Guest post by E. Calvin Beisner
![Alan I. Leshner [Photograph by Colellaphoto.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aaas.org/ScienceTalk/images/leshner-highrez.jpg?quality=83 "Alan I. Leshner [Photograph by Colellaphoto.com]")
Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Executive Publisher of its flagship publication, Science, wrote in a recent editorial, “There is no shortage of topics where policy-makers or other members of the public seem to persistently misunderstand, misrepresent, or disregard the underlying science: climate change, genetically modified foods, vaccines, or evolution, among others.”
Well, I guess two out of four isn’t too bad. I imagine his and my understandings of GMO and vaccines are reasonably alike. But on climate change and (naturalistic macro-) evolution (not to oversimplify and distort), I suspect his conclusions and mine differ dramatically—and I have a feeling that, in question-begging style, he assumes that my conclusions are wrong and his are right, and what’s needed is for him and other scientists to help me understand the science better.
Trouble is (focusing here just on climate change), the better I’ve understood the science on climate change (having read over 40 books on the science and over 30 on the economics, and scores of major papers and thousands and thousands of articles on each), the more convinced I’ve become that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) is false.
In fact, a careful scientific survey found that the more people know about the science, the less likely they are to believe in CAGW.
It seems likely, therefore, that Leshner will be disappointed in the results if scientists do become any better at communicating the science of climate change.
But a careful reading of his editorial suggests that that’s not what he’s really after anyway. After decrying scientists’ ineffectiveness at enlightening the public about the science of climate change, he writes,
Valuable studies have been carried out to discover what determines public attitudes toward science and technology, and some … point to an individual’s ideological views or cultural identity as having greater influence … than an understanding of the facts. Often, simply increasing public knowledge about an issue will not move the debate …. Instead, the way an issue is framed can have a larger effect on people’s views. As a case in point, many people will give more credit to the scientific claims about climate change when the issue is cast as a technological challenge than as a regulatory problem.
(I.e., with regard to that last sentence, if we beg the question of the reality of CAGW and just present people with the technological challenge of how to deal with it, we can avoid the problem of convincing them of its reality in the first place.)
It appears that what Leshner is really after is not better public understanding of science but particular public opinions about climate change and that he would be content to see scientists turn from facts to ideology, cultural identity, and framing to move public opinion on global warming—a dangerous but not uncommon view in our postmodern times, even in the science community, as I discussed in “Wanted for Premeditated Murder: How Post-Normal Science Stabbed Real Science in the Back on the Way to the Illusion of “Scientific Consensus” on Global Warming.”
That this would indeed satisfy Leshner his very next sentences confirm:
Science is complicated and often jargon-laden, so scientists may need help from a ‘translator’ to help tell a story simply and cogently. In doing so, the gist of the message is what matters. Here there is a lesson to be learned from antiscience [sic—note the question begging] forces, who regularly oversimplify science in very effective ways, even when distorting it.
Noting that “people care primarily about things that affect them personally or locally,” he adds, “thus, a useful approach is to determine what matters to a specific audience and seek a way to make the message relevant to them.”
Yes. Like telling kids who like furry polar bears that global warming is driving them extinct; or people on low-lying islands and seacoasts that global warming is driving sea levels upward faster than ever; or biodiversity champions that global warming threatens to drive half the world’s species extinct; or allergy-prone people that global warming’s cause, rising CO2, will cause the pollen that irritates them to multiply (to mention just four such tactics)—when the first three are false and the last is offset by the fact that pretty much all plants will grow better, meaning food will be cheaper.
The fact is, in my constant reading and conversations, I’ve found it far more common for CAGW true believers than critics to oversimplify and even distort the science. It’s the true believers who so readily resort to the claim, “Look, it’s basic physics. Greenhouse gases warm the planet, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so more CO2 means more warmth.” They’re the ones who don’t like to get into the weeds of quantifying “climate sensitivity,” CO2’s logarithmic warming curve, the sign and magnitude of climate feedbacks, the multiple natural drivers of climate, whether and how much local land use change (especially urbanization) distorts “global” temperature readings, or any number of pesky details that falsify their intuitively sensible but false conclusion. They’ll discuss them, reluctantly, if pressed, but only then.
