[Vision2020] Correction Climate & Science

[Ted Moffett]

In my just sent post in the "Climate & Science" thread, there was an
error in the website to critical info that everyone is just dying to
discover, regarding the publication record of Syukuro Manabe from the
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory website, 164 articles from 1955
through 2011, counting a few articles now "in press:"

This is the correct website:

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/results.php?author=1070


> On 7/13/11, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> I find it just as frightening that *any* criticism of climate scientists
>> is seen as a statement that there is a "paranoid extreme conspiracy".  I
>> have good reasons for not trusting some of the major figures in climate
>> science.  Mann, for example, and his "hockey stick" graph.
>>
>
> Climate scientists criticize each other every day, and I have never
> observed anyone behaving as though any criticism of climate scientists
> implies a "paranoid extreme conspiracy."
>
> The paranoid extreme conspiracy mentality is expressed by those who
> think the entire international field of climate science is involved in
> a deliberate hoax to promote anthropogenic climate change as a serious
> problem, aimed at a political or economic agenda.  Many of those who
> obsess on the email hack from the Climatic Research Unit from EAU in
> the UK express this mentality.
>
> The very implication you are suggesting, that there is to any
> significant degree in the world of science, or in media or Internet or
> any form of public discourse, a level of censur occuring that attacks
> any criticism of climate scientists as an expression of paranoia, is
> itself an example of paranoia!
>
>> Climate science is a young field.  The first actual degree offered in
>> climatology was a BS in climatology offered by the University of South
>> Queensland in Australia with the first enrollments in the degree in
>> 2001.  I think it's a bit soon in a field that looks at time spans of
>> 30+ years to say that we've pretty much concluded what the answers are.
>>
>
> For one thing, study of climate science is often called meteorology.
> Degrees in meteorology have been offered for decades, though I don't
> know when the first one was offered.  Thus some scientific
> organizations focusing on climate are the World Meteorological
> Organization and the American Meteorological Society.
>
> If you examine the degress of some prominent climate scientists who
> have been publishing in the field for decades, you won't find
> "climatology" as a degree title: MIT's Professor of Meteorology
> Richard Lindzen, a very often quoted and interviewed skeptic of a high
> value for climate sensitivity (i.e. human sourced CO2 in the
> atmosphere has a limited impact), has degrees in physics and math:
> http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/CV.pdf
>
> NASA's climate scientist James Hansen, who in his book "Storms of My
> Grandchildren" ( http://www.stormsofmygrandchildren.com/ ) called
> Lindzen the "dean" of anthropogenic climate warming skeptics, has
> degrees in physics, math and astronomy:
> http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/jhansen.html
>
> Climate science has been a major field of scientific study for over
> 100 years, at least since Nobel winner Arrhenius in 1896, sometimes
> referenced as publishing the first serious attempt to quantify climate
> sensitivity.  Here is long list of published scientific studies of
> climate sensitivity, from 1896 to past 2006:
> http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ClimateSensitivity.html
> Levenson in detail addresses the often heard comment that climate
> models are untestable or unreliable here:
> http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html
>
> I recall you once wrote on Vision2020 Levenson's climate sensitivity
> list reveals climate sensitivity to be "all over the board."  Yet when
> I responded that in fact all the results show temperature increases,
> that none show temperature decreases from negative feedbacks that
> overcome the radiative forcing of atmospheric CO2, so therefore these
> results are not "all over the board," you ignored this rather
> compelling fact.
>
> I dispute that climate science it is a "young" science, as is often
> stated, to undermine the credibility of climate predictions.  It could
> be argued modern genetics is a younger science, given DNA was not
> fully unraveled till the 1950s, yet we trust DNA evidence in court.
>
> Climate science has researched time scales of millions of years of
> Earths history, as anyone studying the subject knows, as revealed
> here: "Climate Change: Evidence from the Geological Record"
> http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/climatechange
>
> The peer reviewed publication in this field are vast.  Consider just
> one, GFDL climate scientist Manabe's publication record, 164
> publications, from 1955 to 2011, counting articles now "in press."
