The number of things which are “remotely possible” is infinite, and includes things like the Roswell UFO crash, the Lizard Illuminati and the limitless talent and potential of Justin Beiber. You’re going to have to do better than “remote possibility”.
Hang on here a minute - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, worked on the Homo erectus found in China…Gregor Mendel, OSA, discovered the laws of heredity and, essentially, founded the science of genetics…Father Georges Lemaitre first derived Hubble’s Law and suggested that the universe started with the Big Bang …Holy moly, evolution is clearly a Vatican/Jesuit conspiracy! Someone tell the fearless folks over at Breitbart! Wake up, sheeple!
I remember the news a year or two ago, along the lines of “Pope Francis says evolution is real, isn’t that shocking!?” Which would be so if, you know, John Paul II, Pius XII, and even Benedict XVI among others didn’t say the same dang thing.
Seismology is also sometimes called “the Jesuit science.” Which I’m sure that there are some fundamentalists teaching that earthquakes are God’s farts or something, but generally speaking studying earthquakes is easier if you don’t think that carbon dating is God’s way of testing your faith.
Getting away from Breitbart, Nye and NdGT: I personally know quite a few scientists. Some are general-purpose geniuses. Some are quite bright within their field of expertise and kind of dense outside of it. Computer Science in particular seems to attract a lot of savants who can’t dress themselves or write a declarative sentence, and I’m glad they’ve found a niche where they can function to society’s benefit. I’m sure Ben Carson is a gifted surgeon but I’m otherwise kind of unimpressed by him. So yes, some scientists are a little dim in some ways. So am I, though I’m not a scientist at all.
I’m not following this argument, because that’s not what you originally were saying. I was the one who brought up the matter of symbolism, you said nothing about that. Your original argument in #37 was this:
But the climate change fight does not involve a return to those days. Controlling climate change involves controlling carbon emissions, something that was not quite in the radar of the 1970s era EPA. Scrubbing our emissions clean of particle matter and being careful about destruction of the ozone layer is not exactly the same as managing carbon dioxide excess, although there’s certainly some overlap.
Now it may be that I misunderstood your point, but let me re-iterate again why I think it’s wrong.
Even if one takes the charitable view that AGW deniers (which in the last couple of election cycles seemed to be all major Republican candidates) don’t literally want to go back to the emissions scenarios of the 60s and 70s, the anti-regulation and anti-government thought process is exactly the same. That alone suggests that the “regressive thinking” argument is accurate. But it’s even more than that. Many of these folks have explicitly said that they want to abolish the EPA, in exactly those words. Perhaps we could delve into policy details and see how many actually want to repeal the laws and regulations that Congress has passed, that the EPA has enacted, and that the EPA enforces – because those who do would literally take us back to the pollution of 50 years ago. And at the very least, even those who don’t are still demonstrating the same anti-regulatory fanaticism that would have prevented any progress from being made on SO2 and NOx and particulate emissions in the 70s, and are preventing essential progress today.
And on the matter of symbolism, I suppose it’s always arguable how “fair” a particular symbol is, but I strongly disagree with your analogy. The tasteless and scary partial-abortion pictures represent a scenario that is exceedingly rare, and if such procedures were strictly constrained by law, the goals of the pro-choice movement could still be fully met. OTOH, smokestacks and smoke coming out of them seem to me to fairly represent fossil fuel combustion. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, as they say – it’s not a complicated concept, and fairly represents the intrinsic pollution problem caused by power plants and heavy industry, and even if it omits the portion caused by vehicles, it gets the idea across. If not, please tell me how you can have power plants with giant smokestacks belching smoke that use a technology that doesn’t harm the environment.
All of those are true and fairly accurately represents the rubes that climate change denialists cater to. With respect to the first sentence, I cite Wolfpup’s Law #378:
Any writer, especially an Internet blogger, who obsessively puts “Ph.D.” after his name is almost certainly a crackpot peddling woo.
Real scientists mostly discuss their subject matter with audiences where a Ph.D. is virtually universal, so it’s absolutely redundant and kind of bizarre to even mention it. And when they do talk to a lay audience, they’re generally trying to inform, not impress in order to sell a fraudulent bill of goods. When you see “Ph.D.” after a blogger’s name, you usually can’t go wrong interpreting it as meaning the following, and to act accordingly: “I have a Ph.D. and you don’t, you stupid and humble peon, so believe without question everything I say.”
…Milo, the author of the articles in the OP, is really a disgusting piece of work.
He has been one of the most prominent figures in the on-going internet sagas known as gamergate: and he is best known for harassing prominent feminists on twitter and for writing hit pieces about these same feminists. Here is my story about the time a random person on the internet decided to come after me: using Milo’s work as his inspiration.
