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Claims that the "the science isn't settled" with regard to climate change are symptomatic of a large body of ignorance about how science works.
The first thing to understand is that there is no one method in science, no one way of doing things. This is intimately connected with how we reason in general.
[...] Those who demand the science be "settled" before we take action are seeking deductive certainty where we are working inductively. And there are other sources of confusion.
One is that simple statements about cause and effect are rare since nature is complex. For example, a theory might predict that X will cause Y, but that Y will be mitigated by the presence of Z and not occur at all if Q is above a critical level. To reduce this to the simple statement "X causes Y" is naive.
Another is that even though some broad ideas may be settled, the details remain a source of lively debate. For example, that evolution has occurred is certainly settled by any rational account. But some details of how natural selection operates are still being fleshed out.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 16 2016, @03:28PM
The mark of intelligence is to progress in an uncertain world and the science of climate change, of human health and of the ecology of our planet has given us orders of magnitude more confidence than we need to act with certitude.
Notice how this worked out. A multi-page straw man on what science is followed by a one paragraph fallacy by assertion on climate change. The obvious implication is that if you don't accept the fallacy, then you aren't capable of understanding science. The obvious problem here is the evidence doesn't match the confidence. And once again, we're left with an empty lecture on science which hammers climate change talking points.
When will he turn his attention to the evidence for overpopulation, global poverty, habitat and arable land destruction, government and societal corruption, etc? There are bigger problems out there which "acting with certitude" on climate change can completely fuck up, making our situation worse than it would be if we did nothing about climate change at all.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday September 17 2016, @01:13PM
I concur, human related climate change is a convenient fig leaf. "We destroy society with war, economic war, treatments instead of cures, pollution, but hey we are preoccupied about global warming, which means 1. we are good guys, 2. the problem is you and not us, now shut up get taxed and don't reproduce."
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