Science and the lay person
This is an old article. But I just looked at it, and it brought to mind a weird feature of the debate over what to do about global climate change. One problem we've had in getting anywhere, legislatively speaking, is that not every senator believes there is such a thing as global warming.
How does one decide whether to believe in global warming? (Note: what James Inhofe denies, actually, is not the existence of a global climate change, but the claim that we human beings are the primary culprits in this change.) Ideally, one would carefully examine all the available evidence and come to a conclusion about whether the best explanation available is, in fact, the explanation that has been adopted by all or almost all of those who seriously study the issue. Unfortunately, this is not possible. We must, therefore, take the word of our experts for it. Thus--and this is the weird feature of the debate I mentioned--many arguments about what to believe make no appeal to the evidence for or against the claim in question. Instead, we are told that we should believe X because there is a strong scientific consensus on X.
This opens up room for people like Inhofe to claim to have the relevant expertise ("he even delivered a 12,000-word Senate floor speech titled 'The Science of Climate Change,' outlining conclusions he said he'd reached after several years of studying the issue") to evaluate the claim in question, and access to the evidence, so that they can plausibly insist that there is reason to dissent from the consensus view. It also creates the opportunity for this sort of misbehavior, in which companies flush with oil profits fund bogus "science" in order to have more voices opposing the scientific consensus. Whether or not their reports have any merit, they provide more evidence (never mind that it was planted) that people can point to in order to argue that this subject is one about which reasonable people can reasonably disagree--that there is no consensus. This has nothing to do with determining whether or not global climate change is real, and everything to do with creating a zone of plausible deniability (not the normal use of that term, I know) in which politicians like Inhofe can work to derail legislation that would cut into oil industry profits.
All of which suggests to me a new strategy that these folks might employ to advance their agenda. Why not deny that the earth is round? (Inhofe: "How do you define 'mainstream'? Scientists who accept the so-called 'consensus' about global warming? Galileo was not mainstream.") If the earth is flat, then there simply cannot be such a thing as global warming. Maybe they can point to Thomas Friedman's book as evidence that there isn't a consensus about the shape of the earth, either.
How does one decide whether to believe in global warming? (Note: what James Inhofe denies, actually, is not the existence of a global climate change, but the claim that we human beings are the primary culprits in this change.) Ideally, one would carefully examine all the available evidence and come to a conclusion about whether the best explanation available is, in fact, the explanation that has been adopted by all or almost all of those who seriously study the issue. Unfortunately, this is not possible. We must, therefore, take the word of our experts for it. Thus--and this is the weird feature of the debate I mentioned--many arguments about what to believe make no appeal to the evidence for or against the claim in question. Instead, we are told that we should believe X because there is a strong scientific consensus on X.
This opens up room for people like Inhofe to claim to have the relevant expertise ("he even delivered a 12,000-word Senate floor speech titled 'The Science of Climate Change,' outlining conclusions he said he'd reached after several years of studying the issue") to evaluate the claim in question, and access to the evidence, so that they can plausibly insist that there is reason to dissent from the consensus view. It also creates the opportunity for this sort of misbehavior, in which companies flush with oil profits fund bogus "science" in order to have more voices opposing the scientific consensus. Whether or not their reports have any merit, they provide more evidence (never mind that it was planted) that people can point to in order to argue that this subject is one about which reasonable people can reasonably disagree--that there is no consensus. This has nothing to do with determining whether or not global climate change is real, and everything to do with creating a zone of plausible deniability (not the normal use of that term, I know) in which politicians like Inhofe can work to derail legislation that would cut into oil industry profits.
All of which suggests to me a new strategy that these folks might employ to advance their agenda. Why not deny that the earth is round? (Inhofe: "How do you define 'mainstream'? Scientists who accept the so-called 'consensus' about global warming? Galileo was not mainstream.") If the earth is flat, then there simply cannot be such a thing as global warming. Maybe they can point to Thomas Friedman's book as evidence that there isn't a consensus about the shape of the earth, either.
posted by gregates at 1:40 PM
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