[MLUG - DISCUSSION] global warming and science/ethics

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Sat, 7 Jan 2006, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:

> On global warming I have absolutely no idea whether it is real or not. 
> There is no authority I can turn to and ask who is right.

I never had a firm opinion on this issue either.  Most people take sides 
based on ideological commitments and friendships and small amounts of 
knowledge because, really, most people don't know anywhere near enough 
about this to have a valid point of view.  But once Bush's own science 
advisors reported that human activity was contributing to global warming, 
I had to admit this was likely:

http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/rmnews/2004/msg00102.html

Bush still says "we just don't know," and I think he is lying, but I am 
not completely unsympathetic with what he is doing.  The problem is that 
he is not in the truth business (but I am), he is in a job where he must 
take action, and on a rather grand scale.  What sort of action should he 
take?  Well, he doesn't know, so he isn't doing anything.  That might be 
the right thing to do at this point.  I don't know either.  Example:  if 
we use less fuel oil, the price of oil will drop and China and India will 
burn more of it.  They will create even more pollution per gallon burned 
than we will.  So, if we use less, will that make things better or make 
things worse?  I don't know.  Some people think that growing more forests 
will improve things, but then more recent modeling shows that forests 
absorb more heat and reflect less into the atmosphere resulting in net 
warming!  So sometimes things aren't as they seem and the naive analyses 
we hear from nonexperts are not helpful.


> The arogant scientists got it right with evolution, but as best I can 
> see they got it wrong with the ethics of stem cell research.  The right 
> wing fundamentalists are probably right about stem cell research (but 
> why don't they also decry the very fertility methods that create the 
> frozen embryos in the first place, which to my mind have similar 
> unresolved ethics problems), but the right wing are extremely content to 
> trot out very bad science to support their anti-evolution viewpoint - 
> and continue to do so even after the rottenness of their arguments is 
> shown to them.

We can disagree about stem cell ethics, but that isn't science. 
Scientists are good at science, but I don't know how good they are at 
ethics.

I don't know how many of the scientists you are thinking of are "arrogant" 
and how many are just sick of hearing total baloney that distracts them 
and wastes their time.  How arrogant does a religious ideologue have to be 
to think that a scientist should engage with him in a scientific 
discussion when he doesn't know anything about science?  Not only that, 
but most of the religious people who want to communicate with scientists 
that way want to tell the scientists that they are wrong -- how arrogant 
is that?!

Mike

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