Science writer Erick Vance asks why conservatives aren’t in favor of or proposing solutions to deal with climate change. Isn’t it an issue right up their alley? Conversation ensued.
Science writer Erick Vance asks why conservatives aren’t in favor of or proposing solutions to deal with climate change. Isn’t it an issue right up their alley? Conversation ensued.
Why should we propose solutions to a situation we don’t see as a problem. The evidence for destructive global warming is scanty. The evidence that it is man-made is even thinner. In fact the indicators have started to reverse, as you would expect a cyclical pattern to do. So, if there is not really a problem, no solution is needed.
Because they’ve read the hacked emails.
The global warming scare is all about increasing government power, which is, you know, kind of what conservatives are against.
Ten years ago I took a health class from a state university to complete a general education requirement. A question on the final exam asked about the causes of global warming. I replied that Global Warming was invented after the Global Cooling scare of the 1970’s had failed to generate enough panic to produce government funding to study it. Later, when global cooling was introduced, promoters used better scare tactics resulting in government funded studies, each of which concluded that more study was needed. Soon an entire industry was formed around the government funded study of global warming. In other words, Global Warming, now called Climate Change since it’s not warming anymore, is caused by government funded research.
I got an A, verifying my observation that the instructor had spent most of the quarter distancing herself from the material she had to teach.
In fact, I am yet to read findings from any government funded study on any topic that doesn’t conclude that more study is needed.
Ha! Your last statement is remarkable, and I believe it.
I wanted to leave a comment in the thread I linked to, but I goofed up the login and lost what I’d written. Others have made the case for skepticism already. My main point was to recall the psychologist I wrote a post on a few months ago, who said professionals in many fields have a disappointing tendency to think in a pack on hot topics. Naturally, this would be one of those topics.
I wonder if an anonymous survey could be taken of research scientists to determine how willing they would be to report data that would end their current jobs.
It’s been interesting to see how various Sf writers have responded to Climategate. While John Wright treated it as a serious breach of ethics (the science scandal of the century), others, such as Charlie Stross (Peter Watts, etc.) treated it as more or less a non-event. (Watts claimed that science was a tough business, and this is just the way the game is played.)