and across the centuries.
It is an obvious thing once one becomes familiar with it, but before I'd heard any of it, my take on the world was much more like yours is at the moment, from what you write. I've grown up in Europe and various African countries, under different regimes, like Zambia, and really, despite the fact that I was living there, I didn't have any maps for understanding the wider processes going on.
I am perhaps being unfair to you by expecting you to just "get" my point of view when my point of view came from being exposed to certain books and how those books then caused me to rethink and recontextualise all the experiences I'd had in Africa.
Unless you want to delve into developmental psychology, we'll have to disagree. I've tried to just point out one particular thing, which is that the kind of global care and compassion which you are showing, was borne out of a western educated context, but the rest of the world, for the most part, doesn't have that high standard of living combined with intellectual freedom, and so the rest of the world doesn't create or promote or show real commitment to the kind of environmentalism and compassion which you are championing here.
Did you know, for example, that the Dalai Lama is anti-gay? His interpretation of Buddhism says that being gay is a sin. Now when I first heard that, I was shocked for it didn't fit my idea of Buddhism. But that's because I'm a western "intellectual" and I just didn't know that, despite how peace loving Buddhism appears, and how noble their philosophy can sound, there are distinct cultural developmental issues which mean that Buddhism in the East has more in common with Christian fundamentalists in the West than we would imagine.
These are the sorts of subtle cultural differences that are absolutely integral to the world situation and understanding it. And it bears heavily on any environmental effort to move to sustainability. I've had Muslim friends, Iranian friends, Swedish friends, Kenyan friends, and so on, and sure there is a common courtesy and friendliness across all cultures, but when you get down to the radical issues underneath, there are deep rifts and divisions between cultures.
Even though I'd been to a few places, I had never noticed these. It was only once I read about recent developmental psychology that the differences started to make sense.
There are developmental reasons why the sort of caring environmentalism and commitment to sustainability arose in the intellectuals of the West, and there are developmental reasons why the rest of the world, mostly, will ignore these movements, whilst perhaps going along with some of the talk for political convenience.
What a shame Mr Brin believes his views cannot stand discussion.
As for the GOP, they're very difficult to pin at times. Historically, they've seemed to stand for civil libertarianism, which you're now associating more with the democratic party it seems, and, indeed, it does seem like these days it's the liberals who want a smaller role for government in SOCIAL affairs.
I grew up in the 1960s, and the first presidential election I was aware of was Nixon's. At that time, the conservatives were the champions of "law and order" and the liberals (think hippies) were "do your own thing". That still colors my perceptions of the two sides, even though the right now claims to be anti-government and (even more incredibly) claims that the LIBERALS are the ones who fethshize government force.
To me, it comes down to this: Say you come across a playground bully being aggressive to a group of smaller kids. Do you let them work it out themselves, or do you interfere? In real life, the choice probably depends on variables such as how much actual violence is being done and whether interfering this time will help or hurt later on when you're not around to watch. There are all sorts of reasons to argue for either side, but at the end of the day, you're making a decision to interfere or not to interfere.
You are NOT, however, making that choice based upon a philosophy of being for "freedom". Because, you are clearly choosing BETWEEN conflicting freedoms. If you leave the situation alone, the BULLY has freedom, but the other kids do not--they are at his mercy. If you interfere, you are restricting the bully's freedom, but liberating the smaller kids. Either way, someone's freedom is restricted and someone's freedom is enhanced.
When liberals talk about freedom, they are talking about government guaranteeing the freedom of victims to act unhindered by bullies.
When Republicans (of today) talk about "freedom", they mean they are defending the BULLY's freedom from police, teachers, etc.
Stefan, I appreciate the explanation, but I'm not sure you understand my position.
I understand your position. Remember, I do have a fair amount of education in social sciences, and am fully aware of this planet's cultural diversity (its existence, if not its full nature; it would be arrogant to claim I understand all world cultures). I may not have the extent of study that you do, but I have dedicated a significant portion of my eduction to social science (more so when I was a journalism major... back when there was a journalism industry of note...)
What you need to understand is that it really isn't all that relevant here, and for two reasons:
First, while your essential thesis is correct, that sociocultural evolution is not a globally homogeneous process, and that different cultures produce individuals with different standards and modes of thinking, the particular aspect of societal evolution that enables a society to become truly destructive to the environment carries the means to develop environmentalism with it.
