Originally posted by WATU2:
This back and forth is an example of the broader question: When should or how does scientific evidence drive societal policy? Clearly the concept that human actions are effecting climate change is unwelcome news because it raises a host of difficult questions and implies changes that hurt important economic and social interests.
And the nature of science is that it is an evolving process so there is never 100% certainty; just look at the Creationists ongoing fight against evolution using what they claim to be 'scientific evidence'. The scientific consensus is in favor of evolution, but there are still those claiming the science is inadequate for flawed.
More recently economic interests and beliefs seem to have replaced theology as the opposing force to science. One example of would be the tobacco industry's ability to suppress and offer distorted research connecting tobacco use with cancer and other health issues. A lot of people were hurt by the tobacco companies efforts to protect themselves from the scientific consensus, but eventually societal attitudes and policy changed.
Some claim that the scientific establishment has been bought off by funding sources which demand a particular outcome. That claim doesn't stand up to examination, as the funding available from established economic interests hurt by climate change implications (all carbon based industries, particularly large energy companies) have economic interests and funding capabilities that far exceed what is available through grants from the National Science Foundation or similar groups. Those same economic interests also have far greater motivation.
Anyway, an interesting question. We seem to trust science in about every area of our lives except in the few cases when the news might hurt our pocket books in the short term. A conundrum.
First "our pocketbooks" is actually the destruction of one of the main economic forces is in states like Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Wyoming. Our government has required massive investments to reduce pollution in fossil fuels industries. These industries have made those investments only to be rewarded by targeting to be eliminated.
This is based on predictions being made by the same people who 8 years ago predicted that the artic ice cap would be gone in five years and who now scramble to explain the "pause" in Global Warming. They use the tried and true method with their predictions don't come true. Global Warming is renamed Climate Change. At one point you give examples of how the Scientific Method has debunked past incorrect consensus but then trivialize those who provide alternatives to current consensus.
Tobacco and cancer is one of my pet targets. We all have lost friends and family to tobacco related cancer. It is going on today. Yet today the Artic Ice Cap is for the second straight year well above the 2012 level, ocean levels are rising but much slower than predicted and there is no drought that compares to one 80 years ago in 1934.
People are asking huge changes of the way people live based on predictions that are not coming true. China, one of the most polluted countries in the world [not only with CO2 but with other pollutants that we have made huge progress on] announced recently that it would not make CO2 reductions without financial transfers.
Conservation is great. Like others I now drive vehicles that get greatly improved mileage from what the ones I had 10 years ago. But conservation by the 300+ million people in the US won't replace additions by the 7.2 billion people in the world.
Carbon based fuels have not be replaced as the primary source of energy. Some progress has been made but not enough to keep up with a world that does not want to become Amish or remain third world. There are a few glimmers of hope from cold fusion. That needs to be worked on along with other sources. But you can't quit your day job and head of to Nashville with a guitar.
Simply put, you can't stop using the main source of man generated energy on the planet based on computer projections of conditions at the end of the century.