Climate and Opinion
Sep. 6th, 2010 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steepholmI'm very far from being a climate-change denier, but it bothers me when those who defend the consensus point out (as, in media interviews, they invariably do) that only about 3% of scientists are in that camp, with 97% believing in man-made climate change - as if that were an argument for climate change in itself. It makes me want to jump on the sofa shouting, "In 1543 99% of scientists believed the sun went round the earth, stupidhead! Don't you know how science even works? It's not a democracy!"
Of course, I don't do that at all, but those who know me well might see the corner of my eye tremor slightly in a suppressed wince.
Naturally I understand their frustration. The BBC, for example, seems to feel that its duty to be balanced means that it can never interview a scientist with one opinion without also giving equal air time to a scientist who believes the opposite - and the effect from the believers' point of view is distorting in itself, putting the President of the Royal Society on a par with Mad Jack Crack and his Prophetic Bladderwrack.
Although science isn't a democracy, I think the Beeb might learn a lesson for the reporting of science from its own political coverage during elections. Then, it regularly consigns the fringe parties to oblivion, merely meeting its legal obligation by noting that "a full list of candidates can be found on our website." Why couldn't it do something similar with climate change, and end each report with the observation that "Cooky opinions are also available"? It might be better than the current situation, which is both confusing for lay people and tempts climate change scientists into questionable forms of argument.
Of course, I don't do that at all, but those who know me well might see the corner of my eye tremor slightly in a suppressed wince.
Naturally I understand their frustration. The BBC, for example, seems to feel that its duty to be balanced means that it can never interview a scientist with one opinion without also giving equal air time to a scientist who believes the opposite - and the effect from the believers' point of view is distorting in itself, putting the President of the Royal Society on a par with Mad Jack Crack and his Prophetic Bladderwrack.
Although science isn't a democracy, I think the Beeb might learn a lesson for the reporting of science from its own political coverage during elections. Then, it regularly consigns the fringe parties to oblivion, merely meeting its legal obligation by noting that "a full list of candidates can be found on our website." Why couldn't it do something similar with climate change, and end each report with the observation that "Cooky opinions are also available"? It might be better than the current situation, which is both confusing for lay people and tempts climate change scientists into questionable forms of argument.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-06 09:29 am (UTC)The media just don't understand science, media people have never studied it and they have the erroneous belief that scientists can say definitely that something is or isn't happening. (This is due to the way science is often taught at school that science is a body of "facts" that are indubitably true.)
The real answer is that It's All Very Complicated, but that doesn't make for a good 5 minute interview on the Today Programme or wherever. :(
The result is a very confused populace. :(
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-06 10:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-06 01:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-06 03:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-06 02:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-06 02:42 pm (UTC)It irritates me too, but that's exactly the way I hear it used on a regular basis.
If scientific research is worth anything at all, it's foolish to reject such an overwhelming conclusion.
I'm certainly not denying that 97% of climate change scientists do indeed think that. As a statistic, it's certainly an arresting one, and anyone who hears it might very reasonably want to know why that's so, and hopefully try to understand the conclusions that lie behind it, and the science that lie behind them. If they don't have the time or the resources to do that, they may well decide to take it on trust. But it's not itself a conclusion, nor is it an argument for the existence of climate change.
I chose Copernicus for reasons of fame, but I don't think it would be hard to find more recent cases of well-studied subjects where one could say that 97% of scientists were mistaken at a given point in time.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-06 03:03 pm (UTC)Since science does not deal in deductive logical proofs, nothing that science says about anything can ever be proven beyond possible doubt. To justifiably doubt a widely-held scientific conclusion, however, you must have evidence. The incompleteness of classical physics and the existence of continental drift are two cases that were denied, and justifiably denied, until there was evidence, at which point they were quickly and widely accepted - though again, in both cases the old view was long-held and based on old assumptions, not on new evidence. Climate science as it now exists is entirely a product of the last 30 years. It's like quantum physics or continental drift theory. The people denying it are not the brave new researchers, but the diehards who refuse to see what's clearly evidenced. There might be a case of a new view that came to be this widely accepted and which later turned out to be wrong on the level of discourse available at the time, but I can't think of one offhand.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-06 03:39 pm (UTC)As you point out, climatology is relatively new science. For that reason it seems inappropriate to talk of "diehards", as if there were a longstanding establishment of scientists with a professional investment in the idea that mankind can never alter climate. I'm not aware that there was a huge consensus either way, to be honest, and suspect that climate change denial is a reaction to climate change theory rather than a pre-existing orthodoxy.
