8 ms·

Science by democracy doesn’t work

72 points by Red_Tarsius 12y ago

fapjacks 12y ago
This person doesn't get it. The vote was introduced as a means of identifying with a single vote who is a climate change denier and who is not. There is no scientific consensus attempted here. It's just a clever way of getting a solid, no-frills yes or no out of our elected officials.
- aswanson 12y ago
  Climate change is a funny topic. I don't see the populace or scientifically illiterate senators (read that as James Inhofe of Oklahoma) weighing in on the standard model of physics, proteomics, or the results/implications of steroid use...but when it comes to anthropogenic warming...everybody has an unequivocal answer. Those most certain seem to be of the political stripe that had the certainty that Iraq had wmd and posed an existential threat to human existence. The scary thing about these folk is that they are so convinced they are right that they are able to convince the people who look at things probabilistically that they are ABSOLUTELY right. Because economics.
  - guscost 12y ago
    In fairness, you don't see politicians arguing for energy taxes and subsidies by saying that the standard model indicates a global catastrophe will happen otherwise.
    - aswanson 12y ago
      Granted. But the level of certainty espoused, with the downside risk considered, imply a level of competence in the concerned matters. From where I sit, the people with the loudest mouths seem to simply not know what the fuck they are talking about. The LHC, by the way, cost some $10 billion USD to date.
  - BerislavLopac 12y ago
    There is actually a term for this phenomenon: bikeshedding.
  - tjradcliffe 12y ago
    Climate change is a funny topic in part because some elements on the far Left (represented by Naomi Klein, for example) want to use it as a lever to justify the kind of radical social engineering that failed so spectacularly and murderously and repeatedly throughout the 20th century, and the far Right have decided that to fight the politics they have to fight the science. This has resulted in a situation where the Left, who abandoned science decades ago, pretend to care about it, while the Right--which has long had an ambivalent relationship with reality--has decided to go full-post-modern and construe all facts as pure social constructs, which is exactly what the Left has been saying for a long time. Almost none of the discussion of "climate science" in the public sphere has anything to do with science, and if you're an actual scientist with relevant expertise and you say anything about the science you will get beaten up by both sides. As a computational physicist I've given my opinion on occasion that climate models are non-physical and therefore non-predictive, no matter how well-tuned they are to past climate (because only the correct physics can extrapolate the past forward, and the unphysical approximations in climate models are not small in the relevant sense.) What climate models do show fairly convincingly is that we are increasing the Earth's heat budget by 1.6 W/m2 or so, which is in the range of 0.5% overall, and this is plausibly a very bad thing. So because I criticize climate models the Left attacks me as a denialist, and the Right embraces me as one, whereas I'm actually saying the models give a pretty decent reason to take some fairly mundane steps, like implementing carbon taxes and tariffs. The "tariff" part is important because it exports the cost of emissions to other jurisdictions. At this point the Right attacks me as being a socialist taxer (because taxes are socialist?) and the Left attacks me for not wanting to "change everything" (because that always works so well.) There simply isn't any science in the "climate science" debate. It's all politics.
    - jquery 12y ago
      Honest question: why is "global warming" or "climate change" (as a non-scientist, not sure what I'm supposed to call it) supported by such a vast majority of scientists? Can you elaborate on what political pressure is doing to scientists?
      - thisrod 12y ago
lumberjack 12y ago
>But it isn’t arguments or votes or opinion that herald the acceptance of a scientific explanation: it’s the evidence. Follow it wherever it leads. But you cannot actually do that. You cannot be an expert in every field and actually follow the evidence to make up your own conclusion (which btw does not guarantee that your interpretation of the evidence is correct). As an aspiring physicist I feel helpless every time I'm at the doctor's office. I cannot just "follow the evidence". Heck I cannot "follow the evidence" on anything in physics unrelated to my field. This is more generally an economics problem about information asymmetry and it will become more prominent as professions become increasingly sophisticated and specialized. I don't think better access to information makes up for it, either, because there is just as much misinformation. The solution seems to me to build ever more complex social institutions with complex trust relationships which I know makes some cryptofans cringe.
- fapjacks 12y ago
  It is a distant cousin of the "if you don't like software X, write your own", which is often impossible because we don't have ninety-hour days and the technical wherewithal to accomplish such a task.
  - Qwertious 12y ago
    Which is itself related to "if you don't like open-source software X, you can just fork it", which has the same problems. I find it interesting in that it's a useful argument, but only at a communal level - if the entire community hates the direction of a project (e.g. OpenOffice), they can fork it and take it in a different direction. You're still boned as a discerning individual if you dislike the program, though.
    - ahomescu1 12y ago
      > I find it interesting in that it's a useful argument, but only at a communal level - if the entire community hates the direction of a project (e.g. OpenOffice), they can fork it and take it in a different direction. You can take leadership of the community and lead by example: fork it yourself and start hacking, then try to get more people to join.
johnpowell 12y ago
I wish people would just come out and say, "Humans can change the climate. The question is how we deal with that from a economic standpoint." I understand that argument and would like to have the debate about the trade-offs. But flatly denying isn't helping us move forward.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  Oh I am sure we could change the climate, China does with artificial rain. However I am not convinced about the dire predictions or short of a collective effort to affect the climate that we have a large effect by default. We cannot accurately model changes in the climate yet there is no shortage of people who want to scream bloody murder we are all going to die. Trouble is, far too many of them come off as traveling religious leaders, just missing a tent.
  - lumberjack 12y ago
    >China does with artificial rain That's weather not climate.
- iopq 12y ago
  Oh, I totally agree with that. But try telling that to your average Green Peace liberal who just wants to abandon technology because it's "killing our planet" or some such. Nuclear plants on average pollute less than coal? Nope, gotta get rid of both, YESTERDAY. It's this kind of all-or-nothing debate that makes people not want to give in.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >Oh, I totally agree with that. But try telling that to your average Green Peace liberal who just wants to abandon technology because it's "killing our planet" or some such. Abandoning something (e.g. some technologies) because it's "killing our planet"? What a crazy idea! No, we gotta have more of it, forever increasing, and it will sort out the problems it creates itself. Why ever be content with anything we have? After all the meaning of life is having more and more of everything.
Houshalter 12y ago
But really, who did win? And what is M31-V1? And what does any of this have to do with determining who's right, which really does matter, e.g. climate change?
- cjg 12y ago
  This explains what M31-V1 is: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/star-v1.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/star-v1.htm...
malchow 12y ago
Hm. Maybe taxing and benefits assignation by democracy do not work, either.
Udik 12y ago
So I guess this means that the whole 'consensus' thing around global warming is pointless. "What matters isn’t what people thought the answer was- since they only had incomplete information- but rather that this debate was an important step in laying out what the arguments would be to support each of these two competing ideas." Just about time, now please let's stop with the (completely flawed) 97% meme.
nine_k 12y ago
It's funny how the article's epigraph quotes Trofim Lysenko, who was known for his book-cooking and numerous earth-shaking irreproducible results. Is it used ironically? I failed to grasp that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko
- pervycreeper 12y ago
  Unquestionably, yes.
snowwrestler 12y ago
The vote in the Senate was not about science, it was about policy. Scientists obviously understand the science of climate change, and don't take votes on it. But policy is made by politicians, and in the U.S., they do operate by democracy. Hence the vote.

