This is an update to but independent of http://used-ideas.blogspot.com/2012/06/climate-change-maybe.html
Politics, damned politics, cursed politics... Such a more conservative institution there has ever been. Whatever the view, your view, my view, politics invites a type of rigidity from which retraction of positions becomes extremely difficult. Politicians are loathe to change their minds regardless of evidence to the contrary - unless it presents itself on their doorstep. That said, let's get to the business of the day: Our Climate.
Global warming, climate change, extreme weather, whatever you wish to call it is a signature issue of our age. It has a large group of believing in its precepts, based on rather sophisticated mathematical and statistical models. None accommodate that global weather is a thermodynamic system and is therefore very much fundamentally unpredictable in the long term. (Imagine, setting afire a piece of paper and trying to predict the exact form of the ash.) Yet the models work on statistical and projective models that work well looking backwards, gaining agreement with the past, and then boldly projecting into the future. On this basis all the predictions are made.
Some have call these predictions and this pursuit as "junk science," jokingly calling for a "junk PhD." It is serious business, junk or genuine. We can't call it junk or genuine until a full vetting is available. We do not know at this point whether the planet is evolving in a normal cycle, if the sun eruptions are making an effect, whether grasslands are declining or increasing, whether deforestation is a factor, or really anything firm.
Nonetheless, these folks have proposed a model, and if they were open to investigation would demand or recommend a government program to set the models on a firm scientific basis, open to critique by qualified scientists. Indeed, there is evidence of warming. This is our planet. We should check it out, just as we do for any newly discovered virus.
Many adherents simply want to believe that mankind is at fault. They feel badly and want evidence to believe. The models give it, and they jump on board the Global Warming train. Many feel this is an "weighty" issue worthy of their concern and attention, and while not understanding it simply want to do something, maybe something that can be conducted at cocktail parties.
However, there is a political agenda held by some of the Global Warming adherents, namely further government control of all things human. Weather is big; medical care is big; financial systems are big; education is big; nutrition is big. All of these, also signature issues of our age, have a similar remedy proposed that the government should do something such as spend, regulate, or generally interfere.
Recall, there was once the widely accepted medical treatment for fevered patients by blood-letting. It did, after all, serve to reduce the fever. Had blood-letting become a political issue, we might still have it. On climate change, we are merely in the first phase of investigation. Too bad it has become so political. With political stakes at hand, there comes a rigidity of theory very difficult to penetrate.
Politics, damned politics, cursed politics... Such a more conservative institution there has ever been. Whatever the view, your view, my view, politics invites a type of rigidity from which retraction of positions becomes extremely difficult. Politicians are loathe to change their minds regardless of evidence to the contrary - unless it presents itself on their doorstep. That said, let's get to the business of the day: Our Climate.
Global warming, climate change, extreme weather, whatever you wish to call it is a signature issue of our age. It has a large group of believing in its precepts, based on rather sophisticated mathematical and statistical models. None accommodate that global weather is a thermodynamic system and is therefore very much fundamentally unpredictable in the long term. (Imagine, setting afire a piece of paper and trying to predict the exact form of the ash.) Yet the models work on statistical and projective models that work well looking backwards, gaining agreement with the past, and then boldly projecting into the future. On this basis all the predictions are made.
Some have call these predictions and this pursuit as "junk science," jokingly calling for a "junk PhD." It is serious business, junk or genuine. We can't call it junk or genuine until a full vetting is available. We do not know at this point whether the planet is evolving in a normal cycle, if the sun eruptions are making an effect, whether grasslands are declining or increasing, whether deforestation is a factor, or really anything firm.
Nonetheless, these folks have proposed a model, and if they were open to investigation would demand or recommend a government program to set the models on a firm scientific basis, open to critique by qualified scientists. Indeed, there is evidence of warming. This is our planet. We should check it out, just as we do for any newly discovered virus.
Many adherents simply want to believe that mankind is at fault. They feel badly and want evidence to believe. The models give it, and they jump on board the Global Warming train. Many feel this is an "weighty" issue worthy of their concern and attention, and while not understanding it simply want to do something, maybe something that can be conducted at cocktail parties.
However, there is a political agenda held by some of the Global Warming adherents, namely further government control of all things human. Weather is big; medical care is big; financial systems are big; education is big; nutrition is big. All of these, also signature issues of our age, have a similar remedy proposed that the government should do something such as spend, regulate, or generally interfere.
Recall, there was once the widely accepted medical treatment for fevered patients by blood-letting. It did, after all, serve to reduce the fever. Had blood-letting become a political issue, we might still have it. On climate change, we are merely in the first phase of investigation. Too bad it has become so political. With political stakes at hand, there comes a rigidity of theory very difficult to penetrate.
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