Speaking for myself, since I don't have the necessary level of competence to judge the science, I find that what weighs more heavily than that statistic are two different, though equally extra-scientific factors. First, I note that that many climate-change deniers either are themselves, or are funded by, people who have an ideological, commercial or religious interest in denial, and this makes their conclusions suspect, especially as the governments who fund the IPCC don't have the same interest in carbon reduction. Second, when you're doing fairly radical things to the only planet we've got, it's common sense to err on the side of caution. That's it, really.
There might be a case of a new view that came to be this widely accepted and which later turned out to be wrong on the level of discourse available at the time
This shifts the goalposts slightly by introducing two new conditions: a) that the consensus view to be challenged must be of recent date, and b) that it must turn out to be wrong on the level of discourse available at the time. The first seems reasonable to me, but the second not, since I'm not interested in whether climate change scientists are doing good science in their own terms, but whether they are, in fact, correct about climate change. However, I'll give the matter some thought and see if I can come up with examples that fit the first criterion.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-06 04:09 pm (UTC)You can, if you prefer, prefix "in my experience" to my opening statement, as I have many, many times seen the "overwhelming majority of scientists" argument, and never - not once, ever - has it been clearly interpretable as a "science is a democracy" argument. And I take leave to doubt that you have found such a case, either. I believe you are misreading.
I have also had personal experiences of finding a group of people in dispute over an external fact. When I suggest that we take a survey of the group (or a show of hands if the possibilities are clearly binary) just to get an idea of what the range or balance of opinion is, I am always chided by some idiot who thinks I'm trying to establish external fact by democratic vote, no matter how carefully I try to phrase myself to avoid that impression.
The "diehards" in this case are those invested in the comforting belief that we can't render our own planet uninhabitable. After all, in a million years of human history, we never have. That's a pretty long-standing orthodoxy.
I agree entirely with your third paragraph.
This shifts the goalposts slightly by introducing two new conditions: a) that the consensus view to be challenged must be of recent date
No, I said nothing about recent date. Possibly you are misreading the intent of the word "new". I mean new, the result of new research, at the time that it is new. Newtonian physics was new when it was new. Mendelian genetics was new when it was new.
that it must turn out to be wrong on the level of discourse available at the time.
When you go on to say that your concern is "whether they are, in fact, correct about climate change," I see that I must repeat that I said "on the level of discourse," and not "on the facts available." I seek only to inoculate against a claim that scientists who accepted Newtonian physics in 1700 were wrong because it was modified two centuries later by Einstein and others. Einstein is not an argument for a 1700 scientist to have rejected Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics was correct, and remains to this day correct, on the level of discourse available in 1700.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-06 05:10 pm (UTC)I was fairly careful not to say anything about what they meant, but only about the way the statistic was used. And I have frequently heard it used in variations on the following:
Q: Why should I believe in climate change?
A: Because 97% of the world's climate scientists do.
If you've never heard that, or something like it, then the level of debate is clearly higher in your parts than it is round here.
The "diehards" in this case are those invested in the comforting belief that we can't render our own planet uninhabitable. After all, in a million years of human history, we never have. That's a pretty long-standing orthodoxy.
The state of affairs may be of longstanding, but I've never heard anyone assert that as a belief. As someone who spent the Cuban Missile crisis in utero, I can report that the orthodoxy during most of my lifetime has been quite the opposite.
I seek only to inoculate against a claim that scientists who accepted Newtonian physics in 1700 were wrong because it was modified two centuries later by Einstein and others. Einstein is not an argument for a 1700 scientist to have rejected Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics was correct, and remains to this day correct, on the level of discourse available in 1700.
