Global Warming & Epistemology
I just came across a comment on Non-Hacker News about an article from a global warming skeptic (I fixed a couple typos):
I don’t understand why people are so ready to believe in global warming. Even if it is true, the effects will not be significant for a very long time, much too long for us to take the measures we are taking now.
I’ve also read enough convincing and levelheaded counters from smart, independent people that I also am not convinced global warming is caused by people, or is necessarily happening at all.
For reference there is Michael Crichton, this guy, and James Hogan (highly esteemed hard sci fi author). The last author has written a very interesting book called Kicking the Sacred Cow that I highly recommend. It debunks and/or shows persuasive alternative theories to many "facts" we "know" today. Besides global warming, he also tackles topics like Darwinism, the big bang, catastrophism, and AIDs.
I like the comment because it gets to the crux of the matter, which is epistemology. When faced with a complex argument, how do you decide what is true and what is not? In this case specifically, how does one come to an informed opinion about whether or not climate change is occurring, and if so, why?
It’s important when reading articles like the ones the commenter mentioned to realize that it’s fairly easy to convince lay people of anything with selective use of facts and logic, especially when the attempt is well-written. It’s much harder to do the same to experts. Cherry-picking data won’t fool someone who has ready access to all of the rest.
The overwhelming majority of experts in climatology believe that climate change is occurring, that the cause is largely man-made, and that we don’t have much time to avert the potential crisis. That’s an incontrovertible fact. You can argue about why that is. Some say it’s due to social or political pressures, or Al Gore, or a host of other reasons. But you can’t really argue that they don’t endorse the idea. Even the ones funded by oil and coal companies do.
Personally, I like Occam’s Razor here. One explanation is that there is some cabal of scientists and left-wing politicians who have formed a global conspiracy with the intention of destroying our economy by forcing a widespread and expensive change in energy policy, and that said cabal has ensured that anyone who disagrees will never be published or elected and will be laughed out of the scientific or political community. Another explanation is that most climatologists who studied the issue believed that the data pointed to anthropogenic climate change. I don’t know about you, but I’d lump the people in the first group in with those who believe that Bush engineered 9/11 and ones who think The DaVinci Code was a documentary.
It’s also important to consider sources. Neither Michael Crichton nor James Hogan are or were climatologists. They’re both authors. Smart authors who know more about science than most, but still not climatologists or even scientists. And the original article’s writer is a software engineer.
As an uninformed person (i.e. non-climatologist) I’ll accept the word of the vast majority of informed persons (i.e. climatologists, including the ones who have clear incentives to the contrary) over the word of a couple authors and a programmer. That doesn’t mean I’ll be correct 100% of the time, and I might not even be on global warming. I accept that. A broken clock is right twice a day, and sometimes hapless skeptics are too.
Nobody can be right about everything, and the nature of climate change is that the ultimate decisions have to rest with citizens, the politicians they elect, and entrepreneurs, most of whom can’t be expected to know everything about everything, or even everything about global warming. The best they can do is take the most informed opinions around and act on them.
And that’s what many of us who believe we need to take action on climate change are saying. We’re not saying we have any special knowledge about the problem, and we’re not saying that it’s unquestionably mankind’s fault. What we are saying is that clearly those who devote their lives to the study of such matters overwhelmingly agree that we need to take action, and that we therefore should because we have no better advice to the contrary.
So I side with them. I won’t always be correct in doing so, but in the long run I’ll have a much better track record than those who simply choose the argument that is politically expedient or causes them the least concern.
November 27, 2008 at 5:36 am
Michael Crichton studies biological anthropology, lectured in anthropology at Cambridge and got an M.D. from Harvard. That's a bit more that “just a writer” and certainly close to “scientist”.
The summary of this article seems to be “I don't get all this stuff, so I'm going to go with the majority and abuse everyone else.” Sounds like a religious view to me. On to the rest of your article.
A problem with articles like this (and there are very many of them) is that those who don't agree are shouted down. The facts aren't discussed and those who present other views are personally villified; this article explicitly rejects facts as even being part of the discussion. Even after Gallieo the consensus view was the the sun revolved around the earth, it took a long time before the consensus view caught up with reality.
Having a model doesn't predict the future, especially for a chaotic system. And (coming back to those pesky facts), the assumptions in the models are very flawed and don't reflect the physical science. Nicholas Taleb is worth reading on model builders and the evaluation of models.
I don't think it is a consipracy, I just think there is a large amount of funding and social pressure to accept the one, true, global warming religion. One that is funded by the oil companies and they are quite happy with.
But this is one article in a tidal wave of unfounded belief. Think, don't just accept.
November 27, 2008 at 7:18 am
You do know that the photos of polar bears clinging to increasingly melting icebergs has been debunked, right? Polar bear populations are also stable and/or increasing.
November 27, 2008 at 6:59 pm
First off, an MD does not make you a scientist, let alone a climatologist. Michael Crichton may be a little more able to make sense of data than the average Joe, but he's still nowhere near as valuable as a climatologist on this topic.
My argument is the exact opposite of religion. Religion is about not admitting that there are things you don't know. I'm admitting that, because I don't have the time to research intensively every issue that comes into play in the voting booth. So instead I'm trusting the people who spend years researching individual topics. As I mentioned, it isn't perfect, but it's a lot better method than siding with convenience and conspiracy theories. In fact, it's the best method we've got.