> http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/results.php  Manabe is well know
> for publishing in 1980 what is sometimes considered the first serious
> discussion of "polar amplification": Manabe, Syukuro, and Ronald J
> Stouffer, 1980: Sensitivity of a global climate model to an increase
> of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Journal of Geophysical
> Research, 85(C10), 5529-5554. available in full (26 pages pdf) free
> here: http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/sm8001.pdf
>
> While on the subject of meteorology, read the statements on human
> influenced climate change from the AMS and WMO:
>
> http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html
>
> How will climate change in the future?
>
> There will be inevitable climate changes from the greenhouse gases
> already added to the Earth system. Their effect is delayed several
> decades because the thermal inertia of the oceans ensures that the
> warming lags behind the driving forcing.  For the next several decades
> there is a clear consensus on projected warming rates from human
> influences among different models and different emission scenarios.
> ----------------------
> http://www.wmo.int/pages/themes/climate/causes_of_climate_change.php
>
> Since the industrial revolution, human activity has increased the
> amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (shown in the graph to
> the right). The increased amount of gases which absorb heat, has
> directly lead to more heat being retained in the atmosphere and thus
> an increase in global average surface temperatures. This change in
> temperature is known as global warming. The increase in temperature is
> also leading to other effects on the climate system. Together these
> affects are known as anthropogenic (human caused) climate change.
>
>> There may indeed be a well funded, politically supported junk science
>> agenda, I wouldn't know.  That's not where I get my info.
>
> How many times have you posted to Vision2020 defenses of junk climate
> science websites and articles?  More times than I can count...
>
> I''ll reference one notable example, a website you have referenced
> numerous times.
>
> National Snow Ice Data Center director Mark Serreze called Anthony
> Watt's junk climate science website "Watts Up With That" an expresion
> of "breathtaking ignorance."
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/realpolitic/worlds-oceans-warmest-on-_n_289210_31196131.html
>
> Yet you vigorously defended Watt's confirmation bias filtered
> statements on Arctic sea ice extent predictions for 2010 from "Watts
> Up With That," with profanity laced responses, revealed in the
> following Vision2020 posts from June and July 2010:
> http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2010-June/070679.html
> http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2010-July/070799.html
>
> The final Arctic sea ice extent for 2010 refuted Watt's scientifically
> irresponsible spring predictions, a result you never followed up on
> regarding our discussion of Watt's confirmation bias filter.
> ------------------------------------------
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>
>>>
>>> I could expand on this theme for a thousand pages, but I'll simply
>>> once again offer an essay on the history of the scientific study of
>>> the CO2 greenhouse effect, going back over 100 years, from the
>>> American Institute of Physics... And then for those inclined to
>>> paranoid conspiracy theories about climate science "Global Overlords",
>>> I'll once again reference one of the best satires on this paranoia,
>>> "The Knights Carbonic," from George Monbiot:
>>> TheCarbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect
>>>
>>> http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
>>>   The Knights Carbonic
>>>
>>>
>>>     November 23, 2009
>>>     http://www.monbiot.com/2009/11/23/the-knights-carbonic/
>>>
>>> Yes, the hacked climate emails are damaging. But here’s the one you’d
>>> need to see if you wanted to show that manmade global warming is a scam.
>>>
>>> By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian, 23rd November 2009
>>>
>>> It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails
>>> extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the
>>> University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging(1
>>> <http://www.anelegantchaos.org/>). I am now convinced that they are
>>> genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.
>>>
>>> Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things
>>> in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the
>>> comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages
>>> that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be
>>> evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being
>>> released(2
>>> <http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=914&filename=1219239172.txt>,3
>>>
>>> <http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=490&filename=1107454306.txt>),
>>>
>>> and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of
>>> information request(4
>>> <http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=891&filename=1212063122.txt>).
