The First Law of Discomforting states that lay rejection of the scientifically obvious will be directly related to the discomfort it provides to people, systems and investments. Discuss.
61 thoughts on “First Law Of Discomforting”
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Dubya says the science isn’t there.
Michael Crichton won a “journalism” award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists for his novel State of Fear. Basically, it’s a strident denunciation of global warming as a load of horse shit. Linkage
Who provides the budget for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists?
Big oil, methinks. By extension, you and I.
I am not a douber of the science so much as a doubter of the methods.
Kyoto seemed to penalise the developed world much more so than the developing world. Our industries have essentially matured and everyone is striving to be cleaner and less polluting, for points in both the “good citizen” and “PR tool” buckets. This is not the case with industries in developing nations. If this global throttling of industry were a little more even-handed, it might be worthy of greater support.
So you say global warming is a fact but Kyoto is not the right solution?
I would say some aspects of climate change seem much more plausible than others.
But I do not want to see Canada, or the West, for that matter, take a huge economic hit just because we are likely to go along with the protocol and places like China or India (with 1/3rd the world population between them) are less likely to do so — or are at least less put-upon by the corrective measures.
And if it is too late why should we not whoop it up as we go down the slide to the post-ozone-collapse world of living in caves wearing grey overalls and eating only mushrooms.
Responsibility, man. How can you use your beer-and-popcorn allowance if the world isn’t there to spend it on?
It’s not my doomsday. Ask the beer and popcorn funders who’s the dopes filling the air with crap.
Well… if the world’s going downhill… it kind of is, isn’t it?
In all seriousness though, trying to reach some kind of equitable agreement on emissions is a good notion in principle. I just don’t think they adequately took strategic imperatives under consideration, like the fact that the West will not want to give potential competitors a free leg-up.
Whatever gets negotiated next can’t seriously disrupt the existing economic order (i.e. major disruption is notionally okay provided everyone is disrupted equally) or people will get concerned about losing place militarily, politically, and so on.. and then it gets roundly panned, like Kyoto.
The solution will always be the same, though the problem will change over time as each is discredited: put your betters in charge, it’s the only solution.
Anthromorphic Global Warming is scientific nonsense — that is, it may be true, but there sure as hell been hasn’t been much reproducable evidence entered into the scientific record. What’s the Sun’s energy output compared to 1906? Who knows. What’s the effect of increased water vapour on climate models? Who knows.
But I would argue this from a different way — if the evidence for AGW was so strong, why not argue the facts? The hockey stick model, the centerpiece of the first IPCC report, is a clear fraud. Arguments against Lomberg tend to take the form of physical violence, caricature (as per the SciAm hack job a few years back), or a Gordo-style ad hominem attack. And Lomberg believes in AGW!– he just doesn’t think a clear cost/benefit analysis makes it worth the fight. Reports of various glaciers melting neglect to mention important facts, for example.
Science _is_ accessable to every educated person if they want to invest the time; it is not the sole domain of experts AND it doesn’t require advocacy if the facts are there.
Criton has done some pretty good and clear writing about the issue. Why don’t you read some of it for yourself, if you don’t mind Xeni Jarden or Cory Doctorow snickering at you for your declassé ignorance.
By that same reasoning, there should be acceptable benchmarks to define the problem. Where are they?
Well, science is a slog and that’s pretty well it. There’s lots of safeguards in the methods to avoid the opinions, predjudices and biases of the scientists from slipping into the results; when those methods are abandoned or set aside, well, it’s not really science any more.
Science _is_ accessable to every educated person if they want to invest the time; it is not the sole domain of experts
OK. Please feel free to look around the net for solution of the following without consulting a civil engineer: a floodwall of 2.7 meter height (length 90 meters). Please calculate the maximum thickness of concrete needed to stop a force of water that moves with a speed of 50 km/h.
I think you mean the minimum thickness, Arthur. But even though we do not know that answer, it is not true that that is merely a formula that already exists?
I think you mean the minimum thickness, Arthur.
Ops. My Dutch language engine put me on the wrong track. Minimum that be.
But even though we do not know that answer, it is not true that that is merely a formula that already exists?
Even if you’d know this formula: a person not trained in this specific applied science would not be able to tell what the exact safety margins are for strength calculations if you work with materials like concrete. Or even where these margins come from.
