Re: [asa] Creation Care

*Strikingly similar to the "evolution controversy".*

Charles, in some ways I think you're right, and that's unfortunate I think.
Our gut reaction is to shy away from questioning the consensus because we
don't want to get caught with our pants down around our ankles (like many of
us did when we first had to face the facts about YEC).

At the same time, though, the argument from "consensus" bothers me deeply.
At the end of the day, it's just an argument from authority, which is no
argument at all. I'm not willing to commit to a radical greenhouse gas
policy only because climatologists have reached a consensus about a warming
trend. First, I need to understand exactly what the consensus really
reflects. Then, I need to understand the *basis* for the consenus. Then, I
need to understand the social and economic implications, which requires
input from other disciplines.

In this regard, I think it is fair to point out that climatology is a
relatively young science, that weather systems are dynamic and notoriously
hard to predict over the long term, and that the computing power simply
doesn't yet exist to model climate change in any realistic detail. Thus,
while the science so far strongly supports a human-caused warming trend, it
can't yet say with any degree of accuracy how rapid or extensive that trend
will be over a century or more. Do even climatologists dispute this?

It's also fair to point out, I think, that, while there is a non-trivial
volume of climate modeling literature, comparatively speaking, the
literature remains thin compared to other established disciplines. I read
about one literature review that surveyed 900 or so journal articles, which
I took to be the corpus of major work in the field. It would be interesting
to see how many authors and academic institutions are represented in those
900 articles, how many of those articles present truly new models or
approaches to modeling, how extensively the models have been cross-checked
through work in other disciplines, etc. It's not a trivial amount, I'm
sure, but it doesn't approach the volume of work that's been done, say, on
biological evolution.

Finally, I think it's fair to point out that there are politics involved in
this science. This isn't to suggest that the people publishing in this
field are purposefully misrepresenting results or engaging in any kind of
unethical activity. It is to suggest, however, that the politics might
influence funding opportunities, doctoral and post-doc work, research
choices, departmental hiring and tenure decisions, and peer review, perhaps
in subtle ways. Maybe this sounds like some kind of attack on the
scientists working in this field, but it shouldn't sound that way.
Everyone, everywhere, in every occupation, is influenced to some degree by
social and political pressure. With a highly charged political hot potato
like warming, it defies experience to believe that the science is pristinely
objective.

Of course all of the above sounds like the criticisms ID folks raise against
evolutionary science. I guess there's an extent to which I have some
sympathy for those criticisms on the sociological level. Consensus should
always be subject to challenge. Even scientists with the best motives are
influenced by social and political factors. Where warming is different from
ID/evolutionary science, I think, is in the extent of the conclusions that
legitimately can be drawn from the science to date and in the breadth of the
consensus. The volume of work done, the cross-disciplinarity, the
correlation with predictions and observations, all are far more extensive in
evolutionary science than in the science of climate change at this point in
the respective research programs. At the end of the day, it seems like
apples and oranges to me.

On 1/18/07, Charles Carrigan <CCarriga@olivet.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Strikingly similar to the "evolution controversy".
>
> Best,
> Charles
>
> _______________________________
> Charles W. Carrigan, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor of Geology
> Olivet Nazarene Univ., Dept. of Physical Sciences
> One University Ave.
> Bourbonnais, IL 60914
> PH: (815) 939-5346
> FX: (815) 939-5071
> ccarriga@olivet.edu
> http://geology.olivet.edu/
>
> "To a naturalist nothing is indifferent;
> the humble moss that creeps upon the stone
> is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns the
valley or the mountain:
> but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of the rocks the annals of
a former world,
> the mossy covering which obstructs his view,
> and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone,
> is no less than a serious subject of regret."
> - James Hutton
> _______________________________
>
>
> >>> "Randy Isaac" <randyisaac@adelphia.net> 1/18/2007 9:05 PM >>>
>
>
> Dave,
> One of the questions I particularly wanted to investigate was the
source and extent of the controversy and uncertainty. As we all know, the
key to good science is to know what you know and know what you don't know.
Folks outside any particular specialty often don't understand what is known
and what isn't. In climatology, the factors are so vast and complex that it
is very easy to believe that we know very little. What I found is that the
"controversy" and "uncertainty" within the scientific community of
climatology is vast indeed--but not regarding the big picture of global
warming trends, anthropogenic influences, likely consequences of action or
inaction, etc. The uncertainties lie in the range of specific impacts and
detailed factors. The source of the idea that climate models are very
inaccurate and highly untrustworthy seems to be those who are outside the
professional community and who amplify various uncertainties, extrapolating
them to the point where we can't really trust what the scientists say.
> In other words, the scientific literature has no significant
controversy. One review I found in Science scanned 928 papers on the topic
and found 75% explicitly or implicitly in agreement and 25% that didn't
address that issue and none with a contrarian view. Another review analyzed
2,000 papers and found 2 that disagreed with the consensus perspective. That
means that contrarian views are being expressed elsewhere and not in the
professional scientific literature. No one has published a model that
substantively differs from Jim Hansen's climate modelling, for example.
Quantitative details differ but the conclusions aren't significantly
different. In other words, people outside the professional community seem to
have taken differences and uncertainties of details and extrapolated to a
"controversy" which isn't really going on inside the community. There are
also some scientists who have published alternative scenarios--like a strong
solar effect, which I discussed with some of the folks--and have received a
lot of publicity outside the scientific community while the mainstream folks
have published corrections to the erroneous assumptions in those papers. I
don't consider that a "real controversy."
>
> If anyone is interested, I can provide a few more details in coming
days.
>
> Randy
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From: David Opderbeck
> To: Randy Isaac
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 7:28 PM
> Subject: Re: [asa] Creation Care
>
>
> To my surprise, for example, the global warming issue is quite clear with
no controversy in the community of scientific expertise in the field. I
found that global warming is significant and is primarily due to
anthropogenic sources.
>
> Based on what I've read and also not being an expert by any stretch, I'm
inclined to agree that warming is a real problem with anthropegenic
sources. I don't know how you can say, however, that the issue is "quite
clear with no controversy in the community of scientific expertise in the
field." What I've seen suggests the question is clear as mud, particularly
when it comes to the extent of human causation and the projected rate,
trends and effects of warming, and further that every position in the
scientific community is significantly affected by politics. Why are you
saying it's so easy to brush off every criticism?
>
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Web:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com
Blog:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
MySpace (Music):  http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.