Weird Science
What to make of this?
The first thing I looked for is, "what did he change?" The transgressions seem to have taken place in matters of emphasis. He added "significant and fundamental" before "uncertainties" in a section assessing the solidity of the evidence for climate change. He added the "extremely" in the sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."
This is not really kosher. The man is not a scientist. On the other hand, adding adjectives and adverbs is not the same thing as, say, changing "3" to "7." You can say "Michael Jackson is guilty," or "Michael Jackson is very, very guilty," and you have'nt changed the fundamental statement. The most intrusive editing that Cooney did, as I read the reporting on this, is x-ing out a paragraph describing the projected reduction of glaciers and snowpack. But that's a projection, not a statement of scientific data.
Yet projections are an important part of science, and I had rather the paragraph had stayed in, and Cooney had not had a hand in editing these reports. One of the critiques of the Bush II administration that has never been refuted is that it has little regard for science when it clashes with political goals. And if there is bad science, fzzy thinking, and politically motivated grandstanding among climate change alarmists -- there's a ton of it, if you're wondering -- the way to correct it is not with a lawyer's blue pencil, but with a more rigorous investigation of the forces that drive climate change.
My criticism of this field always has been that the world's climate changes dramatically all the time -- look at the paleo-climatology of the last 20,000 years (an instant, in geological time) if you want to see how much.
Until we understand that, we can't begin to understand how, and how much, human activity is changing this. But there are plenty of sensible reasons to cut back on pollution even without this evidence in place, and I hope most people agree on this. You're talking to someone who just traded in a Camry for a Prius yesterday.
"Scientists are best equipped to inform the public about climate science, not White House lawyers," says Naomi Oreskes of the University of California, San Diego. "People have a right to know the truth about climate science and the scientific consensus on the seriousness of this problem," she says.
The science and the sociology are so intertwined on this issue, it's going to be impossible to keep them apart. Anyone adult enough to have a class consciousness, or an opinion about world poverty or American materialism, is not going to be able to keep it in a box long enough to study climate change thoroughly.
Especially the climate-change alarmists, who seem at times opposed to American materialism for personal and political reasons more than environmental ones. Bush's reluctance to admit climate change from human activity is at times compared to his expressed sympathies for creationism. But it's the passionate climate change doomsday pundits who remind me of the creationists who send us letters to the editor. The letters always start by being very scientific:
And so forth. But by the end of the letter, all the science has fallen away, and alarm over social realities blares forth, along with the millennial solution:
Ideally, when a situation becomes so politically polarized that anyone within it is tainted by one perspective of the two, you reach outside the closed system to find an impartial observer. In the late 1930s, when the Carnegie Corporation wanted to fund an in-depth study of race relations in America, it realized no one born and raised here, black or white, could really do the work without prejudice. So it reached acrss the ocean and selected Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal, who produced a classic work, "An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy."
But unless you can find a Martian scientist to study Earth's climate, we don't have that option.
Documents released by a watchdog group, the Government Accountability Project, show that as chief of staff for the White House council on environmental quality, Philip Cooney watered down government scientific papers on climate change and played up uncertainties in the scientific literature. Mr Cooney is a law graduate and has no scientific training. [The Guardian]
The first thing I looked for is, "what did he change?" The transgressions seem to have taken place in matters of emphasis. He added "significant and fundamental" before "uncertainties" in a section assessing the solidity of the evidence for climate change. He added the "extremely" in the sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."
This is not really kosher. The man is not a scientist. On the other hand, adding adjectives and adverbs is not the same thing as, say, changing "3" to "7." You can say "Michael Jackson is guilty," or "Michael Jackson is very, very guilty," and you have'nt changed the fundamental statement. The most intrusive editing that Cooney did, as I read the reporting on this, is x-ing out a paragraph describing the projected reduction of glaciers and snowpack. But that's a projection, not a statement of scientific data.
Yet projections are an important part of science, and I had rather the paragraph had stayed in, and Cooney had not had a hand in editing these reports. One of the critiques of the Bush II administration that has never been refuted is that it has little regard for science when it clashes with political goals. And if there is bad science, fzzy thinking, and politically motivated grandstanding among climate change alarmists -- there's a ton of it, if you're wondering -- the way to correct it is not with a lawyer's blue pencil, but with a more rigorous investigation of the forces that drive climate change.
My criticism of this field always has been that the world's climate changes dramatically all the time -- look at the paleo-climatology of the last 20,000 years (an instant, in geological time) if you want to see how much.
Until we understand that, we can't begin to understand how, and how much, human activity is changing this. But there are plenty of sensible reasons to cut back on pollution even without this evidence in place, and I hope most people agree on this. You're talking to someone who just traded in a Camry for a Prius yesterday.
"Scientists are best equipped to inform the public about climate science, not White House lawyers," says Naomi Oreskes of the University of California, San Diego. "People have a right to know the truth about climate science and the scientific consensus on the seriousness of this problem," she says.
The science and the sociology are so intertwined on this issue, it's going to be impossible to keep them apart. Anyone adult enough to have a class consciousness, or an opinion about world poverty or American materialism, is not going to be able to keep it in a box long enough to study climate change thoroughly.
Especially the climate-change alarmists, who seem at times opposed to American materialism for personal and political reasons more than environmental ones. Bush's reluctance to admit climate change from human activity is at times compared to his expressed sympathies for creationism. But it's the passionate climate change doomsday pundits who remind me of the creationists who send us letters to the editor. The letters always start by being very scientific:
I think most parents want schools to teach kids facts. So there should be no debate over teaching intelligent design vs. evolution. Lets look at a few facts. The second law of thermodynamics says basically that all natural systems degenerate to disorder when left to themselves. The biogenetic law says life comes only from life. ... Science can be very good, but wrong theories or conclusions should not be taught as fact.
And so forth. But by the end of the letter, all the science has fallen away, and alarm over social realities blares forth, along with the millennial solution:
Although scientific theory may change year after year, Biblical facts and principles remain the same through the ages.
Is it any wonder that after telling kids there is no God, only the strong survive, you are a cosmic accident with no purpose, you are only an evolved animal that there are so many behavior problems, mental issues, abuse etc. The importance of this issue is eternal. If you’re a teacher seriously consider the consequences.
Ideally, when a situation becomes so politically polarized that anyone within it is tainted by one perspective of the two, you reach outside the closed system to find an impartial observer. In the late 1930s, when the Carnegie Corporation wanted to fund an in-depth study of race relations in America, it realized no one born and raised here, black or white, could really do the work without prejudice. So it reached acrss the ocean and selected Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal, who produced a classic work, "An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy."
But unless you can find a Martian scientist to study Earth's climate, we don't have that option.