What you have to understand is that environmentalism isn't purely a cultural phenomenon, and that modern environmentalism is, in fact based in science. Environmental biology isn't some relative cultural value; it's a hard science. When societies become more industrialized, or even begin to interact with the industrialized world, that carries with it a increased focus on education, and so, such nations don't NEED western academics to tell them about the virtues of conservation. These nations have their OWN scientists.
From China, to many parts of Africa, to India, there is often a huge emphasis on conservation by these nations as a whole. Rural villagers may not understand, but the governments of these places do, and the efforts put forth to protect species such as the African elephant, the bengal tiger and the giant panda (which have consequently provided habitat for countless other species that inhabit their ecosystems) are HARDLY lip service to the international community as you imply.
China has been attempting to conserve pandas since before significant trade was opened with the west, and the number of reserves for the animals has tripled in two decades, all from Chinese conservation efforts. They had rocky periods, and much like our scientists here, they made mistakes (perhaps because the long-standing lack of trade didn't allow them to learn from ours), but they've always cared as a nation.
I'm not so ethnocentric as to think that all people of all cultures will share my particular beliefs on the intrinsic value of life (particularly non-human), but that isn't a perquisite for what I'm talking about.
Secondly, you have to realize that western society is no the birth place of cultural environmentalism, even if we did make many contributions to starting the science. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that the west (particularly English culture) was the birthplace of ANTI-environmentalism. This is something you can see throughout old English literature, from Beowulf to Aurthurian legend, where nature is portrayed as chaotic, harsh, and an enemy of the civilized halls of men (think of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). In old poetry such as the Wife's Lament and The Wanderer, it's portrayed as cold and harsh, not just because that's the overall tone of the poetry (cold, isolation), but because that is how nature is seen.
Basic value for nature has been a value much longer in many non-western cultures than it has in western cultures. In a way though, that's neither here nor there, as an cultural argument is, because conservation is something that needs to be argued on the basis of science. Robust ecosystems are necessary for the survival of humanity, regardless of whether the life they contain is valued intrinsically by any given individual.
@Larryhart
Our political culture actually offers what is supposed to be an answer to that conundrum. Our government is defined as a liberal democracy, and within our government, and our political culture, we have simple values that help determine precedence when rights conflict. First, because all individuals are equal, one does not have the right to exercise a given freedom if it curtails an equally important freedom (as determined by political and legal precedent), or if it curtails a civil liberty. If two civil liberties conflict, the more fundamental of them takes precedence (for instance, one's right to run a business as they see fit is null and void if their practices violate another's right to life by leading to fatalities).
This is, of course, why we have a robust court system, but it's imperfect, and the GOP manages to get by with disastrous agendas even with all of our nation's safeguards. Again, things like illegal torture and blatant anti-environmentalism go WAY beyond what can be excused with simple differences of political opinion with the context of our overall political culture. One does not have the right to ignore science relevant to the well being of countless people, or to ignore both international law and US legal precedent on the rights of those held by our legal system (and no, "Inter arma enim silent leges" is not an excuse :) )
Always good to see Neil Craig get the brushoff he deserves.
Well it's unfortunate in a way, but people brush him off because he's not here to do what the rest of us are: discuss.
He's here to make converts to his political ideology, and nothing more, hence the "I'm right, by default, no matter what, even if I'm proven wrong". Because you can never convince him of anything because facts don't affect him, and because disproving his points just make him go out to the interwebz to get more sound-bite bulleted talking points to be presented with his usual dishonest debate tactics(which the net has a near infinite supply of), there's really nothing to do but dismiss him as the absolutist ideologue that he is and hope he goes away if dismissed/ignored long enough (because there's nothing to be gained by discussion with him except being attacked and told you're wrong... just because).
The correct URL is http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2010/02/real-struggle-behind-climate-change-war.html
Note the URL is titled slightly differently from the article.
Cross-reference, good and perhaps the original blog post on this issue, written back in 2004:
http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2004/12/septics-and-skeptics-denialists-and.html
"septic" is not a typo, it's a meaningful classification.
> the vast majority of
> sceptical scientists
You can't have a "vast majority" when there's only a handful all told.
Corey, you are correct, although I don't think even Neil thinks he's going to make any converts anymore. I first ran into him 3 or 4 years ago, maybe more, and he was just as useless then.
The only reason to engage in any way with such people is so that others can see that these people metaphorically have no clothes on.
Thanks for the correct URL, Corey. I'd just clicked the link at the top of the thread, that's where it's broken (maybe the title changed later?)
I see the spambots have found this thread. Pity.
> Corey said...
>> LarryHart said...