You should very carefully reread my article because I think you missed the point. Convincing “facts” are bandied about by both sides of the argument. If I were going to judge based on them, I'd probably still believe in anthropogenic climate change, given that each year the ice caps melt more (to the point where we're now ironically considering looking for oil where they used to be), each hurricane season gets worse, etc.
But still, facts are just data points that I (and presumably you) as a non-climatologist am unable to use to form a coherent model. Models may not be perfect, but science is all about forming and constantly improving them. And the best we have now point to anthropogenic climate change with consequences that may be severe.
I don't see any evidence in the scientific community of dissidents being shouted down, and the few I've talked to have said the same. It's largely their excuse when their Big Oil-funded studies (and big oil fought climate change for years because their product is largely blamed, so they're certainly not happy with it and continue the fight to this day) are rejected by publications for pure bad science. It's easy for them to simply claim censorship and shout about social pressures and conspiracies. If anything, science is often funded by corporations, none of whom want change from the status quo. They actually have financial pressure to deny global warming.
Also, you're just plain wrong about Galileo. There was nothing like the scientific community we now have then, in fact he's referred to as the founder of modern physics for that reason. Science was in its infancy, there was no such thing as consensus. When there's only 1 physicist, anything he says is by definition the consensus.
And it was largely the religious community that rejected heliocentrism (which we now know to be not exactly correct anyway).
November 27, 2008 at 7:00 pm
How can a photo be debunked?
But really, it's called humor.
November 28, 2008 at 3:34 am
One othe link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Climat...
The scientific method does not value consensus; the global warming religion does.
November 28, 2008 at 3:35 am
Hmm. My other (long) response was lost. Will it come back?
November 28, 2008 at 8:03 am
If you want to talk anthropology, I would take a look at Jared Diamond's work before I looked at Crichton's.
Diamond is a Pulitzer prize winner who writes nonfiction.
Crichton writes science fiction.
Diamond wrote Collapse, a factual account of previous civilization's undoings and what caused them.
Crichton wrote a sci-fi book called State of Fear that talks about environmentalists killing people to support their views.
Michael Crichton was a good sci-fi author and a bad authority on climate change.
November 28, 2008 at 12:18 pm
It was spam filtered for whatever reason. I'll fix it.
November 28, 2008 at 12:20 pm
The difference between trusting priests and scientists is that scientists use things like data collection, experimentation, and peer review. It's not at all similar. It's the opposite.
Here's the first list of facts I found Googling: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12...
Which not coincidentally directly refutes the “facts” you gave. For instance:
“Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
• The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850. “
How are you so sure the facts you gave are the correct ones? If most scientists believe the facts I just gave, and you're not a scientist, why do you believe them? Recent cooling doesn't refute global warming (which is better termed global climate change anyway) at all. You would expect some small periods to be cooler than preceding ones.
November 28, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Interesting … though ….I thought the agrument was that if global warming is a non-issue, all the people who collect money for studying climate have a difficult time buying groceries because no one cares. You seem to take it in the other direction i.e. if those studying a problem claim it's a major problem, then we should give them lots of money. May I add you to my mailing list please?
November 28, 2008 at 3:06 pm
That's largely not how science is funded. Many have been fired because the corporations that pay them to study climate change don't like the results. It's not Al Gore funding them all, it's Exxon.
November 28, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Janm said 'Michael Crichton studies biological anthropology, lectured in anthropology at Cambridge and got an M.D. from Harvard. That's a bit more that “just a writer” and certainly close to “scientist”.'
I have given an extract of one of his books (Jurassic Park) to students to see if they could spot the five blunders on the one page. He was not much of a scientist.
December 1, 2008 at 2:23 am
My only concern is the data: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?x...
When a hypothesis (global warming caused in total or in part by manmade activity) is based entirely on numbers (temperature readings), and some of those numbers are discovered to be false exaggerations, there's a problem. If scientists are going to recommend serious costly overhauls to the economy to curb carbon emissions among other things, they had damn well better make sure the data is right and has been rigorously tested and verified.
December 3, 2008 at 12:15 pm
You know, there's another side to this argument. Regardless of whatever happens, what the hell are you as a single person going to do about it? Nothing. The only way to affect real change is to inspire a larger group of people. Since the general public seems to be increasingly motivated to do something as of late (with our without you), I feel that I and my close friends really only have two options: 1) ignore it/wait it out 2) get involved for the purpose of profiting.
I read an article yesterday written by someone who, when driving a Rolls Royce Phantom, was flipped off by a Prius driver. While you could argue about who's being more self righteous, a single V12 has the same effect on the environment as a single hybrid powertrain: none.
December 7, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Actually, I am myself a ghostologist. That's right, I study ghosts. Most people don't believe ghosts are real, but who are they to disagree with me anyway? After all, I'm a ghostologist and they are not! Si if we ghostologists reach a consensus on the fact that ghosts do indeed exist, you'd better believe us.
Joke aside, the problem I have with global warming is not regarding the science itself. It's that some environmentalists want me to accept all the following statements:
* there is global warming
* and it is man-made
* and it is necessarily a bad thing
* so we have to fight it through massive economical planning
Actually, I'm not a scientist and it may be true that there is man-made global warming. But you'd better have to be really convincing if you want me to accept giving even more power to bureaucrats.