Bill Nye on Crossfire with S.E. Cupp and Van Jones

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Comments

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

The language used to frame the discussion in the video is bizarre. If the science community warns of a danger, then it's absurd to frame that as 'scare tactics' or 'bullying'. If a consensus of experts disagrees with you, then that's not automatically unfair just because you don't like what they're saying.

Worse, it's so blatant... I don't understand how anyone could listen to this, even climate change deniers, and not feel patronised by the open manipulation.

[planet-x-zero.livejournal.com]

"Science" isn't so cleanly defined, really. I agree it's generally absurd to ignore the evidence on this issue, but in the past there have been dire warnings about things that didn't happen. The most famous being, The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich, which predicted mass starvation and overpopulation ten or twenty years after it was published. Then there was another more recently: Peak Oil.

The Right usually plays off of environmental disaster predictions while the Left does the same for moral ones.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

Climate Change seems to have become pretty solid now, but that's not the crux of my complaint anyway.

If people want to dispute the science then, by all means, have a rational debate about what can be reasonably concluded based on the research and evidence available so far. What shouldn't happen is the kind of anti-intellectual anti-science attitude of the female speaker in the video.

[planet-x-zero.livejournal.com]

Yeah...I actually avoided watching it because I had a feeling the anti-science would make me want to throw up. Then I watched it and wanted to throw up.

I should have watched first. You were right.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich,

Wasn't that was a single book, by one author versus governmental numerous scientific bodies and studies from all over the world?

[planet-x-zero.livejournal.com]

I didn't say it was accurate, I only pointed to it as an example of bad science. The book got a huge amount of attention at the time.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Media attention doesn't necessarily mean scientific attention. Did 97% of relevant scientists at the time say "yes, this is very likely"?

[planet-x-zero.livejournal.com]

"I only pointed to it as an example of bad science." The issue was exactly that it received a large amount of any attention. Whether a Stanford biologist is responsible or the media is irrelevant. There's some historical basis (malthusian catastrophes) that fuel some of the denialist behavior of the Right. Said behavior is not being justified, only explained from a social standpoint.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

> "Science" isn't so cleanly defined

All scientific knowledge is provisional and subject to change with new evidence. However, knowledge about climate change, and knowledge about The Population Bomb and Peak Oil, are knowledge assertions of dissimilar classes. There is a difference between rational suppositions about the world which have some evidence, and a Scientific Consensus. Its like comparing Dark Matter to the Standard Model.

Now, the above distinction is not difficult to get your head around. I'm sure you can understand it with just a bit of reflection. So, if one is trying to be scientific, and one then equates an interesting hypothesis with a solid consensus as if they were of the same class, one should be a little bit embarrassed. But serial climate deniers in the public sphere fail to understand this simple distinction, and they fail to do so OVER AND OVER. That kind of behavior is the giveaway, that their ostensibly scientific judgements are in fact motivated by something other than science, and they are not FAILING to understand the above distinction, it is simply the case that it is irrelevant to their aims, which are political, economic, and social.

> The Right usually plays off of environmental disaster predictions
> while the Left does the same for moral ones.

Dude, this is like the MOTHER of all false equivalencies.

[planet-x-zero.livejournal.com]

Not really. Take Hugh Everett's theories. He was essentially ridiculed for his theories, now it appears he was ahead of his time. There's little correlation between the popularity of a scientific prediction and it's validity. I'm sure you can get your head around that after a bit of reflection. Science isn't dogma. The evidence supports climate change, but do you have notes of temperature changes in your area? No, of course you don't. You accept certain information totally on faith. But science isn't faith, and that's the greatest embarrassment of all. Science, orthorexia, etc -- replacement religions for most.

As to the latter point, it's a social observation, not a hypothesis.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

> He was essentially ridiculed for his theories, now it appears he was ahead of his time.

One guy hypothesizing and a bunch of others guys not buying it is not analogous to our context as previously discussed. The Many Worlds Interpretation has not since become the Scientific Consensus, nor was a rejection of it the Consensus of the time. Now, IF....

1) 99% of Physicists back then insisted that MWI was false (not just presently unsupported, but FALSE) and
2) if now 99% were willing to unequivocally say that MWI is true...

then we're talking the same ballpark. But we're not.

