Re: [asa] Creation Care

Randy, the worn-out feeling is getting to be mutual, but just a few key
things:

As to "no competing models," you miss the point. When you say a critic must
present a model that is superior to the existing model, that may be true for
the scientific community, but it is *not* true for public policy. Here is
what you dont' seem to understand: *government regulation has costs in
terms of human flourishing*. There actually is a susbstantial law and
economics literature that calculates the costs of government regulation in
human lives. Literally, regulation kills. This isn't some kind of
conservative knee-jerk position -- it's a "scientific" conclusion of many
law and economics scholars of various political persuasions. So, from a
policy perspective, it is valid to criticize a model on which costly
regulation will be based *even in the absence of a competing scientific
model*. Such criticism may simply reveal that regulatory action is unwise.
That in itself is a valuable exercise, even if it isn't specifically itself
a *scientific* one.

As to "let's be moderate," again, you continue to miss the point. The point
isn't that we should select the middle range of the warming estimates as the
most likely correct scenario. The point is that we should consider moderate
*policy* options given the *range* of* possible* scenarios reflected in the
consensus science. One can take this stance without in any way rejecting
the consensus reflected in the IPCC reports. We can acknowledge that the
upper range scenarios are real possibilities but still select a "moderate"
regulatory option for the present.

And this is why I started a thread about the precautionary principle and the
ethical basis for regulation in this area. Only a very strong reading of
the precautionary principle would justify the severe costs -- remember,
costs in human lives -- of massive regulatory action given that the
consensus presents a range of scenarios over a long (in regulatory terms)
time horizon without any ability to give realistic probabilities about where
in the range things will fall.

For all the continued argument about the authority of science and whatnot,
you still haven't explained what policy action you favor, what the economic
consequences are of your favored policy, and on what ethical basis you are
making your decision.

As to this being an issue important to the ongoing controversy regarding
science and Christian faith, yes, I agree that it is. I agree that the
evangelicals who drafted the "Interfaith Alliance" document did an abysmal
job addressing the science. But, I fear that the approach you seem to
advocate is swinging way too far in the other direction. This seems to come
from the "wall of separation," to borrow an oft-misued metaphor, that you
want to draw between the science and the policy in this instance. That wall
is a fiction. Advocating that we should trust the scientific experts in
this instance is the same as advocating that we should allow those
scientists to dictate policy *because all of the thought leaders -- Jim
Hansen in particular -- are also advocating policy. *If you doubt this,
read the materials on Hansen's personal website (
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/). It is not "pure" science, it is a mixture
of science and policy. That's not a knock on Hansen, it's just the reality
of this issue.