>>>
>>> Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the
>>> publication of work by climate sceptics(5
>>> <http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=307&filename=1051190249.txt>,6
>>>
>>> <http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=484&filename=1106322460.txt>),
>>>
>>> or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on
>>> Climate Change(7
>>> <http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=419&filename=1089318616.txt>).
>>>
>>> I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign.
>>> Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.
>>>
>>> But do these revelations justify the sceptics’ claims that this is
>>> “the final nail in the coffin” of global warming theory?(8
>>> <http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/>,9
>>>
>>> <http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=116882>) Not at all.
>>> They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise
>>> questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several
>>> hundred lines of evidence. To bury manmade climate change, a far wider
>>> conspiracy would have to be revealed. Luckily for the sceptics, and to
>>> my intense disappointment, I have now been passed the damning email
>>> which confirms that the entire science of global warming is indeed a
>>> scam. Had I known that it was this easy to rig the evidence, I
>>> wouldn’t have wasted years of my life promoting a bogus discipline. In
>>> the interests of open discourse, I feel obliged to reproduce it here.
>>>
>>> “From: ernst.kattweizel at redcar.ac.uk
>>> <mailto:ernst.kattweizel at redcar.ac.uk>
>>> Sent: 29th October 2009
>>> To: The Knights Carbonic
>>>
>>> Gentlemen, the culmination of our great plan approaches fast. What the
>>> Master called “the ordering of men’s affairs by a transcendent world
>>> state, ordained by God and answerable to no man”, which we now know as
>>> Communist World Government, advances towards its climax at Copenhagen.
>>> For 185 years since the Master, known to the laity as Joseph Fourier,
>>> launched his scheme for world domination, the entire physical science
>>> community has been working towards this moment.
>>>
>>> The early phases of the plan worked magnificently. First the Master’s
>>> initial thesis – that the release of infrared radiation is delayed by
>>> the atmosphere – had to be accepted by the scientific establishment. I
>>> will not bother you with details of the gold paid, the threats made
>>> and the blood spilt to achieve this end. But the result was the
>>> elimination of the naysayers and the disgrace or incarceration of the
>>> Master’s rivals. Within 35 years the 3rd Warden of the Grand Temple of
>>> the Knights Carbonic (our revered prophet John Tyndall) was able to
>>> “demonstrate” the Master’s thesis. Our control of physical science was
>>> by then so tight that no major objections were sustained.
>>>
>>> More resistence was encountered (and swiftly despatched) when we
>>> sought to install the 6th Warden (Svante Arrhenius) first as professor
>>> of physics at Stockholm University, then as rector. From this position
>>> he was able to project the Master’s second grand law – that the
>>> infrared radiation trapped in a planet’s atmosphere increases in line
>>> with the quantity of carbon dioxide the atmosphere contains. He and
>>> his followers (led by the Junior Warden Max Planck) were then able to
>>> adapt the entire canon of physical and chemical science to sustain the
>>> second law.
>>>
>>> Then began the most hazardous task of all: our attempt to control the
>>> instrumental record. Securing the consent of the scientific
>>> establishment was a simple matter. But thermometers had by then become
>>> widely available, and amateur meteorologists were making their own
>>> readings. We needed to show a steady rise as industrialisation
>>> proceeded, but some of these unfortunates had other ideas. The global
>>> co-option of police and coroners required unprecedented resources, but
>>> so far we have been able to cover our tracks.
>>>
>>> The over-enthusiasm of certain of the Knights Carbonic in 1998 was
>>> most regrettable. The high reading in that year has proved impossibly
>>> costly to sustain. Those of our enemies who have yet to be silenced
>>> maintain that the lower temperatures after that date provide evidence
>>> of global cooling, even though we have ensured that eight of the ten
>>> warmest years since 1850 have occurred since 2001(10
>>> <http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20081216.html>).
>>>
>>> From now on we will engineer a smoother progression.
>>>
>>> Our co-option of the physical world has been just as successful. The
>>> thinning of the Arctic ice cap was a masterstroke. The ring of secret
>>> nuclear power stations around the Arctic Circle, attached to giant
>>> immersion heaters, remains undetected, as do the space-based lasers
>>> dissolving the world’s glaciers.