“Public understanding and support of science and technology have never been more important, but also never more tenuous,” Leshner says. Perhaps he’s right about the support, but I have a hunch public support for “science” (in this context, code for global warming alarmism) is tenuous precisely because public understanding of science is growing—thanks to “climate skeptics.”
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is Founder and National Spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, author of three books on environmental science, economics, ethics, and policy, and a member of the AAAS.
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Joel Shore says:
Interesting bedfellows you have! And, to think that people around here object so strongly when I note the obvious connections and analogies between “AGW skeptics” and “evolution skeptics”!
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The CAGW enthusiasts use just every available logical fallacy.
This one is a form of ad hominem fallacy called ‘guilt by association’ as in “My opponent for office just received an endorsement from the Puppy Haters Association. Is that the sort of person you would want to vote for?” (Wiki).
It’s difficult to fathom whether these fallacies are use cynically (in order to fool the unwary) or they are blissfully unaware of their paralogisms.
Doug Proctor
Quick point 1499 James IV was King of Scots, later to die at Flodden Field (Flowers of the Forest and all that)
Jeff Alberts says:
but you must remember Joel is coming from his own deeply held religious belief and in that belief he is as fanatical as the most crazed “christian” zealots.
I am Christian and I find Evolution plausible. What I do NOT find plausible is CAGW, which is magical thinking at its finest.
One good test of any science theory is to see how many paradoxes it contains, as they only occur when wrong assumptions have been made.
Any single paradox should make the scientific mind start to be suspicious that understanding is incomplete. Multiple paradoxes should make the scientific mind start looking for a new theory to test.
The above is the gist of a lecture by Edward de Bono, which I attended many years ago. For those who have read his book, “The Edward de Bono Code Book”, improvements in the conduct of climate science could be made by adopting a 6/2 strategy – ‘you tell me my point of view and I’ll tell you your point of view’. This can be very useful when one or both parties in a dispute are not making enough effort to understand each other’s view point, and.allows for real debate based on facts rather than belief systems.
GlynnMhor says:
October 20, 2012 at 3:12 pm
I’d add to your list.
The United Nations sees carbon credits and taxes as a way to generate a large revenue stream and it’s own tax base.
Although what E. Calvin Bliesner writes on this article is well argued as regards to scientific communication in the case of CAGW, I wholly reject his claims regarding religion and evolution. The irony is of course that the AGW scare is a mirror image of his own religious beliefs regarding the fate of the earth, salvation and the coming Apocalypse.
In the case of the Theory of Evolution, there is more than enough evidence both inside and outside the Laboratory that a) the Earth is at least 4 billion years old b) that fossil records show increasing complexity from simple to complex organisms, speciation, specialisation, natural selection because of environmental changes, both sudden and slow, which affect populations of organisms, and many other things besides. Even if the Theory of Evolution were overturned tomorrow, it would not make Creationism any less false.
As has been seen in court case after court case, Creationism and it’s bastard daughter Intelligent Design, are religious beliefs and not scientific theories. The Earth and the Universe are not thousands of years old but many magnitudes older, there is no evidence of a global flood nor any mechanism for such a flood to take place, no evidence that human beings descended from a single pair of humans, no evidence that humans are distinct from the rest of the biosphere, copious evidence retained within our own bodies the vestiges of our evolution as mammals and primates and composed of the same form of blueprint in the form of DNA as every other living thing on the planet.
When there is a scientific controversy, one can always find instances of religious people siding with one side or the other claiming that this or that controversy is part of a more generalised “Crisis of Science” itself. In the case of E.Calvin Bleisner, his organisation is pitted against other evangelical Christian organisations who do support the AGW scare and the environmental crisis suppoosedly caused by the same, all the while flinging Bible texts at each other.
In the early days on Climate Audit, a commenter posted a link to an article about bristlecone pines showing scientific research that the trees can produce false extra rings because of environmental stress giving in some cases a false reading of the age of the tree. While this was interesting, I found that it was used by the commenter to show that the ancient age of bristlecone pines was an artefact of this phenomenon and therefore the Young Earth hypothesis of Creationism was not violated. I rejected the comment and Steve agreed with me.
