Re: [asa] Teaching ID and teaching that Gobal Warming is not real

Frankly, I think the "400 Prominent Scientists" deserve more of a hearing than most participants in this forum seem willing to give them. In particular, the "scientific consensus" doesn't appear to be as much of a consensus as some are claiming. Many of the statements contained in that referenced report (U. S. Senate Report:...) have at least some ring of truth to me as one who has been a professional Earth scientist (geophysicist) for 25 years.

Not that I think there is no basis for the "scientific consensus" on global warming; as far as I know, the climate scientists who join in that consensus are doing "good Earth science." But once again I insist that Earth science is not physics, and much thought, debate and investigation must precede any political action that is based on Earth science predictions. The oil industry must spend its hundreds of millions drilling wells on the chance that their Earth scientists' predictions might be right; but to gamble in a similar way with the world's economy is a whole other level of risk-taking.

It's fairly clear that economic development has been the road to improved standards of living. Politicians must be very careful about erecting roadblocks.

Further, I find the term "GW deniers" offensive when applied loosely to anyone who questions any part of the "scientific consensus." I consider this expression, among others in a similar vein, to be part of an attempt to intimidate people and inappropriately shut down dissension. (Jump on our bandwagon, you idiots!) I suspect just about everybody acknowledges evidences of climate warming, particularly as it manifests itself in the northern polar regions and in observed glacier shrinkage. Not everyone is willing to accept the "scientific consensus" predictions concerning what those evidences mean. The predictions may well be the best that scientists can do from their models, but Earth science models are notoriously prone to error.

Scientists must generate the best possible models, but in Earth sciences they must be willing not to take them too seriously and improve them over time.

Unlike Earth scientists' predictions in the petroleum industry, which are tested regularly, the climate scientists predictions have never truly been put to significant tests. It's one thing to get a good match with the past, it's an entirely different thing to predict the future. Earth science is full of unknowns, and it necessarily relies on data that often need to be "conditioned." And unlike in physics, no one controls the systems being investigated.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Michael Roberts
  To: David Campbell ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2008 3:41 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Teaching ID and teaching that Gobal Warming is not real

  We also need to note that GW deniers include Calvin Beisner who has weird
  ideas of the curse, yet is listened to by the Acton Inst , SBC and gave a
  hairy deposition to the senate last year.
  See the various depositions on
  :
  http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=e39940af-802a-23ad-4371-252edd78194f.

  : Here's what he wrote!

  . On July 25, 2006, the ISA responded with An Open Letter to the Signers of
  "Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action"...and Others Concerned About
  Global Warming, signed by more than 130 scholars, theologians, scientists,
  economists, and other leaders, including James A. Borland, D. A. Carson,
  Guillermo Gonzalez, Wayne Grudem, James Kennedy, Michael Oard, Joseph A.
  Pipa, Robert L. Reymond, and Jay W. Richards.

  Thank goodness Cizik and Ball are countering this kind of nonsense.

  Michael

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Received on Sat Jan 5 09:25:48 2008