Politics in the Guise of Pure Science

[groovedaddy]

Why, since President Obama promised to “restore science to its rightful place” in Washington, do some things feel not quite right? First there was Steven Chu, the physicist and new energy secretary, warning The Los Angeles Times that climate change could make water so scarce by century’s end that “there’s no more agriculture in California” and no way to keep the state’s cities going, either.

Then there was the hearing in the Senate to confirm another physicist, John Holdren, to be the president’s science adviser. Dr. Holdren was asked about some of his gloomy neo-Malthusian warnings in the past, like his calculation in the 1980s that famines due to climate change could leave a billion people dead by 2020. Did he still believe that?

“I think it is unlikely to happen,” Dr. Holdren told the senators, but he insisted that it was still “a possibility” that “we should work energetically to avoid.”

Well, I suppose it never hurts to go on the record in opposition to a billion imaginary deaths. But I have a more immediate concern: Will Mr. Obama’s scientific counselors give him realistic plans for dealing with global warming and other threats? To borrow a term from Roger Pielke Jr.: Can these scientists be honest brokers?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/science/24tier.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

[caraher]

1. Sure, having scientists influence policy is so much worse...

... than having industry lobbyists write leigslation.

Of course scientists can be wrong, and of course they can exaggerate and misjudge their roles. But after 8 years of foxes guarding the henhouse this kind of handwringing strikes me as rather reactionary and far out of proportion to the dangers of listening to those imperfect scientists. Certainly the dangers of dismissing scientists altogether are far worse!

[groovedaddy]

2. I think you're right. Global climate change is the most glaring example

where the ditto heads were asking us to ignore the scientists. I'd rather know what scientists think than stick my head in the sand!

[caraher]

3. Another issue...

in the article, we're asked to believe that it's the same thing if we attain a given CO2 level in, say, 2050, whether we get there by restricting emissions today or by invoking some CO2-scrubbing technology in the future after letting levels rise. That's simple ignorant. First, the surest way to know CO2 levels will not go up because of human activity is not to engage in the activity in the first place. But more important, even granting the feasibility of technological means of later dropping CO2 levels, climate simply doesn't respond that way. If "early" warming sets off feedbacks - for instance, a little bit of warming in the near future causes methane releases that add still other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere - simply scrubbing the CO2 later will not give is the mean global temperature we would have reached had we simply curtailed emissions.