And concrete is not concrete. But that is an interesting point that does not defeat David’s case necessarily. Even though there is a lot of information to marshall to make the case, it is still marshallable and therefore possible for the lay person. It may, however, take as much time as it takes to become an engineer in concrete applications in marine contexts. The shorter answer is to go find an example of the phenomena and pour 4 or 44 times the thickness of concrete.
(Naturally, these margins come from years of collecting statistics and doing emperic research on behaviour of materials)
What I’m trying to say is that being informed is not the same as being actually in the field practitioning the science. Reading one book about civil engineering doesn’t make me a civil engineer.
doesn’t make me a civil engineer.
‘doesn’t make one a civil engineer’.
What’s wrong today? Is it Friday the 13th already?
There was a comment on Metafilter the other day from a person who was actually researching Global Warming (I have no link and am trying to figure out if I still have it: Metafilter’s search is un-emperical) and I like what he said: we do the science and others can do whatever they please with the facts and statistics. However, he added, among researchers there was a general consensus about mankind’s influence on climate change.
I think you could improve the law by having the magnitude of the rejection be proportional to the wealth and/or religiosity of the people discomfited.
Hmmm: “lay rejection of the scientifically obvious will be directly related to the discomfort it provides to people, systems and investments times the wealth and/or religiosity of the people discomfited”…
Does that mean the Bay of Fundy may overflow and short out my highspeed Eastlink internet connection? Say it isn’t so.
I think you will find there are other Fundy mega-poject worries enough.
Perhaps it’s the word ‘accessability’ that’s tripping you up. I know vaguely (but well enough for my life) what DNA polymerase is and how it is used to sequence DNA; however, I cannot do DNA sequencing myself (though I’m pretty sure I could do it with a semester of study). However, if a scientist claims he’s using DNA polymerase to clone humans, I have a pretty good idea he’s full of it — and even more so if he or she refuses to release his data and other scientists cannot replicate his or her results.
The “growing consensus” of AGW is coming about because (1) you’ll never get a paper published if you don’t support it (2) you’ll never get tenured if you don’t support it (3) you’ll never get promoted in your government job if you don’t support it. This is a very recent phenomina — less than 10 years old; there was nothing close to a consensus from the first big IPCC paper. The stakes are too high now for the establishment. The classic “echo chamber” effect.
Now, how can you replicate my conclusions?
(1)
Good science doesn’t need advocacy. If important facts are being left of the table, or graphs or charts are produced that are mant to occlude the data, it’s a good indicator that the science is poor or weak. (For example, a graph using only shades of red to indicate warming and cooling)
(2)
Good science doesn’t require “appeal to expertism”. The primary bulwark of strong proponents of AGW is expertism — Lomberg is an economist, and therefore cannot critisize our results; M&M are statisticians, and therefore are not qualified to review our statistics based claims about climate, and so forth.
(3)
Good science requires peer review or replication of results by independent scientists. If an independent team hasn’t replicated a result, it’s not science yet.
Note that those three rules (and there’s others, such as minimizing observer bias) are appliable by any reasonable person against any field of science. Science as a closed world of men and women in white jackets is just a religious cult, and should be taken as seriously.
There’s a nice article in Reason today about Moral Panics.
I still think that the opposition has many of the same qualities and the failure to role out benchmarks and explanations for the melting Arctic, for example, are keys to making it look like a political ploy.
Well, strong AGW proponents are claiming that the world economies need to be totally restructured along statist lines so it seems that the burden of evidence is much higher on them.
Artic ice is melting? Good for it. Some ice is melting, some ice is freezing, some places are hotter than they were 100 years ago and some places are colder, and the porportion between the two is always changing. That’s the climate, but that’s neither evidence in either directory of AGW.
directory -> direction.
You will be getting calls soon from the anti-global warming set, David. Any fact that someone asserts but says the other side must
assertdisprove is wonky science. Things are happening like carbon dioxide levels and temperature raisings and penguins with sun tans. They do not follow historic patterns and merely saying “boo-hoo, ain’t so” is not good enough. Where is the solid science that says there is no real shift happening?Penguins:
– are they in fact getting suntans
– is there a relationship between CO2 levels and the Ozone layer
– where is the vast bulk of economic activity in the work, the northern or southern hemisphere
– where are penguins, the northern or southern hemisphere
– what is the mechanism for atomospheric particulates crossing the equator (hint: there isn’t one)
– was there a hole in the ozone layer over the south pole in 1880?
