Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Trial Of The Century?

4 Comments

Yet another piece on the Mann suit, in support of freedom of expression. This part is incorrect, though:

So Mann’s lawsuit now proceeds and unless a settlement is reached, pre-trial discovery will make public both the critics’ motivations and the details of Mann’s research.

No, the trial will not move forward unless and until the appellate court rules against us.

[Update a few minutes later]

A useful science/policy scale.

4 thoughts on “The Trial Of The Century?”

  1. On the scale, there should be another point within “Science” but before “No Faith in Science”. That point would be labelled “Little Faith In Scientists“.

    In a Venn diagram, “Science” and “What Scientists Do” merely intersect – the mapping is not bijective, much as some would like us to believe.

  2. The policy scale also has mitigation as spending less money and this really isn’t true if you are actively trying to mitigate changes in the climate regardless of what causes them. And it really doesn’t capture the argument that the proposed solutions will or wont solve anything.

    To expand on Bart’s point, you can have faith in science and still not buy into AGW. And it is interesting that that end of the scale has “no faith” as if following science is some sort of religion. Wouldn’t the other end of the scale be, “has faith” in global warming apocalypse? The belief at the extreme, but populated by a majority of believers, that global warming leads to apocalypse and has nothing to do with science but rather a evolutionary fear of the future, which is always uncertain.

    1. I’ve held that fear of CAGW is more than just fear of the future, it’s an innate fear that the god’s will punish us for over-indulgence or excess, which is a theme that pops up in a great many religions. You can rarely get a believer to even think that the consequences of over-indulgence might actually be not only not catastrophic, but exceedingly good, because they are certain that the divine or karmic retribution for sin must be horrifyingly painful.

      1. “You can rarely get a believer to even think that the consequences of over-indulgence might actually be not only not catastrophic, but exceedingly good”

        George, what does the “over” in “over-indulgence” mean?

        But lest you think that I’m one of the people you’re talking about, I think the following method for addressing global climate change would be a real hoot: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0102126

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