I agree up to a point with the first sentence, and entirely with the second, but I'm not so sure about the third! But Newtonian physics is a rather special case, since in many respects it's been not so much disproved as shown to be incomplete. More typical examples might be, say - well, Ptolemaic astronomy, of course, but let's throw in the theory of humours, phlogiston, the perforated septum and the ether. All widely believed, with plenty of observations taken and experiments conducted, within the level of discourse operational at the time - yet these are not only incorrect now, they always were incorrect. That doesn't mean the people who believed in them were stupid, or bad scientists, or acting unreasonably. But they were wrong.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-06 06:05 pm (UTC)I have seen exactly the kind of rhetoric you quote, many times. I do not believe it in any way means, or is using the statistic to mean, that scientific truth is established by democratic vote. If it were, the vote would be cast among the general population, not just climate scientists (in which case the result would be much more equivocal, at the very least). What it means, it seems to me so obviously as to not need discussion, is that this is what the people who have studied the matter and know what they're talking about have concluded after research, and that there is essentially no dispute on the question. Since we, the ordinary public, have not that expertise, we can either accept that expertise or else bloviate on topics we know nothing about.
re next point, very cute. Modify original statement to include "by industrial activity" or whatever term will serve to exclude nuclear holocaust. And in fact, I have seen it argued that climate change cannot affect the planet too strongly: lots of blither about self-correcting mechanisms, or about how we survived the Little Ice Age just fine, so therefore we can survive anything else that gets thrown at us, or that climate change will just make it a little more comfortably toasty in the summer and less frigid in the winter, nothing wrong with that. (That last argument was put out by a Fellow at the Hoover Institution while I was on staff there; we all got copies of his statement and I wish I'd kept mine.)
I believe that what I meant by "correct on the level of discourse available in 1700" is identical to what you mean by "not so much disproved as shown to be incomplete."
Ptolemaic astronomy is, of course, still useful in limited purposes, mostly for navigation. Like Newtonian physics, it's less wrong than it is incomplete. You could say it's completely wrong because the planets don't in fact move that way; well, by those standards, Newtonian physics is completely wrong because particles aren't little ball bearings. Ptolemaic astronomers got accurate results within the level of precision available to them, and so did Newtonian physicists. Within what they were trying to measure, it's incorrect to say that they were wrong. If a Ptolemaic astronomer told you that there was going to be an eclipse, you'd be damned foolish to disbelieve him.
The climate science equivalent of the inaccuracies of Ptolemaic astronomy and Newtonian physics is that there are many unknowns regarding the mechanisms by which this is happening. But that it is happening is now undisputable (though the same people who are now denying that it's human-caused were, up until very recently, still denying that it was happening at all) and that it's human-caused is so close to certain as to make the uncertainty of no significance.
Phlogiston and the ether were hypotheses set out on the basis of long-known collateral facts. They both immediately began to fall apart as soon as scientists began making experiments designed to measure them directly, and dispute was hot until the theories collapsed entirely. That's pretty much the opposite of what's happened with climate science.
I don't know what you're referring to in regard to the perforated septum. There is such a thing as a perforated septum.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-06 08:06 pm (UTC)The distinction I intended is simply that between intention as an event in the speaker's psyche, to which neither of us has access, and the rhetorical effect (whether intended or not), which is public though still of course disputable.
I have seen exactly the kind of rhetoric you quote, many times. I do not believe it in any way means, or is using the statistic to mean, that scientific truth is established by democratic vote.
Aha - I think I see where some of our problem arises. My (hypothetical and hyperbolical) sofa-shouting wasn't really meant to imply that the people who said this consciously believed that scientific truth could be established by a democratic vote. But I do object to that statistic being presented as being in itself a scientific argument against climate change. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
I'm happy to exclude nuclear holocaust, if you like; but does any of that blither to which you refer predate, say, 1900? If not, then we can't really speak of a longstanding orthodoxy on the subject.
As for the rest, it's interesting stuff, and though we may be getting a little off the point following it, still, what the hell! Ptolemaic astronomy was and is useful in that it "saved the appearances": that is, it accounted adequately for all the data it needed to account for. A physicist once told me, in fact, that the computer program for one of the space missions was calculated using the Ptolemaic model, because it was simpler to compute than the Copernican one. He may have been kidding, but it hardly matters for the argument: the Ptolemaic model (and Tycho Brahe's model, for that matter) really does predict celestial appearances accurately for the purposes required by those who used it. Nevertheless, the theory on which it was based is, and was, incorrect. The planets aren't in orbit around the earth.
