Re: [asa] IPCC

On Feb 16, 2007, at 9:08 PM, Bill Hamilton wrote:

> I believe David has a really good point here. Lawmakers are
> generally not
> educated in the sciences. And scientists are frequently not
> educated in
> economics or law or any of the other bodies of knowledge needed to
> make society
> function. There has to be a level of trust established among
> scientists,
> lawmakers, practitioners of other disciplines, and the public.

Absolutely. The coarsening of the public debate over the last several
decades has in turn caused the various domain experts and the general
public not to trust each other. Thus, layman do science, scientists
do politics, and lawyers do economics, etc. This breaks down the
natural division of labor and produces non-optimal solutions. We
could spend until Jesus returns trying to finger point who was
responsible. It's not profitable to rehash the past here, so let's
look to the future instead.

Randy has asked what can the ASA do to extend its reach. This is it.
Of all the various groups out there, the ASA is one of the few that
doesn't have a vested interest save the good of humanity and God's
Creation. If we want to have the political leaders trust us, then we
need to take the risk and trust them that if we give them good
science then they will come up with good policy. Janice will
undoubtedly again call me naive and I will again take that as a
compliment because there is good reason for optimism here. For
example, none of the major candidates for President in either party
is now denying the problem of climate change. Even within the Bush
Administration I see evidence of things turing around. Our political
leaders will be asking for good faith advise and we should give them
that, being truthful not only for what we know but also being clear
what we don't and without a bias towards any political agenda. That
way, they can make wise public policy decisions for the good of
everyone, most especially the poor.

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Received on Mon Feb 19 17:28:09 2007