Good scientists are cautious. They are rarely willing to commit to a "I'm pretty sure its X" statement, because in a real way (unlike politicians) their careers depend on it, and if they back the wrong horse, their career can suffer.

Even so,. Individual scientists do back the wrong horse. It happens all the time; but when the entire Meta-institution backs the wrong horse, that's a rare thing. You have to go back to something like Piltdown Man for that sort of scale.

Individual scientists are free to speculate, and if smart they will couch such speculations in obviously speculative language (again, unlike politicians ). Individual scientists are also free to commit to positions. But when 99% of every specialist in the field commits to a position, we need to take special note. That's whats meant by the Scientific Consensus... Big "S" Big "C".. not just a small subset of scientist agreeing or not agreeing with each other.

There was no such commitment in any of your counter examples. Not Population Bomb, not Peak Oil, not the Many Words Interpretation.

> There's little correlation between the popularity of a scientific prediction and it's validity.

If our sample is the general public, then you're probably correct. But, if our sample is scientists working within the field, there is a very HIGH correlation between how popular a theory is among them, and its validity... because it is its demonstrable validity that makes it popular among them.

Imagine of the opposite were true? We could build bridges using polling data from mid-western salsepeople instead of tables of physics constants, and expect to get as good a bridge as one designed by engineers. We could have saved the USA a whole lot of money, and hired a bunch of plumbers for the Manhattan Project, instead of Nuclear Physicists... because... hey... the popularity of Atomic Theory among Nuclear Physicists has nothing to do with its validity, right?

[cont]

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

> do you have notes of temperature changes in your area? No, of course you don't. You accept certain information
> totally on faith.

Well, setting aside the fact that a record of local temperatures has little to say about global warming... talking about Taking something on Faith is dicey because faith is a funny old word, used in a lot of ways, and it'll get you in trouble. I do not 'believe' in positions or people in any religious sense, (e.g. without need of, or reference too evidence) and I try to refrain from investing in them emotionally. All knowledge is provisional, to be abandoned when new evidence presents itself. So in that sense I take nothing on Faith... but faith also means trust, as in "keeping faith." I have 'faith' that my thermometer works, because it has worked in the past, and without compelling evidence to the contrary, I will continue to trust it to work in the future. As far as climate change goes, I have an understanding of the underpinnings and the process; I know something about the physics of greenhouse gasses themselves, and have seen these qualities expressed in high school level science fair demonstrations. The framework holds together as a cohesive whole.

Furthermore I trust the methodology of science in general, because of its past utility, and critically, understand that part of its methodology is the self correcting nature of the scientific community as a whole, and so I recognize a crucial difference between the pronouncements of A SCIENTIST, versus OF SCIENCE.

Even the later CAN be wrong, of course... but its unlikely. My dad used to say "The battle does not always go to the Strong, nor the Race to the Swift! ... but that's the way to Bet "

And presently, I fear that as a society we are betting on the long odds, for not much of a payoff. We are why bookies stay in business.

> As to the latter point...

I felt they were a grossly mismatched pair.... since a climate disaster, to be a disaster, really has to have some objective effects obvious to everyone outside the ivory tower of climate science... they need a body count, or at least wrecked buildings and property! If I dismiss so called "Moral disasters", its because it seems to me that they can still be considered disasters even if the only things effected are the rules that the pissed off moral guardians invented in the first place. If Gay marriage started killing people, that would be a Moral Disaster... but if Gay people are just getting married, and by doing so pissing on someone else's taboos... that's no disaster. That's just life in the Big City.

[planet-x-zero.livejournal.com]

Tautologies, circular reasoning and argumentum ad ransom note: italics, CAPITALS, and bold italics!

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

...

weak.

If you want to say I'm using a fallacy, please quote and say where. I was careful to reply to your specific arguments.

[planet-x-zero.livejournal.com]

If you SAY so!

PS - Thanks for not editing the response three times and filling my inbox with TWO pages of changes, plus a to be CONTINUED!

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the edits, but the new LJ Button "Edit Post" just posts what's been written, rather then displaying a spell checking preview that lets me re-read for typos and grammar.

I apologize for the length, but that was because I was addressing your points comprehensibly, and with intelligible examples.