72 points by Red_Tarsius 12y ago

This person doesn't get it. The vote was introduced as a means of identifying with a single vote who is a climate change denier and who is not. There is no scientific consensus attempted here. It's just a clever way of getting a solid, no-frills yes or no out of our elected officials.

aswanson 12y ago
Climate change is a funny topic. I don't see the populace or scientifically illiterate senators (read that as James Inhofe of Oklahoma) weighing in on the standard model of physics, proteomics, or the results/implications of steroid use...but when it comes to anthropogenic warming...everybody has an unequivocal answer. Those most certain seem to be of the political stripe that had the certainty that Iraq had wmd and posed an existential threat to human existence. The scary thing about these folk is that they are so convinced they are right that they are able to convince the people who look at things probabilistically that they are ABSOLUTELY right. Because economics.
- guscost 12y ago
  In fairness, you don't see politicians arguing for energy taxes and subsidies by saying that the standard model indicates a global catastrophe will happen otherwise.
  - aswanson 12y ago
    Granted. But the level of certainty espoused, with the downside risk considered, imply a level of competence in the concerned matters. From where I sit, the people with the loudest mouths seem to simply not know what the fuck they are talking about. The LHC, by the way, cost some $10 billion USD to date.
- BerislavLopac 12y ago
  There is actually a term for this phenomenon: bikeshedding.
- tjradcliffe 12y ago
  Climate change is a funny topic in part because some elements on the far Left (represented by Naomi Klein, for example) want to use it as a lever to justify the kind of radical social engineering that failed so spectacularly and murderously and repeatedly throughout the 20th century, and the far Right have decided that to fight the politics they have to fight the science. This has resulted in a situation where the Left, who abandoned science decades ago, pretend to care about it, while the Right--which has long had an ambivalent relationship with reality--has decided to go full-post-modern and construe all facts as pure social constructs, which is exactly what the Left has been saying for a long time. Almost none of the discussion of "climate science" in the public sphere has anything to do with science, and if you're an actual scientist with relevant expertise and you say anything about the science you will get beaten up by both sides. As a computational physicist I've given my opinion on occasion that climate models are non-physical and therefore non-predictive, no matter how well-tuned they are to past climate (because only the correct physics can extrapolate the past forward, and the unphysical approximations in climate models are not small in the relevant sense.) What climate models do show fairly convincingly is that we are increasing the Earth's heat budget by 1.6 W/m2 or so, which is in the range of 0.5% overall, and this is plausibly a very bad thing. So because I criticize climate models the Left attacks me as a denialist, and the Right embraces me as one, whereas I'm actually saying the models give a pretty decent reason to take some fairly mundane steps, like implementing carbon taxes and tariffs. The "tariff" part is important because it exports the cost of emissions to other jurisdictions. At this point the Right attacks me as being a socialist taxer (because taxes are socialist?) and the Left attacks me for not wanting to "change everything" (because that always works so well.) There simply isn't any science in the "climate science" debate. It's all politics.
  - jquery 12y ago
    Honest question: why is "global warming" or "climate change" (as a non-scientist, not sure what I'm supposed to call it) supported by such a vast majority of scientists? Can you elaborate on what political pressure is doing to scientists?
    - thisrod 12y ago

