Naomi Oreskes and Post-Modern Science
Post-modernism is many things and its exact meaning is subject to argument, but I think most would agree that it explicitly rejects things like formalism and realism in favor of socially constructed narratives. In that sense, what I mean by "post-modern science" is not necessarily a rejection of scientific evidence, but a prioritization where support for the favored narrative is more important than the details of scientific evidence. We have seen this for quite a while in climate science, where alarmists, when they talk among themselves, discuss how it is more important for them to support the narrative (catastrophic global warming and, tied with this, an increasing strain of anti-capitalism ala Naomi Klein) than to be true to the facts all the time. As a result, many climate scientists would argue (and have) that accurately expressing the uncertainties in their analysis or documenting counter-veiling evidence is wrong, because it dilutes the narrative.
I think this is the context in which Naomi Oreskes' recent NY Times article should be read. It is telling she uses the issue of secondhand tobacco smoke as an example, because that is one of the best examples I can think of when we let the narrative and our preferred social policy (e.g. banning smoking) to trump the actual scientific evidence. The work used to justify second hand smoke bans is some of the worst science I can think of, and this is what she is holding up as the example she wants to emulate in climate. I have had arguments on second hand smoke where I point out the weakness and in some cases the absurdity of the evidence. When cornered, defenders of bans will say, "well, its something we should do anyway." That is post-modern science -- narrative over rigid adherence to facts.
I have written before on post-modern science here and here.
If you want post-modern science in a nutshell, think of the term "fake but accurate". It is one of the most post-modern phrases I can imagine. It means that certain data, or an analysis, or experiment was somehow wrong or corrupted or failed typical standards of scientific rigor, but was none-the-less "accurate". How can that be? Because accuracy is not defined as logical conformance to observations. It has been redefined as "consistent with the narrative." She actually argues that our standard of evidence should be reduced for things we already "know". But know do we "know" it if we have not checked the evidence? Because for Oreskes, and probably for an unfortunately large portion of modern academia, we "know" things because they are part of the narrative constructed by these self-same academic elites.
Here's why I find the "we haven't had significant warming in the past *insert number between 10 and 20* years" type of argument unconvincing. The smaller your data set is, the harder it is to get a 'statistically significant' deviation.
For example, you can have a period of 100 years in which there is a clear, steady statistically significant increase in temperature, but when broken up into 10 periods of 10 years, each ten year period could show no 'statistically significant' increase. The signal to noise ratio rises the smaller the data set, so. If the, hypothetically, warming were drastic even on the 20 year scale, would it make sense to say 'but there's been no statistically significant increase in the last three months, ergo it has surely stopped'?
For phenomena that occur (or are only apparent) on a longer time scale, this sort of argumentation seems like saying, during an economic recession, that because the stock market shows no statistically significant declines today, the recession must be over.
i saw a statistic from SS that if every smoker quit, SS would have to pay out more in pensions, since so many smokers die before age 62 and thus never collect from the system... ;-[
Interesting, how then do you explain the hysteria over the 'warming' that occurred from the mid 1970's to the mid 1990's. That's about 20 years and the climanistas want us to waste hundreds of billions of dollars and destroy the economy based on that 20 year period.
There is no such thing as "postmodern science". If something doesn't conform to the rigors of the scientific method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw
...it's not science. End of story.
XKCD on the 95% criterion
If the danger of smoking is analogous to the danger of climate change,
are anti-vaping activists analogous to anti-nuclear activists?
JW, great historical context...I think you boiled it down to the essence - control!
The thinking as outlined by Warren goes hand in hand with "interpretation" of the "living" Constitution to "fit modern times". The proper process is to change the law if we don't think it reflects what we think it should, not "interpret" away its meaning.
The same goes with our culture and "political correctness". It is a means to control our thinking.
Hence we get AP (and other news sites) refusing to run the images from Charlie Hebdo as their policy is not to for anything "..aimed at mocking or provoking people on the basis of religion", while not so long ago seeing fit to selling images of "Piss Christ" http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2558314
Hence we get the 1400 (conservative estimate) of children abused in one community over 15 years, for fear of offending the ethnic group of perpetrators. http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/1407/independent_inquiry_cse_in_rotherham - page 91.
This thinking has permeated to all corners, where people fear even doing what is obviously the "right" thing, or have become selective in applying their "standards" only to "safe" targets.
Gee, I'm a physicist. I find Newton completely confusing. I've been watching Mercury for decades and it just doesn't behave the way Newton's gravitational theories predict. I guess his theory must be wrong then.
And your interpretation of 95% confidence is completely off base as well (not to mention that 95% is less than 2 standard deviations). In what area of chemistry do you study or practice (and, full disclosure, I'm not a physicist, the first paragraph was allegorical)?
The GCMs (which, by the way, does not stand for "Global Climate Models") are not programs which spit out a number called "temperature." They are models that, given an input data set of the value of state variables on a grid, increment in time utilizing well-understood physical principles (conservation of energy, Navier Stokes, etc.) and output the values of these state variables at some later time. It's certainly the case that they don't "predict," many effects are parametrized because either insufficiently fine or accurate data is available or not enough is known about the effects.
Nevertheless, it is a known fact (only argued against by some outlier crackpots such as Joseph Postma) that CO2 absorbs outgoing long wave infrared radiation emitted by the Earth as a decent approximation of a black body radiator. It reemits this radiation in all directions, some Earthward. Thus, greater thermal energy is in the Earth/ocean/atmosphere system than would bee the case without the added CO2. An equilibrium must be established that, somehow, achieves a balance. If the Earth does not, on average, reach a higher temperature in order to equilibrate this new energy level, the energy must express itself in some other way. What would you propose?
This last paragraph has nothing to do with GCMs or Navier Stokes or PDO or sunspots or gamma rays. It's simply an energy balance. And, for your reference, GCM is an acronym for "General Circulation Model."
All that said, I'm no fan of Oreskes.
Having witnessed Naomi's refusal to acknowledge how she and Conway gleefully substitute their own invented narrative for their ersrtwhile subjects actually views and statements, and the anti-historical degree to ehich they ignore chronology and indulge in often hilariously strained ellipsis, I think the author has a valid point of view.
Did you happen to notice that 100+ years of warming has been happening long before any appreciable increase in CO2 concentration?
Wrong. That's what models are
supposedrequired to do. Just like those for gravity, EM, etc.Projections and predictions are the same thing. Only the degree of precision varies.
But when the
predictionprojection goes in the opposite direction, it just doesn't matter what semantic variant you choose to use.Actually 12,000 years of warming has been happening. Since the last glacial period ended. The temp goes up and down but has been in a slowly increasing mode when you average the swings out.
And when you look at temperature changes over that long a time scale (as in the graphs in "Hot Talk, Cold Science"), you realize that you're looking at a huge range of temperatures but also at something that takes geological ages to happen. These natural changes are simply too large for human activity to have any significant effect on them, whether we wish it did or not.
If the earth is 2 or 3 degrees warmer a century from now, who cares? Our grandchildren will just turn up the air conditioning, provided the eco-nuts haven't destroyed civilization by making it illegal to produce the energy they need to run that air conditioner.
"Environmentalism" is about hating man. Anyone who believes in it should begin by killing himself.
I don't doubt it at all. In a few years, tobacco will likely be banned. But it will give your friendly neighborhood dope dealer a way to stay in business after marijuana is legalized.
Not in mine. The Nobel discredited itself by giving one to Paul Krugman.