4 ms·

The science of finding the bomb is inherently neutral to how or even whether the bomb should be defused. To stretch the analogy, the science to find a bomb in a

The science of finding the bomb is inherently neutral to how or even whether the bomb should be defused. To stretch the analogy, the science to find a bomb in a kinder garden is the same to find a bomb in the basement of a building about to be demolished. Or slightly more analogous to climate science: OK, so you've found the bomb. But there are 19 different ways of trying to defuse it and/or limit the impact of it exploding, including just evacuating the area and letting it blow. Bomb-science might tell us something about what either option is likely to result in, but it probably intersects heavily with a lot of other fields in doing so, and there will still be inherently non-scientific trade-offs to be made at the end of the day (do you send in three bomb-technicians with a 70% chance of defusing/30% chance of getting blown up to save a $10m building? Or do you send in a robot with a 60% chance of success? What if it's a $1m building? What if it's a power plant and 100,000 people and a hospital depend on it? etc etc).

tremon 10y ago
Let's make that even more analogous to climate science: Ok, so you've found the bomb. You've found it inside a school, disguised as a soda vending machine. The moment you publish your results, you find yourself under attack from school administrators and soda vendors, and they all use the same argument: "there's thousands of soda vending machines in schools, and not one of them has blown up. Your results must therefore be faulty". The attacks are not based on their own scientific rigour, but only serve to sway public opinion against any action. It seems the soda vendors are happy to let this one bomb explode in order to protect their revenue stream.
- toss1941 10y ago
  Let's continue to make that even more analogous to climate science: "You've found a bomb in school disguised as a soda vending machine. You alert the school administrators of your finding and find yourself under attack from school administrators and soda vendors. You then use unproven computer models to demonstrate almost precisely where and when the bomb will detonate and what the impact will be. Your first ten predictions turn out to be completely wrong and you play down any bad predictions and shun other bomb experts who disagree with you. You also completely ignore that in the last 100 years there have been 10 completely natural and non-human caused explosions in the school and a lot of other bomb scientists think that the bomb you have found is as best as they can tell, one of these natural bombs and has nothing to do with anyone putting the bomb there on purpose or by accident. You want to keep your day job and money rolling in so you hype up your human planted bomb theory to the nth degree, build political alliances and ignore all scientific critics and work to actively keep them from making a living."

tremon 10y ago

Let's make that even more analogous to climate science: Ok, so you've found the bomb. You've found it inside a school, disguised as a soda vending machine. The moment you publish your results, you find yourself under attack from school administrators and soda vendors, and they all use the same argument: "there's thousands of soda vending machines in schools, and not one of them has blown up. Your results must therefore be faulty". The attacks are not based on their own scientific rigour, but only serve to sway public opinion against any action. It seems the soda vendors are happy to let this one bomb explode in order to protect their revenue stream.

toss1941 10y ago
Let's continue to make that even more analogous to climate science: "You've found a bomb in school disguised as a soda vending machine. You alert the school administrators of your finding and find yourself under attack from school administrators and soda vendors. You then use unproven computer models to demonstrate almost precisely where and when the bomb will detonate and what the impact will be. Your first ten predictions turn out to be completely wrong and you play down any bad predictions and shun other bomb experts who disagree with you. You also completely ignore that in the last 100 years there have been 10 completely natural and non-human caused explosions in the school and a lot of other bomb scientists think that the bomb you have found is as best as they can tell, one of these natural bombs and has nothing to do with anyone putting the bomb there on purpose or by accident. You want to keep your day job and money rolling in so you hype up your human planted bomb theory to the nth degree, build political alliances and ignore all scientific critics and work to actively keep them from making a living."