A courtesy that has, alas not been returned.

As for the varying typefaces, COPE.

[planet-x-zero.livejournal.com]

"A courtesy that has, alas not been returned."

Certainly fair enough, you made a number of very good points, but they weren't in contrast to what I meant. I take responsibility for that, as I wasn't clear. I agree with you, however I feel that people simply consume information that appeals to their biological and sociological imperatives. Beyond that, I don't believe we exist in a universe where rationality matters anymore. Information has become a kind of intellectual circus. Perhaps there's ebola and beheadings and climate change, but perhaps there isn't. There's no point going on with this line of argument because it's leaning precariously into tin-foil hat territory

"As for the varying typefaces, COPE."

Hahaha. Yes. I apologize.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Then there was another more recently: Peak Oil.

Oh, really? Care to elaborate how Prof. Hubbert's theory is in any way lacking in evidence?

[planet-x-zero.livejournal.com]

Well, the primary error for Hubbert modelers is the assumption of geology as the sole motivator of discovery, depletion and production. In the work of Campbell, Deffeyes, and Laherrere, they go further, equating causality with correlation.

This is one of most basic errors in physical or social scientific analysis.

Basically, the argument that the drop in global discoveries proves scarcity of the resource is the best example of the importance of understanding causality. While it is true that global oil discoveries dropped in the 1970s from the previous rate, this was largely due to drop in exploration in the Middle East. Governments nationalized foreign operations and cutback drilling as demand for their oil fell by half, leaving them with an enormous surplus of unexploited reserves. It is noteworthy that none of those pessimistic about oil resources show discovery over time by region, which would support this.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

It wasn't as bad as the debate with Ken Ham, but about as fruitful.

We are just screwed, screwed, screwed...

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Bill Maher mentioned this Friday (according to WWF) that Earth has lost about half its wildlife over the last forty years. (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/29/earth-lost-50-wildlife-in-40-years-wwf)

The report concludes that today’s average global rate of consumption would need 1.5 planet Earths to sustain it. But four planets would be required to sustain US levels of consumption, or 2.5 Earths to match UK consumption levels.

The fastest decline among the animal populations were found in freshwater ecosystems, where numbers have plummeted by 75% since 1970. “Rivers are the bottom of the system,” said Dave Tickner, WWF’s chief freshwater adviser. “Whatever happens on the land, it all ends up in the rivers.” For example, he said, tens of billions of tonnes of effluent are dumped in the Ganges in India every year.

While population has risen fourfold in the last century, water use has gone up sevenfold. “We are living thirstier and thirstier lives,” he said. But while freshwater species such as the European eel and the hellbender salamander in the US have crashed, recoveries have also been seen. Otters were near extinct in England but thanks to conservation efforts now live in every county.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

This path we are walking down has slain half of the life on the planet. If we were to retrace our path, we would kill the remaining half traversing our way "back". But that is not how things work - point of fact, things don't work. Everything falls apart.

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

[nutmeg-44.livejournal.com]

Isn't it customary to have the scientist answer the question you ask him? What's the point of asking him the question if you never give him a chance to answer it? They keep asking questions then never give Bill a chance to answer. I'm surprised he has just walked off the set. I know I would have.

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

Really? The number one problem? Not the global belligerence flaring up?

[catlin.livejournal.com]

Global ignorance is FAR more dangerous, you are right.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Global belligerence, if you have a really bad example, might burn a few fields and displace a population of farmers.

A shift in climate patterns can wipe out a vast stock of agricultural produce and leave no means of replacing it.

When one considers that all wealth can be measured as a surplus of available food, this gets more serious.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Where does your food come from?

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

...global belligerence flaring up?

Why aren't you doing your part and staying quiet? ;)

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

I tried that for a while and then Obama decided to bomb Syria.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I really hate her pseudo-intellectual posing.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

But on what other basis is LiveJournal supposed to exist?

[planet-x-zero.livejournal.com]

Hahaha <---guilty as charged.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

It's the debate format with an expert on one side and an idiot on the other.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Note how the "economist" made basically zero arguments that resembled economics. Of any school. He just kept repeating doubt about the science. And Cupp's "argument" was...what was it again? Nye's patiently pained look said it all.