– easier question, was there a hole in the ozone layer over the south pole before the first satellites looked for one?
There is no “historic pattern” to climate (though there’s good reason — historcial evidence — to believe the earth was a lot warmer in 1000-1400 than it is today).
Finally, and this may be my last word on the subject since I’m not sure if you read anything I wrote above if “boo hoo” is all you got out of it, AGW is not GW: i.e. an assertion that the climate today is “worse” today than if there was some other course of action the human the human race took for the last 150 years.
Ok, ok – “boo hoo” was mean. But are not your statements above questions rather than facts. I don’t expect you to be able to roll them out like that wallet full of photos of a kid that was a standard 1960s TV joke but is there a “Globe Not Warming” information centre on the web that would be able to state a positive position like, say, the creationists would have?
I’m not getting what you’re saying: are you claiming that someone claiming AGW is not science is similar to someone claiming creationism is science?
No, I am saying any theory – even creationism – must advance a positive statement of what it is and not just a refutation of what others are saying. Creationism is science in a sense even if it is bad science. It is also a belief system which refuses to abide by the rules of science (hence it being bad science). So if any theory presents itself, like the anti-global warming set does, as better science it has to have a positive statement of what reality consists of that is itself subject to scientific testing.
You’ve absolutely reversed the burden of proof.
AGW-proponents are making a claim about the effect of CO2 on (1) the historical climate record and (2) the future climate, both “beyond what could be reasonably expected”. This is a reasonable thing to _posit_ and I am not claiming otherwise. However, if you want to claim that things are outside of normal bounds, then it’s up to the proponents to offer that evidence.
Point (1) has not been demonstrated and in fact, as mentioned much earlier, the primary evidence proffered — the “hockey stick” — not only disagrees with the known historical record but is a fraud. Not just wrong, but a deliberate piece of misinformation that was _never_ peer reviewed and cannot be reproduced. Furthermore, all the supporting studies (you’ll see the charts on Wikipedia), although appearing independent, are actually from one clique of “scientists” whose studies have the same problem and whose results are being shredded as we speak.
I’ll make a much better prediction that your climatologists: in 5 years time, all the hockey stick models will be disappeared down the memory hole as if it never happened.
Point (2) depends on the mechanisms of climate predication models. The burden of proof for model-runners is _much_ higher than for other fields of science because, well, models aren’t reality. Given the inability (to my knowledge) of these models to postdict what we’ve seen, I’m not to concerned at this moment of what their predictions are.
This is not a legal argument. There is no burden of proof. Each side is alleging a state of demonstrable fact which has to be able to be shown. It is not enough to attempt to refute and call that an explanation. If environmental policy is to be based on long term stability and no degredation of the climate, that modelling has to be positively stated and more strongly pursuasive. I frankly do not care about claims of fraud and cliques as the facts are independent of the motive.
Where is the positive proof of climactic stability? I am sure there is some but it also gets drowned out in the politics.
No one’s claiming the climate is stable. Everyone agrees the climate is unstable.
AGW proponents are claiming the CO2 has made a significant effect in the past to the climate outside the bounds of what we would have expected and that has significantly changed the climate of today and will have catestrophic effects in the future.
The fact that the main proof proffered for the climate moving outside the normal bounds and linking that to CO2 emmissions is a fraud a huge deal.
If you want to claim that gravity is caused by invisible lepracauns moving stuff around, it’s up to you to demonstrate it, not to me to disprove it.
Many are claiming there is no global warming, that the unstability is not indicative of general warming and/or that any changes are not primarily caused by human industrial activity. These positions need positive proof in themselves to be plausible. Relying on the refutation of the positions of others is a sideshow and also wallows in politics.
I do not accept that there is an issue as to scientific fraud in relation to the entire movement as that is irrelevant. I only want to know the state of the science without the politics of either side and until I see that plainly stated it is all lepracaunism as far as I am concerned and as compelling as folksongs of the tanning penguins.
