[Vision2020] Warning from Copenhagen

[Chasuk]

Joe,

I didn't put words in your mouth, but you have certainly enjoyed
putting them in mine.

You find a majority opinion relevant, I don't.  Our disagreement can
be reduced to that.

I trust doctors, lawyers and gardeners for a number of reasons. The
first reason is pragmatic.  In the case of doctors, I'm not likely to
choose my carpenter-neighbor to transplant my kidney  when a surgeon
is available. I have evidence of the doctor's competence (or
incompetence) by the surgeries that he has performed before. Second,
perhaps akin to pragmatism, is desperation. I need my kidney replaced,
and only doctors occupy the niche of reliable kidney-replacers. If
plumbers had a track record of successfully replacing kidneys, I might
hire them for the job. Finally, doctors aren't theoreticians. They
are't postulating about things that are ultimately untestable. They
put their hands in my guts and pull out organs. Hopefully, I feel
better when I leave their offices or operating theaters.

Now consider climate scientists. Their expertise exists in  a wide
variety of disciplines. I never see the fruits of their work, and
often neither do they, except for in the receipt of a paycheck.  I may
benefit from their expertise, but only indirectly. Most importantly,
they are largely theoreticians,  and the confirmation (or not) of
their theories can only be judged over many, many lifetimes. I have no
pragmatic or obvious evidentiary reasons for trusting climate
scientists, whereas I do for doctors, layers, and gardeners.

The keys I drop tomorrow might fall up, yes. I acknowledge this (with
a bow to David Hume). However, that doesn't mean that I am not going
to proceed with my life as if causation had been proved. I believe in
the law of gravity not because I can demonstrate that it has universal
and eternal spatial and temporal applicability, but because I m not
clever or motivated enough to develop a better theory.

I claimed that there was "no absolute consensus among scientists
about...the cause(s) of global warming,” and I still make this claim.
Confusingly, you categorically state that "this is false," but in the
next sentence write " there is near consensus." You can't have it both
ways, even though you try by equivocating with " I’m not suggesting
that ALL of them accept it, but a HUGE majority accept it." You are
rephrasing my words in your defense while objecting to them when they
appear in their original form. To be plain, " "no absolute consensus"
and " I’m not suggesting that ALL of them accept it" repeat the same
thing, unless one is being extraordinarily picayune.

You might find this startling, but I agree 100% that our public policy
should be formulated according to the worst-case scenario. Simply,
it's better to be safe than to be sorry, and there are seldom negative
consequences to caution. Consider it applying Pascal's Wager to
climate change (although I disagree with Pascal's conclusions
generally, but that is a different subject). I wear my seat belt
applying much the same logic.

I insert myself into this debate not because I am opposed to our
public policy, but because I think it is being conducted dishonestly,
by people who should know better.

I finish with this: consensus is contagious. I posit that a large
percentage of the scientists in the humankind-caused-it-camp are there
because they perceive consensus of their peers, not because they have
weighed the evidence themselves. Scientists are people, and people are
sheep.