On 1/28/07, Randy Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Dave, you've finally worn me out! You seem to have an inexhaustible
> supply of variations from what I said. But I'll do one more reply since you
> are sincere and I think this issue is very important to the broader issues
> of controversy regarding science and Christian faith. After this, you may
> have the last word and I won't reply but will move on to other topics.
>
> "...tyranny." We aren't talking about government leaders. We are simply
> asking who is the best qualified to determine the most accurate description
> of nature, whether it be past, present, or future. Did you find some group
> who would be more qualified than the scientific community in that specific
> expertise?
>
> "...abrogate our duty...." I think you know I never recommended that or
> the other comments in your paragraph. I don't think people are stupid but
> when in a very complex field, they believe their limited knowledge trumps
> that of the experts, maybe they could deserve such a description. "Reason,
> wisdom..." etc. is precisely what we need and seldom if ever would such a
> process overrule data-tested consensus of an expert community.
>
> "....string theory..." Perhaps I need to continually repeat "verified by
> data" "independently reproduced and corroborated" etc. etc. Even Lisa
> Randall and Brian Greene are quick to say that as elegant as their theories
> are, there is no data verification or refutation and there won't be for a
> long long time.
>
> "...censoring criticism is equally unacceptable..." There is a world of
> difference between censoring criticism and testing criticism for validity.
> On what basis will we evaluate criticism? Yes, we welcome all criticism and
> encourage critiques but not all criticism is valid. Who would you suggest is
> qualified to evaluate criticism? How is slanderous, erroneous, misleading
> criticism which is allowed to persist unfettered to be considered valuable?
>
> "...no competing model is a canard..." There are enough quacks that there
> must be lots of canards around. Please recall what I'm saying, though it
> isn't getting through. There are zillions of models floating around in
> science being revised and examined. The ones worth noting are the ones that
> have withstood the withering scrutiny of being validated by data,
> independently reproduced by multiple sources, successfully predicted new
> results, and won the competition of competing models. Once that level of
> confidence is reached, criticism is certainly welcome but it has a very high
> bar to pass. It must also explain all data plus show superiority over the
> current model where there is any unexplained data. Of course it is possible
> to critique an existing model without a competing one but it must show some
> major unexplained data.
>
> Several posts in this thread advocated in essence "let's avoid the
> extremes and be moderate". I'm very much a moderate but let's be careful
> what this means. Being moderate in social action or policy is most wise. But
> let's be careful about just taking the moderate stand in affirming what is
> scientific data. In one of my previous posts I joked about the absurdity of
> being moderate and avoiding the extremes of the age of the earth so we
> should all accept 5 million years. Ludicrous, of course, but there is a
> point. To take a position between the extremes of scientific data, you must
> first determine that the set of data you are "averaging" is valid data. For
> global warming, you can't just say "some people say zero, others say the
> earth will melt, so let's take something in the middle." or something of
> that genre. What is acceptable is to look at the entire range of scientific
> data that has been reviewed and to average that. My feeling, after scouring
> the literature to some extent, is that the tendency is for scientists to all
> cluster at the low end of the data to avoid being viewed as alarmists. But
> somehow they didn't avoid it anyway. Specifically, the range of data for
> temperature projections for 2100AD seem to be from 3C to 9C but the
> implications are more focused on 3C.
>
> and from your other post, "I am skeptical as a more general matter of
> anyone who says "just trust the scientists." Surely you know that I never
> said or implied that. Stated without qualifiers such a claim is quite false.
> One should never trust a scientist outside his area of expertise any more
> than you would trust any one else. And even in an area of expertise you
> don't trust the scientist. John Bardeen won two Nobel prizes in physics but
> he was wrong on high-Tc supercondutors, his field of expertise. To repeat ad
> nauseum, you trust a set of ideas/explanations/theories that have been
> verified by data, independently corroborated and reproduced, and agreed upon
> by the ones working in that field. The rest of us are free to throw stones
> as we wish but that's mainly part of the education process for us.
>
> "communication" Yes, the scientists have a responsibility to communicate
> their work and most don't do it very well. But doesn't the audience have a
> responsibility to listen respectfully as well? And to have some degree of
> scientific literacy to be able to understand it?
>
> "policy" Scientists should not set policy. They aren't good at it. They
> are good at describing nature. Let's have some intellectual honesty by
> recognizing what are the facts of nature. As a society, we can decide what
> we intend to do about it. At this point, we may well decide to do nothing.
> If that's the majority preference in our democracy, then so be it. But
> let's have the honesty to say that we've heard the facts and decided not to
> do anything (or relatively little) about it rather than try to cover our
> tracks but claiming that the scientists have it wrong, can't be trusted, our
> wisdom is superior to theirs, they are distorted by conspiratorial
> money-grubbers, or whatever.
>
> Enough said. I want to move on to other topics.
>
> Randy
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
> *To:* Randy Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net>
> *Cc:* asa@calvin.edu
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 25, 2007 10:39 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [asa] Creation Care
>
>
> *You say "it's irresponsible to ingore contrarian views". I would ask, on
> what basis do you decide which contrarian views to reject and which ones to
> value? Who is the arbiter?*
>
> Why must there be a single person or single community that serves
> as arbiter? That approach always leads to tyranny.
>
> Reason, wisdom, experience, common sense, faith, and revelation, in
> varying proportions as the circumstances dicate, is the basis on which we
> need to evaluate truth claims and make decisions. A recapture of the
> classicle virtue of phronesis and the Biblical virtue of wisdom is what we
> need. The last thing we need is to abrogate our duty to think for ourselves
> to some supposedly authoritative community. Most people are not as stupid
> as other people think they are.
>
> It seems to me that you're coming dangerously close to the zeitgeist that
> takes "the literature" as a sort of secular scripture and the scientific
> community as a sort of secular priesthood. Of course practical wisdom
> relies on the recommendations of trained experts and recognizes the motives
> of the experts' political critics -- but it never, never sloughs off the
> duty to think carefully and weigh everything in the balances simply because
> of expert authority. Even beyond the simple and obvious truth that all
> human knowledge is historically and socially situated, we as Christians know
> in particular the every temporal social structure, every community,
> scientific, ecclesiastical, political, familial whatever, is deeply
> corrupted by sin and therefore cannot be authoritative in an ultimate
> sense. To put it in somewhat Kuyperian terms, each of these communities
