Reasonable people do disagree about scientific theory quite a bit. There are some parts of climate science that are pretty settled, for instance the earth has warmed and human activity has played a big part in the recent warming. There are other parts that are not such as to what extent positive or negative feedbacks will kick in beyond the basic CO2 forcing. I'm not sure how helpful it is shunning people as deniers.
There are very dogmatic people involved in this argument that want to put in place very expensive measures to avoid a catastrophe but we have to be careful. We could drive our global economy into the ground if we go to far. The cost to the environment would be far worse. Industry gets very dirty when people go into survival mode. Clean technologies could alter the balance, but they're only going to get developed if we have the money to invest in them.
Even if global warming wasn't a thing reducing pollution is worth investing in for all sorts of reasons.
For example, the greenhouse effect is a piece of well-established science. Climate change is even less scientific. To what extent humans contribute to the problem is even less scientific. Analyzing the costs/benefits of climate change is an even less scientific question. And what sorts of policy prescriptions might be effective is the least scientific question of all.
Climate activists fail to acknowledge any of that nuance, instead lumping all of those things together and labeling anyone who has a nuanced opinion on one of those points as a "denier".
It's total intellectual corruption.
I would say no. An oil CEO might say yes.
Who should have a bigger say in public policy, the civilians facing the 5% possibility of human extinction and no extra paycheck, or the oil CEO weighing their paycheck against possible human extinction?
The current head of the EPA clearly thinks oil industry profits are more important. Trump clearly thinks oil industry profits are more important.
When you hamper the economy, everyone loses a little. It weakens wealth creation slightly.
We're at a moment in history where we're pulling people out of poverty, through economic growth. So any actions that limit economic growth need to be judged with a high bar. https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-bil...
I'm not saying that we shouldn't do it, and if it is actually a 5% catastrophic risk then I think it would be prudent to take action at the cost of leaving millions of people in extreme poverty. But there is a trade-off, and it needs to be examined.
And even if energy prices rise slightly, the reduction of externalities will more than make up for those increased costs. It is well known that pollution from fossil fuels causes a variety of health issues. I would gladly pay a few more cents per kwh if it reduces my chances of getting cancer or heart disease.
I've run into conservatives who believe that, and invariably it turns out they have only looked at a small part of the evidence.
For example, they might dismiss the extent of human contribution to rising CO2 levels as mere correlation, claiming that scientists are just noting that the CO2 curve matches some other human activities and are assuming that those activities are responsible for the CO2. Maybe it is just coincidence and the rising atmospheric CO2 comes from natural sources.
If that was all scientists had, that would be a good point. But that isn't all scientists have. CO2 from burning fossil fuels has a different isotopic composition that CO2 from natural sources so scientists can directly distinguish "our" CO2 from "natural" CO2.
Then there is atmospheric oxygen levels. Burning fossil fuels should not only release CO2 into the atmosphere. It should also take oxygen from the atmosphere. Guess what? The atmospheric oxygen levels have been doing just what they should be doing if scientists are right about how much of the atmospheric CO2 comes from us.
Climate activists won't admit that.
This shuts down the possibility for a reasonable discussion because one party (the activists) is overwhelmingly guilty of acting and arguing in bad faith.
For instance, I believe that there are fewer experiments that confirm general relativity than there are that confirm quantum mechanics, so does that mean GR is less scientific than QM?
Does this mean GR-skeptics are on firm scientific ground? No, it does not. The evidence for GR is overwhelming. That QM may have even more evidence does not cast doubt on GR. Both GR and QM have overwhelming evidence, and there is no meaningful sense in which one can say that one is less scientific than the other.
> This shuts down the possibility for a reasonable discussion because one party (the activists) is overwhelmingly guilty of acting and arguing in bad faith
No, what shuts down the possibility for reasonable discussion is people discarding 90% of the experiments and measurements, and then claiming that there is no evidence. It's not the activists that are doing this.
Unfortunately the brand of science is used to promote these models, which is disingenuous. These models aren't like physics models, they are like economic models.
