On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 8:00 PM, David B. Shemano <[email protected]> wrote: > I have asked this question before in different contexts. I am a lawyer, not > a "climate scientist." Just a citizen in our partial social-democracy asked > to support or oppose various political positions. Therefore, as I am not a > "climate scientist," on what basis do you believe I (or any other non-climate > scientist) can conclude that climate change is occurring, that CO2 emissions > contribute to global warming, that geoengineering solutions are not feasible, > etc.? Are you taking the techno-elitist view that only "experts," who are > determined to be experts by other experts in a self-perpetuating cycle, are > allowed to advocate or oppose political positions? In fact, on what basis > could a non-economist (such as a climate scientist) criticize Levitt/Dubner's > economic arguments? I can understand criticizing Levitt/Dubner for being > wrong on facts, but why attack them on their professional credentials? Is > not such an attack an example of ad hominem, appeal to authority, and other > logical fallacies? >
David, I agree with the sentiment here. Scientism and mindless appeals to authority are indeed increasingly common. Unfortunately, Popper et al notwithstanding, there are no sharp boundaries between good science and quakery. There are many interesting ideas that fall into the vast grey area separating gravity on the one hand and frauds like creationism on the other. Intelligent men and women have no choice but to examine each issue on a case-by-case basis and come to their own conclusions. What about climate science? On the one hand there is little doubt that there is genuine science behind, for e.g. phenomena like El Nino. On the other hand, it is obviously not on a par with gravity in terms of its elegance and predictive power. What about global warming in particular? Once again the basic science behind the greenhouse effect seems indisputable. On the other hand, going from there to annual temperature projections involves many modeling assumptions that can be legitimately questioned. But this is a mere distraction. Overall, we can make a very compelling case that extraction, distribution and consumption of fossil fuels is very bad in many, many ways, global warming being only one. In my opinion, this exclusive obsession with temperature projections is crowding out non-global, non-apocalyptic but nevertheless very important issues like mountaintop removal coal mining, water-table exhaustion, oil slicks etc. It also opens the way for idiots like Levitt to come along with silly "solutions". As if temperature increases are the only problem with fossil fuel use! But all this has nothing to do with criticism of Levitt and Dubner. Lacking credentials is the least of their crimes. The biggest reason I don't like them is that they are extremely obnoxious. They belong to that exclusive club of celebrity authors who are far less intelligent than they seem to realize, generally very mediocre men like Thomas Friedman, Alan Greenspan, Donald Trump and now, Steven Levitt. -raghu. -- Confucius say, dirty book rarely dusty. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
