Is Scientific Consensus a Threat to Democracy?

chance_encounter writes "President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus has published an article in the Financial Times in which he seems to equate the current global warming debate with totalitarian thought control: 'The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced ... The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.' At the end of the article he proposes several suggestions to improve the global climate debate, including this point: 'Let us resist the politicization of science and oppose the term "scientific consensus," which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority.'"

Threat to democracy?

Threat to democracy? No.

Threat to scientifically illiterate politicians? Maybe.

Re:Threat to democracy?

Perhaps he is scientifically illiterate. But he's not illiterate in the language used by totalitarians. It seems that no one here is actually commenting on who Vaclav Klaus [wikipedia.org] is.

Klaus was chairman of Civic Forum, the Czech anti-totalitarian movement that was one of two leading groups during the 1989 Velvet Revolution against the Soviet Union's dominance over Czechoslovakia. He's a free market politician (predictably after decades of ruinous Soviet economic predominance) and quite naturally suspicious of totalitarian influence.

If Klaus sees a parallel between the way global warming alarmists and the Soviet totalitarians use language to browbeat their opponents, he at least merits a hearing-out rather than an out-of-hand dismissal.

Re:Threat to democracy?

But cute response

It's the standard pseudo-intellectual put-down. Ridiculing someone who disagrees is always easier than actually supporting a position with a rational argument. These days it's tossed at anyone who doesn't agree 100% with Al Gore. In earlier decades, it was tossed at people who disagreed with the presumed moral superiority of communism.

-jcr

Re:

The reverse is also true- I know in several circles there is a "burn the witch" attitude towards anybody who mentions global warming.

Absolutely

The only reason anyone ever goes to the scientific consensus argument is because either (a) the person making the argument doesn't understand the science, or (b) the person being argued to doesn't understand the science. In the case of (a), that person typically is assuming that the scientific question is solved, and it's now time to address the complicated political questions. In the case of (b), how else do you try to convince someone incapable of (or unwilling to) understanding the science behind global warming? The strongest scientific critics you will find against global warming (Pat Michaels and Richard Lindzen) argue that they're not sure if humans are the primary cause of global warming, but that they acknowledge that humans are a factor in global warming - and even these critics are a small minority of climate scientists.

There are lots of places that address the basic science behind global warming, but if you're unwilling to try to understand that basic science, then it makes more sense to accept the wisdom of the majority than the wisdom of the minority under the theory that sometimes the minority is right. (Sometimes they are, but that's the exception and not the rule.)

Heck, there's already been a shift in certain circles towards the next "stage" in avoiding responsibility for global warming. First, they denied the warming. Then, they denied that humans were responsible. Now, they've moved on to the coup de grâce: who's to say warmer won't be better?

(Oh, and this argument against scientific consensus could just as easily be made against evolution, general relativity, or even quantum mechanics. No, it's not a threat to democracy.)

Re:Absolutely

I think the point that many people are trying to make is that suppressing the minority view by shouting them down or dismissing them is crackpots is rarely a productive stance. No one cares if someone claims global warming can be stopped by wearing underwear on your head unless enough people begin to believe it. Some are beginning to make noise about stripping dissenting scientist of certification and awards if they publically denounce the concept of global warming. Why? Because each "anti-warming" voice gives a little extra support to people who would rather not address the issue because of greed, apathy, our political expediency. The dissenting voices may truly believe that global warming is not happening, or is not caused by humans, and in some cases they may have data to support their case, but their reasonable and well thought out ideas are used in broad and irresponsible ways to serve political ends. The debate is not being driven by opposing scientific opinion, it is being guided by self interest on both sides. Scientific consensus, like all consensus, is sometimes wrong and should not be allowed to protect itself from criticism by shutting down the debate. The same is just as true for evolution, general relativity, and quantum mechanics, as it was for the Earth-centric model of the Universe, Alchemy, abiogenesis and the hundreds of other "scientific" ideas that have fallen by the way side. Someone will always point out that many failed "scientific" models failed before rigorous use of the scientific method was common, and that is true, but the scientific method REQUIRES dissenting ideas to test against or it is nearly worthless.

Re:Absolutely

Why wasn't last year more severe? That was what was predicted, guess they were wrong....darn

Re:There is more than one way to destroy Tuvalu

You have produced yet another set of statements without proof that this has anything to do with man-made global warming. Sea-levelss have been rising for more than 10,000 years and somehow you've just noticed?

In any case,

a) living on a delta is a great way to see the sea rising relative to the land, but the sea-level has hardly changed while those deltas continue to sink. Ask the Mayor of New Orleans. If the deltas are not replenished then you get severe coastal erosion and deltaic islands sink into the water.

b) Tuvalu's problems are entirely caused not by rising sea-levels (because there isn't any) but by overpopulation and overextraction of water making the wells become brackish.

Here's what the scientists say [flinders.edu.au]:

"The historical record from 1978 through 1999 indicated a sea level rise of 0.07 mm per year." and

"The historical record (from Tuvalu) shows no visual evidence of any acceleration in sea level trends."

So the sea-level rise is just barely measureable and shows no acceleration due to global warming, man-made or otherwise.

Re:There is more than one way to destroy Tuvalu

You have produced yet another set of statements without proof that this has anything to do with man-made global warming. Sea-levelss have been rising for more than 10,000 years and somehow you've just noticed?

Did you look at the article the poster cited? You seem to be rebutting an argument they never made.

a) living on a delta is a great way to see the sea rising relative to the land, but the sea-level has hardly changed while those deltas continue to sink. Ask the Mayor of New Orleans. If the deltas are not replenished then you get severe coastal erosion and deltaic islands sink into the water.

b) Tuvalu's problems are entirely caused not by rising sea-levels (because there isn't any) but by overpopulation and overextraction of water making the wells become brackish.

The Tuvalu embassador never said the sea levels had risen. Instead he noted that the ocean was warmer, and this, he believed, was part of the reason their coral was dying (probably a factor though it may not be the primary one). More importantly he noted that warmer ocean temperatures mean more severe weather (most climatologists seem to agree with this) and severe weather can be very destructive to an island that's only 4m above sea level.

Here's what the scientists say [flinders.edu.au]:

"The historical record from 1978 through 1999 indicated a sea level rise of 0.07 mm per year." and

"The historical record (from Tuvalu) shows no visual evidence of any acceleration in sea level trends."

So the sea-level rise is just barely measureable and shows no acceleration due to global warming, man-made or otherwise.

Your link was broke but the points you mentioned miss the mark on two points. First I couldn't see anywhere where the Tuvlu embassador was talking about significant rises in the sea level, most of his worry was about the severe weather from warmer oceans.

More importantly those historical stats sidestep the fact that the sea level rise that people worry about comes from land based ice caps (like the one on Greenland) sliding into the ocean. Something that hasn't really happened yet so there wouldn't be any reason for the sea levels to have already risen.

Your argument there is a bit like standing on the deck of the Titanic just before it hit the iceburg and arguing that everyone is safe as the hull is still completely intact.

Re:Thank you for the source

Actually I'm a liberal, and I'm afraid that climate is always changing and always will. Efforts to try to modify the Earth's climate are as futile as King Canute's edict on tidal erosion.

I think the best strategy is not trying to stabilize the unstabilizable, but on adaptation and lifting people out of poverty that makes them less susceptible to climate change one way or the other. But climate change will happen because we live on a dynamic world.

Age?

Except that they (and I assume you mean skeptics) have never denied that there has been warming over the 20th Century...

Really? How old are you? I remember Rush Limbaugh, for one, making exactly those comments in the early 90's. To wit, he brought up these new satellite results that were able to measure the effect of the full moon on temperatures and then claimed that it was funny that with such sophisticated techniques they still weren't able to measure global warming. There were plenty of ditto-heads who took that statement and ran with it.

But climate alarmists have: it's called the Mann Hockey Stick and its a scientific fraud whose sole purpose is to minimize historic natural climate change while maximizing the changes of the 20th Century

Why don't you do a little personal research on the Mann Hockey Stick? Try to go to sites that cover actual science and not just politics though, okay? Also avoid sites that admit to being junkscience.

Those were the climatologists of the 1970s some of whome were claiming that we were about to go into another Ice Age. I have the quotes because I have the books.

Please provide the book title and such a quote. Also, don't confuse "a climatologist from the 1970s" with "the climatologists of the 1970s". A lot of people who bring up "global cooling" seem to do that. (I do see, however, that you were good enough to qualify that only "some" were claiming that.)

Re:Absolutely

You mean the billions pumped into climate modelling and the IPCC process? Absolutely.

(Step One: Incredulity)
Wait... you're kidding, right?

(Step Two: Make a point)
You seriously somehow got the illusion that the 'billions' poured into computer simulations even begins to approach the scale of money involved modern industrial production?

(Step Three: Condescension, with implication of lack of real-world knowledge)
I'm afraid you simply have a lot to learn about how money works in the real world.

(Step Four: ???)
Irish line dancing is the single largest cause of global climate change, after everything else.

(Step Five: Profit!)
You, sir, are just plain dead wrong. There is no "real" money in science research... if they were doing it for Profit!, they wouldn't be spending their days being ridiculed by the likes of you - they'd be out shorting stock for flood insurance companies.

Two hands

On one hand, you have scientists paid to do research by the government and other public organizations, with no instructions on what they can and cannot publish. These scientists are not paid more if they find that global warming is anthropogenic than if they find that it's not. If you think otherwise, you're drinking the Crichton kool-aid, and are subscribing to the biggest conspiracy theory of them all.

On the other hand, you have scientists paid to do research (sometimes out of their field) by fossil-fuel companies who are not allowed to publish their data without first passing it through those doing the funding. Interestingly enough, these scientists don't find evidence that global warming is non-anthropogenic. No, they only seem to be able to show that it's not necessarily primarily anthropogenic. Two key terms there: "not necessarily" and "primarily". That is, they know that humans contribute to global warming, there's no way to interpret the science otherwise, even when being funded by fossil fuel companies. They also know that it's possible that humans are the primary contributors to global warming. However, if they do their research just right they find that there's not enough evidence to say that humans are definitely primary responsible. Of course, it's not to hard to find a lack of evidence.

Re:Two hands

On one hand, you have scientists paid to do research by the government and other public organizations, with no instructions on what they can and cannot publish. These scientists are not paid more if they find that global warming is anthropogenic than if they find that it's not. If you think otherwise, you're drinking the Crichton kool-aid, and are subscribing to the biggest conspiracy theory of them all.

You obviously don't work in academia. Academia works off of grants. Grants are given to study specific things. Two huge sources of grants are AIDS and global warming. So, for instance, if you wanted to research herpes (not that well funded), the easiest way to get that money would be to go after an AIDS grant and research how herpes spread has been affected by AIDS. Similarly, if you want to study elephants in Africa, you would try to get a grant from a climate change group to study how global warming has affected the migration patterns of elephants in Africa. Those organizations that actually give the grants get THEIR funding based on the research that comes back. So if a research paper comes back and says "global warming is not much of a problem", the organization that gave the grant might not have as large a budget next year. It's essentially chopping off the branch you're standing on. Now, if you come back and say "global warming is a huge problem", you'll get more press, the organization that funded you gets more money, you get even more grants to do your research.

Now about your point that oil companies fund the anti-global warming research. The number I've heard on the money oil companies have contributed is in the tens of millions (this from an environmentalist group, I forget which). The actual global warming research being performed from grants in gov't agencies and whatnot? Billions. Now is it a surprise that the scientists on each side of the issue is proportionate to the amount of funding on each side? Let's just say I'm a little skeptical.

Re:

This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic grow

Re:Threat to democracy?

Your share of the nebulous "money" that you can't eat or wear or take shelter under, that only has existence and value in that it gives you power over me and others around you?

No, dimwit, the object of money isn't that I can wear it or take shelter under it. Money is a voucher I can exchange for things I can wear or take shelter under. It beats having lug around things I've produced to trade directly for things other people have produced.

Burn your money, invest your money, makes no fucking difference. Money doesn't do anything except keep count of these predatory arrangements that give men power over each other.

What it keeps track of is how many things I've produced that other people find valuable. That's why other people give me money. Because I've given them something they value.

You cordoned off resources that were floating around out there and put them in your pocket. My house. My factory. My land. My good idea.

Sure thing - there have been iPods and HD-TV's and factories and houses floating around since the Pleistocene Era. And I've done gone and cordoned them off! Good deal, that!

They're only yours to administer because of the cops and guns.

In other words, they're mine because a civilized society will recognize and defend property rights.

Re:Threat to democracy?

You forgot the quotes around "position", "it's", "Gore" and ",". You also misspelled "I am a banana".

Re:Mann Hockey Stick

The debunkers (and I assume you're referring to McIntyre and McKitrick) have not been debunked. Every criticism of the Hockey Stick that they made has been upheld.

From what I can read it seems like the reverse is true. The only valid criticism M&M made was a methodological issue that, when corrected, had no effect on the outcome of the model.

There are more than a dozen climate reconstructions that uphold the original "Hockey Stick", and to my knowledge, M&M have offered no objections to any of them. For a "debunked model" it's been featured prominently in materials as recent as the IPCC TAR Summary for Policymakers, so the scientific consensus clearly has not come down on the side of M&M's objections.

Because those fakers are still writing on RealClimate.

It's really easy to toss around ad hominem attacks like they mean something in science, but that seems to be all the climate change deniers really have to offer.

Finally, someone said it

Consensus science isn't science, it's politics, and that's exactly what the Global Warming debate is about: politics

Re:

Yeah those pesky scientists with their "rules" and "laws" and "theories". I agree, I find that my own personal threat to democracy is the law of gravity. My innate right to remain upright is threatened by this so-called consensus about gravity. In fact,

Re:

You ivory tower intellectuals must not lose touch with the world of industrial growth and hard currency. It is all well and good to pursue these high-minded scientific theories, but research grants are expensive. To justify your existence, you must provi

Re:Finally, someone said it

A physicist explains science to third graders [physicstoday.org]:

We take a vote. I ask how we decide who is right, and then I do the experiment... I emphasize that science is not a democracy, it is not the majority but the experiment that decides what is correct.

Sums it up pretty nicely.

Re:Finally, someone said it

Consensus science isn't science, it's politics, and that's exactly what the Global Warming debate is about: politics

I despise how global warming discussions focus so much on whether or not someone "believes", and heralding or ridiculing people for being in the right or wrong camp, rather than simply being discussions about straightforward facts.

Negative externalities

No, it is about negative externalities. We don't want the rest of you fucking up a shared resource, projecting the cost of your actions onto us. Global warming is not about "consensus science," whatever the hell that is supposed to be. Is the theory of gra

Re:Watermelons

Humans are "hardwired" for both altruism and selfishness, for rape and for courtesy, for monogamy and for promiscuity. What expressions these drives and instincts take is based on history, society and culture. "Selfishness" means something completely different in a nomadic livestock-herding society than it does in a pre-modern agricultural one, and both mean something very different in a modern, technological society in which you work for money which you spend on housing and manufactured goods.

Appeals to "human nature" fail when closely analyzed. We are all capable of acts of remarkable sacrifice and remarkable selfishness, and through various semantic games, we can interpret each through the lens of the other.

Also, describing a call for a worldwide regulatory system in response to climate change as "communism" is incorrect. "Capitalism" in modernity has, and has always had, an extensive governmental system to support it: to control borders (which keeps markets, especially labor markets, in place), to protect property, to print currency and enforce monetary and trade policy, and so forth. It is not as if there is currently a "Wild West"-like free market that policies against climate change is going to shut down: intelligent and responsive regulation is firmly established as a requirement for successful capitalism. (Just think what would happen if we didn't regulate, for example, the printing of currency.)

Re:Finally, someone said it

Climate change is fact, and solid science.

Very true. A quick look at climate history [scotese.com] will show that the climate has been changing since the Earth had a climate to begin with, well before the SUV was invented and Bush was elected. It will also show that we are actually in a cool period and global warming will get us back to where we need to be!

Only in countries where there is a strong vested interest in maintaining the status quo has the issue been politicized.

Right, and the countries that are interested in changing the status quo are NOT politicizing the issue? I get it, since they are on YOUR side, it's not political, but those with different views are politicizing the issue.

Re:

So... the SUVs the dinosaurs drove brought about their extinction, then?

Re:Finally, someone said it

President Bill Clinton refused to forward the protocol to Congress for ratification. Vice President Al Gore wanted language including developing nations in the accords, and when the language was not added he withdrew his support for the treaty. Only after President Bush was elected did Mr. Gore call for total adoption of the Kyoto treaty as it is. Before we lob accusations about what "Shrub" has or has not done, we should consider why we are in this situation. In the 90's, Vice President Al Gore knew that the most risky source of an increase in emissions came from developing nations, not "USians." That and the crippling restrictions on US business were all the justification he needed to kill the treaty in the United States. He was right.

Re:

Anthropomorphic? Lets wait until this sunspot cycle dies down to find out

Sunspot activity peaked several years ago.

Reference: here [space.com]

I gues by citing my source I am engaging in consensus science too.

Wrong.

Just because someone modded you up, I thought I'd pull up the first page of results of a quick google search. Lokiee there.... [bbc.co.uk]

does that mean....

does that mean that there should be a democratic process to decide on what "1 + 1" is?

First off, we have to realize that global warming is a problem. Next step, reduce, reduce, reduce while scientists, engineers, and inventors come up with a more permanent solution to help rid ourselves of well....not so eco-friendly "things" (everything from transportation, energy, manufacturing, etc.)

and damn...it's hot today.

Re:does that mean....

First off, we have to realize that global warming is a problem

Why? Because you heard someone say so? Because you feel it's true?

First off, we have to allow scientists to determine whether global warming is a problem, without political interference.

Re:does that mean....

Why? Because you heard someone say so? Because you feel it's true?

Because that's what all the serious scientific organizations have concluded after examining the data. Because that's where all the scientific evidence points, and no better theories have been put forth to explain it.

First off, we have to allow scientists to determine whether global warming is a problem, without political interference.

That's already been done. The only political interference now is coming from those who don't like the answer.

Re:does that mean....

No, all the serious scientific organizations.

Really.

All of them.

Seriously, for real.

Yes.

All of them.

No, really.

It's true.

Did the message get through, yet? Look, here's a scientific study of the fact that all climate scientists agree that global warming is real and man-made:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/306/ 5702/1686?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT= &author1=oreskes&searchid=1103210845409_5389&store d_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&fdate=10/1/1995&tdate=12/31 /2004 [sciencemag.org]

Believe it yet?

It's true.

Doesn't sound like Vaclav Klaus is a scientist.

Scientists listen to data, not what politicians/economists etc want.

Re:Doesn't sound like Vaclav Klaus is a scientist.

Yes, in Utopia. Back in the real world, scientists are human beings, and are vulnerable to fads, group-think, and politics.

Re:Doesn't sound like Vaclav Klaus is a scientist.

Like most people, scientists listen to whoever is paying them.

Re:

Scientists listen to data, not what politicians/economists etc want.

Ideally, you are correct. In practice, I've yet to see a field of scientific pursuit that wasn't tainted by the expectations and desires of those doing the research.

Right now, in the United States, if you publish a paper that is referenced in support of a

Re:Doesn't sound like Vaclav Klaus is a scientist.

Yes, because we all know that scientists are above the petty musings of mankind, like political ideologies and personal agendas. They would NEVER stoop to slant their research with preconceived notions, or tailor their reports to maximize future research grants. How DARE us plebeians question their superiority and accuse them of being mere mortals!

Translation for those who don't speak Czech

"They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence."

That is:

"You need to tell me if you have any political thoughts that I can turn into an ad hominem argument rather than discuss your data or your methods because I'm not a physicist and I can't follow the math."

Re:Translation for those who don't speak Czech

"You need to tell me if you have any political thoughts that I can turn into an ad hominem argument rather than discuss your data or your methods because I'm not a physicist and I can't follow the math."

No - he's saying that if you have an AGENDA, be open and up front about it so that people can determine for themselves if it's the data or the political beliefs speaking.

Most people - including the vast majority on slashdot, who tend to be much better educated and intelligent than "the great unwashed" (myself included), don't have the specific knowledge or background to be able to properly weigh the data presented in the debate.

Knowing people's biases will make it easier for them - US - to properly weigh what they've said.

When an Oil company exec says something about global warming, you're going to take that into account when you look at any data he presents. Likewise, when the president of "People for the Full Eradication of Technology and Man" gives HIS views on the subject, you should also take THAT into account when looking at data he presents.

It's got exactly ZERO to do with ad hominem arguments, and everything to do with wanting full disclosure so that biases can be weeded out - on BOTH sides.

Sounds perfectly sensible to me.

Bottom line: Global warming is *intensely* political. And before we can make any rational decisions about what to do about it, we need to separate the politics from the science. Disclosing biases - on BOTH sides - will at least give us a CHANCE to do so.

Re:Translation for those who don't speak Czech

No - he's saying that if you have an AGENDA, be open and up front about it so that people can determine for themselves if it's the data or the political beliefs speaking.

If people are competent to understand the data, they can review the data and determine what is speaking. The objectivity of empirical facts and the repeatably of systematic testing of empirical hypotheses is rather the point of science.

Most people - including the vast majority on slashdot, who tend to be much better educated and intelligent than "the great unwashed" (myself included), don't have the specific knowledge or background to be able to properly weigh the data presented in the debate.

Asking that scientists disclose their biases and a litany of how they affected their results isn't going to acheive that, for several reasons. First, people aren't going to claim they are biased, either because they don't believe they are biased, or if they are biased and working deliberately from that bias, because they won't want to reveal it. Second, any publication of scientific results is a claim that the scientific method was applied, i.e., that agenda did not influence the results. So that's exactly what anyone currently publishing would claim if they followed the prescription offered.

Of course, the politician making the recommendation knows this isn't going anywhere, he is just trying to sell the idea that the scientific consensus is both not real and entirely the product of bias by acting as if that is an established conclusion from the outset and railing for a correction.

When an Oil company exec says something about global warming, you're going to take that into account when you look at any data he presents.

I've never seen an Oil company exec present data about global warming. I've seen oil company execs make bald, conclusory statements without presenting the supporting data. There is an important difference between the two things.

Likewise, when the president of "People for the Full Eradication of Technology and Man" gives HIS views on the subject, you should also take THAT into account when looking at data he presents.

Sure, if someone is presenting their views. Data != views.

It's got exactly ZERO to do with ad hominem arguments

Yes, arguing that someone's arguments should be evaluated based on personal affiliation is ad hominem argument, except where the argument is supported only by personal authority of the source and the challenge is to bias or credibility of that source. Where the argument is presented based on verifiable evidence, challenges of bias of the source remain ad hominem.

No!

Scientists say global warming is real and countries have to mandate reductions in CO2 emission because that's where the science points! If you have a better theory, submit it to a journal, but all other explanations have LOST in the market place of ideas, and only through willful ignorance do people continue to ignore the rigorous scientific methodology.

Oh, sorry, I was just channeling Chris Burke's bias-pandering populism for a second there.

Not exactly

Actually, science currently points that the world is getting (slightly) warmer, and that CO2 levels have risen. These are not necessarily related. We have models and whatnot that show the world will continue to warm, but these are not evidence.

The point th

he is clearly delusional