[Vision2020] Fwd: Climate & Science

Wed Jul 13 16:49:48 PDT 2011

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 4:00 PM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
> Also, it may be naive, but climate scientists should not be helping to make
> policy decisions.  They are not experts in the fields of foreign policy,
> disaster control, geo-engineering, or emergency preparedness.
>

This is so obviously false, again, you must be writing in jest, or as a
parody, or as bait for discussion...

When climate scientists are consulted by politicians regarding the levels of
reduction in atmospheric CO2 emissions that science indicates is required to
prevent a disastrous level of climate change, *they are helping to make
actual or potential policy decisions, and on this one issue, they are
experts on geo-engineering. * As NASA climate scientist James Hansen said,
and I paraphrase, we are already geo-engineering the climate, though
unwittingly, and any response humans undertake to modify this unintentional
geo-engineering, to lower atmospheric CO2 emissions, or sequester CO2 from
the atmosphere to lower atmospheric CO2 levels, etc. is deliberate
geo-engineering of the sort we have no choice but to undertake, to prevent
unwanted degrees of climate change.
------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett

>
>   ------------------------------
> *From:* Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
> *To:* vision2020 at moscow.com
> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 13, 2011 3:04 PM
> *Subject:* [Vision2020] Fwd: Climate & Science
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Art Deco* <art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 6:01 PM
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Climate & Science
> To: Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>
>
>
> No one is arguing for unquestioned authority.  Neither the author of the
> article nor I.  It would be nice if you could argue just once without
> distorting a position with which you disagree.
>
> There is a difference between being critical by examining the data, facts,
> and the probabilities/conclusions and just making pseudo-arguments as a
> contrarian.
>
>
> Paul writes:
>
> "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?"
>
> How naive.  Since when are facts/theories, especially ones difficult for
> the average policy maker to comprehend,  main element of policy making?
> What kind of facts back up the claim that the national debt can be paid off
> without raising taxes?  What kind of facts back up the claim that most
> welfare recipients are lazy chiselers?  What kind of facts back up the claim
> that migrant workers live off America without contributing anything?
>
> Ted Moffett posted a review of the book* Unscientific America*.  Perhaps
> there are many here that might profit if they read that book with an open,
> non-contrarian mind.
>
> w.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 3:59 PM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>  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
>
>  [image: Opinionator - A Gathering of Opinion From Around the Web]<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/>
>  July 12, 2011, 4:01 pm On Experts and Global Warming By GARY GUTTING<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/gary-gutting/>
>  The Stone <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-stone/> is a
> forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.
>  Tags:
> anthropogenic global warming<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/anthropogenic-global-warming/>,
> climate change <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/climate-change/>,
> Global Warming <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/global-warming/>,
> Plato <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/plato/>, science<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/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<http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm>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<http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/gate-fever-breaks/#more-22259>
> .
>  Related More From The Stone<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-stone/>
> Read previous contributions to this series.
>
>    - Go to All Posts »<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-stone/>
>
> 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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