“Yes, Prof. Derr, the Planet Is Heating Up”
Posted on June 25th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
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At dotCommonweal, I empty a clip on a baffling piece of anti-global warming propaganda from the First Things blog. I was quite proud of my concluding sentence:
If the First Things crowd ever decides to do one of those fundraising cruises that have become so popular of late, I know of a river in Egypt that would be an appropriate destination.
Whole thing here.
Filed under: environment, science/tech
Your article slings a lot of globally-warmed mud, but fails to establish a convincing argument for folks who are skeptical of the theory.
And fella, it’s a bit silly to quote your own article just to let us know you’re proud of your ability to insult people.
Well, it’s also a bit silly to be a global warming skeptic. My purpose, though, wasn’t to establish an argument that would convince such a person (it seems to me that the fact of scientific consensus ought to be enough do that), but only to show up a few bad anti-GW arguments for what they were.
Silly to be a global warming skeptic? If there is one thing one would hope “Science” has learned, it would be humility in the face of “consensus.” Or perhaps I’m being a bit too hard on Ptolemy and his followers?
Regardless, I merely said skeptic, not denier. Forgive me, but if the history of science has shown me anything, it’s that scientists often end up looking like complete asses when they are most certain.
Is global warming as dire as it is portrayed? I accept people influence their environment but is it really the “end times?”
So the fact that the scientific consensus has been wrong in the past means that it deserves to be met with an across-the-board skepticism? Sorry, but if you applied that criterion consistently you wouldn’t end up believing anything, including the testimony of your own apparent memories.
And eep: No, it’s not the “end times”. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility to try to keep things from getting worse.
So the fact that the scientific consensus has been wrong in the past means that it deserves to be met with an across-the-board skepticism?
Er… yes. Especially since science is not, and never has been, about “consensus.” It’s about hypotheses, experimentation, extracting conclusions, and publishing reproducible results. It doesn’t matter what Dr. Smith down the hall “believes” about the experiment or the data, it matters what he can repeat.
Anything outside this process is not actually “science,” and deserves as much skepticism as any other discipline receives.
Depending on what is meant by that criterion, either climatology is a science or geology, evolutionary biology, and astrophysics are not. But hey, the choice is up to you: will it be utter absurdity, or a position that offends against your ideological preconvictions?
How could it be stopped from getting worst? I think lifestyles would have to change in industrialized countries, developing countries would have to stop industrialization. There is talk of food, water, and energy shortages as the world population continues to rise.
What do you think about people comparing the global warming movement to the eugenics movement?
Agree with everything Andrew Davis said. And the “joke” you posted to toot your own horn wasn’t even funny. Wow, take a cheap shot at National Review…that’s so cliche already. Hardy har har. Maybe you should take a break from the “heated” subject of global warming(which has already been rebranded as “climate change” to make way for a possible cooling comeback) and spend some time examining your narcissistic personality disorder tendencies.
I agree that the question of how to combat climate change effectively is an incredibly difficult one, and it’s got no straightforward answer. By my lights, most of the possible political solutions are pretty problematic, and I’ve written about that a lot in the past. My point here was just that pretending that there’s nothing to worry about is utter foolishness.
I had no idea that there were such people, but I did a Google search and apparently there are. Umm … they’re silly? If there were good peer-reviewed literature making the case against global warming (or against Darwinism, or whatever), then it would get a hearing, plain and simple.
Uhh, it was First Things.
Mr. Schwenkler,
May I ask for your credentials? Are you a scientist? What is your area of research?
If you are, in fact, a scientist, that is superb. Credentials do add weight to an argument, but only in terms of one’s ability to trust a credentialed person as an authority. Just as “consensus” does not make truth, neither do credentials. But for now, I’d just like to see yours.
My credentials are linked right there on the sidebar, but I’m afraid they won’t help. The thing to do, though, would be to check the credentials of the people publishing the research and running the scientific bodies that have concluded that AGW is real.
It’s weird how I see the same arguments–literally almost verbatim–in a lot of these comment threads. Is there some climate-denialist-talking-point clearing house I don’t know about?
“… geology, evolutionary biology, and astrophysics are not.”
Okay.
We should probably toss particle physics in the mix, too – that is just outright nonsense.
“how to combat climate change effectively”???? I’ve heard radio commercials on the importance of combating climate change. Can a “war on climate change” be far behind? After all, we have wars on cancer, poverty, drugs, and terrorism and I’m sure I’ve missed a few.
Assuming that global warming is taking place, why is this necessarily a bad thing which we must worry about and must be kept from getting worse? As for climate change, exists there any period in the earth’s history or pre-history when climate was not changing? What is the evidence that present climate is the exact optimum so that any further change must be combatted?
The notion of an “exact optimum” is a red herring; the issue is that our best analyses suggest that the kind of warming the planet is currently projected to undergo – which is pretty clearly not an instance of an ordinary planetary trend – is going to have disastrous consequences for a lot of human societies and natural ecosystems. That’s why it’s a bad thing that we must worry about and (try to) keep from getting worse.