Milo is a serial harasser and a fabricator of stories. He isn’t a journalist: he’s a troll.
Among the general public (and many scientists), belief in specific scientific theories is more about political affiliation and signalling membership in a group than it is about believing science.
I can give you an excellent example from complexity theory. The left embraces the notion that evolution is an undirected process, absent any sort of creator or designer. They cite complex systems theory as a justification for the ‘precautionary principle’, and explicitly acknowledge that we can not know what effect an intervention will have on an ecology because complex systems are impenetrable and unpredictable. Therefore, it’s arrogance to think we can manipulate and control them.
On the other hand, even though it’s clear that human societies are also complex systems, they have no problem advocating for major interventions and pretending that they can know where and how to intervene to ‘improve’ it. So the same people who would never dream of taking a few million animals from North America and dropping them in Asia to improve ‘diversity’ believe there’s absolutely nothing that could go wrong when transporting several million people from radically different cultures in the middle east and dropping them into Europe.
And on the other side, conservatives will embrace complex systems theory and the precautionary principle when it comes to government intervention in the economy or as an argument against rapid social change imposed from the top down. Adam Smith made the argument that economies are bottom-up evolutionary processes without a designer, and conservatives will accept that wholeheartedly and then turn around and argue that evolution is impossible because the amount of complexity we see couldn’t happen without a designer.
People who scream ‘follow the consensus of scientists!’ on global warming will also completely reject the consensus when it comes to GMO foods or nuclear power. Not everyone, of course. There are plenty of global warming believers who also agree that GMO foods are good or that nuclear power is a viable solution. But certainly not everyone.
Why do people do that? Well, it’s helpful to look at the implications of the science they agree with and the science they reject. The left contains more than its share of anti-GMO people because GMO’s are the product of big agri-business, and no one on that side wants to support the arguments of Monsanto against the small organic farmer. Conservatives don’t support global warming because to do so would empower large governments and multi-national NGOs. Motivated reasoning and confirmation bias plays a big factor in reinforcing scientific beliefs along pre-determined partisan lines.
The left doesn’t like the idea that cultures and economies are complex, evolving systems that are not the product of human design, because that implies a much more hands-off public policy. The right rejects the complex nature of natural ecosystems because they don’t like government telling them not to meddle with it, or because it weakens the need for a God as grand designer.
Both sides manage to find enough scientists or ‘studies’ that can support their point of view, while rejecting out of hand other studies that disagree with them as tainted by partisanship, big money, or whatever. Both pick and choose what science to believe in not based on the merits, but based on what their particular tribe has agreed is the ‘right’ science to support. In both cases, it’s more about virtue signalling to the group or concerns about the political result than it is about the science itself. Arguing over the science is essentially a proxy war in the never ending partisan political struggle.
Most people who support global warming science but ignore the science in favor of GMO’s or nuclear power have no qualifications to evaluate either one. So they fall in step with ‘their side’, and assume that everyone on the other side is anti-science or just stupid.
Same old same old. Good thing I’m on the record of supporting nuclear power and GMOs so I indeed have the capability to once again tell you that you are still misguided by trying to make this like if both sides are equal, even worse when you are jumping into a discussion about this Milo fellow. As it was pointed many times before there is plenty of evidence that the complexities you are going on are understood a lot.
And this continues to be a gross misunderstanding and mistake, it was for partisan reasons why the ones that disparage science are looking for “their scientists”
http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-key-reason-why-u-s-politicians-dont-understand-scien-1575132934
.
Thanks for proving my point. This is a perfect example of how science is used - or rejected - for political reasons, not on the merits.
And in case you think that your example only makes Republicans look bad, I have to point out that these scientific ‘studies’ were gigantic straw men. No one serious about SDI thought that it was going to save the entire population, and that wasn’t the argument. The arguments were:
-
It moved the cold war competition into a technologically-advanced area that the Soviets could not compete in. This terrified the Soviets and gave the U.S. an upper hand in negotiations.
-
SDI could eliminate a ‘first strike’ potential by denying the enemy certainty that a first strike could remove enough U.S. missiles that retaliation wouldn’t be devastating. The math worked out in favor of SDI - If you could protect 10% of missiles (even a random 10%), then a first strike by the Soviets would leave at least 700-1000 American ICBM’s untouched, which was enough to destroy the Soviets. And if the Soviets doubled the amount of ICBMs, that would still leave 350-500 American ICBMs untouched. They couldn’t beat SDI through sheer numbers, and that’s where the Soviets excelled.
-
SDI could actually make the world safer, by reducing the need to respond in hair-trigger fashion to a single potential nuke launch. It might not be able to stop 8,000 MIRV’d warheads, but a single missile launched by a rogue state or by accident? That was possible. And if that could be achieved, then the early warning system could be put on less of a hair-trigger response.
