Yes, I trust scientists…
Monday, September 29th, 2008… more than politicians
… more than religious leaders and their holy scriptures
… more than the man in the street
… more than my gut
… more than the voices in my head
And you should too.
Today’s post is snipped from a recent discussion I had about energy consumption and the need to reduce it, where I articulated my thoughts on global warming and specifically those who doubt it. I was surprised that a number of workmates were rather cynical about the idea, based on personal observations of weather, winters etc, so felt obliged to pipe up (Sorry for the recycled content; time goes too fast lately)
Observation of global warming is not based on individual persons’ subjective/anecdotal experiences, but rather vast amounts of corroborating data gathered by climate scientists. It does not predict that the world will be uniformly warmer; in fact it predicts that weather will be more random and extreme (higher overall energy in a system means more chaos + turbulence).
Note that even though a lot of people are wondering if the apparent increase in the incidence of monster hurricanes is due to global warming, climatologists are not yet saying that this is definitely the case. This is because they are scientists, not lobbyists, and they are conditioned to test their theories and models as much as possible before attributing causality, and this in turn means that it is completely reasonable to respect the opinions of the vast majority of experts in the field when they say that global warming is happening and that it is affected to a significant degree by human activity.
This is not just an argument from authority (as some would argue) because the authority is in fact a consensus among thousands of scientists from every country and cultural background. Scientific opinion on an issue is not dictated by some supreme council, but by the convergence of research by thousands of individuals. It’s funny how no one questions the consensus on other atmospheric effects, el Nino etc, but when something requires a lifestyle change suddenly everyone is a "skeptic".
Almost all the energy used by humans in the last 100 years has come from fossil fuels… which are all extracted from the ground, and are all based on carbon. That carbon is not leaving the planet, but neither is it going back into the ground (nor transmuting into other elements)— so where is it? The bulk of it is either in the atmosphere or dissolved in the ocean, the net effect of which is that the atmosphere traps more heat and the ocean is more acidic (causing corals and anything that has to form a carapace to suffer, because they dissolve too easily as acidity rises).*
As complicated and flawed as models and simulations are, basic physics and chemistry tells us that we can’t keep taking all the carbon out of the ground without expecting consequences.
Plus, the more we use fossil fuels the faster we run out (and the more painful it will be) and then we will be totally screwed.
I should elaborate here: when I say I trust scientists, I mean simply that the qualified opinion of a scientist (and especially a large number of scientists) is more likely to be true than an opinion ventured by just about anyone else you can think of, and ironically it is also more likely to be accompanied by an acknowledgement of uncertainty.
Certain people like to harp on the idea that Hitler was inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution, and although I think that this connection is total bullshit (did Hitler even mention Darwin?), what difference would it make if he was? Would it make evolution any less true?
Science isn’t about telling you what you want to believe; it’s about finding out how things are, and wherever possible understanding why they are so. Science is more concerned with truth than any other discipline and yet, unlike religion and politics, science is often the last to assert any particular truth, because humility is built right in to the scientific method.
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* Interestingly, if we started growing forests just for fuel (ie burning wood) that would at least be carbon neutral, since all the carbon in a tree is effectively coming out of the atmosphere in the first place. I’m guessing the particulate pollution would cause overwhelming health problems though…
September 29th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
To be fair eugenics (Hitler’s in-particular) can be placed right about square in the middle between Darwin’s original theory & the always good for a dark-giggle: phrenology*
*Checking the spelling of which led to this epic wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
September 29th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Mark, I will try to break this to you gently ;-) You have been taken in a giant con. Don’t worry, it can happen to the most intelligent - viz. the astute businessmen who have succumbed to Nigerian scams.
Scientists like to think they are objective, but when politics gets involved (and money) then the inevitable groupthink (unfortunately) often becomes the consensus - I’ve seen this before. The IPCC reports are actually politically inspired rewrites of extrapolations of what a very small cabal of scientists set as the basis of all future research. See http://tinyurl.com/4pj4vm, http://tinyurl.com/53pqrj, http://tinyurl.com/6d279c
September 29th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Ross, I will break this to you slightly less gently: you believe all animals on earth are descended from a small group that were all stuffed into an ark after a vengeful god decided to flush 99.999% of life on earth down the toilet. I consider this an automatic forfeit of credibility when it comes to discussing matters of objectivity.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
You can claim that I’m not objective, but that doesn’t make the IPCC and associated sycophants objective. Why not listen to some retired PhD climate scientists who no longer have to be PC? Is that unreasonable?
September 29th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
American Thinker? Seriously that is as bad a source as conservapedia. Why should I bother reading an article that refers to “Al Gore and his minions [using] Stalinist tactics” within the first paragraph? Not all points of view deserve to be heard, especially when they can’t be constructed with the merest semblance of objectivity.