John, I’m a fan of your writing, but this is some of your weakest stuff. At best, according to your interpretation of the evidence, 2 of Derr’s 3 points are actually wrong. In fact, he may only be incorrect about one (rising sea levels) since the very tracking of a ‘global temperature’ – even if it’s anomalies we’re comparing – is extremely difficult, and the data can often be interpreted either way by using various established metrics.
Now having said that, I’m not a denier, and I’m not really even skeptical of anthropocentric global warming. But I am skeptical with the proposed solutions and predicted outcomes of climate change. For me it’s an issue that receives far too much attention at the expense of more serious environmental problems that are threatening us right now, as opposed to 100-150 years in the future (ie, the widespread use of chemical fertilizers, electronic waste, etc).
And the other one is at best misleading, and in any case no evidence at all that global warming isn’t real.
I share your skepticism of the proposed solutions and (to some extent) the predicted outcomes, and I think such an attitude is entirely warranted. But there’s a responsible case for that attitude, and then there’s the kind of denialist silliness that Derr goes in for; it seems to me that thinking conservatives ought to police the boundaries pretty strictly.
For more on scientific consensus, I recommend The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. But to more directly answer your response:
either climatology is a science or geology, evolutionary biology, and astrophysics are not.
Insofar as they produce results that can be tested and retested, then yes, they are science. Every time you drill a core, or take a reading off a passing comet, you generate proofs or disproofs of your theses. Climatology as a discipline may be science, but “reaching consensus” is manifestly not scientific behavior. Indeed, as Kuhn made clear, consensus is the first sign that scientific thought has halted.
Sorry, but I know my Kuhn and he made no such thing clear.
Sorry, but I know my Kuhn and he made no such thing clear.
Apologies, my brain must have wandered. I should have attributed that clarity to Karl Popper; but I had Kuhn on the mind. Whoops!
Briefly: Kuhn argues that consensus does not quickly change in the face of opposing evidence, and thus has an inertial state resistant to new interpretations and new theories; but as the evidence mounts, rapid change can occur (long calm – violent upheaval – long calm).
Popper’s adherence to falsification (ie, counter-evidence must always and immediately cast doubt on any conclusion), when taken with Kuhn’s understanding of scientific progression, led me to the point I was attempting to draw: that the inertia of the scientific community leads them to dally over countervailing evidence (hence, “halting” scientific thought), when under the rules of scientific inquiry, they should be more malleable.
And thus I reach an explanation of my previous post – that scientific consensus, with its tendency toward the antithesis of scientific method, is deserving of our skepticism.
Sorry for the confusion. As usual, the fault is mine.
So we must combat climate change because the kind of warming the planet is projected to undergo is going to have disastrous consequences? This isn’t science; it’s crystal ball gazing. It’s the concept of preventive war applied not just to individual regimes and countries but to the entire planet.
So by this criterion, we ought also to be skeptical of general relativity, the theory of evolution, and the law of universal gravitation, just because those theories are held by consensus. Sorry, but that’s not Popper, either.
As I’ve said before, I’m perfectly willing to debate whether any of the various “combat” strategies on the table are good ones, or even whether it’s worth trying to combat climate change at all. (I think it is.) But predicting long-term planetary trends and analyzing the causal processes behind them just is what science is – by your reasoning, should we also have dismissed the ravings of those “crystal ball gazers” who rightly predicted that the Iraq invasion would be a fiasco? Is conforming our actions to what we have good – and not merely pretend, as in the “regime change” case – reason to believe about the future always unwise? Something seems to have gone badly wrong here …
Those who correctly predicted that the Iraqi invasion would be a fiasco and still more those who said it was unjustified on any grounds were the “dissenters” who were excluded by the “consensus” in the same way that you, Mr. Schwenkler, wish to exclude from the climate change discussion any who are outside the “consensus” on global warming. What has gone badly wrong here is that a consensus of politicians, activists and their kept scientists have decided that the human race needs government management of the climate of the planet, a hubristic project never before attempted in history. And should great harm occur from this (as this crystal ball gazer will not hesitate to predict), the advocates of combating climate change will simply claim that the wrong strategy was chosen, not that the war was insane to begin with and the need for it did not even exist.
It’s simply not true that I “wish to exclude from the climate change discussion” anyone who dissents from the prevailing consensus. But there’s responsible, empirically-informed dissent (cf. Freeman Dyson or perhaps Bjørn Lomborg), and then there’s denialist hackery of the sort that I was criticizing here. It’s only the latter that doesn’t deserve a hearing.
Is dissenter David Deming officially permitted to join the discussion? He has an interesting article on today’s lewrockwell.com. The same site also quotes statements by Paul Krugman (a supporter of the consensus) that those who deny global warming are guilty of treason against the planet.