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It seems that the author of this post has a quite weird position - that climate science should be unpolitical [1]. I don't think that a science which at its co

It seems that the author of this post has a quite weird position - that climate science should be unpolitical [1]. I don't think that a science which at its core deals with the human causes and human consequences of climate can be unpolitical. It's definitely fair to have different views, just kind of weird to argue against politics and then make highly political recommendations. In my opinion, the key is rather to work towards a more empirical, more transparent, and more rational discourse (a goal which becomes more difficult the more economic, affective, and health pressure builds up on people). [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/book-review-the-climate-fix https://spectrum.ieee.org/book-review-the-climate-fix [edit] Since some commenters took so much offense with this position, let me clarify: Of course you can try to do unpolitical science. But anything that recommends or implies solutions (or lack of problems) is inherently political. If one believes climate change is happening (as the author does), it's impossible to talk about causes and outcomes without being political.

newsclues 3y ago
> I don't think that a science which at its core deals with the human causes and human consequences of climate can be unpolitical. from wiki: "Science is a neutral, rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe." Nothing to do with politics or humans. Removing human and political biases are good for science. The perversion of science to be political and human centric is dangerous.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  if we remove humans from climate science, there's nothing to worry about. Life itself is incredibly resilient and likely to survive anthropogenic climate change; it's survived past extinction events that resulted in a 95+% die-off of the biosphere. ... for obvious reasons, we care about climate change because there's a nearly 0% chance of humanity being one of the surviving species in that severe an outcome.
  - newsclues 3y ago
    humans and human biases are two different things.
- mort96 3y ago
  The opinion that we as a society ought to take seriously the knowledge gained from this neutral, rigorous, systematic endeavour... is a political one. And the decision about which actions we as a society ought to take as a response to the knowledge gained... is very very political.
  - mgaunard 3y ago
    I would hope that even in the US, where it's certainly popular to run on a political anti-intellectual platform due to the wide societal gaps between the educated and the uneducated, accounting for science when building the rationale for policy decision-making is still a no-brainer.
    - mort96 3y ago
      It doesn't seem like it? One of the two parties's stance on climate change is that it's not happening and we should do nothing about it; and despite having been in power quite a bit since the science on climate change became clear, they have stayed true to their platform.
      - nemo44x 3y ago
        That’s a nice bit of sleight of hand. The science isn’t clear and most of it isn’t really science as it isn’t falsifiable. That doesn’t mean it’s not possibly useful but it’s also not the final word on anything. Saying that I agree that moving carbon from the earth to the atmosphere has the ability to contribute to a warming effect. We can model that in a lab but there’s still the question of scale and complexity. But that’s just a small part of it. The other part is does it really matter? Some models, which sensationalist media loves, will tell you we are all dead in 50 years. Other models, which aren’t so popular with media say otherwise. Point being these are models which greatly simplify reality. They don’t account for most things. But climate doomers have taken it to a quasi-religious place. It’s cultish and weird. It’s like there’s a hole being filled for some people… A thing to be skeptical about is the billions in NGOs/etc that profit from this. That a scenario based on doom inherently attracts power as it’s useful and one that doesn’t predict doom does not. So yeah maybe there’s some that just flat out deny. But there’s also many that are skeptical of the solutions and the motives of those pushing (and their hypocrisy) them as well as the practical reality of it all.
