Since many of us have just endured another interminable period of very cold weather, I thought this would be a good time to bring up global warming. And no, that's not really fair, but shut up. But also, I want to talk about the way in which the Left "does" science, and why it's so bad.Where are we on the whole global warming/climate change/dead polar bears crisis? Well, as far as the broad outlines are concerned, there's not a lot I can tell you that you don't already know. It's early April and I'm still shivering in my long-sleeve shirts, so the temperature's not going up and up and up; impartial scientific measurements continue to show a plateau in global temps for the past decade or so; and as far as the public goes, belief in the reality and importance of global warming continues to remain steady or even decline somewhat, depending on who you talk to.
Likewise, although there has been some weakening in a few quarters, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that the general response from the Left to all this has been to double down. In particular, many climatologists and commentators like to claim that a significant cold snap is itself proof of the reality of global warming. As an example, a senior editor from Time, which surprisingly is still in business, explained the cold wave a couple weeks ago by saying that "the Arctic is warming faster than elsewhere" and this is causing a changing "temperature differential" that results in rapid changes of the weather, so it's not just "global warming" but "global weirding."
Uh....okay. First of all, that makes no sense. Second, it is nonetheless possible that changes associated with global warming, assuming it actually is happening, could cause a short-term cooling effect in some areas. (Although not on the ridiculous scale of The Day After Tomorrow.) Third, why am I even talking about this? Isn't it a given by now that liberals will just make up the rules of global warming or whatever they're calling it this week to keep pushing environmentalism? Well, yes it is, because that's liberals for you, but it also has a lot to do with some differing interpretations of science.
Now by "interpretations," I don't mean whether result X should be considered scientific. No, I'm talking about what it means for something to be considered science. There's actually a very deep philosophy about this, which I can't do much justice to, but in summary, there are a couple different schools of thought, generally known as verification and falsification. According to the former, science consists only of that which can be proven true (or verified), while falsification says it only consists of that which can be proven, well, false. I know it sounds like there's no difference between them, but there kinda is, and falsification is the one conservatives should go with.
Again, I can't explain why this is so without making myself fall asleep, but here's the bottom line: Proving something false (or ultimately failing to do so) requires a heck of a lot more rigor than does an effort to prove something true. The most famous example is that of swans. If you go with verification to prove the statement "All swans are white," all you have to do is find some swans, observe that they're all white, extrapolate to the general population, and voila! Statement proven. To prove it through falsification, though, you have to go out and find a swan that isn't white (there are, but they're in Australia or something).
Now what does this have to do with liberals and conservatives? Well, I'm not saying that each group adheres to one side alone, because most people don't actively think about this. But verification, with its looser standards, leaves a lot more room for pseudoscience and circular logic--the sort of thing that the Left specializes in. Consider AGW. At the very least, we can find a lot of data that suggests the earth is getting warmer, right? And that there's a connection between that and rising carbon dioxide levels, right? Boom! Theory verified. And this can apply to lots of theories. Evidence that rich capitalists are exploiting the poor? Boom! Marxism verified!
And the beauty of this approach is that non-evidence or contrary evidence is a lot easier to shoehorn into a verification of sorts. Rather than throw out your favorite theory altogether, you only have to modify it slightly. Thus AGW suddenly becomes responsible for global cooling AND global warming. Evidence of people acting for reasons having nothing to do with economics isn't evidence that Marxism was wrong, it's merely an instance of "false consciousness." And so on.
Now like I said, verification, falsification, etc. aren't terms you run across in everyday life. And most liberals, like most conservatives, probably aren't aware of how all this works. So why bring it up? Well, I think it's important not to underestimate the Left. Although liberal thinking is deeply flawed, there is some structure to it, and to challenge it, we need to understand it. And there's a lot of truth in the charge that radical environmentalism and other "causes" are just updated versions of old-line Marxism. Ideas come and go, but the assumptions that give rise to them haven't. To refute liberals, you can't just disprove individual claims, you have to get at why they came up with them in the first place.
Then again, pointing out it's really freaking cold outside isn't half bad if you're short on time.
