February 27, 2008
On Open Minds and Equal Time
My old professor Akeel Bilgrami once remarked that he didn't get the fetish of being "open minded." "I don't keep an open mind on whether the Earth is flat," he said to drive the point home. This isn't that bad, but Sean Carroll spells out a similar problem with the fetish of "equal time."
Arts & Letters Daily is a useful website, sort of a proto-blog, that brings together links to all sorts of interesting articles about, you know, arts and letters. If you follow it just a little bit, a decided political bent becomes clear, as you read headlines like “Do professors indoctrinate students by expressing a political ideology in the classroom?” and “Ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single woman what she most longs for, and she likely won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waist: she wants a man and a baby…” The site’s impresario, Denis Dutton, is a right-tilting philosopher and entrepreneur, who occasionally enjoys ranting against the postmodern obscurantism of the left-tilting academy.
But Prof. Dutton has apparently discovered that a touch of relativist anything-goes-ism can be useful in certain circumstances: in particular, when science is telling you something you don’t want to hear. These days, science is telling us that we are bollixing up the planet by dumping tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The very idea that the unchecked engines of capitalism could somehow lead to something bad, rather than all-pervading and unalloyed good, offends Prof. Dutton’s free-market sensibilities. So he has launched Climate Debate Daily, where both “Calls to Action” and “Dissenting Voices” are given equal time in a different free market, this one of ideas.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 02:44 PM | Permalink
Comments
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So a website opens up that offers a convenient service for those interested in becoming better informed on all sides of a crucial public debate. A forum that publishes items at odds with some kind of imaginary consensus right alongside items seeking to cement it OF COURSE seems like a terrible idea to those, like Mr Carroll, who themselves seek to cement it and close off rational deliberation on the subject. However, to the curious intellectual reader, who wishes to not make politics of science, it becomes pretty immediately apparent, reading these items, that there is indeed a real scientific debate to be had. Since this immediately falsifies the idea that there is a solid scientific consensus, Mr Carroll is dismayed. But it is not clear why we should care. Mr Dutton is indeed some kind of libertarian conservative. He is also an articulate advocate of Karl Popper’s philosophy of science, and what he is doing here is obviously very far from the post-modern obscurantism that Mr Dutton actively deplores, but is an outstanding example of a liberal, sceptical, scientific attitude. Kudos to him and Climate Debate Daily.
Posted by: Ergonomic Slingshot | Feb 27, 2008 5:37:27 PM
Ergonomic, you seem to have missed the point somewhat. Mr Carroll is isn't objecting to dissenting voices, he's objecting to equal time for dissenting voices, which he sees as giving the dissenters disproportionate air time, thereby lending otherwise undue credability to their positions. While a loud minority insist on global warming science is bunk, the vast majority of scientists kinda agree on the subject.
There doesn't have to be two equal sides to every argument. Would you support equal time for the dissenters on FlatEarthDebateDaily ?
Posted by: Brendan | Feb 27, 2008 8:57:32 PM
I find this whole topic intriguing and indeed, it is almost at times as if it's beginning to echo the "teach the controversy" catch cry of the woefully ill-informed ID crowd.
I find, in debates on this topic, most people have not the slightest idea what the latest science is and are still debating points that were settled half a decade ago or more. Still, what can you expect when you're not really interested in properly understanding the science and are more at pains to take a dissenting view for dissent's sake.
Sure, there's been some Chicken Littles on various topics in the past, but that doesn't excuse your obligation to ensure you understand fully what you are talking about before jumping in feet first with "global conspiracy" cries. Do dissenters (as they like to call themselves as they set up their opposing straw men) seriously think the people whose very job it is to know and investigate these matters have not grappled deeply with the very points they raise as they try to objectively work out exactly how an enormously complex, multi-faceted system behaves?
Did it ever occur to them that in the world of evidence-based thinking, the consensus view is given that title for a reason? It represents a consensus between the people who have access to the best and most up-to-date information available on the topic, who mostly stand ready to alter their thinking and their models to fit the ever-increasing number of data points as they become available.
The numbers continue to roll in and on virtually every indicator, it appears previous estimations were too conservative. Don't expect any of this to have too much effect on the die-hard dissenter though. For that, they'd have to have a proper understanding of what constitutes science.....
Posted by: MattInOz | Feb 28, 2008 12:27:14 AM
Science is not a democracy. It's about what you can proof.
Science is also not about personality or political persuasion.
By the way, many of the scientists who have been put on the list of "the majority that agrees", were not very happy about that. So even if science was a democracy, the results of the election are tainted.
MattInOz, I hope you appreciate the irony of your post.
There is no evidence that CO2 can alter climate. Most importantly, CO2 levels loosely follow °T levels, not the other way around, as Al Gore would lead to you believe. This is because most of the CO2 is held within the oceans, and they release it as °T increases.
Global climate has been perfectally predicable, as a product of solar activity and the earths' magnetic fields. It follows a 22year cycle, and nothing out of the ordinairy has happened in the last few years.
