Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Politicians pay for science, but scientists should not be politicians. Consensus is a political concept. Unwisely deployed, it can be damagingly anti-scientific. A reply to Naomi Oreskes (Nature, 4 September 2013).
Subject terms: Philosophy of science, consensus, climate change
The celebrated mathematician, astronomer and philosopher of science Abu Ali Ibn al-Haytham, or Alhazen, is justly celebrated as the founder of the scientific method. His image appears on Iraqi banknotes and on the postage stamps of half a dozen nations of the ummah wahida.
Al-Haytham on a 10,000-dinar Iraqi banknote. Image source: banknotes.com.
Al-Haytham, unlike Naomi Oreskes,[1] did not consider that consensus had any role in science. He wrote that “the seeker after truth” does not put his trust in any mere consensus, however venerable: instead, he submits what he has learned from it to reason and demonstration. Science is not a fashion statement, a political party or a belief system.
The objective of science, as of religion, is truth. Religion attains to the truth by accepting the Words of Messiahs or of Prophets and pondering these things in its heart[2]. Science attains to the truth by accepting no word as revealed and no hypothesis as tenable until it has been subjected to falsification by observation, measurement and the application of previously-established theory to the results.
The Royal Society’s dog-Latin motto, Nullius in verba, roughly translates as “We take no one’s word for it”. The Society says, “It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment.”[3] No room for consensus there.
The Royal Society’s achievement of arms and dog-Latin motto. Image source: The Royal Society
T.H. Huxley, FRS, who defeated Bishop Wilberforce in the debate over evolution at the Oxford Museum of Natural History in 1860, put it this way: “The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties: blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”[4] Richard Feynman agreed: “Science,” he said, “is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”[5]
Karl Popper[6] formalized the scientific method as an iterative algorithm starting with a general problem. To address it, a scientist proposes a falsifiable hypothesis. During the error-elimination phase that follows, others demonstrate it, disprove it or, more often do neither, whereupon it gains some credibility not because a consensus of experts endorses it but because it has survived falsification. Head-counts, however expert the heads, play no part in science.
Left to right: T.H. Huxley (cartoon by Spy), Karl Popper (ivanjeronimo.com.br), and Richard Feynman (swfan444.deviantart.com).
The post-modernist notion that science proceeds by the barnacle-like accretion of expert consensus on the hulk of a hypothesis is a conflation of two of the dozen sophistical fallacies excoriated by Aristotle[7] 2350 years ago as the commonest in human discourse. The medieval schoolmen later labelled them the fallacies of argument ad populum (consensus) and ad verecundiam (appeal to reputation).
Science has become a monopsony. Only one paying customer – the State – calls the tune, and expects its suppliers to sing from the same hymn-sheet. Governments, by definition and temperament interventionist, are disinclined to pay for inconvenient truths. They want results justifying further intervention, so they buy consensus.
The Hamelin problem is compounded by a little-regarded consequence of nearly all academics’ dependency upon the public treasury. Those whom the State feeds and houses will tend to support the interventionist faction, and may thus give a spurious legitimacy to a political consensus by parading it as scientific when it is not.
Too often what is really a political consensus will be loosely defined with care, allowing its adherents to pretend that widespread scientific endorsement of an uncontentious version implies support for a stronger but unsupported version.
Consider climate change. The uncontentious version of the climate consensus is that greenhouse gases cause warming. Oft-replicated experiment establishes that the quantum resonance that interaction with near-infrared radiation induces in a greenhouse-gas molecule, such as carbon dioxide, emits heat directly, as though a tiny radiator had been turned on. Thus, adding greenhouse gases to the air will cause some warming. Where – as here – the experimental result is undisputed because it is indisputable, there is no need to plead consensus.
The standard version of climate consensus, however, is stronger. It is that at least half the global warming since 1950 was anthropogenic.[8],[9] Supporters of the uncontentions version need not necessarily support this stronger version.
Though IPCC (2013) has arbitrarily elevated its level of confidence in the stronger version of consensus from 90% to 95%, Cook et al. (2013),[10] analyzing the abstracts of 11,944 papers on global climate change published between 1991 and 2012, marked only 64 abstracts as having explicitly endorsed it. Further examination[11] shows just 43 abstracts, or 0.3% of the sample, endorsing it.
No survey has tested endorsement of the still stronger catastrophist version that unless most CO2 emissions stop by 2050 there is a 10% probability[12],[13] that the world will end by 2100. The number of scientists endorsing this version of consensus may well be vanishingly different from zero.
