Why Climate Science is on trial

[dude1394]

Pretty interesting and thoughtful piece about the climate change debate. Not falling really on either side but trying to explain why the passion. Good stuff.
http://blogs.the-american-interest.c...e-is-on-trial/

Posted on February 5th, 2010 Why Climate Science Is On Trial
Over on his blog at Foreign Policy, the always interesting and engaging political scientist Daniel Drezner raises some important questions about science and politics. Drezner looks at the interaction between populist critics of the science consensus and the guardians of that consensus — specifically at the debate between those who think that vaccinations may promote or cause autism and those (the overwhelming majority of scientists who’ve studied the issue) who think the link is totally bogus. As with the science on climate change I generally assume the main body of scientists are more reliable than their critics unless something very much out of the ordinary is going on.
Dan is surprised and disturbed that on issues like vaccination and climate change these controversies keep erupting. Not being a political scientist I’m in no position to give Dan a fully fleshed out theory, but in a seat-of-the-pants way I do have some ideas....

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[alexamenos]

That's a good read, but I think he treads too lightly around a very obvious consideration: People are overwhelmingly willing to believe things which keep them in a job and overwhelmingly unwilling to believe things that may cost them a job.

Let's posit that the data is iffy, possible but by no means certain.....What's the chance that somebody working on governent grant money to study *climate change* is going to reach a conclusion that climate change is not a man-made phenomena and requires no government intervention?

I'd say pretty darn small....1-in-10 at the most, so that 1 goes to the back of the grant money line and the other 9 go to the front. It doesn't take long before...voila!!!!....there's a heavy consensus that climate change is a fact that we must do something (all the while pumping grant money to the scientists who tell us this).

Science does not exist in some political vacuum where money and political pressure are irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the scientific process.

[dude1394]

Agreed...and the same thing about whether people expect a lot more rigorous scientific study on something as big as managing the entire global economy versus the snail darter. One bothers a handful of folks the other a bunch.