> have a certain type of authority and certain roles within their given
> spheres, as well as certain relationships to each other; none of them is a
> meta-authority.
>
> *String theory is not consensus in the sense of being tested
> experimentally and found to be consistent.*
> **
> And string theorists would say that their models are sound and elegant,
> and that if you don't have the many years of training required to really
> understand them, you shouldn't question them. See, the authority game gets
> pecked away bit by bit, and the response always is, "well *that* community
> of science doesn't really have it's act together, but *this* one does."
> But then *that* community of science says, "who are you to say we don't
> have our act together?" Who, then, is the arbiter of which community of
> science gets to be the arbiter?
>
> *Allowing the shrill voices of critics who have no competing models, who
> have no in-depth understanding of the field, to prevent action is also
> unacceptable.*
>
> Perhaps, but censoring criticism is equally unacceptable. If the critics
> really have no in-depth understanding of the field, let the mainstream
> voices demonstrate that through facts and argument. If that can't be
> demonstrated through facts and argument, maybe the critics know more than
> the mainstream thinks.
>
> As to "no competing models" -- that line, IMHO, though, is a canard when
> it comes to policy making. If a model is advanced the demands very costly
> social action, criticism of the model can be very valuable *even if the
> critic has no competing model*. Simply avoiding the costs of the faulty
> mainstream model would be a good thing.
>
> Having said all this, let me reiterate: I personally think global warming
> is a real problem that is substantially caused by human actions, and that
> some political action is necessary. I am not convinced that anyone can say
> the problem will be catastrophic in any given time frame, however. But I am
> most sure that censoring debate and arguing from authority is a bad
> precedent to set, particularly if we want to approach the science-policy
> nexus from a thoroughly Christian perspective.
>
>
> On 1/25/07, Randy Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> > I'm actually a fan of Smolin and don't like string theory either. I do
> think, however, that you may be applying Smolin's comments in slightly the
> wrong way. String theory is not consensus in the sense of being tested
> experimentally and found to be consistent. He's talking about the relative
> distribution of funds in fields where there is no consensus of proven
> models. He's talking about the tendency to fund research in new areas
> according to the fad of string theory. The issue of what work to fund long
> before there's consensus is actually the more interesting part of scientific
> research and I've spent much of my career doing that.
> >
> > Once a field has an appreciable degree of success in explaining data the
> research in that field moves to digging deeper and refining the big picture
> as well as understanding the next layer of the onion. You say "it's
> irresponsible to ingore contrarian views". I would ask, on what basis do you
> decide which contrarian views to reject and which ones to value? Who is the
> arbiter? Are you the arbiter and we must convince you? Is the general
> public? Is it the freerepublic bloggers? Is it the amateur scientists
> sitting on the sidelines throwing potshots? Is it those of us on this list
> with just enough knowledge to be dangerous? You say "if the contrarian view
> is clearly wrong, that should be demonstrable..." but who will demonstrate
> that? Who is responsible for deciding whether Glassman's paper on CO2 in the
> ocean is correct or not? Who will decide if John Baumgartner is right in his
> C-14 assertions? Who will decide if Russell Humphreys is right in his
> cosmological cooling? Do we vote to see if we have a majority? Do we give
> equal weighting to every commentator?
> >
> > The solution has actually evolved over a few hundred years in the
> scientific methodology. Imperfect as it is, it has been shown over and over
> to work. That certainly does NOT mean that all peer-reviewed publications
> are correct. Far from it. In the past I've opined that as many as 80% of
> published papers might have errors. The beauty of the system is that over
> time, the fraudulent work gets exposed and the right ideas are independently
> corroborated and confirmed. Cynics like Janice who think the system is so
> thoroughly corrupt that nothing can be trusted have no evidence to back up
> their conspiracy theories and have a tremendous amount of counterexamples to
> explain away. As far as I know, virtually all known frauds in science have
> been ferreted out and corrected from within the scientific community, not
> from the outside.
> >
> > I really don't buy this "precautionary" stuff. Once a technical
> community has reached the level of consensus like that which the
> climatologists have shown, then it becomes irresponsible for us not to act
> accordingly. Granted, there could be the unusual occurrence of two
> consecutive volcanos greater than Mt. Pinatuba only 2 years apart and all
> bets are off. But we don't hold off action because such a rare event might
> occur. We are responsible before God to act on the basis of the
> understanding he has given us. Allowing the shrill voices of critics who
> have no competing models, who have no in-depth understanding of the field,
> to prevent action is also unacceptable.
> >
> > Jonah was reluctant to go to Ninevah because he feared his dire
> predictions wouldn't come true and he would be shown a fool. God
> straightened him out, he went, preached God's word and, sure enough, the
> people repented, God didn't judge Ninevah, and Jonah's fears came true. The
> city was spared. We can and should pray that we will be spared as well but
> that shouldn't stop our actions.
> >
> > Randy
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: David Opderbeck
> > To: Randy Isaac
> > Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> > Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 10:30 PM
> > Subject: Re: [asa] Creation Care
> >
> >
> > ... who are the final arbiters of controversies in scientific debates?
> I think we need to educate the public about scientific methodology and the
> need to rely on the scientific publication process as part of authoritative
> opinion. Without that, there's no resolution.
> >
> > Randy, let me push back and play the contrarian a bit here. I hope
> everyone will forgive a long response, but I find this fascinating, and
> important.
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > So I would say this: yes, we must take seriously the consensus of
> working scientists in any given field as reflected in the peer reviewed
> literature. However, we must also retain the rational and political freedom
> to evaluate consensus claims on the merits, being always mindful that the
> authority of all human communities, including communities of science, is
> necessarily limited by social dynamics and sin. Because of this, it's
> irresponsible to ignore contrarian views, even if they are not a significant
> part of the peer reviewed literature. This is particularly true where the
> science in question is critical to public policy and democratic debate. If
> the contrarian view is clearly wrong, that should be demonstrable based on
> the rational strength of the consensus view, without resort to arguments
> from authority.
> >
>
>
>
> --
> David W. Opderbeck
> Web: http://www.davidopderbeck.com
> Blog: http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
> MySpace (Music): http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke
>
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Web:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com
Blog:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
MySpace (Music):  http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke
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