Re: [asa] Creation Care

On 1/19/07, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>

Let's first understand the nature of the controversy. There are some
who deny that there is a strong anthropogenic component to global
warming. Once we establish the scientific vacuity of said position, we
may wonder as to the impact of the observations that the global
climate is warming and that we as humans share a large responsibility.

> 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?

Nope, climatologists however can look at what would happen if the CO2
emissions continue to add to the air concentrations and its historic
impact on climate as well as model its impact. Of course, such models
become 'less' reliable over longer times, especially when predicting
specific impacts on a particular country for instance. However, global
temperatures are a statistical average which removes some of the
problems to which David alludes. How familiar is David with the
current state of climate and weather modeling?

> 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.

Climate modeling is surely less mature than biological evolution but
one should be careful to therefor reject its relevance. David raises
good questions and I am certain that the answers can be found by
researching the relevant literature and understanding the many many
contributors to the IPCC report for instance.

> 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.

I'd say that while evolutionary science may go back to Darwinian days,
our real understanding of genetics is more recent than our
understanding of climate and I do not think that comparing the two is
unreasonable. In many ways both have found that the complexity of
life/weather is far more intricate than one may have imagined only a
few decades ago. Genetics was given a strong push by science's
abilities to unravel the code and pursue unraveling the code amongst
common species. Climate modeling got a major push from satellite
observations, especially over the oceans, adding significant knowledge
and data. In other words, both are in many different senses,
relatively young sciences. Climate research also involves many other
sciences such as for instance geology, dendrology, ice cores etc. All
providing relevant data to resolve the ambiguities that are so typical
in science.

Nor it is unreasonable to point out the many similarities between
evolution and climate science when it comes to politically or
religiously motivated (and well funded) opposition. Both seem to use a
well tried approach of cherry picking, equivocation and a certain
appeal to our ignorance as evidence.

Skepticism is good if it leads one to do more research, skepticism
should never be the end point.

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Received on Fri Jan 19 12:28:59 2007