If the selectivity employed by climate denialists in choosing their ‘authorities’ were made into an industrial process, it could be used to filter gold from seawater. Of course if their sources can sound sort of “sciencey” while pretending some expertise in current climate science, they can depend on a lot of attention from journalists whose ability to distinguish real experts from fake ones approximates the value of their journalism degree.
Jeffrey Shallit at Recursivity discusses one important climate-denialist’s tool in : “Credential inflation”. (Thanks to my son for the link) And while we’re on the subject, Tim Lambert at Deltoid. gives us assurance that “You too can be a distinguished climate scientist”. Of course the techniques work equally well no matter what reality you’re denying, be it anthropogenic climate change, evolution, or the poor track record of “abstinence-only” sex education.
As understanding climate change is a problem for the layman, the surrounding meta-problem is understanding just what constitutes “scientific expertise”. This is not as simple as it sounds. To the rescue (from Framing Science) is this wonderful, ongoing 10-part CBC radio series, “How to think about science”. You can listen online or download .mp3 files. So far I’ve listened to
- episode 1, an interview with Simon Schaffer, author of Leviathan And The Air-Pump, a seminal and controversial work of science philosophy that explores how trust is mediated in science.
- episode 2, interview with Lorraine Daston, director of the Max Planck institute for the History of Science in Berlin and author with Peter Galison of the new book, Objectivity, which examines the history of how we have come to model the understanding of nature. Less than two hours after I listened to the podcast, David Ng at The World’s Fair posted a great review of her book on his blog: Objectivity: True-to-Nature, Mechanical, and through Trained Judgment.
Which leads me to the most extraordinary scientific find of the week: a relevant “Cathy” cartoon. I noticed it by accident in today’s paper. Believe it or not, here’s the usually lame comic strip “Cathy” exhibiting what Daston would call “mechanical objectivity” in accordance with 19th century science…
Man, the world just keeps getting stranger and stranger.
Yeah, but scales are a form of objective truth. I many cases they’re calibrated to legal standards, to back up the truth.
Sizes on the other hand; they’re like opinions. Flattering and telling attractive lies.
I just noted another point:
Or is it:
Which works pretty well on the general dismissiveness scale.
A “Too-distinguished climate scientist” – that would be Reid Bryson. He is very distinguished indeed, and had a fine career in climatology, but he got stuck somewhere back there.
He floated the idea of a new ice age back in the 1970’s, and the popular press (think Newsweek) snatched up the idea and ran with it. He is the denialists favorite excuse when they say “Scientists all predicted global cooling in the ‘70’s.”
Well yeah, if by “all scientists” you mean “Reid Bryson.” Considerably past his sell-by date, he makes a living today as a cranky climate contrarian. As you might imagine, he’s very much in demand.
Part ot the problem is the tendency for most to think about science in linear/Newtonian paadigms…plus vested interests, denial born of fear, this is not a recipe for clarity. It will be interesting to see what the deniars make of http://www.cbc.ca/cp/science/080102/g010213A.html
Oh, any natural cause just makes their whole day. They’re past denying global warming, now they’ve retrenched into “but humans aren’t causing it.” Of course it’s either one or the other; natural cycles OR anthropogenic causes. Unlucky combinations of the two wouldn’t exist and if they did they’d relieve us of all responsibility so we can keep wasting and polluting. Or failing that, Jesus will return.