I'm not a fan of the "less scientific" phrasing, but the point of science is to be convincing to even a skeptic. That's why reproducibility (try it yourself in your own lab!), statistical analysis (there's basically no chance this is a coincidence!), control groups (it's not just an endemic property of the lab), random sampling (it's not selection bias) and other things are so important.
In some kinds of inquiry, it becomes difficult or impossible to apply certain standards. It's flat out unethical and immoral to not treat a man's syphilis just to have better quality evidence. So if you're studying syphilis, you need to find other ways to be convincing. It's impossible to have a statistically significant sample of Earths or a control group of Earths, so the bar for convincing is also higher in climate science.
"Less scientific" probably means "doesn't have access to many standard scientific techniques, so stronger evidence in other ways is essential to be convincing".
Sure it is. It evolved from "natural philosophers" showing off their work to each other. People have always been able to convince themselves of things, but scientific rigor is about convincing other people (i.e., being objective).
The point is to be convincing to a rational mind. It's not a persuasion contest, no. The evidence should speak for itself. But it needs to speak to an audience.
Otherwise it would be a self indulgent exercise and not a corporate one.
>For example, the greenhouse effect is a piece of well-established science. Climate change is even less scientific.
Even looking at this sentence, which is the foundation of your arguments, the way you express yourself is that the greenhouse effect itself is not scientific! The actual science part of climate change is actually pretty great science, and very much scientific. You can check out the physical science IPCC report [1] for the starters. It contains many references to actual scientific articles, but by itself is a great piece of work.
The political part -- policies, denial of facts, media coverage, bribery by the fossil fuel industry representatives and continuous slander of climatic researchers is a problem, I agree.
[0] -- Here's the IPCC Synthesis report, a short summary, for starters: http://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/
[1] -- IPCC Physical science report: http://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
A thought exercise to hopefully make it easier to empathize with these people. Imagine you are transported back several hundred years into a Catholic ruled country. You don't believe in God but you don't discuss that with strangers because you often hear people say things like "Reasonable people cannot disagree about Scripture, which is overwhelmingly on the side of eternal damnation on those who don't believe."
Imagine you hear this stuff in the market, at your job, and from the street corners. No amount of hearing this is going to convince you to believe in God. If anything this reinforces the feelings you have that religious people are hateful and ignorant.
I understand that reasoned knowledge is inductive, which is why I claimed it is based upon "the best available body of evidence". When a belief is shown to be false we must reject it and reevaluate what we believe to be true. That is why one of the most exciting events in the scientific realm is proving a belief to be false, as that means we have fundamentally altered the corpus of human knowledge.
At least in the Christian sense, "belief" and "faith" are the same word and are synonyms of "trust". So you just said "Religious trust is predicated on trust in the absense of evidence". That really doesn't make sense. So maybe you'll see why Christian's are making a point of disagreeing with your definitions around religion and "belief".
Belief isn't the opposite of reason or evidence. They're not in conflict at all. Belief is the opposite of self-reliance and distrust.
As I understand it, the "faith" Christians refer to is a deeply held belief in religious principles regardless of the presence or absence of empirical evidence to support that belief.
Contrast that with a "rationalist" it skeptic's practice of rejecting beliefs not supported by evidence, and only tentatively adopting beliefs as true until they are disproven.
I'm am really trying not to moralize religious belief. That is difficult for me to do and perhaps explains gaps in my perception here. My point was a religious person will continue to hold religious beliefs despite observable phenomena that directly contradict scripture and dogma.
The Greek root word for both "faith" and "belief" in the Bible is "pistis".
"In Greek mythology, Pistis was the personification of good faith, trust and reliability"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistis
There's no reason one couldn't be skeptical, find satisfying answers to questions, then have a lot of faith (trust) in something.
> My point was a religious person will continue to hold religious beliefs despite observable phenomena that directly contradict scripture and dogma.
I'm not sure what scientific evidence would disprove that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God exists. Any real objection to a god's existence would have to be predicated on some metaphysical assumptions (like, God wouldn't design evolution or create fossil records). What looks like misplaced trust might actually be a disagreement or misunderstanding about metaphysical axioms.
I suppose I am painting with a broad brush when I assume the motivations behind religious beliefs. Either way I am way off topic here.