>> "Or possibly, they honestly
>> can't conceive of the other
>> side thinking and behaving
>> differently from themselves."
That's an important insight, and well documented. I recall an interview with Wall Street types just after Clinton survived impeachment, in which they were saying "well if Clinton can get away with Whitewater then we can do business any way we want too" -- really nutty bitter stuff. But indeed they did start making up new ways to do business along the lines they imagined he must have gotten away with.
And look how that worked out.
The "rules are for little people" notion of entitlement by the rich is astonishing when it leaks out.
Think of the term bigwigs -- how old is THAT? They're the problem.
Hank Roberts said...
"Think of the term bigwigs -- how old is THAT?"
You know, it's funny you should say that, because I was just pondering that earlier today.
As for the rest, there's no question of the truth of what you're saying (or at least, very little question), but what's astonishing is that an entire political party has gotten swept along with these people, a political party that, through some extraordinary perfect storm of circumstance, has managed to come out against every good concept and idea that has ever pertained to government (including their own historical beliefs!).
Going back from the beginning of the decade, the list is actually quite long. There was the fiscal discipline and pay-as-you-go rules of government under Clinton that Bush and company abolished (from the party of "fiscal discipline, mind you). Unsurprisingly, once that happened, the Clinton surplus became the Bush deficit. It actually surprised me to learn that the government deficit during the past decade was actually no bigger than the Bush tax cuts, which means the budget could have been balanced completely just by repealing them.
Just the other day, my dad and I were walking through Charlotte just to goof around, and after marveling at the CATS transportation system, including Charlotte's fantastic light rail system, I mentioned that Obama had high hopes for greatly expanding light rail and high-speed rail around the nation. The biggest obstacle? THE GOP. He quipped that "you can look at almost any good idea out there and when you ask yourself 'why can't we do this', the answer is always the same: 'the GOP wouldn't allow it'". He's right. Alternative energy? No, the GOP wants to "Drill'n'Burn". Universal health care like all the other industrialized nations (who pay 1/3 what we do)? No, the GOP thinks that would be "socialism". How about slashing our military funding so that we only out-spend, say, 50-75% of the entire planet, rather than outspending THE ENTIRE PLANET, freeing up enough money to do... well... anything. No, the GOP thinks that would make us less safe, and responds by spending 50 billion on ballistic missile defense that doesn't function (exactly what are we afraid of if the whole planet can't threaten us? Aliens maybe?). How about we institute real CAFE standards, so that American auto makers can be more forward looking about the inevitability of increasing fuel prices and design GOOD small cars? An automotive engineer of 25+ years, ten years ago my dad said government should do this, because GM wasn't designing good small cars, and was going to lose market share to the Asian makers, and eventually blow over when the first economy stiff breeze came (turns out, he was 100% correct). The problem with that? The GOP thinks CAFE standards are government takeovers of the market. Just a little bit ago, Michelle Obama talked about raising awareness of childhood obesity, and Glenn Beck came on and called it a "government takeover of what we eat". This is the level of extremist "bad ideaism" that has taken over the party.
Essentially, what we have is a party that wants us to believe that they can run government on the principle that "all government is evil" and has no function beyond having the world's most expensive armed forces by a factor of seven. It's just a fascinating phenomenon.
Still censoring in the Fascist cause then Brin.
"Still censoring in the Fascist cause then Brin.
How can I be reading this if it's been censored?
"How can I be reading this if it's been censored?"
Don't you know? Clearly it's all just the alarmists pushing the Global Socialist Agenda?
Of course, I'm not sure what fascism has to do with it when Neil has given the most fascist sentiments here out of anyone (fascism being a *far-right* political system largely defined by corporatist attitudes). In other words, don't ask, because Neil hasn't a clue; he's just throwing words around irrelevantly in hopes that eventually one of them will make him sound like he knows what he's talking about.
My problem as a non-expert is that I have been through all this before.
When I was an undergraduate, a professor of geography warned us that we should not openly discuss "continenatal drift". Not if we intended to teach at an university. The geophysicists assured us that continental drift was impossible because there was no mechanism for moving continents. I kept quiet about the studies I was doing in plate tectonics and eventually lost interest.
We were told there was not much prospect for siginificant climate change either. I decided not to pursue climate change studies, at least not professionally.
Twenty years later came the revolution known as "plate tectonics" and we now measure in millimeters per year how fast the plates move and with them, the continents. The geophysicists finally found the mechanism.
At the same time plate tectonics was discovered, we were being told that the observed climate cooling indicated that the present interglacial was drawing to an end and that continental glaciers would soon be advancing on New York. That theory lasted only a decade or so.