-
Moving the cold war into R&D instead of just building more of the same missiles and tanks was a better way to go and might actually produce social benefits rather than just creating more munitions.
So faced with these much more reasonable arguments, what does the other side do? They fall back on some speech Reagan made where he said SDI would be an ‘umbrella’ or something, then created the straw man that SDI was claimed to be a perfect defence and if it wasn’t it was completely useless. And then they trotted out scientific studies in defence of this straw man as if they were the last word on the subject.
Everyone can notice that you ignored the software issue, the reality is that unless you can demonstrate it otherwise, the OTA had the most unbiased scientific view of the capabilities we had then.
And it also has to be noted, you are failing to deal with what the OP was about, clearly what Milo did was a gross hatchet job and it does not even deserve anything like an effort to make both sides equal on this regard.
The results of not having an independent and closer group to review science in congress can be seen with the recent fiasco brought to the Republican party and Ted Cruz:
And really , we have to remember alway that the “scientists” the republicans are relying on are deeply compromised or are not experts and holders of a minority view.
And related to the hatchet job from Milo, the Braitbart contributor just looks at the mote that is in the popularizers of science’s eyes, but willfully ignored the beam that is in their expert’s own eyes.
There is no equivalence to that, unless we are willing to believe that scientists like Dr. Seitz were experts on everything the reality is that what the Republicans are getting are experts on seeding doubts; Dr. Seitz and others were the go to scientists supporting SDI, denying that the ozone layer depletion was human related, denying the human causes of acid rain, denying that tobacco smoke caused cancer and lived long enough to tell the Republicans that human induced climate change was not a problem.

People who scream ‘follow the consensus of scientists!’ on global warming will also completely reject the consensus when it comes to GMO foods or nuclear power …
… Most people who support global warming science but ignore the science in favor of GMO’s or nuclear power have no qualifications to evaluate either one. So they fall in step with ‘their side’, and assume that everyone on the other side is anti-science or just stupid.
GIGO has pretty much addressed this but I just want to briefly add a very important observation about the false equivalency you try to draw. This is aside from the fact that, as you point out yourself, many of those who advocate for climate change mitigation are also in favor of nuclear power, including top climate scientists who recently published an open letter strongly advocating nuclear power as the most viable way forward to clean energy. So your attempt at trying to show some sort of inconsistency in “beliefs” makes no sense at all to begin with. I myself have often mentioned, as a good example of sound environmental policy, the fact that Ontario has demolished some of its biggest coal-fired power plants and currently gets more than half of all its electricity from nuclear power, a strategy that I strongly support.
But here’s why your examples are a false equivalency even if there are some AGW activists who oppose nuclear power. Climate science is a physical science, or more accurately, a synergy of several different physical sciences. When the evidence for certain conclusions is overwhelming and supported by an equally overwhelming scientific consensus, it’s no longer a matter of “belief”, or politics, or anything except incontrovertible scientific fact. It’s just that stark. End of story.
Of course AGW mitigation policy is far more nuanced and debatable, but in many cases – most notably in the realm of US politics – the argument hasn’t even got to that point yet. As long as the argument among many politicians remains denial of basic science, there’s no comparison with any of your other examples because it’s just basic medieval scientific ignorance.
Furthermore, there are other aspects that tie together a logical consistency between AGW advocacy with opposition to nuclear power, though I and obviously many others don’t share the latter. The major reason that a climate change denialist movement is alive and well is because of a massive, organized, and well-funded campaign by the fossil fuel industry and other industrial interests to undermine the public perception of the science. In the US, most nuclear power operations are in the hands of that same sector of for-profit private industry, and a history of cover-ups and environmental malfeasance by power producers and heavy industry in general has understandably made people nervous about the safety of nuclear power in the hands of these operators. I think these problems are surmountable but the common thread is a distrust of Big Industry – it’s not the crazy inconsistency that you make it out to be.

I can give you an excellent example from complexity theory. The left embraces the notion that evolution is an undirected process, absent any sort of creator or designer. They cite complex systems theory as a justification for the ‘precautionary principle’, and explicitly acknowledge that we can not know what effect an intervention will have on an ecology because complex systems are impenetrable and unpredictable. Therefore, it’s arrogance to think we can manipulate and control them.
On the other hand, even though it’s clear that human societies are also complex systems, they have no problem advocating for major interventions and pretending that they can know where and how to intervene to ‘improve’ it. So the same people who would never dream of taking a few million animals from North America and dropping them in Asia to improve ‘diversity’ believe there’s absolutely nothing that could go wrong when transporting several million people from radically different cultures in the middle east and dropping them into Europe.