When most people say “global warming” they mean AGW. I’ve chosen to always make the distinction clear. If there’s GW but not AGW, Kyoto et al. are meaningless.
Agreed. But without solid postive science which shows anthromorphic global warming due to human industrial action or even agricultural activities (like cow farts and forest cutting) is not a factor in global warming, I cannot discount it even if not convinced by the arguments saying it is. The facts are independent of the capacity of the advocates of any side in a debate to express their position. To date, to be general, in the global warming argument the positive statement of the Suzukis is more compelling than the postive statements of the Bushes even if the rebuttal of the Bushes may be more compelling than the rebuttals of the Suzukis. I want to know what is, not whether someone else has stated what is incorrect.
Suzuki’s very consistently been peddling a religion with a very definite desired political outcome long before global warming of any sort came on the scene.
But that aside, you’re feel free to believe what you want as am I. However, science is testable hypothesises (-ii?) supported by repeatable observations. As a political point of view, what you’re saying is quite reasonable — i.e. you’re worried about something that may have some undesirable outcome in the future and that we should do something about it. That ain’t science though.
I disagree utterly. You are the one who has denied the role of science in the proposition that there is not AGW. You take comfort in a proposition but cannot point to testable hypothesae (?) supported by repeatable observations proving your proposition. I am only asking for the application of science and the acknowledgement that a position taken based on the lack of evidence of another position is not science, likely vacuous and no different than politics.
Christ, Al. If you’re making a claim, it’s up to you to demonstrate it first, not for me to disprove it.
Just to summarize:
Claim: masturbation causes furry hands
David Science: prove it
Alan Science: prove it doesn’t
I am making no claim but you mean the you that is the “one”.
One may say the world is “X” but see no need to prove it other than to refute to some degree or another the proof of the person that says the world is “Y”. This is insufficient. I personally am not convinced the world is either “X” or “Y” but see the entire thing laced with politics on both sides despite the fact that there is a factual phenomena of some sort or another as to what is going on.
If anyone is going to engage in any debate on a choice between an “X” or “Y” it is a waste of time to not have positive science explaining what is. Anything else is scoffery and naysaying, very unconvincing approaches. It is the sort of thing that attracts lots of scoffers and naysayers to blogs but is not science.
The fact of furriness itself is a fact whether it is present or not. If there is an exclusive causal link is observable and a second separate matter. Science makes you ask the question as to both the presence and the cause of the presence after you have stated the hypothesis, whether your hypothesis is that furriness is nor is not caused. Once you have marshalled the best positive evidence for each hypothesis, they are compared for validity. Niether may be valid but to not engage in the analysis of both is half-science aka politics. The anti-AWG crowd wallow in this sort of politics. The AWG crowd may well as well.
Sorry, your understanding of how science works is incorrect. If someone claims X, there is no duty on the part of “X sceptics” to prove !X — just to consider the offered evidence and tests for X.
Sorry, yours is incorrect in that it is partial and somewhat conveniently so. With all respect (truly or I would not spend the time with you that I do) your position displays and encourages all the interest in science that cigarette lawsuit defence lawyers have. If you deny based on insufficiency you are not interested in determining what actually is a given state of affairs. Politics and defence lawyers may gain from that approach but it does not expand understanding.
I trust you do want to expand understanding. If one were to believe that there is no AWG but have no interest in proving what the actual state of affairs is, that person would not not engaged primarily in science but a belief system focusing on creating doubt to ensuring that which is not known is all we know. Science making as a basis for confounding. Given that there is a general degree about doubt in science, it is also a mugs game as all you are showing is a not yet proven situation which is always an available way of describing anything. That may be science but it is half-assed science satisfied with scoffery in the face of the natural order of things which is at best about proving the best likelihood on available information.
I say it again – if anyone thinks there is actually a state of affairs whereby AGW is not a factor in the climate around us come up with something supporting your view or admit disinterest in the actual revelation of the best likelihood.
I have it. You are Steve Zissou at the outset of the movie disillusioned with the quest and forgetful of its purpose. I am Zissou after the Jaguar shark is found reborn in scientific wonder.
Funny you should mention smoking. My position there … especially wrt. second hand smoking and cancer … is probably exactly what you think it is. There’s lot of good solid correlations between first hand smoking and cancer, though why this is any of the state’s business is beyond me (unless, for example, tobacco companies were putting in ground glass to increase the addictiveness).
