Saturday, March 03, 2007

The global politicisation of science

In yesterday's Independent, Dominic Lawson wrote an interesting piece about the green lobby and the climate change debate. Now I should start by declaring my interests, I am neither a climate change denier, nor a climate change supporter. I am simply a sceptic on most things, because, I believe that scepticism towards grand theories is a fundamental core element of my conservativism.

Sadly, scepticism rarely exists these days when it comes to the issue of the environment. Everyone considers themselves as experts and will happily cite scientific evidence which "proves" their beliefs. Where they fail though is that they've convinced themselves that science deals with proofs, rather than the reality that science deal with hypothesis and failure to disprove.

This has led, quite prevalently in recent weeks, to statements such as "the evidence of man-made climate change is unambiguous", or "there is scientific consensus on climate change". However, as Lawson points out via a quote from Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, "consensus is the stuff of politics, not science". Quite right too.

The climate change debate is laden with politics these days rather than science, and annoyingly I find myself (kind of) in agreement with people connected to the Revolutionary Communist Party who, as Lawson also notes, see the Green Movement as a
"deeply reactionary form of Western imperialism, which put improvement through science and industry of the welfare of people in Africa and the Asian subcontinent below its own decadent obsessions with biodiversity and so-called "sustainable development".
The reason I say I only kind of agree is because of imperialist charge. I don't agree with that, but I do agree that those on the furthest extremities of environmental politics are actually anti-science, anti-Enlightenment, and hold human ingenuity to use technology to control nature in contempt. It is a deeply pessimistic, and ultimately regressive movement.

As I understand it on the matter of climate change study, there are multiple hypotheses for where the cause of the current warming we are experiencing may lie. The problem is that because there may be a measurable impact that man is having, it is assumed it is the only cause we should and can deal with. If anyone, especially a scientist, dares to challenge that assumption, either through argument, or in some case falsification, they are treated as a pariah who doesn't care about the future of the planet.

It's certainly a strange state of affairs where scientists who are doing what they love to do, are sucked into politics over the acquisition of knowledge and understanding about the planet. One of the charges that is often made against New Labour is that they have politicised public service. I'd say a similar charge can be levelled at the global environmental lobby, who have, in comparison, politicised science through the issue of climate change.

12 comments:

AntiCitizenOne said...

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence": Carl Sagan

It's a conceit to believe that humans are warming the planet by producing 3.0% of the 0.003% of the atmosphere that is CO2 (airborne plant food) and it's nothing to do with the fusion of 10 million tons of hydrogen a second at the centre of the solar system.

Anonymous said...

In the Daily Telegraph letters page this morning, Lord Rees of Ludlow (President of the Royal Society) seeks to rebut accusations that the climate debate is being shut down by those who are part of the scientific consesnsus. He tells us that:

"The IPCC has looked at all the available evidence, including that related to the influence of solar irradiance.

Its conclusion is that, while other factors do play their part, human activity was "very likely" (greater than 90 per cent sure) to be responsible for most of the observed warming in recent decades."

He omits to tell us that this "conclusion" is from the IPCC summary written by and for policy makers and which has appeared before the main report (scheduled for publication in May) has been amended to allow the "evidence" to agree with the summary!

AntiCitizenOne said...

The "global warming Consensus" is in reality a 4 Billion dollar industry providing scares in return for taxpayers extorted money.

They have a massive vested interest.

Anonymous said...

If it was that serious they would not have Miliband in charge of it and we should be preparing for failure. I dont see anyone rushing to fortify the coastline, sea- levels will rise apparently by 5 feet. I think its safe to say that our political leaders have seen a bandwagon and jumped on it. You cant prove it, measure policy success or be challenged on it. You can however hide other policy behind it, talk about it for ages and hide your other loser policies behind it.

The Home Office cannot locate elbows and arses without secret cover-ups, cant really see him impacting global climate issues can you?

Disillusioned and Bored said...

check out my Nintendo Wii representations of the political party leaders

Jonathan Sheppard said...

Just recorded an interesting interview with Roger Helmer MEP on the environment and climate change. He will be holding a conference in Brussels later on in the year, at which various people will be speaking - including Lord Lawsom

Newmania said...

They can only make predictions wuith models Dizzy and these models can only be imperfect and subjective ...not in a malign sense.
I am with you on it but then I `m not that keen on keeping this shitty place anyway

Anonymous said...

Please spread the word about this program. I'd really ike enough people to see it that even the BBC has to acknowledge the perversion of science that is being perpetrated on us.


THURSDAY 08 MARCH
Documentary
The Great Global Warming Swindle
9:00pm - 10:35pm
Channel 4

Provocative documentary that sets out to challenge the widely accepted view that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for global warming. With arguments from leading scientists, the film points to recent research that solar radiation may be a more plausible factor in climate change, and suggests that reducing carbon emissions may not only have little impact on the environment, but may also have unintentional repercussions for third world development.

CityUnslicker said...

Yes, a tax hike, with an oddly ingenious reasoning behind it.

A tax hike it will be though.

max said...

Umbongo said:
"He omits to tell us that this "conclusion" is from the IPCC summary written by and for policy makers and which has appeared before the main report (scheduled for publication in May) has been amended to allow the "evidence" to agree with the summary!"

I don't think that the IPCC's reports or summaries are written by policy-makers (governments? which? it's an inter-governmental funded body). The IPCC is composed by scientists to review scientific publications for the benefit of governments, not the other way round.

Anticitizenone also said:
"It's a conceit to believe that humans are warming the planet by producing 3.0% of the 0.003% of the atmosphere that is CO2 (airborne plant food) and it's nothing to do with the fusion of 10 million tons of hydrogen a second at the centre of the solar system."

This is exactly the kind of easy remarks that lead nowhere, more the realm of politics than science really.
I could do some ironic comment about this statement but I would only repeat the same error.

There are then other comments around the same style across this thread.

I am a bit saddened by this fashion on the right to be contrarians about scientific findings, like if political commentators were nobel prizes in climatology.
There's no set argument but there are balanced reviews available, here's one:
http://bostonreview.net/BR32.1/emanuel.html

Richard Branson has decided to invest £ 3 Billion over the next 10 years in research on alternative fuels.
That's something to applaude, I believe that adequate policies can help the industry to develop solutions, to cling to an oil-based model is backward and suicidal. Let's not forget that oil has only a few decades left and that much of the denialist propaganda is funded by the loony end of the oil industry, the only industry that has an interest in discrediting the forming consensus on climate change.

dizzy said...

With respect this is not about being contrarian to scientific findings. It's about realising what science is and how it works. There is a strong tendency amongst environmental advocates to treat scientific findings as conclusive proofs. Science doesn't work like that, and science most defintely is NOT about consensus.

max said...

I fully agree that there are fringes on both sides of the argument that use fragments of research to support their views, this doesn't mean that there isn't a large body of scientific research and publications that keeps on examining the green-house theory and finds it very plausible.
Science is not about consensus from the public but it is about researches and publications that are respected by the scientific community.
Consensus or the lack of it from the public can then help or stifle the formulation of adequate policies.