These false movements in science ruined many scientific careers and stymied others, but did not do much harm to the general public. Nobody ever suggested a tax penalty for failing to engage in global warming behaviour. Nobody ever suggested that governments spend trillions to warm the planet.
History of science courses in graduate science programmes are not popular. What I got out of the one I took is that competition among scientists can be as cut-throat as competition among businesses or even countries.
What makes me a skeptic about anthropogenic warming is the evidence of huge blunders revealed by the history of science in addition to those cited above. A major feature of all of these blunders was the silencing of the skeptics one way or another.
I wonder what the orthodoxy will be 30 years from now. Maybe the theory of anthropogenic warming will be confirmed and the outcome as alarming as we have been told.
But I do not want to risk paying a lot to mitigate climate change only to discover 15 years from now that there exist negative feedback mechanisms that were not fully appreciated in 2010. I have seen work on half a dozen good candidates.
So will I hear someone say "Sorry pal, we did our best based on the knowledge we had at the time. We now know that..."?
No, I don't want ever to witness a scenario where the governments of the world divert trillions of dollars to mitigate climate warming. The risk of an honest mistake with that kind of impact is just too much for me to accept.
Do I trust science as a way to gain knowledge? I must do since I have spent most of my life in scientific study of the Earth.
Do I trust scientists? This is an historical, political and scientific question. I think it is safer to say "no" on all counts than to say "yes".
Frank, all of what you've said has already been addressed and then some here. The scientific community never suggested mass global cooling as you imply. The media did, but at the time the vast majority of papers were actually predicting WARMING (or in some cases, a wash between positive and negative forcings). You're hugely misrepresenting what went on.
Furthermore, science doesn't operate by saying "a better theory might someday come along, therefore we need to ignore every theory presently out there for everything". What's more, while blunders and misunderstandings have occurred, nothing has occurred that has fundamentally affected the AGW theory, which is only contingent upon a correlation between GHG concentrations and temperatures, and upon a human influence on GHG concentrations, both of which have multiple lines of independent direct corroborating evidence, which would require a huge number of concurrent coincidences for all the correlating lines of evidence to be a collection of flukes.
I don't blame you for not being well versed in said evidence, as most are not, but at the same time, you can find almost anything you'd need to know right here.
Because there is a large amount of direct evidence corroborating the theory at every step, and not just a lack of evidence underlying any other theory (though both are significant), that makes the tectonics comparison a false analogy, and what's more, science hasn't been shown to be fundamentally wrong about major theories in more than a handful of cases anyways over the past couple of centuries (last I checked, everything from relativity to evolution was still intact), so this idea that we can't trust anything science says is silly. Skepticism is important, but there's a difference between making sure a theory doesn't have holes somewhere, and saying that we can't trust anything science says because on rare occasions it's wrong.
Finally, the things that would be required to fundamentally address climate change are things we should be doing ANYWAYS, and the stakes, while hard to measure, are potentially high enough to act regardless.
There's high probability, and little in the way of downsides (not to mention a huge number of upshots that are worth it regardless of climate) as far as action as long as mitigation is done intelligently.
Unfortunately, like many healthy skeptics of science, you've doubtless fallen victim to the media's take on the situation rather than the scientific take. As the 1970s cooling scare shows, however, the media is calamitously bad at getting this science right. I'd urge you to consider that before throwing up too much doubt over Patrick Micheals going to the Wallstreet Journal and ranting about smoking guns surrounding CRU (and the like).
Incidentally, while I doubt anyone is still following this page, a link given in a further post by Brin has lead to an explanation of Phil Jones' recent comments regarding the MWP and post-1995 warming, available here (http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54#p/c/A4F0994AFB057BB8/8/_PWDFzWt-Ag)
Frank - the problem is that you may well not want to spend money now just because some hitherto unnoticed negative feedback which has never been seen before and not left any traces in the paleo record kicks in and sorts everything out. But what if no negative feedback kicks in? Then we've lost 15 years adaptation, and have to do everything really really fast and more expensively.
Whereas if we take the known steps for reducing fossil fuel dependency, we can solve both AGW and oceanic acidification (Which is another problem which will get worse unless we stop emitting CO2) and without costing much. Back when CFC's were phased out people were predicting that industry would be destroyed, yet somehow industry thrived...