48 comments:
I'll see if I can find it again, I recently saw a report that stated people's beliefs about global warming literally change with the weather. Hilarious!
tryanmax, I saw that too and sadly that makes sense. As meaningless as it is, people love anecdotal evidence. The weather is the biggest anecdotal tease there is. So it makes sense that people would judge a theory like global warming/cooling depending on the weather around that time.
T-Rav, I go back and forth on this:
Although liberal thinking is deeply flawed, there is some structure to it, and to challenge it, we need to understand it. ... To refute liberals, you can't just disprove individual claims, you have to get at why they came up with them in the first place.
On the one hand, this makes sense and it's clearly the only way we will ever get to liberals because they won't learn anything on their own -- their worldview prevents independent thinking.
On the other hand, liberals have this stunning ability to simply dismiss results they don't like even without a reason. "That's different"... "I knew you would say that because you're conservative"... "I still don't think that's right."
It makes me think that liberals simply cannot be won because they aren't thinking, they are feeling and they use the pretense of thinking to convince themselves that they are acting rationally, and they are blind to their own lack of thought processes.
Oh, that wasn't so hard:
http://www.unh.edu/news/releases/2013/jan/lw24climate.cfm
tryanmax, I agree with you. The vast majority of people tend to go with what they are themselves experiencing. In other words, antecdotal evidence leads the way. But, T-Rav, your point is very well taken about falsification vs. verification. What I find troubling is that both methods can be "scientific." As far as the current debate on the environment, it seems what we are seeing is people embracing truths that have not been scientifically proved or disproved.
If we use your example of the white swan, it does bring things into perspective nicely. If there are millions of observed white swans and no observed black swans, it is a reasonable hypothesis to say all swans are white. But, that is all it is, a hypothesis. And what I see with environmentalists is that people who call themselves scientists are making a leap from an unproved hypothesis to stating political slogans like "global warming is settled science" and assuming it is "man made." They also tend to ignore things like sun spot activity as an alternate proximate cause for what appears to be more frequent record extremes.
It is easy for us to anecdotally feel like we are in a period of weather extremes,but to assume that it is man made is simply not the case. Further, it completely ignores the practical implications of certain policies they would want our country to take which causes untold economic hardship at our expense while having no impact on third world or other countries. This is analogous to unilateral dis-armament.
tryanmax and Andrew, I feel like it would be expecting too much from people to be surprised by that. I mean, if there's an 80-degree heat wave in January, even if for one or two days, I feel like there's something very out of whack, and I don't even believe in global warming. Mostly, I think people just mouth these things without really thinking about it--they laugh about it if it's cold and shrug about it if it's hot. And I've seen "believers" and "skeptics" do this.
Andrew, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. Liberals' worldview, though it changes from generation to generation in many ways, seems to always rest on a few basic assumptions: The world is split into identity groups; individuals don't matter; some of these groups are oppressing others; anything which advances the cause of these oppressed groups is good. It's like I was saying in my post about Marxists versus multiculturalists the other day; they see the world in much the same way, the argument is over whether class or race is what divides the oppressors and the oppressed. And environmentalists have just made "planet Earth" the oppressed group.
It's stupid, but it makes sense to them, and since they happen to be controlling so many levers of power, it unfortunately can't be ignored.
tryanmax, that study actually reflects pretty closely what I would expect from society. Two core groups pretty set in their beliefs, and a middle ground shifting with day-to-day events.
Although frankly, the shameless plug for UNH at the article's end makes me question this whole news release a bit.
Thanks, Jed.
I think falsification is probably the better of the two from a science perspective, though apparently it too has problems I don't really understand. The issue with how liberals pursue science, though, is that their claims can't be proven or disproven. To go back to the swan thing, unless you go out and view every single bird, you can't say whether or not all swans are white. All you can say is there's a crap-ton of white swans. Similarly, while AGW proponents can, sure enough, amass a lot of data that suggests climate change is happening, they can't provide actual proof that it is.
And as you point out, the problem is that activists are trying to treat it as scientifically true when their methods rule out the possibility of doing so. So it's really about getting lots of people to think that it's true.
There's a reason that once upon a time university researchers were not allowed to use government appropriated funding for their research.