Most likely, global warming (renamed climate change, after °T started dropping, independent of CO2 levels) is another scam using apocalyptic visions to gain political support, and/or subsidies. Global warming is the meal ticket for many politicians and "scientists".
For example, here in my country, all of the recent new taxes have been packaged as "a way to reduce CO2 output". But we know that if we actually reduce our output, they will just find something else to tax, so it's not really an incentive.
The global warmists have not been able to predict anything. All of their predictions about the climate or the CO2 levels have been wrong. First the planet was going to dry out, now were going to be flooded. It was going to be so warm, the malaria musquito would infest Europe, but now it's going to be so cold we're going to freeze to death. In one story Europe will turn to desert, in the other Europe will disappear into the ocean, or under metres of snow. Rediculious. Each time their predictions don't pan out, they come up with a different story. It's a religion pretending to be a science.
And the biggest problem of all, is the notion that they can fix it, as long as the people submit (their money). If you know anything about the history of societies, biology, or the planets, you know that nothing lasts forever. And why should it? Global warming will kill us all? So what? Were you planning on living forever? Do you really believe the human race will continue into eternity?
Like religion, they promise an eternity. Not eternity for your soul, but for your offspring. It's impossible to actually prove it, just like it's impossible to prove heaven. And it goes against anything we know about the physical world. But you never know, they might be right, so you'd better do what they say.
Posted by: PeterJohn | Feb 28, 2008 12:47:57 AM
PeterJohn, that comment is just astonishing. Why not tie it into the British meta-study finding that anti-depressants work no better than placebos? I'd love to take you on, but the bell on my dog's collar strongly suggests there's going to be another earthquake in the North Atlantic soon, and I need to prepare.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Feb 28, 2008 1:25:50 AM
Peter John,
Thanks for your comments. Where to begin.....
I agree with you on a major number of points, esp as concerns the fact that species, societies and even whole planets don't exist forever or in a vacuum independent from the rest of the universe. And I would never attempt to claim that global warming means the end of the world or even humanity, in fact, as you no doubt will be aware, it will be a positive boon for some parts of the planet, maybe as many as that for which it is detrimental. That's decidedly NOT my point.
The point is that there remains very little doubt that global warming trends are human induced and more exaggerated than they would otherwise be. I very respectfully suggest that you read some of the literature, I don't source my argument from an Al Gore movie, I listen to the experts in the field. It's hard going, I'll admit, but the devil is in the detail. There's some great stuff at the Royal Society site or RealClimate.org where they carefully examine dissenting views and welcome open debate. But don't kid yourself that the two sides have equal standing.
The trouble will most likely come from the fact that different areas of the world will be affected to different degrees (you are dead right in saying there is still much uncertainty as to what extent) and those that stand to be worst affected will see massive food and water shortages, coupled perhaps with unpredictable mass migration - unfortunately it appears this will be concentrated more toward the poorer, often low-lying nations. And of course, a terrible toll will likely be taken on other species that already sit on or near the brink of extinction. I know that that is the 'natural' state of 99% of the planet's past inhabitants, but that's a poor argument for not maintaining biodiversity as best we can today.
As for CO2 not causing global warming or lagging it instead of leading, you're having one of those arguments from the past that I was talking about. If you read some of the papers around this specific topic, you will see that there is large agreement that solar activity or planetary positioning probably has a large hand in kick-starting each warming cycle, but that once underway, the induced release of CO2 over hundreds of years(esp from the oceans) AMPLIFIES the effect many times and leads then to runaway warming before later stabilisation.
As for a global "scientist conspiracy" to gain funding, well, I'll let the ridiculousness of that one stand on its own. You have trouble getting two scientists to agree on the colour of grass, such is the ferociousness of competition within the community so I'm not sure how they'd organise a conspiracy too effectively, given what's to be gained by being dissenting AND correct. That's one of the areas where the "dissenters" start to sound like the ID crowd and their talk of a "materialistic, Darwinian conspiracy" across the globe.
At any rate, the truth will reveal itself in time and I shall respectfully bow my head in supplication if they're proved wrong :-) By the way, it's not like I don't HOPE they are......
Posted by: MattInOz | Feb 28, 2008 1:47:14 AM
I did not use the word "conspiracy". I fact, I consider it an underhanded ad hominem argument, and therefore a debate fallacy. Similar like nazi analogies.
It doesn't take a conspiracy for people to realize that they get a lot more attention with apocaliptic visions, then with a thesis on the colour of grass. These things have a way of feeding themselves. It's very basic game theory: choice and reward. Choice to follow the party line, choice to be reserved or hysterical,... And what works for one guy, will be copied by the next. When Al Gore gets the nobel prize for his propaganda film, you'd be a fool not to jump on his band wagon.
I will tell you what shaped my opinion. I'm always willing to change my mind, if I come across a good enough argument.