- eesmith 3y ago
  It's pretty humorous that citations [1] and [2], which are supposed to support that "neutral" claim, don't actually make that claim. [1] is from E.O. Wilson's book "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge" at https://archive.org/details/consilienceunity00edwa/ https://archive.org/details/consilienceunity00edwa/ , but that source only uses the word 'neutral' once ("The reason is that the mutants involved in drift have proven to be neutral, or nearly so"), and at https://archive.org/details/consilienceunity00edwa/page/209/mode/2up?q=rigorous https://archive.org/details/consilienceunity00edwa/page/209/... seems to argue that "social science" is not rigorous. FWIW, Wilson says https://archive.org/details/consilienceunity00edwa/page/57/mode/2up?q=testable https://archive.org/details/consilienceunity00edwa/page/57/m... > Science, to put its warrant as concisely as possible, is the organized, systematic enterprise that gathers knowledge about the world and condenses the knowledge into testable laws and principles. The diagnostic features of science that distinguish it from pseudoscience are first, repeatability: The same phenomenon is sought again, preferably by independent investigation, and the interpretation given to it is confirmed or discarded by means of novel analysis and experimentation. Second, economy: Scientists attempt to abstract the information into the form that is both simplest and aesthetically most pleasing— the combination called elegance — while yielding the largest amount of information with the least amount of effort. Third, mensuration: If something can be properly measured, using universally accepted scales, generalizations about it are rendered unambiguous. Fourth, heuristics: The best science stimulates further discovery, often in unpredictable new directions; and the new knowledge provides an additional test of the original principles that led to its discovery. Fifth and finally, consilience: The explanations of different phenomena most likely to survive are those that can be connected and proved consistent with one another. [2] is preface to "The Oxford companion to the history of modern science" which at https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont0000unse_s7n3/page/n11/mode/2up?q=disinterested https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont0000unse_s7n3/pa... says quite the opposite of "neutral": > The programs of industrial, governmental, and charitable patrons insure that, no matter what scientists think, science no longer can be a disinterested pursuit of truth. Some philosophers and historians have arrived independently at this last proposition by proving that there is no truth and that, if there were, scientists could not recognize it. The Companion gives due weight to the view that modern science is but an engine for the creation and convenient arrangement of facts. It does not disfavor naive realism, however, and generously declines to decide whether existence is more truly predicated of electrons than of readers.
UnixSchizoid 3y ago
Political bias corrupts science
fallingknife 3y ago
> I don't think that a science which at its core deals with the human causes and human consequences of climate can be unpolitical. This is a ridiculous argument. The physics of a bullet hitting a human body is obviously dealing with a human cause and consequence, and yet can be stated completely free of any politics or bias.
- alangibson 3y ago
  You're confusing the very human project of science (what we look at, why we look at it, where resources get allocated) with a domain of scientific knowledge.
synetic 3y ago
Science ought to be unpolitical and we should strive to make it as unpolitical as possible. What we do with the knowledge gained from scientific inquiry of course is political and ought to be political. It is not weird to say the inquiry ought to be apolitical and then make policy suggestions based on the results of the inquiry. This is as it ought to be.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