I'm not one for deep philosophical analysis, but I don't think its all that complicated. There is a big contingent of tree huggers among the Democrats who regard mankind as a plague on the Earth whose impact and numbers should be minimized. These people have a belief and they will support science which supports their belief.
That would be a bigger liability for the Democrats if there wasn't a perception that the positions adopted by both the Democrats and the Republicans have little to do with science and much to do with votes and money. Both Democrats and Republicans routinely take the line of industries that kick out money to them and then adopt whatever position best serves the industries who pay them and most hurt the industries who don't pay them.
Moving on specifically to climate science, I don't think the science is important. During a severe recession, the public isn't going to be kindly disposed towards concrete, painful moves with abstract benefits.
Andrew......Couple points. The falsification argument sounds like it comes from the statistical hypothesis of Alpha and Beta risk. The chance of thinking something is one way when in fact it's not, and the chance of thinking something is one way and in fact it is. To put it as simply as possible.
So, libs think global warming is happening and use the science to prove it. Conservs don't think agw is happening and use science to prove that. Believe it or not, both are correct. The science proves that the earth is warming up, depending upon what evidence is used. All "proven" by scientific method.
I think the larger issue here...vis-a-vis left vs. right, is that whenever a study disproving agw comes out, the left immediately attacks the scientists motives and their funding. Why? Because that is what the left leaning scientits do. A left leaning think tank with a fancy sounding name like the "Rockefeller Foundation" will fund a scientific study "proving" agw. The scientists on the study agree with the hypothesis that agw is real and will thus prove without the shadow of a doubt, that agw is real. This way they get that swee, sweet grant and continue to live in their bubbles with like-minded nerds, and not have to deal with reality...or alternate scientific proven hypotheses.
Bottom line, our planet cools and heats up in eonic cycles. Any competent scientists can find solid data to prove or disprove either side of the agw argument. And it's all about the funding for the scientists and the desire for power over others for the politicians and the need to be thought of as something other than a pretty face or awesome body for the actors.
Science!!
Anthony.....Appears I am riffing on your earlier comment! All attribution goes to Anthony!!
T-Rav, that's just standard practice for press releases to throw some institutional boilerplate at the end. I could've linked to any number of outlets that ran it, but I thought going to the horse's mouth would enhance the credibility.
K, and unfortunately the significance of that goes unnoticed most of the time, because a lot of people have trouble getting it through their heads that scientists can have feet of clay just like anyone else.
Ah, global warming.
Andrew, I read a book called the 'Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming' a few years ago. In it was described a term called 'watermelon politics.' It basically described the Left's use of environmentalism to further government control with a version of the old 'think of the children argument.' Take the Kyoto Treaty. It hasn't lowered carbon emissions, but it has increased government control over cars and other forms of energy consumption in areas unrelated to environmentalism. Hah, watermelon politics! Green on the outside, red to the core.
Rather than add to the philosophical discussion, I'd just like to bring up a few points...
You know, I worked for five years at a TV news station here in Pittsburgh and frequently talked about man-made global warming with the meteorologists. Their answer was universal: b***s***. They explained every time that Earth's temperature has changed frequently and there really isn't an accepted explanation. (Atmospheric chemistry, volcanic eruptions, orbital position, etc.) In the Age of Dinosaurs (I learned this as a dino-junkie in my childhood), Earth's temps were much higher and there weren't any polar icecaps present. (Antarctica and the Great Lakes were rain forests.) I guess those evil CEO's shipped cruel, carbon-emitting SUV's (DeLoreans?) back in time to make it so! Maybe that's what killed the dinosaurs! (Of course, you'd have to ignore the asteroid stuff.)
But do you know what else is interesting? According to some astronomers, the Sun is going to heat up extensively over the next few billion years, messing up Earth's chemistry and burning off the atmosphere, making this rock as dead and lifeless as the Moon long before the Sun's red giant phase even begins.
Hm...is it even worth saving the environment with that note of impending doom? I'll think about it after I throw my aluminum can in the 'trash' bin. Mwah-ha-ha!
