Just Another Caring Gatekeeper Filtering Out What We Needn't Bother Knowing
A Canadian journalist describes the process whereby he makes your decision for you about how to view the debate over global warming and why he is responsible by not giving equal time to both sides.
"I feel I have two main duties as a journalist. The first is to show that there is more than one side to every story. The second is to carefully judge the information I collect, and present to my audience only what I think is based on solid evidence and facts.
I always try to present different points of view on subjects. But the vast majority of the scientific community seems to agree that profound climate change is under way. By comparison, credible climate-change skeptics seem few and far between."
Then he provides silly non-sequiturs that are historically ignorant to justify his view.
"There are certain things in society we don't debate. We don't debate whether or not the Earth revolves around the sun. We don't debate whether feudalism or democracy is a better form of government. We used to debate these things, but eventually one side won the debate because of the evidence."
First of all, only one of these is really a scientific question. I believe the preference for democracy over feudalism is a matter of sociology, politcal science and other disciplines that we call social sciences. We call them social sciences because they are not quite the same as the physical sciences. And yes we do debate whether democracy is preferable over feudalism, it is just that we call feudalism by many different names today, socialism being just one of the names we use. The feudal protagonists of lords, vassals and fiefs just go by their modern names as well, and in certain parts of the world a gigantic debate of historical proportions is raging over what is better, a feudal-like system or democracy. South America comes to mind.
As far the scientific question goes, yes, we don't debate heliocentrism anymore, but we did, for centuries. Over hundreds of years these topics were debated. And even that debate, hundreds of years in the settling, is only just a small step along a further path of understanding where we now know that the sun isn't the center of the universe at all, but a star in a vaster system. So it took us thousands of years to figure out that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe, but our replacement candidate that title, the sun, well, that was wrong too. It is nearly a certainty that our current body of "accepted scientific knowledge" on climate change will be substantially revised or even rejected with time. Even so, the debate over global warming is in its infancy on the historical scale. We do know very little, and too much remains speculation.
Apparently, numerous Canadian scientists agree and just written an open letter stating as such. But I'm sure glad at least the journalists have made up their mind.
"I feel I have two main duties as a journalist. The first is to show that there is more than one side to every story. The second is to carefully judge the information I collect, and present to my audience only what I think is based on solid evidence and facts.
I always try to present different points of view on subjects. But the vast majority of the scientific community seems to agree that profound climate change is under way. By comparison, credible climate-change skeptics seem few and far between."
Then he provides silly non-sequiturs that are historically ignorant to justify his view.
"There are certain things in society we don't debate. We don't debate whether or not the Earth revolves around the sun. We don't debate whether feudalism or democracy is a better form of government. We used to debate these things, but eventually one side won the debate because of the evidence."
First of all, only one of these is really a scientific question. I believe the preference for democracy over feudalism is a matter of sociology, politcal science and other disciplines that we call social sciences. We call them social sciences because they are not quite the same as the physical sciences. And yes we do debate whether democracy is preferable over feudalism, it is just that we call feudalism by many different names today, socialism being just one of the names we use. The feudal protagonists of lords, vassals and fiefs just go by their modern names as well, and in certain parts of the world a gigantic debate of historical proportions is raging over what is better, a feudal-like system or democracy. South America comes to mind.
As far the scientific question goes, yes, we don't debate heliocentrism anymore, but we did, for centuries. Over hundreds of years these topics were debated. And even that debate, hundreds of years in the settling, is only just a small step along a further path of understanding where we now know that the sun isn't the center of the universe at all, but a star in a vaster system. So it took us thousands of years to figure out that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe, but our replacement candidate that title, the sun, well, that was wrong too. It is nearly a certainty that our current body of "accepted scientific knowledge" on climate change will be substantially revised or even rejected with time. Even so, the debate over global warming is in its infancy on the historical scale. We do know very little, and too much remains speculation.
Apparently, numerous Canadian scientists agree and just written an open letter stating as such. But I'm sure glad at least the journalists have made up their mind.
posted by Donny Baseball at 12:21 PM
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