Some people got all offended when he said doubting science was important. They equate that with global warning deniers, flat earth believers and creationism.
But he is right. Scientific method is based on skepticism. Science creates evidence but skepticism drives science to create more evidence. Without skepticism, without the desire to prove science hypothesis, scientific knowledge stagnates.
Maybe I read it with a bias, but I got it as he was coming across as a denier, and condescending. If wrong, then I apologize to the board and Mr Rowe.
Have to be careful of unconscious bias. One misread word and you get an entirely different understanding of the piece.
You can close this thread now. Everything anybody had to know about it has been answered.
Based on the article I even noted that his aside about climate change was just to make a point about skepticism, so until someone quotes him with clear denials I did not see a big problem there, and I know a lot of deniers of that.
Hence, the only odd thing I did notice, it is very peculiar to see complete denials of black holes when the evidence is more compelling about their existence. Still it is more peculiar that a nutpick is what the OP, The Daily Caller and Rowe sees as worthy of their time,
Dear anomalous1: If you don’t care enough to post a summary or a few explanatory excerpts, I (and IIRC several other Dopers) don’t care enough to click your link.
HTH.
I didn’t read it well. Something about ignorant people. Yes, they get to vote for Trumps etc. Deal with it. They will never change. You might be able to trade some items. We get to keep science and you get to keep your cells phones. If not, you give up the phones.
Yup. I think a big part of why people reject climate change is profits (fossil fuels are a multi trillion dollar industry that support multiple governments) and they don’t want to agree with democrats on anything.
The scientific method is just following evidence. What Rowe seems to be saying is ‘scientists were wrong about how many galaxies there are, so I don’t think climate change happened’. He left off the part that he and people like him reject climate change because of emotional and ideological issues, not because they understand or care about the impacts or science of the issue.
I had someone once try to convince me climate change was wrong because scientists were wrong that brontosauruses were real. Their argument is if science is wrong in one situation, they could be wrong in all situations.
Yeah they could, but they follow the evidence. The climate change skeptics do not understand or care about the evidence, they are motivated by an ideological resistance.
That’s not what he said.
To my knowledge Mike Rowe has never claimed to be a conservative, he just hasn’t denied it. He certainly doesn’t seem to be a Trumpy, and lives in SF where you can’t be too conservative but at the same time find the environment a huge thought bubble.
The doublethink is kind of funny: one side claiming him when it’s convenient, the other deciding that his statements are wrong because of being one of “them.” I don’t think he’s wrong at all, though that doesn’t mean that the OP isn’t being disingenuous.
That is exactly what he said.
“Science was wrong in situation A because informed people without an ideological agenda who were pursuing facts overturned existing beliefs, so there is a reasonable chance it is wrong in the areas where I have an ideological agenda and no training or knowledge” That is the jist of his message.
I’m all for skepticism, when it is done with good intentions and knowledge. In my experience climate change critics lack both. Most are wildly uninformed about climate science (as we all are who don’t work in the field) and their motivations are to disprove a scientific consensus that they dislike for emotional, political, financial and ideological reasons. Galileo didn’t disprove the idea that the earth was the center of the universe because he had no training in the field of astronomy but hated liberals or because he made money off the idea. He promoted it because that is what the facts said and he was trained to gather those facts. In my experience most critics of climate change are conservatives with 0 training in anything related to science outside of some high school courses they took 30 years ago. Why are their opinions valid when it is obvious they are both completely untrained and motivated by the conclusion first and then finding reasons to support the existing conclusion?
You might as well say ‘scientists used to believe in a brontosaurus, so now I as a christian think creationism is plausible’
He said
Again, I’m all for skepticism if the following conditions are met
[ul]
[li]The people doing the doubting are informed and trained[/li][li]They have no existing ideological agenda and no financial, emotional or cognitive investment in validating a pre-existing conclusion[/li][/ul]
If climate scientists start, en masse, saying climate change is bunk then wonderful. We should still transition to renewables because they are cheaper, more sustainable and healthier, but the pressure to do it ASAP is off if we don’t have to worry about trillions of dollars in property damage or damage to the global ecosystem.
But to my knowledge that hasn’t happened. The people who deny it fail both of the conditions listed above. People with 0 education and training who start with the conclusion and then find ways to justify the conclusion are not scientists and that is not science. Science was created to get away from people who thought like that.