-Rustbelt
BTW: Andrew, a few weeks ago I sent your article on "The Day the Earth Stood Still" remake to one of the weathermen I worked with. He thoroughly enjoyed it!
Actually, what REAL scientists do is both verification, THEN falsification. In other words real scientists used to set up an hypothesis based on an observable anecdotal fact -
All I see are white swans, therefore all swans may be white.
Then the scientist will go about trying to prove his/her hypothesis. After enough general research is completed, the scientist would publish his/her findings whereby this hypothesis is put out to the scientific world for scrutiny. That's when the verification part of the experiment came into play Then the scientific world would go about trying to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Sometimes this was doen out of pure love of discovery and sometimes out of pure jealousy. Moving on...Then it would soon be discovered that not all swans were white, because there was strong evidence that black swans exist. By expanding your observable field the data can shift. This raised other questions and the original hypotheses is disproved, but creates another hypothesis:
The color of the swan may or may not depend on geography. And so on and so on.
But along came "politics" and "politicians" who started to interject themselves into the process. This body realized that they could use this information to further their careers and or fill their coffers with lots and lots of special interest money to stay in power. So they started using incomplete data and skewed data for their own purposes.
BTW, "politician" does not mean just elected/electable officials. It can include business leaders and pretty much anyone who has a vested interest in the outcome of scientific research including scientists themselves.
Oh, btw, when it was found that there were black swans, the original scientist in this scenario eventually rounded up all the black swans he could find and killed them, so he could keep his rather sizeable research grant...
Anthony, I would broadly agree with all that. I think an additional point would be that the industries or interest groups usually associated with the Democrats (unions, trial lawyers) don't appear to have as vested an interest in how the AGW debate turns out as Republican counterparts (Big Oil, etc.) do. (Although Solyndra and other "green jobs" programs may be changing this perception somewhat.)
As for the issue of tree huggers, I would agree with that too, I would only add that the particular angle taken by the Democrats on science, consciously or not, has a lot to do with why they continue to flourish on the Left.
All we see are white swans, therefore all swans are racist!
Patriot, I'm sure if Andrew had written this post, he would appreciate your comment. :-)
Verification and falsification as methodologies have a pretty fascinating history, if the philosophy of science interests you. It has a lot to do with epistemology and how we can know what we learn is true. But I'm not exactly an expert on either; I would recommend reading some of Karl Popper's stuff if you want to learn more.
I think you get at something important, which is how easy it can sometimes be to manipulate the scientific method. In this case, it's not hard, as you mention, to make a solid argument for the increase in Earth's temperature (though not as solid, I think, as it appears); with all the different factors influencing that temperature, though, it's the reasoning back to specific causes that becomes so problematic. And that's where people with a specific ax to grind enter the picture.
tryanmax, yeah I know. But did they have to be so blatant about it? (sigh)
Seriously, guys? Who doesn't know by now that Friday morning is my time slot?! (grumble grumble)
Anyway, Rustbelt, I've heard the watermelon line quite a bit in the past and find it quite apt (in more ways than one). As for your comment on the meteorologists--although there's certainly a lot of pressure on them to conform, that profession as a group tends, from what I know, to be much more skeptical of global warming than do climatologists. Which is not surprising, given their greater appreciation for the day-to-day volatility and unpredictability of the atmosphere. (Climatologists would probably say they're missing the forest for the trees, but to-may-to, to-mah-to. I trust the people who are actually observing the weather, not working with models.)
I've also heard about the Sun's dire threat to kill us all in a couple billion years. Fortunately, I expect North Korea to nuke us to death before then, so no worries.
Sorry, T'Rav. I forgot to check the by-line.
Haven't had enough caffeine yet this morning. I'll fix that shortly.
-Rustbelt
T-Rav (yep, I noticed it was you!): I must give credit to my stats prof because I understood your article AND Patriot's comment! YAY! Even Social Science (Psych) stats taught that you can't generalize without a sufficient, randomly selected population and then you have error expectations and confidence ranges... And then, of course, the null hypothesis!
