[Vision2020] Climate & Science

Wed Jul 13 12:59:25 PDT 2011

I can't help being dismayed that someone whose  posts are praised as ones that "apply critical thinking to information and events in the news" would come down on the side of arguing *for* argument from authority.  That seems to me to be about as uncritical as you can get.  

One question to ask, in fact, one that's been lying around just begging to be asked is: why do experts in the field of climate science feel the need to argue from authority in the first place?  Shouldn't they let their methodology and conclusions speak for themselves?  This is science, after all.  Why did they deny multiple FOIA requests for their data simply because the person requesting them might be critical of their results?  Why did one of them specify in one of the Climategate emails that they would delete the information before they would allow themselves to be forced to give it up?  Why did they "lose" the original unadjusted data?  Why do they feel obligated to get in the middle of policy-making?  Shouldn't they be conservatively stating their conclusions, with caveats, and letting the policy-makers decide their importance?

Science is supposed to be egalitarian.  It shouldn't matter if an award-winning climate scientist submitted a paper or a fourteen-year-old Japanese school girl submitted it.  The paper should stand or fall on it's own merits.

Also, "consensus among scientists" can be misleading.  In one poll I looked at (http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2009/2009-01-20-02.asp), scientists had to agree or disagree with two items:  in the past 200 years, mean global temperatures have been rising, and 
that human activity is a "significant contributing factor" in changing 
mean global temperatures.  I would unequivocally answer "yes" to the first one, and probably answer "yes" to the second one.  The word "significant" has a special meaning in science.  The CO2 signature could be "significant" and not be very large.  These statements also say nothing about the expected impact of global warming.  A person could answer "yes" to both statements and still feel that global warming is not a danger.  I would expect a critical thinker to wonder, if that's the case, why such importance is placed on such statements.  The right talks about "loyalty oaths", and I can sometimes see their point.

I would also like to argue that a person doesn't have to be a complete "expert" in a field of study to see problems in one.  We live in a world in which we can educate ourselves quickly on very specific topics with a little motivation and a fair amount of time available.

I'm just not comfortable following the orders of our Global Climate Science Overlords blindly, because I've learned not to trust them.

Paul

________________________________
From: Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 3:35 AM
Subject: [Vision2020] Climate & Science

July 12, 2011, 4:01 pm
On Experts and Global Warming
By GARY GUTTING
The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.
Tags:
anthropogenic global warming, climate change, Global Warming, Plato, science

The Stone is featuring occasional posts by Gary Gutting, a professor of 
philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, that apply critical thinking to information and events that have appeared in the news.

Experts have always posed a problem for democracies.  Plato scorned 
democracy, rating it the worst form of government short of tyranny, 
largely because it gave power to the ignorant many rather than to 
knowledgeable experts (philosophers, as he saw it).  But, if, as we 
insist, the people must ultimately decide, the question remains: How can
 we, non-experts, take account of expert opinion when it is relevant to 
decisions about public policy?
One we accept the expert authority of climate science, we have no basis for supporting the minority position.
To answer this question, we need to reflect on the logic of appeals to the authority of experts.  First of all, such appeals require a decision 
about who the experts on a given topic are.  Until there is agreement 
about this, expert opinion can have no persuasive role in our 
discussions.  Another requirement is that there be a consensus among the experts about points relevant to our discussion.   Precisely because we are not experts, we are in no position to adjudicate disputes among 
those who are.  Finally, given a consensus on a claim among recognized 
experts, we non-experts have no basis for rejecting the truth of the 
claim.

These requirements may seem trivially obvious, but they 
have serious consequences.  Consider, for example, current discussions 
about climate change, specifically about whether there is long-term 
global warming caused primarily by human activities (anthropogenic 
global warming or A.G.W.).  All creditable parties to this debate 
recognize a group of experts designated as “climate scientists,” whom 
they cite in either support or opposition to their claims about global 
warming.  In contrast to enterprises such as astrology or homeopathy, 
there is no serious objection to the very project of climate science.  
The only questions are about the conclusions this project supports about
 global warming.
There is, moreover, no denying that there is a strong consensus among climate scientists on the existence of A.G.W. — in their view, 
human activities are warming the planet.  There are climate scientists 
who doubt or deny this claim, but even they show a clear sense of 
opposing a view that is dominant in their discipline.   Non-expert 
opponents of A.G.W. usually base their case on various criticisms that a small minority of climate scientists have raised against the consensus 
view.   But non-experts are in no position to argue against the 
consensus of expert opinion.   As long as they accept the expert 
authority of the discipline of climate science, they have no basis for 
supporting the minority position.  Critics within the community of 
climate scientists may have a cogent case against A.G.W., but, given the overall consensus of that community, we non-experts have no basis for 
concluding that this is so.  It does no good to say that we find the 
consensus conclusions poorly supported.  Since we are not experts on the subject, our judgment  has no standing.
It follows that a 
non-expert who wants to reject A.G.W. can do so only by arguing that 
climate science lacks the scientific status needed be taken seriously in our debates about public policy.  There may well be areas of inquiry 
(e.g., various sub-disciplines of the social sciences) open to this sort of critique.  But there does not seem to be a promising case against 
the scientific authority of climate science.  As noted, opponents of the consensus on global warming themselves argue from results of the 
discipline, and there is no reason to think that they would have had any problem accepting a consensus of climate scientists against global 
warming, had this emerged.
Some non-expert opponents of global 
warming have made much of a number of e-mails written and circulated 
among a handful of climate scientists that they see as evidence of bias 
toward global warming. But unless this group is willing to argue from 
this small (and questionable) sample to the general unreliability of 
climate science as a discipline, they have no alternative but to accept 
the consensus view of climate scientists that these e-mails do not undermine the core result of global warming.
Related More From The Stone
Read previous contributions to this series.
	* Go to All Posts »
I am not arguing the absolute authority of scientific conclusions in 
democratic debates.  It is not a matter of replacing Plato’s 
philosopher-kings with scientist-kings in our polis. We the 
people still need to decide (perhaps through our elected 
representatives) which groups we accept as having cognitive authority in our policy deliberations. Nor am I denying that there may be a logical 
gap between established scientific results and specific policy 
decisions.  The fact that there is significant global warming due to 
human activity does not of itself imply any particular response to this 
fact.  There remain pressing questions, for example, about the likely 
long-term effects of various plans for limiting CO2 emissions, the more 
immediate economic effects of such plans, and, especially, the proper 
balance between actual present sacrifices and probable long-term gains.  Here we still require the input of experts, but we must also make 
fundamental value judgments, a task that, pace Plato, we cannot turn over to experts.
The essential point, however, is that once we have accepted the authority 
of a particular scientific discipline, we cannot consistently reject its conclusions.  To adapt Schopenhauer’s famous remark about causality, 
science is not a taxi-cab that we can get in and out of whenever we 
like.  Once we board the train of climate science, there is no 
alternative to taking it wherever it may go.

-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com

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