I do not agree with posting articles by people who support my position on something, if those people are also conduits of religious or other anti-scientific beliefs I want to have nothing to do with. Such people pollute the scientific discourse and create an impression of commonality of purpose to our opponents where none exists.
joeldshore:
This is a brief answer to your silly question at October 20, 2012 at 9:08 pm because I am in a rush to fulfil my Christian duties this morning. You wrote
Firstly, it is good that you acknowledge Roy Spencer and David Legates are “illustrious scientists”. Yes, they truly are.
But your acknowledgement answers your question by showing it to be a falsehood. Religious and scientific views of the world differ because they are based on different tenets, but they are NOT mutually exclusive. So, the fact that a person has both religious and scientific understandings does NOT indicate that he or she “links those views together”.
Only a bigot claims there is only one valid way to view the world. An open-minded person can explore different aspects of reality by using the different methods of religion and science. Your question says much about you and nothing about anyone else.
And, before you jump to one of your typical unfounded assumptions, I point out that I completely accept the science of evolution and all its findings. Indeed, I use the processes of evolution as sermon illustrations.
Richard
GlynnMhor;
Well done.
Concerning #7, it’s ironic justice that the EU Energiewende and siblings are pushing EU business to the wall, and often overseas. The Continent is becoming toxic for them.
Jeff Alberts;
I have a clever resolution of the Intelligent Design conundrum, if I do say so myself.
The “junk” DNA in our and most genomes is persistent, conserved. It has many characteristics of a data and policy library. It is accessed by and intervenes in many activities of the cell.
To make a long story short, it may well be a mutation/evolution handbook for the cell. Consider how powerful even simple guidelines would be compared to random variation. Accumulated “guidelines” would self-organize, by the same leveraged “advantage” process,
The intelligence apparent in evolutionary trends is internal.
joeldshore says:
October 20, 2012 at 9:03 pm
All I am asking is for you to explain what parts of his viewpoint you agree with and what parts you reject and why, if you reject part of his viewpoint so strongly, you think that it doesn’t fundamentally undermine the rest of what he has to say?
Joel, that is truly ludicrous. You are suggesting (for example) that if one likes a person’s politics, one must automatically love the football team he supports, his dress sense and his taste in food. That is such nonsense that, imho, it fatally undermines any credibility you may think you have. It’s perfectly possible to agree with someone on certain issues whilst fundamentally disagreeing on others: it doesn’t in any way diminish one’s views on either. It also doesn’t diminish that person’s views.
ROFL!
http://ecalvinbeisner.com/
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and is also an author and speaker on the application of the Biblical world view to economics, government, and environmental policy.
No further comment is needed indeed.
The guy is a straight anti-science.
His presence on blog that pretends being science-related is just bizarre.
At least give Beisner credit for ‘balance’ in conventional political terms. Climate and evolution are disputes where the skeptics have a right-wing flavor, while GMO and vaccines are disputes where the skeptics have a left-wing flavor.
(Unlike Lewandowsky, who lives so completely in a Stalinist bubble that he didn’t even know any of the standard right-wing conspiracy theories; he only knew the Stalinist versions of everything.)
[snip . . OT . . mod]
This discussion can be clarified. If Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Executive Publisher of its flagship publication, Science, is convinced of a need to communicate Science better, look at 2 extremes.
There would be very few people whose medical treatment would be improved if ‘Science’ had undertaken a massive public education program with topics such as self diagnosis, use of the Internet, self administration, etc. Most of us have a broad trust in the medical profession and know that there are active ‘auditors’ paid to maintain a high standard.
OTOH, there are many people, including increasing numbers of scientists, who simply do not believe that climate research has the maturity to be named a science. People have seen frequent and horrible examples of deception, fraud, scheming, subversion of peer review – and the lack of internal quality control ‘auditors’. These citizens do not generally believe that they can trust future action to be informed, diligent and in their best interests.
There is hardly a case for the AAAS to emphasise that people should be better educated about remedial medicine. There is a very strong case that the AAAS should educate itself about the lamentable state of the climate work and its lack of public commitment to ‘do no harm’.
