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March 10, 2010
Scientists Right by Association
This line of reasoning is increasingly irksome, here from a Peter Lord column about University of California History and Science Professor Naomi Oreskes:
Oreskes said modern science has sent men to the moon, cured diseases and predicted tsunamis after the earthquake in Chile. Why do people believe science can't get it right when it comes to climate change?
Frankly, it only makes me more suspicious when ostensible supporters of science speak of it as more of a philosophy than a process. Actually, what happens is the successes are attributed to the philosophy — Science has done great things, so you should believe in Science! — and wrong-turns are just part of the process.
Medical science has taken many wrong turns, as theories have been tested and tried. Expressing skepticism that a sick person just needed more of the earth element in his system, some hundreds of years ago, should not have been taken as distrust of the capacity of science to find the solution, but as a distrust that a particular group of scientists had come up with the right one.
Similarly, it isn't a mark of theological fundamentalism to note that predictions of tsunamis (After a coastline earthquake? No way!) varied in their accuracy. A common phrase, after the last one, was that "Hawaii dodged a bullet." Well, isn't Peter Lord's claim that science had told us where the bullet was headed?
Climate alarmists have been making claims about changes of a few degrees projected out over a century. The daily weather isn't even that accurate. That's not to say that the process of science doesn't turn up generally correct answers in cases such as the weather forecast and the tsunamis, nor that scientists will never find a way to incorporate all of the necessary variables into their models in order to be close enough about the climate. But when globalist bureaucrats take up the torch of major manipulation of the world economy, "close enough" had better be pretty darn close.
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If you are old enough to remember the advertisement in the seventies that featured an American Indian standing on a once beautiful coastline now covered with trash, pollution and dead fish, then panning to the Indian's face and a single tear flowing you wouldn't need a bunch of scientists to tell you to pay attention to the world we inhabit and do a better job keeping it clean.
All the scientists and Al Gores combined never made me think twice about the environment, but I think of that old Indian every time I put something in my recycling bin, or see white, filtered smoke coming from a smokestack instead of the black tar that used to flow from them.
Posted by: michael at March 10, 2010 3:30 PMOreskes is either stupid or employing typical Marxist sophistry. "Science" is not a monolithic group in which everyone agrees. In fact, there is a huge debate among thousands of scientists over whether there even is "global warming", let along its causes. That debate is even larger now that the alarmists have been exposed as having fraudulently doctored their data and conspired to silence, rather than confront, their skeptical colleagues.
Posted by: BobN at March 10, 2010 4:09 PM"But when globalist bureaucrats take up the torch of major manipulation of the world economy, 'close enough' had better be pretty darn close."
Yes, let's leave that to the economists, who unlike scientists are always accurate and have predicted every major economic event for decades!
Glad to see you finally come out and directly state your anti-scientific bias. What do those eggheads with their "degrees" and "research" know that a blogger can't easily dismiss based on common sense, right?
Posted by: Russ at March 11, 2010 10:22 AMMeanwhile back on this planet...
Posted by: Russ at March 12, 2010 4:49 PMOops, here's the link.
Posted by: Russ at March 12, 2010 4:51 PM