Well this link has just been posted in a news forum and I have spent most of my morning reading through it. So it is still live. It has to be one of the best summaries of the science and how science works I have read on climate change. Corey - your logical, patient, persistent and articulate approach is outstanding. I am going to be sending this link on to many others who I know are confused but are intelligent enough to follow the arguments that have been made. In this careful and intelligent way we will find the solutions.
Incidentally, your tangents into political ideology may be broadened by reading about this man
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
The tactics that are used to undermine logical arguments come from propaganda - renamed "public relations" because propaganda doesn't sound very friendly. There is a great documentary "The Century of Self" I think it is called that explores this in fascinating detail.
Anyway - brilliant work.
Nice article. I've been thinking about the non-scientific climate doubters a little bit, not the professionals, but the average citizen doubter. I think you might find this article interesting:
http://how-it-looks.blogspot.com/2010/02/opinion-dont-call-climate-doubters.html
David.
In your essay you make the observation that the majority of scientists in a particular discipline have been wrong before.
Whilst this is correct at first blush, it should be pointed out that where such incorrectness occurs it is usually because this majority have not actually worked extensively to collect data, to analyse it, to compare it to the interpretations of others, and to refine the underlying hypothesis. However such incorrectness might be originally propagated, it usually persists because there is no significant challenge. Additionally, sometimes the technical state of the art is such that alternative hypotheses cannot be tested and compared with the accepted paradigm.
Evolution, plate tectonics and relativity are examples of such scenarios.
Anthropogenic global warming, however, is very much a scientific field that has robustly withstood countless independent measurements to collect raw data, scores (if not hundreds) of independent analytical methodologies, and merciless scrutiny by both friendly and hostile outsiders. Where any sigificant refinement of the science has occurred, it has occurred from within - the deniers have made no major contribution to the underlying science.
Therefore we have a circumstance where a discipline has withstood the harshest scrutiny - much harder than other fields where paradigms have been overturned - and it remains more solid than ever. Denialists might fool themselves that it is otherwise, but the science of climate change has been tested in a way that few disciplines have before, and despite this the 'consensus' view remains secure, and indeed reinforced.
The majority of scientists in this case would therefore seem to be on very solid ground, whilst their detractors are on ever-shakier ground, and the comparison between consensus in AGW one the one hand, and overturnings of historic, scientific consensuses on the other, is therefore really a strech at best.
Whilst it is certainly a point that should be made, it is also a point that should not be permitted to be left unchallenged.
Bernard J.
Late to the party here, sorry...
What bothers me about this debate is how many people confuse what they want to be true with what is true. Surely we can all agree that the two should have nothing to do with each other! The world is what it is, not what we want it to be. Wishes don't come true just by wishing them.
So-called anthropogenic global warming (AGW), human-caused climate change, is true or not independent of whether we think measures to adapt to it would be good or bad. Yet throughout this discussion people are mixing them. It disturbs and offends me to see offered an argument in favor of the reality of AGW, that adapting to it would be a good idea and good for the economy! That is nothing more than intellectual dishonesty, propaganda, and manipulation. Even if someone is so weak minded as to be persuaded by such a false argument, it is immoral to take advantage of his foolishness in this way.
In the long run it is far superior to aim to educate and elevate all participants in the debate. If someone resists changing his mind about facts because he wishes things were otherwise, patiently remind him of the difference between the two. Whether one believes in global warming should have nothing to do with one's political beliefs about the relative merits of unfettered business vs government regulation.
And yet all too often these beliefs do go hand in hand. For my own sanity, I would like to request someone here to acknowledge that they believe in AGW and the need to take action even though they generally distrust government and wish that businesses could be free to operate on their own terms. And (I suspect I will be waiting a long time for this one) I'd like to see someone post who believes in government as a positive force, necessary to restrain the evils of capitalism, but who thinks AGW is a myth and a hoax. Please prove to me that there are intelligent thinkers here who know the difference between wishes and reality.
http://rs.resalliance.org/2010/03/05/naomi-oreskes-of-merchants-of-doubt/
This is a really interesting account of how the whole debate may have got to where it is.
David, thanks so much for this. I think it's insightful.
I'd like to offer a clearer definition of "skeptic", one which includes all serious scientists. That is, the skeptic aims as much doubt at their own position as at any other.
One of our leading communication media for communicating the consensus is called "Skeptical Science" with good reason.
(I'm afraid you are too soft on Dr. Dyson, though. Much though his life has been admirable, his critiques of climatology are superficial and as far as I have seen he does not subject them to much critical self-doubt.)
I'll be happy to take up any specific questions you have on the science or refer them to someone who can do so. Thanks again.
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