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Is Scientific Consensus a Threat to Democracy?
chance_encounter writes "President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus has published an article in the Financial Times in which he seems to equate the current global warming debate with totalitarian thought control: 'The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced ... The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.' At the end of the article he proposes several suggestions to improve the global climate debate, including this point: 'Let us resist the politicization of science and oppose the term "scientific consensus," which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority.'"
A physicist explains science to third graders:
We take a vote. I ask how we decide who is right, and then I do the experiment... I emphasize that science is not a democracy, it is not the majority but the experiment that decides what is correct.
Sums it up pretty nicely.
Wait... you're kidding, right?
(Step Two: Make a point)
You seriously somehow got the illusion that the 'billions' poured into computer simulations even begins to approach the scale of money involved modern industrial production?
(Step Three: Condescension, with implication of lack of real-world knowledge)
I'm afraid you simply have a lot to learn about how money works in the real world.
(Step Four: ???)
Irish line dancing is the single largest cause of global climate change, after everything else.
(Step Five: Profit!)
You, sir, are just plain dead wrong. There is no "real" money in science research... if they were doing it for Profit!, they wouldn't be spending their days being ridiculed by the likes of you - they'd be out shorting stock for flood insurance companies.
groupthink: It's good for self-esteem.
On one hand, you have scientists paid to do research by the government and other public organizations, with no instructions on what they can and cannot publish. These scientists are not paid more if they find that global warming is anthropogenic than if they find that it's not. If you think otherwise, you're drinking the Crichton kool-aid, and are subscribing to the biggest conspiracy theory of them all.
You obviously don't work in academia. Academia works off of grants. Grants are given to study specific things. Two huge sources of grants are AIDS and global warming. So, for instance, if you wanted to research herpes (not that well funded), the easiest way to get that money would be to go after an AIDS grant and research how herpes spread has been affected by AIDS. Similarly, if you want to study elephants in Africa, you would try to get a grant from a climate change group to study how global warming has affected the migration patterns of elephants in Africa. Those organizations that actually give the grants get THEIR funding based on the research that comes back. So if a research paper comes back and says "global warming is not much of a problem", the organization that gave the grant might not have as large a budget next year. It's essentially chopping off the branch you're standing on. Now, if you come back and say "global warming is a huge problem", you'll get more press, the organization that funded you gets more money, you get even more grants to do your research.
Now about your point that oil companies fund the anti-global warming research. The number I've heard on the money oil companies have contributed is in the tens of millions (this from an environmentalist group, I forget which). The actual global warming research being performed from grants in gov't agencies and whatnot? Billions. Now is it a surprise that the scientists on each side of the issue is proportionate to the amount of funding on each side? Let's just say I'm a little skeptical.