#ProTip to “scientists.” We have never been heading into a “known” climate. At least they included some cautionary voices, from people like Christie, Pielke, and Curry, even if they shoved them to the end.
And speaking of Judith, she has some thoughts on the “social costs” of carbon:
The bottom line is: water, food, energy. Heck, even the folks attending Davos get it. People need it and large numbers of people want more of it. And there are more and more people all the time. A single minded focus on reducing CO2 emissions neglects a lot of real problems facing many nations across the globe.
Climate variability and change impacts water, food and energy. But there isn’t much we can do to influence the climate on the timescale of the 21st century — however much we have impacted the climate over the past 70 years or so, those impacts (large or small) will work their way through climate system over the next centuries as the oceans act as a big flywheel on the climate system.
Back to the question posed by Revkin: Will Trump’s climate team accept any social cost of carbon? Well, I hope not.
I hope not, too. The uncertainty is far too great.
[Update a while later]
As usual, the “threats to science” come from the Left.
#ProTip: Science is neither "true" or "false." Truth is for philosophy. Science is merely a powerful method for understanding natural world. https://t.co/6vUGtrX20Y
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2017
I really wish scientists could explain the Younger Dryas. Maybe then I’ll take them seriously.
Anything with the word “social” in it as an adjective means the opposite of what it is supposed to mean. Social Justice, Social Cost, Social Security…
so the science of combustion .. the science of why a piece of paper will combust when heat is applied isn’t true or false? Would not the science beable to predict a true or false outcome? Either the science of why the paper will combust or not is observable or not? True or false?
I would think your statement is the philosophy? Not whether the science of nature is true or not.
The search for truth is for philosophers, not scientists. Science is about attempting to understand the natural world.
The best, according to Popper, at least, is that you can make the claim false.
What is the latest record increase and the margin of error?
Would not the science beable to predict a true or false outcome?
This isn’t happening though.
As a philosopher by training and scientist by inclination, I’m … uncomfortable with the formulation.
Science does not – and I think this is the intended point – give us moral guidance; it does not tell us what we should value. (It’s great for deciding what to do re. the natural world and technology once we have valuations those relate to.)
But it does provide us with true statements, boats of ’em, and many many examples of discarded false ones; one cannot understand the natural world except via true statements about it, no? True things are truths, thus science does, meaningfully, generate truth, if done as actual science.
Science can and ideally should generate truths; it does not generate Theological (so to speak) Truth.
The problem is that many people don’t distinguish between Truth and truth (which is in fact part of the debate going on with the climate religion, and scientism in general). I would say that we can declare things false in science, but never declare them true.
I do think, though, you need to be careful about what you mean when you say “true” there.
Science, fundamentally, is about generating algorithms to predict future observation results. If you’re not making successful predictions, it’s not science. If you are doing science, it doesn’t tell you anything about what those observations *mean*. Nobody understands WTH quantum mechanics means, or what truth it implies, but it’s a great way to predict certain things.
” Nobody understands WTH quantum mechanics means, or what truth it implies, but it’s a great way to predict certain things.”
I exist in a state of superposition in which I do and do not know what it means. Excuse me, I’ve got a cat to feed. Or, not.
The problem with truth and science is that there are too many examples to list of things thought to be the truth and later turned out not to be so.
The current environment surrounding climate apocalypse has less to do with truth than it does morality. At least Christians, Jews, Muslims, ect are aware they are following a set of religious beliefs. That there are so many people who claim to be non-religious and view themselves as evolutionarily superior, more enlightened, and smarter than the rest of the populace are not even self aware of their own deeply held religious beliefs is rather frightening, or funny if the stakes weren’t so large.
“Climate change is the religion of people who think they’re too smart for religion” – Tom Nelson