Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Well I think most have observed some major obtusiosity on this thread, but it hasn't been from George.

Foxfyre wrote:

Well I think most have observed some major obtusiosity on this thread, but it hasn't been from George.

I'll agree with you there Fox.

We have also observed a lot of people claiming they don't know the science but that hasn't stopped them from claiming their position is better simply because they don't know it.

I believe even the revered Thomas Aquinas would be impressed by the continued affection of the advocates of the AGW obsession for the Argument from Authority which they so fervently repeat (along with assurances that they themselves don't understand the science involved any more than they do the arcane details of Neolithic Anatolian pottery).

Again it is the psychological implications of this situation -- in which so many unquestioningly accept the prescription that mankind must abandon its modern technologies and all the progress they have brought, in order to avoid an apocalyptic doom forecast by a self-interested priesthood whose cant they don't profess to understand -- that so fascinates me.

Perhaps the true environmental; zealots will soon come up with a form of the "Rapture" in which they and other true believers will be wisked away to a celestial Marin county, just before the deserved doom engulfs the unbelieving masses.

The evangelicals of the secular left strongly resemble their close cousin opposite numbers -- though they fervently deny it.

Yours is precisely the same argument that the Inquisition used to convict Gallaleo. Their authority was Aristotle.

(I always figured there was a Dominican dogmatist lurking in your soul)

Whereas you, Galileo, son of the late Vaincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, were in the year 1615 denounced to this Holy Office for holding as true the false doctrine taught by some that the Sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the Earth moves, and also with a diurnal motion; for having disciples to whom you taught the same doctrine; for holding correspondence with certain mathematicians of Germany concerning the same; for having printed certain letters, entitled "On the Sunspots," wherein you developed the same doctrine as true; and for replying to the objections from the Holy Scriptures, which from time to time were urged against it, by glossing the said Scriptures according to your own meaning: and whereas there was thereupon produced the copy of a document in the form of a letter, purporting to be written by you to one formerly your disciple, and in this divers propositions are set forth, following the position of Copernicus, which are contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture:
This Holy Tribunal being therefore of intention to proceed against the disorder and mischief thence resulting, which went on increasing to the prejudice of the Holy Faith, by command of His Holiness and of the Most Eminent Lords Cardinals of this supreme and universal Inquisition, the two propositions of the stability of the Sun and the motion of the Earth were by the theological Qualifiers qualified as follows:

The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.

pshaw

Appeal from/to authority takes this form:

John makes a claim
There's something positive about John
Therefore John's claim is true.
(eg it's true if Plato said it, or it's true if the Pope says it, or it's true if Bush says it, etc)

But it is quite a different thing to hold that where a preponderance of experts in a field concur that X is probable, then it is entirely reasonable to think that they may well have it right and less reasonable to believe that a contrarian minority has it right.

In this case (AGW) the self-styled experts have declared their predictions to be sufficiently certain as to require enough expenditure to threaten the economies of the world's developed nations and to inhibit or stop the development of poor countries where disease and poverty still rule.

my metaphor about the secular environmentalist rapture in a celestial Marin County was truly inspired.

There's no exaggeration here at all?

Your cap would not feed a angel-on-pinhead sized ungulate for more than a day, having but a single straw in it. Though I note that straw.

But it is quite a different thing to hold that where a preponderance of experts in a field concur that X is probable, then it is entirely reasonable to think that they may well have it right and less reasonable to believe that a contrarian minority has it right.

I agree if "X" is the proposition: "Under business as usual, the Earth's atmosphrere will warm by an unknown amount, most likely about 5°F over the next 100 years".

But it is quite a different thing to hold that where a preponderance of experts in a field concur that X is probable, then it is entirely reasonable to think that they may well have it right and less reasonable to believe that a contrarian minority has it right.

But business is NEVER as usual !

1) Since we want science to inform our public policy, and since most citizens aren't scientists, it's inevitable that we use arguments from the authority of scientists. This is also fair, as long as the scientific community continues to allocate positions of authority to scientists who are good at figuring out facts. Currently I see no problem with this constraint.

2) It's important to keep in mind that a scientist's proper authority is limited to the specific field that he works in. This is important because global warming policies affect many scientific fields. Climatologists have authority to tell us that global warming is real, and that it's man made. Economists have expertise in answering what material damage global warming will cause, what the cost of preventing it is, and how to make good decisions under uncertainty. Neither climatologists nor economists are experts on the ethics of it all.

So even if you accept that we need arguments from authority in the global warming debate, you still have to be careful about scientists exceeding the bounds of their proper authority.

But business is NEVER as usual !
What the GIEC pro-interventionnists forget to say that their business as usual scenarios presume that an 2100 Earther will be 1600% ie 17x richer than now with scenarii A1B or A1FI (table 1 of this link). That is a 2100 Chinese will be richer than an 2000 American. And they conclude that's a catastrophe that must be mitigated !!!!

Besides, theses scenarios assume that CO2 emission per capita increases in an unrealistic manner (in one case +67%, in another fantasmagoric case +339%) whereas CO2 emission per capita has NOT increased over the last 20 years even with spectacular improvement in our standards of living.