The two key questions in the climate debate are how much warming we shall cause and whether mitigating it today would cost less than adapting to its net-adverse consequences the day after tomorrow. There is no consensus answer to the first. The consensus answer to the second may surprise.
Answering the “how-much-warming” question is difficult. Models overemphasize radiative transports, undervalue non-radiative transports such as evaporation and tropical afternoon convection, and largely neglect the powerfully homoeostatic effect of the great heat-sinks – ocean and space – that bound the atmosphere.
Absolute global temperatures have varied by only ±1% in 420,000 years[14]. Will thermometers be able to detect the consequences of our altering 1/3000 of the atmospheric mix by 2100?
Uncontroversially, direct radiative warming at CO2 doubling will be the product of the instantaneous or Planck parameter[15] 0.31 K W–1 m2 and the CO2 radiative forcing[16] 5.35 ln 2: i.e., ~1.2 K. Models near-triple this value by temperature feedback amplification. Yet no feedback can be measured directly or determined theoretically. Feedbacks may even be net-negative.[17],[18]
Another uncertainty is introduced by the amplification equation in the models, which was designed for electronic circuits, where it has a physical meaning. In the climate, as the singularity at a loop gain of 1 approaches, it has none. In a circuit, feedbacks driving voltage to the positive rail flick it to the negative rail as the loop gain exceeds 1. In the climate there is no such physical mechanism.
The chaoticity of the climate object is an additional, insuperable uncertainty.[19],[20] The IPCC admits this: “In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system and, therefore, that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”[21]
The atmosphere, like any object that behaves chaotically, is highly sensitive to initial conditions. The available data will always be inadequate to allow reliable prediction – especially by probability distribution in model ensembles – of the chaos-driven bifurcations that make climate climate.
Given these real uncertainties, the IPCC’s claim of 95% consensus as to the relative contributions of Man and Nature to the 0.7 K global warming since 1950 is surely hubris. Nemesis is already at hand. Empirically, the models are not doing well. The first IPCC Assessment Report predicted global warming at 0.2-0.5 Cº/decade by now. Yet the observed trend on the HadCRUt4 data[22] since 1990, at little more than 0.1 Cº/decade, is below the IPCC’s least estimate.
Taking the mean of all five global-temperature datasets, there has been no global warming for almost 13 years, even though CO2 concentration increases should have caused at least 0.2 Cº warming since December 2000.
Given the Earth’s failure to warm as predicted, and the absence of support for the IPCC’s version of the climate consensus, its 95% confidence in the anthropogenic fraction of the 0.7 Cº warming since 1950 seems aprioristic.
No global warming for 12 years 8 months. Data sources: GISS, HadCRUt4, NCDC, RSS and UAH.
So to the economic question. Posit ad argumentum that the IPCC’s central estimate of 2.8 Cº warming from 2000-2100 is true, and that Stern[23] was right to say the cost of failing to prevent 2-3 Cº warming this century is ~1.5% of GDP. Then, even at a zero inter-temporal discount rate, the cost of abating this decade’s predicted warming of 0.17 Cº[24] by CO2-mitigation schemes whose unit mitigation cost is equivalent to that of, say, Australia’s carbon tax will be 50 times the cost of later adaptation.
How so? Australia emits just 1.2%[25],[26] of global anthropogenic CO2. No more than 5% of Australia’s emissions can now be cut this decade, so no more than 0.06% of global emissions will be abated by 2020. Then CO2 concentration will fall from the now-predicted 410 μatm[27] to 409.988 μatm. In turn, predicted temperature will fall, but only by 0.00005 Cº, or 1/1000 of the minimum detectable global temperature change. This is mainstream, consensus IPCC climatology.
The cost of this minuscule abatement over ten years will be $162 billion[28], equivalent to $3.2 quadrillion/Cº. Abating just the worldwide mean warming of 0.17 Cº predicted for this decade would cost $540 trillion, or $77,000/head worldwide, or 80% of ten years’ global GDP[29]. No surprise, then, that in the economic literature the near-unanimous consensus is that mitigation will cost more than adaptation[30],[31]. The premium vastly exceeds the cost of the risk insured. The cost of immediate mitigation typically exceeds by 1-2 orders of magnitude that of eventual adaptation.[32]
Accordingly, Oreskes’ statement that “Political leaders who deny the human role in climate change should be compared with the hierarchy of the Catholic church, who dismissed Galileo’s arguments for heliocentrism for fear of their social implications” is not only scientifically inappropriate but historically inapt: for no political leaders “deny the human role in climate change”, though some may legitimately doubt its magnitude or significance; and none impose any such opinion upon their citizens.
