More on the Climate Study Scandal
An opinion found at John C. Wright's blog.
Perhaps I should do a full disclosure here. I have no dog in this fight. I am skeptical of claims of anthropogenic climate warming largely because I do not understand the full science of how one would separate anthropogenic from natural cyclic climate warming. (Being a palaeontologist, gives one a vast time-span of considerably warmer average Earth temperatures to consider.)
I do think the whole question largely wrong-headed, because it derails an essential question in service of a lesser goal. The question is not so much whether or not continual pollution of the environment is causing warming as it is whether or not our continued befoulment of the environment is appropriate under any circumstances. The whole climate issue moves us from a moral ground to a practical ground, and I find that another example of utilitarian arguments that do not advance the human (humane) cause in any reasonable way.
But ultimately, the conduct of the scientists in this controversy, if verified and true, is antithetical to both method and stated purpose of science--the discovery of the truth as encoded in the natural world. Science serving a political agenda is frequently questionable and often catastrophic.
Perhaps I should do a full disclosure here. I have no dog in this fight. I am skeptical of claims of anthropogenic climate warming largely because I do not understand the full science of how one would separate anthropogenic from natural cyclic climate warming. (Being a palaeontologist, gives one a vast time-span of considerably warmer average Earth temperatures to consider.)
I do think the whole question largely wrong-headed, because it derails an essential question in service of a lesser goal. The question is not so much whether or not continual pollution of the environment is causing warming as it is whether or not our continued befoulment of the environment is appropriate under any circumstances. The whole climate issue moves us from a moral ground to a practical ground, and I find that another example of utilitarian arguments that do not advance the human (humane) cause in any reasonable way.
But ultimately, the conduct of the scientists in this controversy, if verified and true, is antithetical to both method and stated purpose of science--the discovery of the truth as encoded in the natural world. Science serving a political agenda is frequently questionable and often catastrophic.
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