Last summer, a British quantum physicist, predicted the weather for this region in wintertime, during an interview months before the winter. He was spot on. He monitors the sun and the earths' magnetic fields to predict the weather. He is not entitled to subsidies, so instead he funds his research by selling his predictions to corporations (perhaps to bet on food prices, I don't know). While traditional meteorologists can hardly predict the weather a week ahead, he can do it with a 9 in 10 accuracy months ahead of time. In the same interview he said CO2 has no effect on climate.
I believe what he says because his science is continuesly tested, and his calculations are increasingly accurate as he develops his technique to predict the weather.
The global warmists, on the other hand, have not been able to predict anything. They've been very very wrong about a lot of things. Nowadays they bet on all the horses at the same time. If it goes up, it's CO2, if it goes down, it's CO2, if it stays the same, we should thank them for saving us. That way it's not falsifiable. Their calculations have a random outcome, so they are right, whatever happens. Good political move, but it renders the theory scientifically useless.
Now if a global warmist was able to consistantly predict events with an accuracy greater than the British guy (whos name escapes me), using the CO2 theory, then I would consider changing my mind. But as long as nothing about the theories is falsifiable, I have no reason to give them credit.
I got off track with my "eternity" argument. My point is that coming up with theoretical visions of death and destruction, and then saying it's the safe bet to treat them as a real problem, is an endless argument. If you follow the argument, you encounter the inevitability of global extinction, which makes everything useless.
You should only act upon a real problem, not a theoretical, non falsifiable, problem. You can come up with thousands of theoretical problems. Spending energy on them will get you nowhere.
By the way, when the oil runs out, human CO2 emissions will drop. So no action is neccesairy. Only, if we have any bad weather then, what will we blame? The Gods, perhaps.
Funny how politicians' concern for CO2s' effect on climate correlates with the inevitable collapse of the service economy, due to energy reserves depletion. It would be a good way force people to consume less energy, without having to acknowlegde that the ship is sinking. But that sound like a conspiracy theory, doesn't it?
Elatia, thank you for the information. :)
Posted by: PeterJohn | Feb 28, 2008 8:46:06 PM
Peter John,
All I can say, respectfully, is do some more reading of the literature, as opposed to the commentary. I know from your history of posts here that you have a good understanding of the workings of science, I am bemused as to why this issue elicits such inconsistency from you.
As I pointed out, if the consensus was so wildly incorrect, as you posit, there would be great prestige not to mention grants/funding (which I personally think you over-emphasize) for those who could come forth with evidence that shakes and breaks the ruling paradigm. This is clearly not the case and I say it again, the consensus has earned its title as such in the hard fought battleground of the literature. Read it.
I understand EXACTLY what you are getting at with your final few paragraphs and agree that there is a tendency for us to behave in this way. The thing is, on this occasion, I believe you are barking up the wrong tree. We must sort the wheat from the chaff and sometimes, when the boy cries "wolf", le lupus IS nigh...
As for your physicist, HE sounds like someone who should definitely be getting in touch with those in the field, don't you think? If only for charitable reasons..? I don't want to go putting him in the same category as Thomas Kimball's bent spoon.... Where's the irony now ;-)
Posted by: MattInOz | Feb 28, 2008 11:09:49 PM
I'm not that into the subject that I would research it. You have to judge a book by its cover most of the times. Too many books, too little time.
Perhaps its bad communication. But all I hear from the global warming camp is fear mongering and moral blackmail. It doesn't impress me.
And what lost them all credibility in my eyes is that when °T started dropping again, independent from human CO2 output, they went ahead and changed the term global warming to global climate change. Blaming the complexcity of climate for their mistake. But if climate is so complex, how come they are so sure of their theory. Seems like they are working backward to prove a predetermined conclusion, instead of working to come to a conclusion.
We all know climate changes. Four centuries ago we had a hot spell here. We were growing plants that would die of the cold and wet nowadays. Sometimes it doesn't snow at all in winter, other years it snows for days on end. We have had summers with nothing but rain, we've had summers that would make the rubber on your shoes melt. The weather has always refused to submit to our time table. It's not the end of the world.
The subsidies are a very important issue. Global warming, unlike the colour of grass, is very political. And education is very political. Governments decide how the money is spend, and more indirectly, who gets gets the best payed, most prestigious, jobs in the schools.
They do not take kindly to someone who wants to contradict their main argument.
You must appreciate how important global warming is in European politics. It's what terrorism is to Americas' politicians. It's their "Raison d'être
After the euro didn't bring the promised prosperity, people in Europe were starting to question the purpose of the EU. It used to be "the economy", now it's "global climate". Just like the occupation of Iraq used to be about WMDs, but now it's about spreading democracy.
Don't get me wrong, I believe human activity does effect the planet, and in some ways the climate, and not in a good way. And we should certainly stop feeding resources into a corrupt economy that needs infinite growth. But I don't buy the apacolyps scenario, certainly not in light of the political motives.
Posted by: PeterJohn | Feb 29, 2008 1:03:12 PM
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