Science is just a "social invention" says The Wall Street Journal

A RRT member's response to:
"Consensus Science, the Law, and Al Gore"
(The Wall Street Journal: THURSDAY, APRIL 05, 2007)
Original article link courtesy of Wil Wirtanen:
http://tbirdblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/consensus-science-law-and-al-gore....

The article in the Wall Street Journal, found in the blog linked above, opens with an interesting twist. "Al Gore will have no trouble finding in Monday's Supreme Court ruling more evidence that global warming is a reality, indeed a dire threat." Right from the get go, it is "established" that not only is Gore having "no trouble" finding "evidence" of global warming in the Supreme Court's ruling, but that a Supreme Court Ruling is the same as evidence. It is an attempt to plant the seed in our minds that scientific evidence is just an opinion. However clever this may seem, it is fundamentally dishonest. While attacking Al Gore, a side notion is quietly slipped in. That idea is that science is just another point of view.

Everything in this life can be called into question. There is an old Harvard experiment involving eight subjects that is well known. It was designed as a test to investigate the effects of peer pressure on one's basic perceptions of his/her environment. A large arrow was placed upon a wall in a room. Eight subjects entered the chamber and were asked which way the arrow pointed, up or down. Seven out of the eight subjects, however, were told ahead of time to say that the arrow pointed up (it actually pointed down) leaving the eighth person to deal with a conflict between senses and reality. Of course, we could further debate what reality truly is in a Zen sort of way, but the arrow was indeed placed on the wall pointing up by the testers. We will take that as a given. As you might guess, the eighth person caved and said it pointed up. My point? Observable things can be interpreted many ways. But what if we honor the "consensus" that the arrow was pointing up when to do so meant that building would explode, just for the sake of argument? Wouldn't we be wise to dig a bit deeper to avoid that outcome? It might feel better in the short term to interpret what we see in the context of what we want. But it is a short-term trade off. The disease gripping our country now has a lot to do with people wanting things to be so that are simply not so. What does this mean for our planet?

The article continues to beat a very dead horse. This horse has been used by the Right Wing for years and is finally being seen for what it is. This is the tactic of creating doubt to win an argument. The technique is designed to ignore a trend or consensus that comes out of direct observation and cling to a small percentage of uncertainty and through repetition, make it larger than it's context. It is latching on to one tiny aspect of an overall picture in order to destroy the reasoning process. I have a feeling this will be addressed in Al Gore's new book "The Assault On Reason."

There are people that need Global Warming to be an
" irresolvable scientific uncertainty, of which the Supreme Court is the latest culprit/victim" to again quote the article.
They fall into a number of groups. One group's financial
solvency depends on Global warming being a hoax. Upton Sinclair says it well: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it"

Another group consists of people who are terrified of Al Gore winning the White House. WSJ: " The consensus that human activities are causing global warming is purely a social invention -- there's no way of showing it to be so, and no self-evident reason for preferring to believe it's so. The "consensus" is, in truth, a product of itself"

Social invention? Science is not simply a "social invention" and the quote above clearly shows the scientific ignorance of the author of this article. And, it flatly contradicts and earlier statement here:
"The link between smoking and cancer is made by observing millions of smokers and nonsmokers. Indeed, what led scientists to seek systematic evidence of a link in the first place was anecdotal evidence that smokers, of whom there have been millions, appeared to die in unusual numbers from lung cancer. Nothing remotely similar has been involved in developing the hypothesis (of global warming)" This quote seems to oddly, validate science citing "systematic evidence." The link between Global Warming and what we are seeing all over the world is being observed by millions of people in all climates. It has led to scientists seeking and finding systematic evidence that is completely in line with their observations. It is exactly similar to the smoking analogy.

And finally this quote:

" Sen. James Inhofe is notorious for saying the theory of manmade global warming is a "hoax." Obviously we need a better theory than Mr. Inhofe's of when head-counting is a useful way of estimating the validity of a factual proposition and when it isn't.
Mr. Gore's answer: "I accept the fact that the most respected scientists whose judgment I think is the best are now concerned that we may be in that territory."

I suggest that the people in denial about Global Warming, who are a cut above Inhofe's particular brand of crazy, want a more palatable smoke screen in order to better succeed in creating confusion about one of the most important and alarming truths of our time.
If we do not act, as Gore points out, because of arguments over whether it is 100% conclusive or %60 conclusive we are profoundly immoral. Perhaps it's time for a bit more science in our classrooms. The kind of obfuscation attempted in the Wall Street Journal would be a lot harder to pull off.

We can all see that things are changing on our planet. Which way will we choose to see the arrow pointing? Up or Down?

Suzanne Smith ~ Ann Arbor, MI.

For anyone truly interested in the science and the fate of our planet, please visit:

http://www.climatecrisis.net/thescience/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070406/ts_nm/globalwarming_dc;_ylt=AvN0nVDS...

http://waluty.onet.pl/14,1403792,,3255,ft.html