Part of the point of this post is that you have to decide which sources to trust, and you have to consider why you would trust them. I think you have chosen to trust the wrong people, and I can only assume it is based on their “ideology”, such as it is.
I think it’s worth noting that the people who deny evolution and climate change have MUCH more in common than the majority who agree. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? How is it that a disparate majority can come to such an agreement, when they have so many competing secret agendas? Where is all the intrigue, the backstabbing? The machiaveliian manipulation? How can so many people with vested interests orders of magnitude smaller and more diverse than conservative Christians and Republican oil men retain such cohesion…?
September 30th, 2008 at 5:56 am
This brings up another annoying one in my mind. On multiple occasions, I’ve been discussing evolution / creationism with someone and they will say, “Evolution is just a theory and hasn’t been proven.”
I usually ask them to jump off a cliff (to test out the unproven theory of gravitation).
September 30th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Prof Massimo Pigliucci explains why his opinion on evolution counts more than a bible scholar’s:
“The answer is simple: I am an expert. You shouldn’t trust me on car mechanics, or on civil engineering, or on market analysis. But what I have to say about science counts more than what most people have to say about it because I am a scientist and they are not. The reason I don’t feel any qualms declaring evolution a sound scientific theory and intelligent design as not even junk science is because I am a professional organismal biologist, and pretty much everyone who accepts ID is not. By comparison, imagine how foolish you would feel if a thousand car mechanics tell you that you need to change the carburetor in your car and you keep insisting that they don’t know what they are talking about, elitist auto-experts that they are, because carburetors obviously don’t exist!”
The arrogance of some people!
September 30th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
A little child exclaims (arrogantly?) that the Emperor is wearing no clothes. Only the wise people can see them. - And sure, I do defer to most experts; but not when they are plain wrong. :)
September 30th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Hey Ross, good to see you holding your end up as the resident kook. Who exactly is “plain wrong” in this case? The IPCC? Provide compelling peer-reviewed evidence of this or go home.
Your passive-aggressive straw-man arguments [”You can claim that I’m not objective, but that doesn’t make the IPCC and associated sycophants objective.”] both now and in the past have combined with your parable-loving tone to make me cringe every time your name comes up in my RSS feed. Your patronizing politeness only serve to diminish your arguments and engender a contempt for clarity and reason.
I will reiterate - provide compelling peer-reviewed evidence of any of your assertions or STFU.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
And everyone though Galileo was wrong… and probably Newton… and Einstein failed math… and all these things are little stories that anti-rational brigade tell themselves at night to stave off the horrible forces of reason and doubt that might make them take stock.
The Emperor’s new Clothes is an interesting parable, not least because only one actual phenomenon matches it in its absurd portrayal of otherwise rational creatures to believe something to be true despite all evidence to the contrary. That thing, you can probably guess, is religion. Only the religious can discount all the evidence illustrating the origin of species, the geological record, and say: “it was a big flood what done it, and all the animals were made as we see them now by God”
Maybe it seems like I’m harping on the Flood topic here, but in the context of a conversation about climate I think it’s rather important to point out that your willingness to believe that the entire land mass of the earth was covered by water just a few thousand years ago, and that life as we know it today managed to come back from that ridiculous precipice of complete extinction… well…
That basically renders any comment you make about climatology worthless in this context. If we can’t even remotely agree on what the climate was like in the past then it seems rather pointless to engage in discussions about its future.
October 1st, 2008 at 12:54 am
Ross: Consistency is essential. You’re arguing that science in general is unreliable, yet the IPCC is wrong because they are NOT reporting true scientific findings. Choosing one or the other may solidify your argument a bit.
October 1st, 2008 at 2:16 am
I know I’m just a glutton for punishment and shouldn’t push this silly charade of an argument any further, but can’t resist chipping in to second Sitakali here. Out of the endless list of crimes against reason that can be charged against creationists, this one has always been a personal fav. I think Richard Dawkins summed it up best when he pointed out that for all the constant bleating about science and religion existing in non-overlapping magisteria (oh Gould!), can anyone believe for one single nanosecond that science would be similarly discounted when it actually turned up a positive result?
October 1st, 2008 at 5:53 am
Redeeming qualities of our current societal situation include:
1. You can no longer be sentenced to death for claiming the earth is not flat or that the earth rotates around the sun.
2. There are a lot of people who continue to hold irrational beliefs but they have a lot less power now then they used to have.
October 1st, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Yeah Timothy it’s not like a New Earth Creationist could be vice president of the USA or anything…
October 2nd, 2008 at 4:46 am
I know, it frightens me. I “pray” the election doesn’t go that way.
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
related issue: Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey (nooooo!) are doing their best to fuck up the lives of millions by scaring people away from vaccinations. Heated debate/insults from both “sides” can be seen here:
http://tinyurl.com/4docem
anti: Science isn’t everything, I am a mother and I trust my feelings over what studies show!
pro: Then you are a total moron!
anti: no need to get emotional!