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Forgive me if I'm wrong, but your argument seems to be: - I don't really understand this whole "global warming" thing. - Even climatologists, who do claim to
by emmett 18y ago
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but your argument seems to be:
- I don't really understand this whole "global warming" thing.
- Even climatologists, who do claim to at least understand global warming, don't have complete understanding of or mastery over the global environment.
- So despite the fact we are probably causing extremely rapid, geologically exceptional warming to levels not seen since before the dawn of mankind, we should do nothing. Climatologists who believe this warming will have large negative effects far outweighing the positive are wrong, or at least not certain enough to be right that we should act.
Implicitly this seems to be saying "One should only act with complete mastery, after achieving total understanding of the situation". That seems like it an overly heavy burden of proof to me, much heavier than you'd normally require of a claim. In fact, it would be completely paralyzing to require this level of proof in the general case, because almost never do we achieve either mastery or true understanding.
- DanielBMarkham 18y agoYep -- I confused you. Sorry about that. I should have stuck to the initial argument instead of providing commentary. The argument I was examining was "who are we to decide?" I think it was answered nicely. To respond: Science is not about "a good feeling" about something. It is about mastery. Constructing a model that can be tested. I mean, just think about it -- when I drop a hammer, I can tell you each second how far away it is going to be, its velocity, and its momentum. It's complete mastery to our degree to measure. That's science. I object to scientists becoming social activists, no matter what the cause. Social activism involves fear mongering, public opinion manipulation, politics, and "messages" instead of information. Science involves none of this, and if scientists continue to confuse their jobs and their art with others, then science will become cheap and politicized even more than it is today. We'll have "conservative" scientists and "liberal" scientists and each group will have the usual internet echo chambers to talk into. It's already heading that way. As far as the chicken little, "why risk it?" argument, I'd refer you to Occam. We can either believe that the climate will continue along some course and the associated ecosystems will adapt as they always have or we can start adding all of these variable like sea level or ice cover and then draw some alarming conclusions. I like to KISS.
- yters 18y agoGood thread. I like the "what is a good climate?" angle.