lumberjack 12y ago

>But it isn’t arguments or votes or opinion that herald the acceptance of a scientific explanation: it’s the evidence. Follow it wherever it leads. But you cannot actually do that. You cannot be an expert in every field and actually follow the evidence to make up your own conclusion (which btw does not guarantee that your interpretation of the evidence is correct). As an aspiring physicist I feel helpless every time I'm at the doctor's office. I cannot just "follow the evidence". Heck I cannot "follow the evidence" on anything in physics unrelated to my field. This is more generally an economics problem about information asymmetry and it will become more prominent as professions become increasingly sophisticated and specialized. I don't think better access to information makes up for it, either, because there is just as much misinformation. The solution seems to me to build ever more complex social institutions with complex trust relationships which I know makes some cryptofans cringe.

fapjacks 12y ago
It is a distant cousin of the "if you don't like software X, write your own", which is often impossible because we don't have ninety-hour days and the technical wherewithal to accomplish such a task.
- Qwertious 12y ago
  Which is itself related to "if you don't like open-source software X, you can just fork it", which has the same problems. I find it interesting in that it's a useful argument, but only at a communal level - if the entire community hates the direction of a project (e.g. OpenOffice), they can fork it and take it in a different direction. You're still boned as a discerning individual if you dislike the program, though.
  - ahomescu1 12y ago
    > I find it interesting in that it's a useful argument, but only at a communal level - if the entire community hates the direction of a project (e.g. OpenOffice), they can fork it and take it in a different direction. You can take leadership of the community and lead by example: fork it yourself and start hacking, then try to get more people to join.

johnpowell 12y ago

I wish people would just come out and say, "Humans can change the climate. The question is how we deal with that from a economic standpoint." I understand that argument and would like to have the debate about the trade-offs. But flatly denying isn't helping us move forward.

Shivetya 12y ago
Oh I am sure we could change the climate, China does with artificial rain. However I am not convinced about the dire predictions or short of a collective effort to affect the climate that we have a large effect by default. We cannot accurately model changes in the climate yet there is no shortage of people who want to scream bloody murder we are all going to die. Trouble is, far too many of them come off as traveling religious leaders, just missing a tent.
- lumberjack 12y ago
  >China does with artificial rain That's weather not climate.
iopq 12y ago
Oh, I totally agree with that. But try telling that to your average Green Peace liberal who just wants to abandon technology because it's "killing our planet" or some such. Nuclear plants on average pollute less than coal? Nope, gotta get rid of both, YESTERDAY. It's this kind of all-or-nothing debate that makes people not want to give in.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Oh, I totally agree with that. But try telling that to your average Green Peace liberal who just wants to abandon technology because it's "killing our planet" or some such. Abandoning something (e.g. some technologies) because it's "killing our planet"? What a crazy idea! No, we gotta have more of it, forever increasing, and it will sort out the problems it creates itself. Why ever be content with anything we have? After all the meaning of life is having more and more of everything.

Houshalter 12y ago

But really, who did win? And what is M31-V1? And what does any of this have to do with determining who's right, which really does matter, e.g. climate change?

cjg 12y ago
This explains what M31-V1 is: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/star-v1.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/star-v1.htm...

malchow 12y ago

Hm. Maybe taxing and benefits assignation by democracy do not work, either.

Udik 12y ago

So I guess this means that the whole 'consensus' thing around global warming is pointless. "What matters isn’t what people thought the answer was- since they only had incomplete information- but rather that this debate was an important step in laying out what the arguments would be to support each of these two competing ideas." Just about time, now please let's stop with the (completely flawed) 97% meme.

nine_k 12y ago

It's funny how the article's epigraph quotes Trofim Lysenko, who was known for his book-cooking and numerous earth-shaking irreproducible results. Is it used ironically? I failed to grasp that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

pervycreeper 12y ago
Unquestionably, yes.

snowwrestler 12y ago

The vote in the Senate was not about science, it was about policy. Scientists obviously understand the science of climate change, and don't take votes on it. But policy is made by politicians, and in the U.S., they do operate by democracy. Hence the vote.