
When Subpoenas Threaten Climate Science - pbhowmic
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/19/opinion/when-subpoenas-threaten-climate-science.html
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RcouF1uZ4gsC
I think this is one of those situations where if you play with fire you are
going to get burned. See [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/exxon-
mobil-under-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/exxon-mobil-under-
investigation-in-new-york-over-climate-statements.html) where the attorney
general of New York subpoenaed records from Exxon. Given how Exxon's stock has
performed, I think you would find it hard to make a case that investors were
hurt by anything Exxon did.

The Exxon subpoena was basically a blatant attempt to chill free speech by
people that are skeptical of climate change. Even though, I think the skeptics
are wrong, attempting to chill speech is not a good look for science.

Now people who supported the Exxon subpoena are getting upset when they get
subpoenaed.

The whole fossil fuel and climate change debate is more about policy than
individual choices. As it is about public policy, everybody should be free to
advocate freely for whatever position they support, and donate money to people
who advocate for such. Any other way leads to loss of free speech in the long
term.

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JumpCrisscross
Note that this is the same Lamar Smith (R-TX) who introduced to Congress the
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in 2011.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act)

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DanielBMarkham
Science is about what _is_ , not what we should _do_. Politics is about what
we should do.

The minute you cross that line, the minute you start advocating for an
_outcome_ , you are an activist, not a scientist. You are now playing in the
political arena. Messaging becomes important. Fundraising. Making sure the
right people get elected. Preventing the wrong people from getting elected.

As a layman who likes watching smart people argue, I'd said for some time that
the climate debate is the worst public debate today, mainly because it's
dragging the name "science" through the muck of politics.

Now I'm hearing from both sides that politicians (gasp!) want to get involved.
Well, what the hell did you expect? Do you really think it's reasonable one
day to be yucking it up with politicians from party X and then expect folks
from party Y to just leave you alone because science?

Real scientists can't be advocates. It's a conflict of interests. This, along
with open science being a requirement for public funding, has become
abundantly clear over the last few years. Science itself it awesome. It's
mankind's only future. The actual practice of science over the last decade or
so has been full of fail.

If you'd like to hear the other side, here's a great Reason article.
[http://reason.com/archives/2016/07/15/the-lefts-insidious-
wa...](http://reason.com/archives/2016/07/15/the-lefts-insidious-war-on-the-
free-spee)

The bottom line is that if we want to make good public policy, we need
scientists to honestly evaluate the science, not engage in political muck-
raking, venture into economics of the year 2100, posit that big companies are
misleading the common rubes through purposely-slanted studies, or anything
else. Just science.

~~~
geekamongus
Some would say that scientists should be the politicians, and that a
government based on science will be more beneficial than anything we've ever
had. Star Trek did it. Why can't we?

~~~
alphapapa
I suppose you're referring to Neil deGrasse Tyson's recent pontification. If
you want discussion, there are long threads here, on Slashdot, etc.

As far as Star Trek goes: that's fiction.

In short: scientists are human (i.e. fallible), and science is an amoral
process. A "government based on science" might well conclude that taking care
of the poor, the elderly, the ill, those born with genetic disorders, etc, is
inefficient, a poor use of resources, and that such problems should be
"optimized away." Why let a mother give birth to a defective fetus? Why spend
resources to sustain a human who uses more than it contributes? What good is
an elderly person who is confined to a wheelchair and can't work anymore?

Of course, you and I are humane, and we value human life, and we have moral
values--but a "rational" government "based only on science" would not be. The
20th century alone is full of examples of where utilitarianism leads: horrific
suffering and death on an unimaginable scale. Millions upon millions of people
suffered and died due to it. Yet there are always those who think we'll get it
right This Time, that they know better.

You mentioned science-fiction--there is plenty out there that imagines such
dystopias. ST is mostly utopia, punctuated by DS9 and the trend toward
"gritty." Both are fiction, but at least balance your sci-fi perspective. ;)

~~~
mseebach
> A "government based on science" might well conclude that taking care of the
> poor, the elderly, the ill, those born with genetic disorders, etc, is
> inefficient, a poor use of resources, and that such problems should be
> "optimized away."

It worth mentioning that past governments did exactly that, "based on
science". The crimes of the nazis makes it easy to forget that eugenics
enjoyed broad popular and scientific support across western Europe and the US
(one might even say that the science was considered to be settled) in the
first decades of the 20th century.

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geodel
Whenever I hear word science attached to other words like Data-science,
climate-science, economic-science, social-science, it smells like pushing up
some kind of agenda that has very little to do with science. They sound very
non-neutral words to me as compared to statistics, economics, atmosphere,
social studies etc.

~~~
dekhn
I am not certain why you associate "climate science" with agenda. It's the
study of the climate using scientific principles. Everything about it is
neutral.

~~~
dozzie
> It's the study of the climate using scientific principles.

Like falsifiability. Oh, wait, you can't falsify most of the climate-related
speculations because of complexity of the system.

~~~
omginternets
For instance?

~~~
dozzie
Let's reverse the question: how to falsify _any_ of the climatology's big
claims?

~~~
Xylakant
For example by providing a theory that better explains all phenomena that
haven been observed so far. Because there are observable phenomena: The
statistical increase in temperatures, the rise of the sea level, the rise in
extreme weather events. And so far, the models line up fairly well. Sometimes
scientist find flaws and refine models, but nobody has yet found a fundamental
flaw or provided a better explanation.

~~~
dozzie
> For example by providing a theory that better explains all phenomena that
> haven been observed so far.

This is not how falsification works. If you provide another hypothesis, even
if it was better tailored to your measured data, you now have two of them that
work. The former one didn't magically stop working. Which one is valid? (Hint:
may be the former, if you account for variables you didn't think about
previously, or may be neither of them).

And most hypotheses are formed as a cause-effect explainations. How to verify
that in a correlation of two phenomena one of them is the reason for the
other? Climatology has only offered speculation till this day.

> Sometimes scientist find flaws and refine models, but nobody has yet found a
> fundamental flaw or provided a better explanation.

Well, nothing to brag about in this case. Those climatologists claim that
atmospheric CO2 concentration is major (or even main) cause for greenhouse
effect, yet CO2 has twenty times smaller(!) heat capacity compared to
atmospheric water at current concentrations.