>>>
>>> Altering the migratory and reproductive patterns of the world’s
>>> wildlife has proved more challenging. Though we have now asserted
>>> control over the world’s biologists, there is no accounting for the
>>> unauthorised observations of farmers, gardeners, bird-watchers and
>>> other troublemakers. We have therefore been forced to drive migrating
>>> birds, fish and insects into higher latitudes, and to release several
>>> million tonnes of plant pheromones every year to accelerate flowering
>>> and fruiting. None of this is cheap, and ever more public money,
>>> secretly diverted from national accounts by compliant governments, is
>>> required to sustain it.
>>>
>>> The co-operation of these governments requires unflagging effort. The
>>> capture of George W. Bush, a late convert to the cause of Communist
>>> World Government, was made possible only by the threatened release of
>>> footage filmed by a knight at Yale, showing the future president
>>> engaged in coitus with a Ford Mustang. Most ostensibly-capitalist
>>> governments remain apprised of where their real interests lie, though
>>> I note with disappointment that we have so far failed to eliminate
>>> Vaclav Klaus. Through the offices of compliant states, the Master’s
>>> third grand law has been accepted: world government will be
>>> established under the guise of controlling manmade emissions of
>>> greenhouse gases.
>>>
>>> Keeping the scientific community in line remains a challenge. The
>>> national academies are becoming ever more querulous and greedy, and
>>> require higher pay-offs each year. The inexplicable events of the past
>>> month, in which the windows of all the leading scientific institutions
>>> were broken and a horse’s head turned up in James Hansen’s bed, appear
>>> to have staved off the immediate crisis, but for how much longer can
>>> we maintain the consensus?
>>>
>>> Knights Carbonic, now that the hour of our triumph is at hand, I urge
>>> you all to redouble your efforts. In the name of the Master, go forth
>>> and terrify.
>>>
>>> Professor Ernst Kattweizel, University of Redcar. 21st Grand Warden of
>>> the Temple of the Knights Carbonic.”
>>>
>>> This is the kind of conspiracy the deniers need to reveal to show that
>>> manmade climate change is a con. The hacked emails are a hard knock,
>>> but the science of global warming withstands much more than that.
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 12:59 PM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com
>>> <mailto:godshatter at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     I can't help being dismayed that someone whose  posts are praised
>>>     as ones that "apply critical thinking to information and events in
>>>     the news" would come down on the side of arguing *for* argument
>>>     from authority.  That seems to me to be about as uncritical as you
>>>     can get.
>>>
>>>     One question to ask, in fact, one that's been lying around just
>>>     begging to be asked is: why do experts in the field of climate
>>>     science feel the need to argue from authority in the first place?
>>>     Shouldn't they let their methodology and conclusions speak for
>>>     themselves?  This is science, after all.  Why did they deny
>>>     multiple FOIA requests for their data simply because the person
>>>     requesting them might be critical of their results?  Why did one
>>>     of them specify in one of the Climategate emails that they would
>>>     delete the information before they would allow themselves to be
>>>     forced to give it up?  Why did they "lose" the original unadjusted
>>>     data?  Why do they feel obligated to get in the middle of
>>>     policy-making?  Shouldn't they be conservatively stating their
>>>     conclusions, with caveats, and letting the policy-makers decide
>>>     their importance?
>>>
>>>     Science is supposed to be egalitarian.  It shouldn't matter if an
>>>     award-winning climate scientist submitted a paper or a
>>>     fourteen-year-old Japanese school girl submitted it.  The paper
>>>     should stand or fall on it's own merits.