The _political_ rammifications of AGW have distorted the science and will continue to distort the science. Meanwhile, I confidently predict that my daughter in 35 years time will enjoy much the same climate we are today, and that no Kyoto protocol or thing of its ilk will ever be implemented.
The funny thing is there’s lots of concrete things that could be accomplished in enivironment studies that doesn’t require diaster fear mongering. Ozone layer depletion and acid rain are at least partially solved; ground level ozone, particulate polution and overuse of antibiotics are three things that society would be better off focusing on and would have an immediate (i.e. within the decade) beneficial effect and have the backing of solid science.
Wrt. the move: I think the world is an amazing wonderful place and I love humanity and I wish people would fuck off trying to “improve” it and us.
I know and agree and I know I am a burden but God gave you me and so I have a certain obligation to be a pain in the ass. And I’m less interested in do-goodery as safety-netism if I were to characterize my socialism.
To be very fair about all the above, we may have been a bit apples and oranges as my concern is about process of anaylsis and I do think science does have more than a merely the aspect of testing inquiry but also questing inquiry so that one by definition comes to science with both scepticism and wonder. So it is interesting that you find a qualitative difference between the smoker and cancer and AGW. Good science I suspect not getting the full share in either side of either debate due to fear mongery and fear blanketing.
Jeez, are my hands ever furry…(Goes to the David and Alan Institute for Hand Studies)
Claim: masturbation causes furry hands
David Science: prove it
Alan Science: prove it doesn’t
Alan Science: Wank a lot do you Mr. Currie.
David Science: Those are pretty damn furry hands you got there Currie.
Alan Science: All the best hand scientists agree that if you have furry hands you have to be wanking up a storm.
David Science: Were your father’s hands furry.
Alan Science: If Currie’s father’s hands were furry that just proves wanking runs in the family.
David Science: What’s your ethnicity Mr. Currie?
Alan Science: Scotish you say Currie: well that just goes to show that the Scots are a bunch of wankers. Just look at their furry hands.
Currie leaves institute resolved to wank less because, well, there might just be something in the wanking/furry connection even if Alan Science can’t actually prove it.
He ponders the difference between science and faith. He wonders about the efficacy of arguments which confirm their anecedents. He wishes Sir Karl Pooper was around so he could chat to him about his furry hands and what a refutable hypothesis might look like. He wonders if excessive wanking might be defined as once an hour, a day, a week, a month. And, given that he really, really likes a good wank now and then, he wonders if a few stray hairs on his palms is to great a price to pay for such pleasure.
Sorry, I can’t read this my eyes don’t seem to be working as well as they used to…
The room is dimmer, the keyboard not as easy to operate…
Did I mention the straight to Hell element…
Guys, just try typing with both hands. It makes all the difference.
‘nee, you’re probably not Scotish.
There is no evidence for that hypothesis, but the evidence against it includes my red hair, a fair complexion, a stocky build, and an ability to play the bagpipes and recite rabbie burns poetry. Alas there is no way for me to offer complete verifiability of being scottish – science doesn’t work that way – and something could always come up later that weakens my claim. But it looks pretty likely that I am, indeed, scottish. I even need glasses to see (although my palms remain unfurred, so would that count for… or against?).
If it would make David happy, I can lend him my Issac Asimov article from the 1960s that discusses how weakly bound 03 (ozone) becomes 02 and 0 when bobarded by C02, and how it takes a huge electrical input to put it back to 03 again, and also in the same book how the basic organisms in the ocean that all things that get eaten eat can’t handle any increase in UV or they will all wither up and die or sink down to a lower layer of ocean where they can’t get eaten by the things that eat them. The question isn’t “Is the climate changing,” it is “Where is all that C02 coming from?” and the bulk of the facts – like the ones about how I’m scottish – show that it’s coming from mankind.
[…spoken Sean Connery blackcurrent drop in mouth tone…]
Scots? Scot..ish. I’ve tasted Laphroaig (mm.. peaty), but on the other hand I don’t have that lovely brogue that my aunties all have. They all still talk about the “old country” as if it’s a magical place full of pixies and free booze. Heaven.
Because it is.