My reference to the perforated septum was to Vesalius's demonstration that Galen was wrong in stating (on the basis of experiments carried out on dogs) that blood normally flows from one ventricle of the heart to the other through the septum, which he saw as a porous membrane.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-07 01:15 am (UTC)It would be possible to say, "This is easily mistook, so it shouldn't be put that way," but I did not see that argument being made.
There was no need to make that kind of climatological blither prior to the recent crisis. It was so deeply assumed in common orthodoxy that the Earth was made for Man that there was no need to argue against those scientifically literate enough to realize otherwise. Such assumptions may be seen hidden in the kind of belief that Voltaire satirizes when he says that noses were made to hold up spectacles.
Actually, what Newtonian theory really says is that all the planetary bodies are in orbit around each other. The Sun merely gets the bulk of the argument. But, whatever. Sure, Ptolemaic theory is completely wrong: as a complete theory, so is Newton's. Yet it doesn't make sense to ignore Newton - I don't know if your physicist's story is true, but it is true that the early Nasa astronauts used to say, when they weren't actually operating the spacecraft engines, that "Newton is in the driver's seat" - and the real point of that story is that, regardless of Ptolemaic theory, the results calculated from it were correct.
If this has any applicability to climate science, the lesson would be that, regardless of what errors exist in climate science models, the conclusions scientists are drawing from it are correct. That doesn't prove the analogy applies, of course, but it is the argument that the use of the analogy supports.
I confess that, outside of evolution and genetics, I know nil about the biological sciences, which is why I didn't remark on the theory of humors either.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-10 01:07 pm (UTC)While I'm here - there are a couple of points in your last comment I should take up:
There was no need to make that kind of climatological blither prior to the recent crisis. It was so deeply assumed in common orthodoxy that the Earth was made for Man that there was no need to argue against those scientifically literate enough to realize otherwise. Such assumptions may be seen hidden in the kind of belief that Voltaire satirizes when he says that noses were made to hold up spectacles.
It was certainly believed by Christians that Man had stewardship over the world, but it's not so clear that it was believed that nothing Man could do would ever make the world uninhabitable, which is the point at issue. Adam and Eve, the contemporaries of Noah, the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, all provided examples of people who'd managed to foul their own nests, and the millenarian strain so strong in Protestant thought at least wasn't particularly compatible with the idea that the earth would be a habitation for all time. Voltaire is satirizing one particular philosophy, that of Leibniz, and who really can't be made to stand for all pre-1800 thought, even had Pangloss represented his views accurately.
Actually, what Newtonian theory really says is that all the planetary bodies are in orbit around each other. The Sun merely gets the bulk of the argument.
Not as I understand it. All the bodies exert a gravitational pull on each other, but there's no sense in which, for example, Mercury is in orbit around Saturn.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-10 04:47 pm (UTC)I don't think that happens often in science, certainly not in physical science where the variables are fewer than in biological. On the other hand, it happens all the time in fields like literary criticism, where fashions come and go, and before they go are applied indiscriminately.
Accordingly, I think this is less an example of falsification in science and more a demonstration that psychoanalysis isn't a science.
In all three Biblical cases that you cite, Man didn't make the environment uninhabitable. Instead, God blew a whistle and said, "Everybody out of the pool." Man's culpability in these cases is an offense against the laws of God, not a destruction of the environment. It would be possible to cite global warming as evidence of the End Times, but I don't believe I've seen anybody claiming that, probably because the kind of people who think in that manner don't believe in global warming. Instead, they cite AIDS or 9/11. They don't believe humans can destroy the Earth in this manner; they consider these things messages from God. In any case, Revelationary apocalypsism is a phenomenon of the last century; previously, Biblical futurists tended to focus on God's promise to Noah not to destroy the Earth again.
I should perhaps have said, not "around each other," but "around a central point." And yes, my understanding is that this applies to every pair of bodies, including Mercury and Saturn, virtually indiscernible though that interaction may be.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-11 04:21 pm (UTC)Some of the ones I encounter on my daily commute seem barely literate. They can't string two words together without an interjectory 'f***' or 'f*****'.
God help their poor lecturers...
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-11 04:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-11 04:25 pm (UTC)