The Competitive Enterprise Institute yesterday made available an essay by Rupert Darwall that explores the expressions of public certainty and private uncertainty by climate scientists at a small workshop organized by the American Physical Society (APS) in 2014. The essay extensively references the workshop transcript, which can be downloaded from the APS.
Scott Pruitt, the Administrator of the US EPA, has proposed that something like the workshop be carried out by a Federal Government agency in the form of a “red team/blue team” assessment of climate science. Darwall supports this. Readers can read both the essay and the transcript and reach their own conclusions. My only warning to readers is that the essay is 18 pages long and the transcript 573 pages.
One useful practical factor is the US government pays salaries to Sime alarmist scientists. Presumably some could be ordered to represent the alarmist team for debates. If they do not appear so as to explain their views, they should be terminated by the employer for dereliction of duty.
Presumably debates could last days. They need no time limit. Full transcrpts could be published on line. Every detail of the alarmist case could be examined and discussed. Genuine transparency could reign.
I have sympathy for Doc Koonin and more broadly for society as a whole.
The democrats led by al gore staked out a zero doubt, everybody who opposes me is horribly corrupt, opinion regarding climate change. Even Tipper had to bail out on that one.
Inconveniently there is no climate change and the impacts of co2 levels are vanishingly small. The democrat strident intolerant case is thus based on lousy science, though ironically they want to brand republicans as anti science.
There is not a lot of middle ground or way to make everybody happy. How can democrats apologize for their dogmatic certitude about nonsense and back down? Answer: not easily or they would have done so already.
The Democrats need 1,000 more Freeman Dysons to stand up and say I am a socialist who does not accept the climate change dogma and does believe science depends on intellectual freedom and debate. There is no reliable and sufficient evidence that persuasively supports the alarmist hypothesis of al gore and Jim Hansen, at this time.
The societal challenge is how to reintroduce skepticism into civil public discourse about the environment, when one major political party is close minded and wrong. An Obama supporter, koonin appears to want to help out with this horrible problem besetting his political party and by extension the entire nation. It’s not an easy problem, but koonin does deserve much respect for willingness to step to the plate.
It’s when issues are most inflamed that society can most use convenors to try to disentangle the mess.
Ben Santer scored a half million dollar MacArthur award for genius.
This payday bought his allegiance, but no amount of money could turn this fellow into a genius.
Doc Carlin intellectually destroyed Santers dopey cause in his great book, but has MacArthur Foundation given the far smarter guy even one thin dime?