It is the true-believers in the New Religion of Thermageddon who have demanded that their opponents be put on trial for “treason” (Robert Kennedy), and for “high crimes against humanity” (James Hansen, NASA)[33]. The penalties for treason and for crimes against humanity are not the house arrest to which Galilei was sentenced, but death. Insistence upon consensus has often bred the most brutal kind of intolerance.
Galileo Galilei. Image source: content.answcdn.com.
The true lesson of l’affaire Galilei, then, is that the governing class, then the high priests of Rome, now the acquiescent archdruids of academe and their paymaster the State, should not intolerantly abuse their power, then of theology, now of monopsony reinforcing peer-pressure rebranded as consensus, by interfering in scientists’ freedom to be what al-Haytham had beautifully called them: seekers after truth.
References
[1] Oreskes, N, 2013, Nature 501, 27–29 (05 September 2013), doi:10.1038/501027a.
[2] Luke II, 19: King James Bible.
[3] http://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/
[4] Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95), Aphorisms and Reflections, selected by Henrietta A. Huxley, Macmillan, London, 1907.
[5] Feynman, R., What is Science?, 15th annual mtg. National Science Teachers’ Assn., New York (1966), in The Physics Teacher 7:6 (1969).
[6] Popper, K., Logik der Forschung, (Julius Springer Verlag, Vienna, 1935).
[7] Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 52 pp. (2012).
[8] IPCC, 2001. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis: Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Houghton, J.T., Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P.J. van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell and C.A. Johnson (eds.)], (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
[9] IPCC, 2007. Climate Change 2007: the Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007 [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Avery, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)], (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
[10] J. Cook, D. Nuccitelli, S.A. Green, M. Richardson, B. Winkler, R. Painting, R. Way, P. Jacobs, and A. Skuce, Environ. Res. Lett. 9 (2013), doi:0.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024.
[11] Legates, D.R., W.W.-H. Soon, W.M. Briggs, and C.W. Monckton of Brenchley, Sci. Educ. 22 (2013), doi: 10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9.
[12] Stern, N., The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge University Press (2006).
[13] Dietz, S., C. Hope, N. Stern, and D. Zenghelis, World Economics 8:1, 121-168 (2007).
[14] Petit, J.R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barkov, N.I., Barnola, J.-M., Basile, I., Bender, M., Chappellaz, J., Davis, M., Delaygue, G., Delmotte, M., Kotlyakov, V.M., Legrand, M., Lipenkov, V.Y., Lorius, C., Pepin, L., Ritz, C., Saltzman, E., and Stievenard, M., Nature 399: 429-436 (1999).
[15] IPCC (2007), p. 631 fn., where the value is given as a reciprocal in W m–2 K–1.
[16] Myhre et al., GRL 25:14, 2715–2718 (1998), doi:10.1029/98GL01908.
[17] Lindzen, R.S., and Y.-S. Choi, Asia-Pacific J. Atmos. Sci., 47:4, 377-390 (2011), doi:10.1007/s13143-011-0023-x.
[18] Spencer, R.W., and W.D. Braswell, Remote Sensing 3, 1603-1613 (2011), doi:10.3390/rs3081603.
[19] Lorenz, E.N., J. Atmos. Sci. 20, 130-141 (1963).
[20] Giorgi, F., 2005, Climatic Change 73, 239-265 (2005), doi: 10.1007/s10584-005-6857-4.
[21] IPCC (2001, §14.2.2.2).
[22] C.P. Morice, J.J. Kennedy, N.A. Rayner, and P.D. Jones, JGR 117:D8 (2012), doi: 10.1029/2011JD017187.
[23] Stern (2006 op. cit.), ix.
[24] Derived from IPCC (2007 op. cit.), 803, Table 10.26.
[25] Boden and Marland, Global CO2 Emissions from Fossil-Fuel Burning, Cement Manufacture, and Gas Flaring, 1751-2007, Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA (2010a). [26] Boden et al., Ranking of the world's countries by 2007 total CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA (2010b).
[27] Derived from IPCC (2007 op. cit.), p. 803, Table 10.26.
[28] Derived from Wong, P., Portfolio Budget Statements 2010-11: Budget-Related Paper No. 1.4. Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Portfolio, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, Australia (2010).
