environment: denialists idiots scientific consensus scientific method tree rings Water
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 25: Look! Bipartisanship!
The June 10 Seattle Times reports on yet another study confirming what we all know:
They looked at the rings of thousands of ancient trees in the mountains above the most important rivers in the West.
What they found may influence how water gets used from Arizona to Canada — and particularly in the Columbia River basin.
Despite odd years like this one, researchers have long reported declines in the mountain snows that power Western rivers. But on Thursday a group of scientists said they now also know this: Those declines are virtually unprecedented throughout most of the last millennium.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and University of Washington measured tree-ring growth from forests that included 800-year-old trees. They learned that snowpack reductions in the late 20th and early 21st centuries were unlike any other period dating to at least the year 1200, according to new research published in the journal Science.
It struck me that these results aren’t surprising to either side of the “debate” any more, and I thought I’d address that surprising unanimity of perception in this letter, sent June 10:
Of course the newest study from the U.S. Geological Survey confirms the existence of climate change, and reinforces the predictions of a complex and catastrophic future for our country and the world! Up to this point, both climate-change denialists and environmental realists are in agreement. But the realists expect to see these results because many decades worth of research on climate questions already supports the core hypothesis: climate change is human-caused, and it’s going to have severe impacts on all of our lives for generations to come. Denialists, by contrast, expect these results because they believe scientific research is part of a liberal campaign to take away their SUVs and force them to change their lightbulbs, a laughable conspiracy theory boosted by corporations afraid of lessening their quarterly returns. Sense and survival on the one hand — paranoia and profit on the other. The choice is clear.
Warren Senders
environment: biodiversity lodgepole pine predictions scientific method
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 9: Maybe They Can Import Kudzu. Yeah. That’ll Work.
More on the soon-to-vanish Lodgepole Pine, this time from Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard. As opposed to a generic AP story, this one appears to be the work of a staff writer, and it’s pretty good.
Citizens of the Pacific Northwest can no longer say they weren’t warned. With the recent release of a study predicting that global warming will bring about a catastrophic decline in the lodgepole pine population over the next five or six decades, residents of the area can begin to imagine a very different-looking future. While the work of Richard Waring and his colleagues is region-specific, there can be no doubt that similar processes are underway around the world; hundreds of regional ecosystems will experience massive disruption, losing thousands of key plant and animal species. We must all work together to change our patterns of energy consumption; as Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland once said, “What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?” We’ve all been warned. What will we do now?
Warren Senders
environment: conservative scientist denialists scientific method
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 9: The Rarest of the Rare
Stop the presses! Neela Banerjee has a story in the Seattle Times about Dr. Kerry Emanuel, a responsible climatologist who is also a political conservative.
Unsurprisingly, the guy’s a little baffled these days. Where is the Republican party of yore?
As a politically conservative climatologist who accepts the broad scientific consensus on global warming, Emanuel occupies a position shared by few scientists.
“There was never a light-bulb moment but a gradual realization based on the evidence,” Emanuel said. “I became convinced by the basic physics and by the better and better observation of the climate that it was changing and it was a risk that had to be considered.”
He sounds like a pretty good guy.
“I’ve always rebelled against the thinking that ideology can trump fact,” said Emanuel, 55. “The people who call themselves conservative these days aren’t conservative by my definition. I think they’re quite radical.”
Paradoxically, conservative Republican administrations in the past four decades pushed through the creation of the EPA and the signing of the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act.
And only a Republican could have opened Communist China to the world. See how this works? The Republicans used to have a Jekyll/Hyde thing, where they’d do tons of dirty tricks and then occasionally allow some decent legislation to pass so they could get credit for it later, as witness Richard Nixon’s EPA. But the last vestiges of Jekyll have been thoroughly expunged; we’re now all-Hyde, all the time.
Naturally, he’s horrified by the behavior of the politicians he’s supported in the past, although he still “reveres Ronald Reagan.” But the current gang of crooks and thugs was too much for him. He supported Obama in 2008, which automatically makes him a far-left DFH.
Once upon a time it was possible for scientific integrity and conservative political views to coexist in the same individual. Charles Keeling, the climatologist whose detailed records of atmospheric CO2 made it possible to measure the greenhouse effect, was, like Kerry Emanuel, a lifelong Republican. The contemporary GOP, however, is deeply antipathetic to the principles that underlie scientific thinking. Ideologically-driven and devoid of scruples, wearing intellectual dishonesty as a badge of honor, the Republican party of today is a danger to the nation and to the planet.
There is no logical reason to deny climate science; the greenhouse effect is indifferent to ideological affiliation. The only reasons are rooted in the profit motive; as they fulfill the wishes of their corporate sponsors, Republican politicians show a near-sociopathic disregard for the common good. Alas, (as Dr. Emanuel has discovered) the phrase “Republican scientist” now sounds sadly oxymoronic, and a tad embarrassing.
Warren Senders
And for your viewing pleasure, here are some old-style Republicans transforming into new-style Republicans before your very eyes:
And here’s one featuring some modern-day Democrats, too!
environment Politics: assholes Charles Keeling idiots scientific literacy scientific method
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 24: I’m Glad I Don’t Understand Science, Because If I Understood It, I’d Be Less Likely To Be A Jackass
The New York Times runs a long and fascinating biographical piece on Charles Keeling, the guy who did the half-century’s worth of atmospheric CO2 measurements that provide us insight into our predicament. It isn’t always this easy to find a theme for a letter; I am grateful to the Gray Lady.
After I got this written I saw that it was 149 words. So I added the “oy.”
It is a tragic commentary on a forty-year decline in scientific literacy in America that the work of Charles Keeling is so egregiously misinterpreted by conservative legislators and a significant fraction of the general public. At a time when we need greater understanding of science and scientific method, we are instead offered the scriptural rationalization that since global warming is mentioned nowhere in the Bible, it cannot exist. At a time when we need unity of purpose in combating one of the most significant threats humanity has ever faced, we are instead offered the blustery hyperpartisanship of incoming committee chairmen who eagerly anticipate hindering the researchers who are our first line of defense. At a time when we need wisdom and farsightedness to recognize the implications of Dr. Keeling’s fifty meticulous years of work, we are instead offered folly, measured out in quarterly profit margins and two-year electoral cycles. Oy.
Warren Senders
atheism Education: epistemology scientific method
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Scientific Method, Scientific Purpose, Scientific Spirit
Just found this quote from Chauncey D. Leake in the most recent issue of Humanist magazine. He paraphrases Edwin Grant Conklin in this beautiful summary of the ways science does what it does:
“The purpose of science, he said, is like that of religion — to find out the truth about ourselves and our environment. The method is one of continual skepticism, self-critical and self-corrective, seeking data which are independently verifiable. The methodology proceeds either by experimental reasoning with logical and consistent coherence as in mathematics, or by observation, tentative explanation, controlled experimentation, and inducible conclusions as in the life sciences. The attitude or spirit of science as a concept, is realization that the findings of scientific effort are tentative and relative, that the validity of scientific conclusions rests on voluntary agreement among those who examine the evidence, and that unwelcome truth is better than cherished error. This is a value judgment, and gives moral significance to the whole concept of science. All of this is based on a concern, in scientific effort, for the welfare of humanity as a whole.”
Chauncey D. Leake — “Humanistic Aspects of the Unity in Science”
All of this is based on a concern, in scientific effort, for the welfare of humanity as a whole.
Let me repeat that.
All of this is based on a concern, in scientific effort, for the welfare of humanity as a whole.
I’m a member of the American Humanist Association. How about you?