Trust Science

[motters]

"It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition."

Bertrand Russell

[gnosis]

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

            -- Max Planck

[ugh]

Grand words, but not much content and brazen attempts to sneak in ad-hominens under the radar:

"The climate change legions are recruited mainly from the Western left-intelligentsia, their kitbags stuffed with all the sub-Marxist and ethno-masochist flapdoodle of the modern Academy. They hate capitalism, they hate Western civilization, and they hate their own ancestors. The kind of dramatic social engineering implicit in the phrase "combatting climate change" is emotionally appealing to them."

With all the nice words around you would hardly notice.

[byrneseyeview]

It would be an ad hominem if he said "And thus they are wrong." But he doesn't even say they're wrong! He just says that they happen to reach the conclusion that lets them act in their ideological interests.

Was there any language in the article that you found particularly wasteful? Did you have any criticisms besides the misplaced accusation of ad hominem?

[robotrout]

You may not agree with him, but others do. A certain first lady, in a couple of her speeches, still makes my fist clench when I think about them.

Anyway, my present to you, is that I'll say no more. It's Christmas. Let's enjoy the day.

Merry Christmas.

[DarkShikari]

Yes, this is Digg material at best. Brazen, obvious trolling and over-the-top insulting of the establishment. All he does is stick something at the top of the article that almost all his readers will agree with and then relies on everyone who doesn't read the rest to reflex-upvote it.

Your average Digg politics thread is more civil.

I mean, seriously, "They hate capitalism, they hate Western civilization, and they hate their own ancestors.". What color is the sky in a world where this isn't flamebait?

Flagged.

[tybris]

No. Science, like democracy, is based on the very principle of distrust. Instead, simply accept it. Accept that scientists are humans. Accept that the process if often flawed. Accept that peer-review doesn't really mean that much. Accept that most theories aren't fully supported by the data. Accept that we have such a diversity in science that experiments are rarely repeated. Accept that it's hard to tell the good science from the bad. but most of all, accept that it is the best thing we've got.

(scientist)

[DanielBMarkham]

I didn't RTA, but I find it interesting you compare science and democracy.

In a good democracy, the politicians are assumed to be gaining the system for personal power. That is, the political system is built up to make it extremely difficult for power to centralize in any one spot for a long period of time. There are lots of ways to do this, checks and balances, term limits, parliamentary systems, etc.

However in the current "scientific" system -- the system that allocates political and monetary power to scientists -- none of this seems to be in place. It's much at the same place democracies were in the 1600s or so; there is a lot of reliance on the "right" people being in power.

I'm not at all trying to slam science -- it is truly the best thing we have -- but I found your metaphor very enlightening, perhaps in ways you didn't realize? Thanks for sharing it.

[jacoblyles]

I think his intended audience are right-wing people who use incidents like Climategate to justify their beliefs in ideas such as creationism. I don't think many people here are part of that audience.

[gjm11]

If you consider the denial of anthropogenic global warming to be an "idea such as creationism", there's ample recent evidence that many people here are part of that audience.

(FWIW, (1) I think it's clearly less crazy than creationism, (2) I think it's somewhat crazy none the less, (3) I think the overblown rhetoric from the anti-AGW camp around "Climategate" is an indication of the weakness of their actual arguments, and (4) I've now said all I'm going to in this thread on that subject.)

[euroclydon]

I love John Derbyshire! Whenever I lament the current stock of presidential candidates, I always say, "We need someone like John Derbyshire running"; somebody who can employ logic and think on their feet.

[byrneseyeview]

He's paleo-conservatism's apostle to the nerds.

[msie]

Being homophobic is illogical.

[azgolfer]

"I have to cop out on that." This is the kind of intellectual laziness that almost let the nonsense of AGW succeed. Fortunately there are people like Watt (check out surfacestations.org) and McKintyre (Climate Audit) who have the skills and put in the time and effort to reveal the horrible corruption in 'Climatology'. The emails and code have now made it obvious, but their release might never had happened without the FOI requests. Here is the latest for those who haven't seen it - One man has been controlling all the Wikipedia climate articles to support the AGW view http://www.nationalpost.com/m/blog.html?b=fullcomment&e=...

[boredguy8]

Oddly, the demand to trust science is itself not a scientific claim.

[dmoney]

All the big words hurt my head. Well, my finger from going back and forth from dictionary.com.

From the petition he links (http://www.oism.org/pproject/) signed by "thirty-one thousand scientists":

> The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment

Maybe it wouldn't help, but how would limiting greenhouse emissions harm the environment?

[anamax]

> Maybe it wouldn't help, but how would limiting greenhouse emissions harm the environment?

Less developed societies tend to be environmental disasters while more developed ones use more energy. Compare urban China's air pollution with LA's.

[guelo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

[bernoulli]

just came here to point out that bernoulli's principle has nothing to do with how airplane wings actually make planes fly.

[msie]

He's a homophobe.

[ugh]

That quite obviously doesn’t matter when he is talking about climate change.