[29] World Bank, Gross Domestic Product 2009, in World Development Indicators 2009. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP.pdf.
[30] Tol, R., J. Econ. Perspectives 23:2, 29-51 (2009a).
[31] Tol, R., An analysis of mitigation as a response to climate change, Copenhagen Consensus Center, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark (2009b).
[32] Monckton of Brenchley, C, 2013, Is CO2 mitigation cost-effective? In Proceedings of the 45th Annual International Seminar on Nuclear War and Planetary Emergencies, World Federation of Scientists [A. Zichichi and R. Ragaini, eds.], World Scientific, London, 167-185 (2013), ISBN 978 981 4531 77 1.
[33] Happer, W., Letter to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming (2010 June 22): http://republicans.globalwarming.sensenbrenner. house.gov/Media/file/PDFs/Hearings/052010Science_Political_Arena/Response_Happer.pdf.
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@ur momisugly Stephen Richards
I can only assume you were addressing me with the comment: ”Perhaps you could lay out you engineering quality proof then? Right here, right now would be good” since you neither implicitly addressed me nor properly indicated that you were quoting my statement that “The evidence for CAGW is best described as underwhelming in 2013”.
I don’t think I have room for an “engineering quality proof” whatever that is (proofs are the realm of mathematicians not engineers) here, but I’ll be happy to clarify. If we go back to say 1995 the evidence for CAGW was more compelling (although still not convincing) than it is today, hence the “in 2013” portion of my statement. Back then 1) the stratosphere was cooling, 2) the outgoing LWR suppression had not been shown by observation to be false, 3) it wasn’t clear the tropical tropospheric hot spot would be AWOL, 4) the global average temperature was rising, and 5) we had little evidence of the magnitude of variations of climate components not well represented in the “models” like clouds and ENSO. All these things provided credence to the high climate sensitivity possibility, which is still possible even now but is even less likely now than it was circa 1995 simply because we have more reliable data now than we did then. The evidence for CAGW is basically based on a correlation (not that good of evidence to start with) that is becoming less and less correlated every year. So, even though there’s a mountain of evidence for global warming (GW) and decent evidence for some anthropogenic (man-made) contribution to global warming (AGW) there is scant and receding evidence that anthropogenic contributions dominate natural “forcings” (AGW) and particularly scant and even faster receding evidence that the warming is particularly dangerous (CAGW).
Note that there are 2 AGW’s; this causes quite a bit of confusion on it’s own since while I would consider myself in the AGW camp that considers natural influences to be dominating but not the AGW camp that holds anthropogenic influences dominate; it would require some very specific language in a survey for example to differentiate one from the other.
alan neil ditchfield says:
> Engineers don’t believe in scientists. They use Euclidean geometry because its propositions stand demonstrated, not because they believe in Euclid. There is a gulf of understanding between believers and those who use science.
I rather like Miles Mathis’s observation that while the propositions of curved geometry can be properly demonstrated, if enough care is taken, it is fully dependent on Euclidean geometry and thus does not lead to new insights. On the other hand, it is cumbersome and counter-intuitive, thus making it easy to miss errors and misdirection — exactly the properties mathematicians are excited about, while engineers are not.
The State tends to start out with good intentions, but oftentimes with poor, unintended results. For example, the concept of welfare is a great idea – a sort of temporary safety net for folks down on their luck. The trouble is, over time and through generations, the safety net for many becomes a permanent bed upon which the beneficiaries become dependent. Now neither the state nor the beneficiary has any option but to continue the welfare ad infinitum.
Climate science is in danger of a similar fate – simply following their master’s political agendas in a scientific framework, all the while convincing themselves they are saving the world. They don’t realise the degree of their servanthood to the state. They are dependent upon the state, ad infinitum, corrupting both the science and their souls.
DirkH says:
September 7, 2013 at 12:05 pm
Holtzbrinck also publishes Scientific American, so suspicions of Watermelon flavored bias may well be justified.
Of all peoples, the English do a better job of tolerating eccentrics. To go farther back than Galileo in identifying the creator of scientific method is eccentric. Worse, it ignores the fact that Galileo’s work, especially his work on projectile motion, is taken up and championed by the creator of what made modern science possible, Newton’s calculus. Galileo’s explication of scientific method and his applications of it are the womb from which modern science emerged.
If you want to understand Galileo’s importance, the book you want to read is:
http://www.amazon.com/Dialogue-Concerning-Chief-World-Systems/dp/037575766X/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378592036&sr=1-6&keywords=galileo+two+new+sciences
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican by Galileo Galilei, Stillman Drake, J. L. Heilbron and Albert Einstein (Oct 2, 2001)
The original text was published in the forties or fifties.
Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but my take on the attempts of scientists to model the climate is this: go read what Dick Feynman had to say about physicists trying to model any fluid other than ‘dry water’.
The earth’s climate is a semi-open complex dynamic system involving interfaces between all three phases of matter (solid, liquid and gas), being exposed to the effects of mulitple inputs (from the sun, cosmic rays etc) and modulated by many quasi-stochastic processes (e.g. volcanoes, oceanic perturbations, ice melts etc).
I see this problem as one akin to engineering, not physics or chemistry. I see it as a chaotic system which nonetheless can be approximated to, for discrete time periods, using Fourier analysis.
Science can be used to measure very discrete, bounded parts of the climate jigsaw.
It can’t, in my opinion and judgement, be used to predict ‘the earth’s climate’.
Rules of thumb can, however, be developed which may or may not have sufficient vailidity to eb useful for economic planning.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
”Fact is that by spending so much on windmills and suchlike fooleries they’re pulling the rug from under the hand that lays the golden eggs.”
ROTFLMAO!
Talk about your mixed metaphors, we’ve got pulling the rug out from under [all of us], [biting] the hand [that feeds them, i.e. all of us], and [cooking the goose] that lays the golden eggs (again, all of us) all wrapped up in one nice little package of hilarity that pretty much sums up the totality of inanity that is climate change action initiatives.
BTW: Where’s my manners? First comment should have started out with Excellent post Lord Monckton but I read the Nature article first and then it slipped my mind.
Excellent work, beautifully timed, thank you.
@Monkton
No scientist uses Popper, unless he wants to sound pompous. Things are more complicated than falsifiability and (in the biologicals) revolve around achieving limited consensus through demonstrations that you can control a phenomenon. Falsifiability doesn’t usuall enter into the discussion and when it does, it’s a minor point because you’ve done somethimg stupid. However, we do watch for Aristotle’s logical fallacies a lot.
I just discovered Alhazen (Al-Haytham) a few years ago, and was very impressed, but, you are talking about a medieval man just the same. His approach is not the equivalent of Bacon, Galilleo, or Boyle, or any of the early renaissance scientists who promoted systems of doing science and discussed how their system lead to truth. Al-Haytham has a fantastic optics but doesn’t mess around in the more theoretic aspects of what it means to do science. His approach, though correct, and though far better than Europeans of his time, doesn’t appear to me to go beyond the subjects he treats.
How are things at Dorc Cottage?
Wow, it is a long time since I’ve seen such an expert command of a language so beautifully rendered in print. My hat is off to you, Sir.
May I also compliment you on the use of the “consensus'” own figures to totally demolish their argument, with this and other postings and presentations, and your backing of the 50:1 project.
I do hope you and Willis get to meet and talk while he is over there. It is lovely to watch the interplay between ye’re comments to each others’ postings.
After seeing what has happened here in Ireland (not that who has gotten in are any different) and Australia at the polls, with a little more input from you, I believe the UKIP party can become a significant minority party within the next government, if not the main opposition. Britain is ready for change, and you have an uncanny knack for backing the right horse.
Jim Steele says:
September 7, 2013 at 1:34 pm
Is not their motto now “Nonsense en Verbose” de Nurse?
John West says:
September 7, 2013 at 3:27 pm (replying to)
Monckton of Brenchley says:
To extend the phrase further …. ”Fact is that by spending so much on windmills and suchlike fooleries they’re pulling the rug from under the hand that pays the golden eggs.”
“whether mitigating it today would cost less than adapting to its net-adverse consequences the day after tomorrow”
Lord Monckton, you got this wrong.
“Mitigating it today” is not costly – it is impossible. We do not posses, today, the technology to produce carbon-free energy (except nuclear, which has other problems).
All “renewables” that are pushed today are incapable, technically, to mitigate anything. They are “tooth fairies and Easter bunnies” (Dr. Hansen’s correct words). They are useless.
We need a major breakthrough in science and technology to find a feasible carbon-free source of energy.
So, the cost comparison of mitigation vs. adaptation is meaningless. There is no “mitigation” available.
Thanks, Christopher, Lord Monckton.
Good essay, it has attracted thoughtful commentaries.