The blind eye and the deaf ear turned toward ‘the Teams ‘ poor scientific practice and overt advocacy but the rest of the scientific establishment has been one of the most shameful aspects of ‘the cause ‘
Its hardly surprising that public trust is being lost this way , when Dr Doom is spouting such utter nonsense while Mann duck and dives in refusing to release publicly paid for information while like others in ‘the Team ‘ acting like a naughty two year old throwing a tantrum.
The need to tie AGW sceptics in with creationists is partly due to the desires to paint them as not just wrong , but mad or bad . And partly as way to shut down that very scientific idea of critical review when it comes to AGW .
I knew the Warmist team had lost the plot, scientifically, when they started conflating ideas about CAGW skepticism, smoking, evolution etc… They long ago left the scientific principle behind (if they had any) and replaced it with CAGW ideology and political mumbo jumbo…
GlynnMhor says:
October 20, 2012 at 3:12 pm
“There is a host of self-centred and greedy ulterior motives different people have for supporting the AGW paradigm……. ”
Excellent summary.
Thanks for that.
Steve C says:
October 20, 2012 at 5:41 pm
“The main problem that Leshner and his ilk face is the sheer scale of scientific…….”
Another excellent piece.
Well said Steve..
Joel Shore asks if commenters agree with ““We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory.””
None of us can know if God has made the earth with a robust and resilient ecosystem or not. We can say with certainty that mankind has developed the ability to seriously damage the earth’s ecosystems. The destruction of the environment can come from malice or evil, or greed, or very simply the struggle to survive (e.g. Haiti). It is not necessary for us to prove that God does or does not exist to understand and empathize with the needs of our fellows and protect them from those few others who would harm them through sins or a selective world view. I suspect that a coal mine operator who doesn’t care about his miners is quite rare. Should we penalize that coal mine operator for adding CO2 to the global atmosphere? You would say “yes” because obviously you know everything.
How can any person comment on climate change when they can’t look back beyond 4004 BC.
A huge disservice to this site having this person given a guest blog. It will be grist to the mill for any who wish to deride any issues that this site raises.
If you lay down with dogs…
One can only chuckle at the ad hom approach by folks like Joel and alex. If only they truly understood how poorly their comments reflect on themselves.
I’m a bit of a different duck. I don’t happen to believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful God yet I find the evidence for macro-evolution very questionable. In fact, I believe those who call themselves “atheists” and totally believe in macro-evolution are doing EXACTLY the same thing as the intelligent design folks. They are simply basing their views on their religion (atheism).
So, I guess by the logic of folks like joel and alex we can disregard anything they say. They are clearly unable to separate facts from their religion. 😉
GlynnMhor … I hope you added your list to the “did you know” thread.
It mystifies and saddens me why this otherwise excellent site will carry posts by people associated with The Cornwall Alliance. It is hard to think of anything more damaging to the quest for scientific understanding. Apparently this guy believes that we can just do anything we like to the ecosystem because “His faithful providence” will clean up after us with Magic. This is way beyond that 10:10 video on the gun-shoots-foot scale.
Why?
KnR says:
beesaman
Ah, last I checked it was Anthony, a noted AGW skeptic, not myself or some other AGW adherent, who decided to publish here a diatribe against AGW science by someone who very explicitly links his beliefs against AGW with his beliefs against evolution and in favor of intelligent design. He does so with such fervor that he could not even resist taking a pot-shot at evolution in this very piece that Anthony published even though it is not the focus of his discussion. In the Cornwall Alliance that he founded, the link between his too beliefs is stated clearly and explicitly.
So far in these comments, there is only one AGW skeptic, [b]John A[/b], who has gone on record as saying, “I do not agree with posting articles by people who support my position on something, if those people are also conduits of religious or other anti-scientific beliefs I want to have nothing to do with.” The rest of you have just cheered the logic of this article or tried to argue why we should simply ignore the other anti-scientific beliefs of the author of this piece.
It is your analogies that are ludicrous. The whole premise of this article requires that we agree with the judgement of the author on a scientific issue. If that scientific judgement has been shown to be totally wrong on another scientific issue, why on Earth would we give any stock to his scientific judgement on this issue? The matter is made worse by the fact that he has explicitly linked his judgements together. I.e., he feels so strongly about the relationship between the two that he has founded a movement to express this linkage with a declaration that states: