Greetings, Some of you may have seen my previous reference to the following post on Chris Mooney's blog:
http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2007/04/i_have_a_paper_in_science_no_t.php I have a paper in Science (And No, This is Not an April Fools Joke) This refers to a paper in the latest issue of Science magazine by Mooney and Matt Nisbet entitled "Science and Society: Framing Science." In my opinion, this raises a very important subject that needs to be considered. I haven't actually read the article yet because it is behind a paid-subscription firewall. However, it has generated a lot of interesting discussion. The reason I think this is important is that it deals with the very important subject of the denial of reality on the part of large segments of society. Much of the discussion resulting from this article has centered on science-related subjects such as global warming and evolution and the problems of communicating science to the general public. However, I think the denial-of-reality problem applies to many other subjects as well, e.g., the war in Iraq. I'm sure you can think of a number of others. (By the way, I think there is a problem with the denial of reality on the part of the scientific community in a number of important subjects because science refuses to examine the evidence in these areas. Some of you will know what subjects I am referring to. :) ) Awhile ago there was a public "debate" about global warming that included Gavin Schmidt, one of the climate scientists who contributes to the RealClimate website: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/global-warming-debate/ Global Warming Debate http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/adventures-on-the-east-side/ Adventures on the East Side There is no doubt in my mind that Schmidt presented overwhelming scientific evidence to counter the nonsense from the other side, which included science fiction author Michael Crichton. However, as soon as I heard about the upcoming "debate," I knew it was doomed to failure. For one thing, by participating in this debate, the message to the public is that there is still an ongoing scientific debate about the cause and seriousness of climate change. The response of the public is to roll their eyes and say, "Wake me up if the scientists ever figure it out and stop arguing." I was not surprised that Schmidt's side "lost" the debate. Surveys of the audience before and after the debate indicated that after the debate more people were skeptical that global warming is a real problem. This illustrates that just presenting the facts is not effective in reaching people. One of the email discussion lists that I subscribe to has 160 members but only about a dozen ever say anything. Most of the views that are discussed are things that I would not agree with. (It's of interest to see how other people view various issues.) However, I figured that there must be some lurkers who had a bit more sense, so I posted a few articles about the IPCC Summary for Policymakers that was released in February. I ended up realizing that there apparently is not a single person on the list who is willing to accept reality concerning global warming. It has been clear for a long time that some people on that list think global warming is just hysteria invented by scientists so they can get research funding. I.e., basically, the vast majority of climate scientists around the world are lying and falsifying data for their own personal short-term gain. I have to say that that is certainly some whopper of a conspiracy theory! However, in all the discussion on the list, there has not been a single person who suggested that perhaps we might want to give some consideration to what the scientists are saying. Not a single one. It appears that everyone on the list rejects the reality that is revealed by science. I find this stunning. The thing that really made me realize how stunning this is was the comments from one person who has sometimes made some sensible comments, so I had thought he might have a little bit of good sense. In one response on global warming he said, "Currently, I'm not convinced that either side has done enough peer (whoever that may be is the topic of another time) review to fully debug their positions." I responded by summarizing the very extensive review of climate science that has occurred and asked why that review is insufficient and what further review he thinks is necessary. I was stunned by his response: -------- My concept of "Peer Review" is to get all the guys together that either are or consider themselves to be Climate Experts and publicly discuss unresolved claims. That way, the entire World gets to see whether any of the unresolved claims are valid or not. If all the unresolved claims are invalid, then let's move on with the majority opinion. -------- Duh! I guess what he wants is to have the thousands of scientists involved with the IPCC report get together in a giant room and publicly discuss all 30,000 comments that were made on the draft IPCC report, etc. And, I suppose he wants this to be televised on C-SPAN or something. Obviously, such a thing would be ridiculous and totally not feasible. He basically is saying that he believes the conspiracy theory that the vast majority of the world's climate scientists are liars. This rejection of reality simply boggles my mind. Presenting more scientific facts to people who believe scientists are liars is useless. The discussion quickly drifted off onto other topics that the folks on this list love to discuss, e.g., bashing of liberals, academics and immigrants. Also a lot of congratulating each other on how smart and hard-working they all are. It made me want to puke. I guess the question that was bugging me was: How can people possibly believe that climate scientists are making up global warming and just lying for their own self-interest rather than seriously trying to understand what's happening to the climate to try to have a positive impact on the world? Thinking about the discussions on this list resulted in me realizing the answer to this question. People are able to believe scientists are only motivated by their own self-interest because that is the relationship to the world that these people have. I suppose this is nothing new, but I guess I never really fully realized how prevalent it is. I really was stunned by the realization that so many people actually believe that the vast majority of the world's climate scientists are just a bunch of selfish liars. I have worked in "big science" for thirty years, and I am well aware that science is not perfect and sometimes gets it wrong when they refuse to look at the evidence in an area. However, global warming is an area that has been very extensively studied. The idea that climate scientists are wrong about global warming being largely caused by human activities and that they are just lying about the data is simply beyond belief. My conclusion: The barbarians are at the gates, and just presenting the facts will not give us any protection. Another example of the problems faced by the reality-based community is the infamous film "The Great Global Warming Swindle." When I started watching "Swindle," I thought I would just watch a short piece of it. However, I ended up watching the entire thing. I guess it's sort of like when you see a bad car wreck. It's so horrible that you just can't avoid staring. On the one hand, it was a steady stream of misleading statements, inaccuracies, cherry-picking of data, and out-right lies. There was very little in the program that was true and accurate. However, the most amazing thing was that it really was quite well done. For people who don't know enough about the subject (which is a lot of people), I'm quite sure they would be convinced by the program. It almost had me starting to doubt that we have a global warming problem. I really just had a sick feeling as I realized that the program would be quite effective in advancing the views of the skeptics. Enough rambling... back to the Mooney/Nisbet article in Science and discussions of what we should do about the problems... Further discussions of these issues are contained in additional entries in Mooney's and Nisbet's blogs: http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2007/04/framing_science_some_replies_1.php Framing Science: Many More Posts, a Few Replies http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2007/04/dont_be_a_dodo_bloggers_weigh.php Bloggers respond to commentary at the journal Science http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2007/04/framing_science_my_response_to.php Framing Science: My Response to PZ These contain lots of links to discussions on various other blogs. In particular, I call your attention to one that Nisbet refers to as "A must-read synthesis by Bora at Blog Around the Clock:" http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/04/framing_science_the_dialogue_o.php Framing Science - the Dialogue of the Deaf I agree that this is an excellent discussion. It is long - the writer admits to having "severe blogorrhea." :) However, if you only read one other article on the subject, this is the one that I would recommend. The bottom line is that the reality-based community needs to understand that simply sticking to the facts is not having the desired effect. This applies to global warming and also many other areas. This applies to both scientists and non-scientists. If we want to have a better society in this country and the world, we will need to develop better ways of communicating. Those who would deny reality are way ahead of us on developing these methods. Jim --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. 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