The other morning I was flipping through radio stations and one was talking about a survey's results where 30+% believed that GW was a hoax - which, the talking voice went on to explain in a shocked and disappointed voice, meant that folks believed that it was an intentional and profited from lie. All I could think was "yep, what's wrong with that?", then "I should send them that article I read... wait they're RADIO hosts!!!!" and I switched stations...
Rustbelt, I'm glad he liked it. That is one of my more favorite reviews, even if the movie itself truly stunk!
Bev, Oh, btw, when it was found that there were black swans, the original scientist in this scenario eventually rounded up all the black swans he could find and killed them, so he could keep his rather sizeable research grant...
LOL! So that's where all the black swans went! I thought maybe Bush killed them all.
rlaWTX, Nothing radio hosts say should be taken internally.
Bev, good point. I should have clarified that in reality, neither of these approaches are used exclusive of the other, and what scientists generally do involves elements of both.
Like I said, this isn't something that gets actively thought about a lot, but it does influence assumptions about how science should and does work, often in subtle ways.
As for the black swans, I thought Natalie Portman killed them all?
Rustbelt, no (permanent) harm done. ;-)
rla, I appreciate your recognition! Let's not forget the standard deviation when talking statistics. You can't do anything without the standard deviation....even though I'm still not really sure what it is.
I actually saw something similar on a weather/climate site the other day. A headline read, "Despite overwhelming evidence and scientific consensus, 3 in 8 Americans continue to doubt the reality of global warming...." You could almost see the writer shaking his head in sadness.
Andrew, are we talking the original or the remake? Because the remake was definitely a pile of crap.
Also, "Nothing radio hosts say should be taken internally"? What the....? What do you do when you listen to the radio?
Like I said, this isn't something that gets actively thought about a lot
But Andrew...er...T-Rav, that is the whole point, we need to understand how scientific research should work. And it should work to find the truth and not be influenced by politics, but it does not. Real scientists should not be drowned out just because their findings to not fit the political climate (no pun intended). So we have push ourselves to look at the bigger picture. This is not a new problem as I believe that Galileo had this exact problem in his day too.
Bev, People don't want to hear things they don't want to believe are true. So they will always shoot the messenger. That happened in the past and it happens left, right and center these days.
T-Rav, The remake starring Al Gore: LINK
Bev, I...agree?
Really, though, it should work that way, but it doesn't. And if we're talking specifics, I don't really know how to change that.
As far as AGW itself is concerned, there are some signs that liberals are beginning to pull back on it a bit, at least to the extent of acknowledging that other factors should be considered. I suspect that if/when the "consensus" on global warming does change, it'll happen all at once; they'll keep the myth going until they can't. But unfortunately, history suggests they'll just pick up a new crisis for their banner.
Andrew, of course. And don't forget the guy who looks like Neo, only more brooding and humorless.
T-Rav - The next "crisis" should be finding a cheap, renewable form of energy. And frankly, this is really what the whole Global warming issue is all about anyway.
Good article. One thing to point out is that some of our ahem right wing colleagues do the same thing with evolution. "It is only a theory" They will ignore the piles of scientific data.
Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact. That humans derived from a more simple being, etc. is the theory.
Koshcat, I second that. There's a lot of willful ignorance on that issue.
Anybody hear about this? LINK
I *love* the last line of the article. Typical.
Bev, I will just direct them to a guy in the Ozarks who figured out how to make cars run on the oil from French fries. Limitless energy, right there.
Thanks Kosh.
I agree and disagree with you regarding evolution. Strictly speaking, "Evolution" is in fact a theory, one without sufficient proof to raise it to the category of a scientific law (i.e., Newton's laws of motion)--and one I personally have problems with that have nothing to do with what's in the Bible. It is, however, well above the level of mere "hypothesis," and on the same level of plausibility as, say, Einstein's THEORY of Relativity. So, yes--bottom line, people opposed to the idea should still be more careful about how they describe it.
tryanmax, I wonder what they classify as "a very small minority."
T-Rav, I'm not sure, but I bet they do it with Science!
Which, of course, calls for THIS.
(Not what you were expecting?)
...............
??
I just don't know how to respond to all that.
LOL! How about with this.
I see your Shatner and I raise you Shatner doing the spoken word version of a rap song... LINK
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