Sam, those two situations are worlds apart. 1) The refugees flooding into Europe are, to a large extent, fleeing a life-threatening situation of war. And so, it’s a question of weighing two options and asking which is the least worse. 2) But… we do, in fact, have lots of empirical evidence that large numbers of immigrants can be integrated into a society with a net benefit to that society. What is America, if not a land of immigrants? I don’t know that anyone is saying “absolutely nothing could go wrong”. People are saying that we have a humanitarian crisis to deal with, and some level of risk is acceptable based on what we’ve seen in the past.
Also, no one claims we can control an entire economy, only make specific directed changes, exactly as we can make specific directed changes in the ecology by, say, spraying for mosquitos to control malaria. We can do that, without claiming we can control everything the entire ecology does. Ditto for, say, the minimum wage. We can’t know all of the long-term follow-on effects, but we know the direct and immediate effects.
Otherwise, you might just as well say that the human body is really complex, so let’s not bother with surgery or medication. It’s a foolish argument, and no one actually makes it.
ETA: agreeing with John Mace, rebutting Sam Stone, as may not be totally clear.

Among the general public (and many scientists), belief in specific scientific theories is more about political affiliation and signalling membership in a group than it is about believing science.
Sorry, but this claim is to a major degree rooted in conspiracy nonsense, even when “controversial” science is involved.
People who scream ‘follow the consensus of scientists!’ on global warming
This is a gross misstatement, not just about climate change but about many other “controversies” to which it is applied - GMOs, vaccination, fluoridation etc. It’s not a question of blindly following scientific consensus, but rather a warning that when a great deal of effort and good science has gone into creating a body of work, one needs really good evidence to overturn it. The poorly documented beliefs of a few shouters on the fringe (who typically don’t even have expertise in the field they expound on) is not sufficient.
It’s true that the Left has its share of idiotic beliefs about GMOs and nuclear power. But the Right is considerably more handicapped by embrace of pseudoscience, especially among its political leaders. I can’t think of any major Democratic presidential candidates who have embarrassed themselves on (for example) vaccination the way numerous GOP candidates have. Nor have major left-leaning media outlets sneered at scientific consensus on climate the way that the Wall St. Journal has.
Endorsement of pseudoscience is a serious problem for the GOP/right wing, and a real turnoff to those who otherwise might be sympathetic to them.

So far as I am aware, Nye purports to explain scientific principles and methods to may people, at a lay level. A bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering seems sufficient.
Good point. We still let people with bachelor’s degrees teach high school science courses. That’s enough to understand the basic principles of science and how to explain it, but perhaps not enough to have a serious chance of making a landmark discovery in the 21st century. As another poster mentioned, many (if not most) scientists never make a landmark discovery.
There are some scientists who did make significant discoveries who were also heavily influenced by and involved in occultic research, which some would describe as “stupid”. Good examples are Jack Parsons, a leader of the Ordo Templi Orientis and colleague of Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard, and Isaac Newton, who was also obsessed with alchemy and finding hidden codes in the Bible.
One important point: How do you define “stupid”? Is it defined in terms of innate and unchangeable factors such as IQ or can a stupid person become “not stupid” via some means such as further education? Is there an exam that a person can take that has a reasonable level of validity in determining whether that person is or is not stupid? Is it defined by behavior (i.e. “stupid is as stupid does”)? If it is defined by behavior, who is the judge, and what are the criteria? Is there a “stupidity rubric” that I can compare someone’s behavior to?

One important point: How do you define “stupid”? Is it defined in terms of innate and unchangeable factors such as IQ or can a stupid person become “not stupid” via some means such as further education? Is there an exam that a person can take that has a reasonable level of validity in determining whether that person is or is not stupid? Is it defined by behavior (i.e. “stupid is as stupid does”)? If it is defined by behavior, who is the judge, and what are the criteria? Is there a “stupidity rubric” that I can compare someone’s behavior to?
I would think that by most people’s definition of stupid, you are not stupid if you get your undergrad degree from Harvard, your PhD from Columbia and do your post-doc work at Princeton.
You may be foolish, you may have no common sense, you may be boring or rude, you may pontificate outside your area of expertise in an uninformed manner. But you didn’t get through that academic path if you were stupid.
I oppose the idea that a certain level of academic achievement can permanently insulate one from being called “stupid.” I’m sure there are Nobel Prize winners who are deserving of being told at times “God-damn, you are one stupid bastard…”

I oppose the idea that a certain level of academic achievement can permanently insulate one from being called “stupid.” I’m sure there are Nobel Prize winners who are deserving of being told at times “God-damn, you are one stupid bastard…”
I’m betting most of us with PhDs know plenty of idjits who made it through, even with fancy school names on their diplomas. I know I do. Maybe I am one (according to some posters here.)