Re: [asa] Creation Care

What Randy says reminds me of the "teach the controversy" approach of ID,
where the only controversy was the one manufactured by IDers. Some things
are helped so greatly by not knowing what is basic to an area.
Dave

On Thu, 18 Jan 2007 22:05:00 -0500 "Randy Isaac"
<randyisaac@adelphia.net> writes:
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?

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Received on Fri Jan 19 14:05:02 2007