newsclues 3y ago

> I don't think that a science which at its core deals with the human causes and human consequences of climate can be unpolitical. from wiki: "Science is a neutral, rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe." Nothing to do with politics or humans. Removing human and political biases are good for science. The perversion of science to be political and human centric is dangerous.

shadowgovt 3y ago
if we remove humans from climate science, there's nothing to worry about. Life itself is incredibly resilient and likely to survive anthropogenic climate change; it's survived past extinction events that resulted in a 95+% die-off of the biosphere. ... for obvious reasons, we care about climate change because there's a nearly 0% chance of humanity being one of the surviving species in that severe an outcome.
- newsclues 3y ago
  humans and human biases are two different things.
mort96 3y ago
The opinion that we as a society ought to take seriously the knowledge gained from this neutral, rigorous, systematic endeavour... is a political one. And the decision about which actions we as a society ought to take as a response to the knowledge gained... is very very political.
- mgaunard 3y ago
  I would hope that even in the US, where it's certainly popular to run on a political anti-intellectual platform due to the wide societal gaps between the educated and the uneducated, accounting for science when building the rationale for policy decision-making is still a no-brainer.
  - mort96 3y ago
    It doesn't seem like it? One of the two parties's stance on climate change is that it's not happening and we should do nothing about it; and despite having been in power quite a bit since the science on climate change became clear, they have stayed true to their platform.
    - nemo44x 3y ago
      That’s a nice bit of sleight of hand. The science isn’t clear and most of it isn’t really science as it isn’t falsifiable. That doesn’t mean it’s not possibly useful but it’s also not the final word on anything. Saying that I agree that moving carbon from the earth to the atmosphere has the ability to contribute to a warming effect. We can model that in a lab but there’s still the question of scale and complexity. But that’s just a small part of it. The other part is does it really matter? Some models, which sensationalist media loves, will tell you we are all dead in 50 years. Other models, which aren’t so popular with media say otherwise. Point being these are models which greatly simplify reality. They don’t account for most things. But climate doomers have taken it to a quasi-religious place. It’s cultish and weird. It’s like there’s a hole being filled for some people… A thing to be skeptical about is the billions in NGOs/etc that profit from this. That a scenario based on doom inherently attracts power as it’s useful and one that doesn’t predict doom does not. So yeah maybe there’s some that just flat out deny. But there’s also many that are skeptical of the solutions and the motives of those pushing (and their hypocrisy) them as well as the practical reality of it all.
eesmith 3y ago
It's pretty humorous that citations [1] and [2], which are supposed to support that "neutral" claim, don't actually make that claim. [1] is from E.O. Wilson's book "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge" at https://archive.org/details/consilienceunity00edwa/ https://archive.org/details/consilienceunity00edwa/ , but that source only uses the word 'neutral' once ("The reason is that the mutants involved in drift have proven to be neutral, or nearly so"), and at https://archive.org/details/consilienceunity00edwa/page/209/mode/2up?q=rigorous https://archive.org/details/consilienceunity00edwa/page/209/... seems to argue that "social science" is not rigorous. FWIW, Wilson says https://archive.org/details/consilienceunity00edwa/page/57/mode/2up?q=testable https://archive.org/details/consilienceunity00edwa/page/57/m... > Science, to put its warrant as concisely as possible, is the organized, systematic enterprise that gathers knowledge about the world and condenses the knowledge into testable laws and principles. The diagnostic features of science that distinguish it from pseudoscience are first, repeatability: The same phenomenon is sought again, preferably by independent investigation, and the interpretation given to it is confirmed or discarded by means of novel analysis and experimentation. Second, economy: Scientists attempt to abstract the information into the form that is both simplest and aesthetically most pleasing— the combination called elegance — while yielding the largest amount of information with the least amount of effort. Third, mensuration: If something can be properly measured, using universally accepted scales, generalizations about it are rendered unambiguous. Fourth, heuristics: The best science stimulates further discovery, often in unpredictable new directions; and the new knowledge provides an additional test of the original principles that led to its discovery. Fifth and finally, consilience: The explanations of different phenomena most likely to survive are those that can be connected and proved consistent with one another. [2] is preface to "The Oxford companion to the history of modern science" which at https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont0000unse_s7n3/page/n11/mode/2up?q=disinterested https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont0000unse_s7n3/pa... says quite the opposite of "neutral": > The programs of industrial, governmental, and charitable patrons insure that, no matter what scientists think, science no longer can be a disinterested pursuit of truth. Some philosophers and historians have arrived independently at this last proposition by proving that there is no truth and that, if there were, scientists could not recognize it. The Companion gives due weight to the view that modern science is but an engine for the creation and convenient arrangement of facts. It does not disfavor naive realism, however, and generously declines to decide whether existence is more truly predicated of electrons than of readers.

UnixSchizoid 3y ago

Political bias corrupts science

fallingknife 3y ago

> I don't think that a science which at its core deals with the human causes and human consequences of climate can be unpolitical. This is a ridiculous argument. The physics of a bullet hitting a human body is obviously dealing with a human cause and consequence, and yet can be stated completely free of any politics or bias.

alangibson 3y ago
You're confusing the very human project of science (what we look at, why we look at it, where resources get allocated) with a domain of scientific knowledge.

synetic 3y ago

Science ought to be unpolitical and we should strive to make it as unpolitical as possible. What we do with the knowledge gained from scientific inquiry of course is political and ought to be political. It is not weird to say the inquiry ought to be apolitical and then make policy suggestions based on the results of the inquiry. This is as it ought to be.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]