Where did he deny science? I’m not seeing it.
Has the OP ever returned to any his 93 threads?
Let’s throw him a bone.
Hey, OP, I’m a progressive and I think the woman calling for Mike Rowe to be fired is a reactionary kook who doesn’t represent me, my views, or those of the majority of rational progressives.
It’s okay for you can come out of your safe space now, snowflake.
Denying the scientific consensus on climate change is denying science, by definition. Claiming that you’re just favoring “skepticism” doesn’t change that.
What advances in climate science have been made by “skeptics” who insist that all evidence of climate change is completely made up? How has cutting funding for climate research or banning government agencies from preparing for climate change or even using the words advanced climate science?
Even if Rowe himself doesn’t support that position, he’s carrying water for it by pretending denialism is about healthy skepticism and the scientific process. It’s the opposite of science.
Healthy skepticism is when informed, educated, trained people who have no investment in the conclusion come across and present evidence that the existing conclusion is wrong.
Climate change deniers for the most part do none of that. They may have some scientists on their side, but they are in the minority and usually get funding to support an agenda.
People doubt the existence of a supernatural being due to a lack of evidence. People believe in climate change because of a large amount of evidence.
Healthy skepticism among informed people is great. Skepticism in pursuit of an ideological agenda among the uninformed is not, it is the opposite of science.
If Mike Rowe has training in climate science, and zero financial or ideological agendas and he said climate change was not going to melt the ice caps, great. He can present his findings.
But if he is just a person with no training or education in the field who is motivated by ideological conclusions, that isn’t science. That is the opposite of science and what science was designed to get away from.
Saying ‘my ideology wants XYZ, therefore XYZ is true’ is no better than saying ‘my god wants XYZ, therefore XYZ is true’. It is the opposite of science.
Wow, Silenus, I had no idea you were such a fanboy of me!
While I do agree with you, I pointed out that if elsewhere he showed as such, then I see how other posters did notice one of the latest developments of denialism, namely to claim that we should always be skeptics, but what I see deniers doing now is to fall for a zeno like paradox of their own doing. (instead of an infinity running turtle paradox, it is a request that scientists never advise to do something until being 100% sure, but then again, science does not work like that either).
As we can see in other places, Mike Rowe has become a darling for conservatives for “telling scientists to be skeptics” about things like climate change.
So, it may be that he is not a conservative, but having to grasp at straws (as he admits, he is only a narrator and he is an actor, not a scientist) is what many deniers who are usually conservative are left to grab on.
What that actor and narrator misses is that history shows that for more than 100 years this issue has been looked at and originally scientists knew that a CO2 increase will warm the earth but that we were safe because of several physical items that were thought to sequester CO2 promptly and reduce the warming effects of CO2 in the atmosphere. Researchers like Callendar that were worried about the warming (in the 1930’s!) were found to had made mistakes, so scientists of the day did not worry.
Around the 1950s however, scientists like Gilbert Plass found that CO2 did not absorb heat as it was assumed and almost at the same time evidence was found that told scientists that the oceans and other natural sinks of CO2 were not going to prevent warming. Double oops,** *and that is what skepticism actually got us about 60 years ago. ***
Ignorant people like Rowe and the denier conservatives are not telling anyone about the mountains of skepticism that researchers already endured to get the current consensus.** It is more sensible now to be very skeptical of what the deniers with powerful support are attempting to do in the popular media**, not only to notice their increased skepticism in their reporting were there is less found among experts nowadays, but also that on top of that they are not being taken to task for avoiding telling others about the whole history of how it was discovered that global warming gases warm the earth and all the trials and science done before.
The Discovery of Global Warming by Physicist and historian Spencer Weart
(Chapter about the history about The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect.
All I’m seeing is the problem with the right wing media. Take one crank, and suddenly they represent all of the left.
Sadly, the Daily Caller didn’t even realize that the Democrat Socialist Borg Collective decided three months ago that the SJW in question was no longer in charge of our collective opinions on every matter. Now, it’s Harold “Weedsmoker Snowflake” Cairns of Berkeley, California, who lives near the big trash can in People’s Park and drives the pickup that has all the bumper stickers.