Fact? Theory? Pfft. Science is a pipeline: a distillation process. Half-assed conjecture goes in one end, and a mostly-reliable consensus comes out the other.
But for the pipeline to work, no conjecture should be dismissed without consideration, and no consensus should ever be immune from entering the pipeline yet again for re-examination.
Is climate change happening? Definitely. Is human activity a major cause? Undoubtedly. But that doesn't mean that skeptics and dissenters should be vilified and excluded a priori, even if they're deluded, purchased, or flat-out wrong.
The leap we should be taking is thinking probabilistically: we may lack the ability to model the climate with perfect accuracy, but given that the data we do have indicates that climate change is extremely likely to be human-related, what can we do to act on that likelihood while we continue to refine the science, including the dissenters in that process?
Comments
Fact? Theory? Pfft. Science is a pipeline: a distillation process. Half-assed conjecture goes in one end, and a mostly-reliable consensus comes out the other.
But for the pipeline to work, no conjecture should be dismissed without consideration, and no consensus should ever be immune from entering the pipeline yet again for re-examination.
Is climate change happening? Definitely. Is human activity a major cause? Undoubtedly. But that doesn't mean that skeptics and dissenters should be vilified and excluded a priori, even if they're deluded, purchased, or flat-out wrong.
The leap we should be taking is thinking probabilistically: we may lack the ability to model the climate with perfect accuracy, but given that the data we do have indicates that climate change is extremely likely to be human-related, what can we do to act on that likelihood while we continue to refine the science, including the dissenters in that process?