>>>
>>>     Also, "consensus among scientists" can be misleading.  In one poll
>>>     I looked at
>>>     (http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2009/2009-01-20-02.asp),
>>>     scientists had to agree or disagree with two items: in the past
>>>     200 years, mean global temperatures have been rising, and that
>>>     human activity is a "significant contributing factor" in changing
>>>     mean global temperatures.  I would unequivocally answer "yes" to
>>>     the first one, and probably answer "yes" to the second one.  The
>>>     word "significant" has a special meaning in science.  The CO2
>>>     signature could be "significant" and not be very large.  These
>>>     statements also say nothing about the expected impact of global
>>>     warming.  A person could answer "yes" to both statements and still
>>>     feel that global warming is not a danger.  I would expect a
>>>     critical thinker to wonder, if that's the case, why such
>>>     importance is placed on such statements.  The right talks about
>>>     "loyalty oaths", and I can sometimes see their point.
>>>
>>>     I would also like to argue that a person doesn't have to be a
>>>     complete "expert" in a field of study to see problems in one.  We
>>>     live in a world in which we can educate ourselves quickly on very
>>>     specific topics with a little motivation and a fair amount of time
>>>     available.
>>>
>>>     I'm just not comfortable following the orders of our Global
>>>     Climate Science Overlords blindly, because I've learned not to
>>>     trust them.
>>>
>>>     Paul
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>     *From:* Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com
>>>     <mailto:art.deco.studios at gmail.com>>
>>>     *To:* vision2020 at moscow.com <mailto:vision2020 at moscow.com>
>>>     *Sent:* Wednesday, July 13, 2011 3:35 AM
>>>     *Subject:* [Vision2020] Climate & Science
>>>
>>>
>>>       Opinionator - A Gathering of Opinion From Around the Web
>>>       <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/>
>>>
>>>     July 12, 2011, 4:01 pm
>>>
>>>
>>>           On Experts and Global Warming
>>>
>>>     By GARY GUTTING
>>>     <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/gary-gutting/>
>>>
>>>     The Stone
>>>     <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-stone/> is a
>>>     forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and
>>>     timeless.
>>>
>>>
>>>             Tags:
>>>
>>>     anthropogenic global warming
>>>
>>> <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/anthropogenic-global-warming/>,
>>>     climate change
>>>     <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/climate-change/>, Global
>>>     Warming
>>>     <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/global-warming/>, Plato
>>>     <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/plato/>, science
>>>     <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/science/>
>>>
>>>     /The Stone is featuring occasional posts by Gary Gutting, a
>>>     professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, that
>>>     apply critical thinking to information and events that have
>>>     appeared in the news.
>>>     /
>>>     Experts have always posed a problem for democracies.  Plato
>>>     scorned democracy, rating it the worst form of government short of
>>>     tyranny, largely because it gave power to the ignorant many rather
>>>     than to knowledgeable experts (philosophers, as he saw it).  But,
>>>     if, as we insist, the people must ultimately decide, the question
>>>     remains: How can we, non-experts, take account of expert opinion
>>>     when it is relevant to decisions about public policy?
>>>
>>>         One we accept the expert authority of climate science, we have
>>>         no basis for supporting the minority position.
>>>
>>>     To answer this question, we need to reflect on the logic of
>>>     appeals to the authority of experts.  First of all, such appeals
>>>     require a decision about who the experts on a given topic are.
>>>     Until there is agreement about this, expert opinion can have no
>>>     persuasive role in our discussions.  Another requirement is that
>>>     there be a consensus among the experts about points relevant to
>>>     our discussion.   Precisely because we are not experts, we are in
>>>     no position to adjudicate disputes among those who are.  Finally,
>>>     given a consensus on a claim among recognized experts, we
>>>     non-experts have no basis for rejecting the truth of the claim.
>>>
>>>     These requirements may seem trivially obvious, but they have
>>>     serious consequences.  Consider, for example, current discussions
>>>     about climate change, specifically about whether there is
>>>     long-term global warming caused primarily by human activities
>>>     (anthropogenic global warming or A.G.W.).  All creditable parties
>>>     to this debate recognize a group of experts designated as “climate
>>>     scientists,” whom they cite in either support or opposition to
>>>     their claims about global warming.  In contrast to enterprises
>>>     such as astrology or homeopathy, there is no serious objection to
>>>     the very project of climate science.  The only questions are about
>>>     the conclusions this project supports about global warming.