But, even though I am an electronics engineer, I could not fully understand when you wrote
“Another uncertainty is introduced by the amplification equation in the models, which was designed for electronic circuits, where it has a physical meaning. In the climate, as the singularity at a loop gain of 1 approaches, it has none. In a circuit, feedbacks driving voltage to the positive rail flick it to the negative rail as the loop gain exceeds 1. In the climate there is no such physical mechanism.”
Do we not have evidence of climate oscillations between ice ages and temperate climates?
Or is it that we have no proof that an ice age triggers its own end?
BTW, I think it was Galileo that started modern science.
“the house arrest to which Galilei was sentenced” was much more than that; He was psychologically tortured and had to put his young daughter in a convent. He had a life sentence.
Lord Monckton, thank you for the enlightening article. I know you spend a good bit of time working on this issue. I am grateful for your efforts.
@Thomas Traill
That was an interesting scenario comparing parachute jumping to a climate consensus. I believe you were having fun because who would go parachute jumping without personally learning how to pack and use a parachute? As a matter of fact, a consensus on parachute use would probably advise new users to learn and practice the art before trying it.
A saying I have heard comes closer to the general idea of why people are skeptical on climate issues. It goes, “You don’t have to be a farmer to know when you have a rotten egg”. It’s kind of country sounding, but it is not hard to see where climate scientists has gone off the tracks with their lack of ability to make any decent predictions in the last twenty or so years. Anybody can see that unless they are riding the government gravy train of endless research grants.
You have probably heard the story about a man on his first sky-dive. After he jumped out of the airplane, he pulled the ripcord and his chute did not open. Panic set in as he fumbled with every handle and strap he could find. Then he saw a man rising from the earth at a terrific speed. As the man approached, the sky-diver called out, “Do you know anything about parachutes?”. As the human rocket passed the sky diver, he yelled back, “Do you know anything about Coleman stoves?”.
Pick a target, then open the taxpayer’s purse in an effort to hit it.
Accuracy suffers when nobody is responsible.
History, will not be kind.
Good essay, but I have one objection: Science has become a monopsony. Only one paying customer – the State – calls the tune, and expects its suppliers to sing from the same hymn-sheet.
There is a lot of scientific research carried out in the private sector.
“Political leaders who deny the human role in climate change should be compared with the hierarchy of the Catholic church, who dismissed Galileo’s arguments for heliocentrism for fear of their social implications”
As usual, she has got it backwards. Alarmists are the ones denying the role of the sun in climate, placing human induced climate change at the centre of the universe. When scientists claim the sun has a central role, they are ignored and maltreated, just like Galileo was. They don’t like making the sun the centre of the climate change universe for the same reason they didn’t with Galileo-it reduces their role and their sense of self-importance.
As for evolution, once again the alarmists have got history and science backwards. The evolutionists were gradualists-they believed biological systems responded slowly and gradually over long periods to change, notwithstanding rare chaotic periods associated with catastrophes, where entire ecosystems could be replaced by others. The anti-evolutionists denied this, they believed that species and ecosystems did not change at all, and they were only replaced by human induced catastrophes where God’s hand intervened. They denied that natural change occurred, and assumed a large human induced role in natural change, just like alarmists do today.
In the Aardman animated movie, “The Pirates,” a shot of the Royal Society’s seal and motto says “The Royal Society – Playing God Since 1687”
Odd date, I thought, but that’s when Newton published “Principia.”
The good Lord writes, “The celebrated mathematician, astronomer and philosopher of science Abu Ali Ibn al-Haytham, or Alhazen, is justly celebrated as the founder of the scientific method.”
I’m afraid this statement is somewhat overblown. For a more nuanced and researched role by a qualified historian of science who goes by the blog title, The Renaissance Mathematicus, you might like to read, http://tinyurl.com/l4j62u6
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhazen) states, “He made significant contributions to … the scientific method.”
That’s a rather more modest claim!
As ‘Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego’, you would expect Oreskes to know all that.
Oreskes is sitting on her ‘consensus’ … if she were to give it some light, the face of it might scare her.
Andres Valencia says:
September 7, 2013 at 4:26 pm
I don’t think that Galileo (1564 to 1642) started modern science. IMO that would be Copernicus (1473 to 1543) & Vesalius (1514 to 1564), both of whom undertook to overthrow classical authority with observations & analysis anew.
Galileo’s “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” did however present a philosophy of modern science, but so too did Francis Bacon a dozen years earlier in his “Novum Organum”.
The reference links like http://wattsupwiththat.com/Users/Anthony/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.IE5/1K64Q3MP/#_edn12 don’t work.