>>>     There is, moreover, no denying that there is a strong consensus
>>>
>>> <http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm>
>>>     among climate scientists on the existence of A.G.W. — in their
>>>     view, human activities are warming the planet.  There are climate
>>>     scientists who doubt or deny this claim, but even they show a
>>>     clear sense of opposing a view that is dominant in their
>>>     discipline.   Non-expert opponents of A.G.W. usually base their
>>>     case on various criticisms that a small minority of climate
>>>     scientists have raised against the consensus view.   But
>>>     non-experts are in no position to argue against the consensus of
>>>     expert opinion.   As long as they accept the expert authority of
>>>     the discipline of climate science, they have no basis for
>>>     supporting the minority position.  Critics within the community of
>>>     climate scientists may have a cogent case against A.G.W., but,
>>>     given the overall consensus of that community, we non-experts have
>>>     no basis for concluding that this is so.  It does no good to say
>>>     that we find the consensus conclusions poorly supported.  Since we
>>>     are not experts on the subject, our judgment  has no standing.
>>>     It follows that a non-expert who wants to reject A.G.W. can do so
>>>     only by arguing that climate science lacks the scientific status
>>>     needed be taken seriously in our debates about public policy.
>>>     There may well be areas of inquiry (e.g., various sub-disciplines
>>>     of the social sciences) open to this sort of critique.  But there
>>>     does not seem to be a promising case against the scientific
>>>     authority of climate science.  As noted, opponents of the
>>>     consensus on global warming themselves argue from results of the
>>>     discipline, and there is no reason to think that they would have
>>>     had any problem accepting a consensus of climate scientists
>>>     against global warming, had this emerged.
>>>     Some non-expert opponents of global warming have made much of a
>>>     number of e-mails written and circulated among a handful of
>>>     climate scientists that they see as evidence of bias toward global
>>>     warming. But unless this group is willing to argue from this small
>>>     (and questionable) sample to the general unreliability of climate
>>>     science as a discipline, they have no alternative but to accept
>>>     the consensus view of climate scientists that these e-mails do not
>>>     undermine the core result of global warming
>>>
>>> <http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/gate-fever-breaks/#more-22259>.
>>>     Related More From The Stone
>>>     <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-stone/>
>>>     Read previous contributions to this series.
>>>
>>>         * Go to All Posts »
>>>           <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-stone/>
>>>
>>>     I am not arguing the absolute authority of scientific conclusions
>>>     in democratic debates.  It is not a matter of replacing Plato’s
>>>     philosopher-kings with scientist-kings in our /polis/. We the
>>>     people still need to decide (perhaps through our elected
>>>     representatives) which groups we accept as having cognitive
>>>     authority in our policy deliberations. Nor am I denying that there
>>>     may be a logical gap between established scientific results and
>>>     specific policy decisions.  The fact that there is significant
>>>     global warming due to human activity does not of itself imply any
>>>     particular response to this fact.  There remain pressing
>>>     questions, for example, about the likely long-term effects of
>>>     various plans for limiting CO2 emissions, the more immediate
>>>     economic effects of such plans, and, especially, the proper
>>>     balance between actual present sacrifices and probable long-term
>>>     gains.  Here we still require the input of experts, but we must
>>>     also make fundamental value judgments, a task that, /pace/ Plato,
>>>     we cannot turn over to experts.
>>>     The essential point, however, is that once we have accepted the
>>>     authority of a particular scientific discipline, we cannot
>>>     consistently reject its conclusions.  To adapt Schopenhauer’s
>>>     famous remark about causality, science is not a taxi-cab that we
>>>     can get in and out of whenever we like.  Once we board the train
>>>     of climate science, there is no alternative to taking it wherever
>>>     it may go.
>>>
>>>
>>>     --
>>>     Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
>>>     art.deco.studios at gmail.com <mailto:art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>