{"id":1974,"date":"2011-10-05T17:48:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T17:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=1974"},"modified":"2013-03-13T17:51:28","modified_gmt":"2013-03-13T17:51:28","slug":"who-really-is-anti-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/who-really-is-anti-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Really Is “Anti-Science”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n

FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

In any national election we can depend on the usual liberal\u00a0ad hominem<\/em>attacks on Republicans and their candidates. One chestnut already appearing is the charge that Republicans comprise the \u201canti-science party,\u201d as even a Republican, presidential primary candidate Jon Huntsman, fretted recently. Huntsman\u2019s angst arose over doubts expressed by some other candidates, particularly Texas governor Rick Perry, that human-caused climate change is an established scientific fact, as\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0columnist Paul Krugmanbelieves<\/a>: \u201cThe scientific consensus about man-made global warming \u2014 which includes 97 to 98 percent of researchers in the field, according to the National Academy of Sciences \u2014 is getting stronger, not weaker, as the evidence for climate change just keeps mounting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, apparently not all the evidence. Just recently,\u00a0experiments<\/a>\u00a0conducted at the CERN particle accelerator in Geneva by Jasper Kirkby (who is following up on over a decade of research by Danish physicist Henrik Svenskmark) suggest that variations in cosmic rays influenced by the sun contribute to increases or decreases in cloud formation, which in turn affect temperature changes. Kirkby had earlier speculated that confirming Svensmark\u2019s research could \u201cprobably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole\u201d of 20th-century warming. In other words, rather than accepting premature claims of \u201cconsensus\u201d on climate change, some scientists are doing what they should do: adopt George Orwell\u2019s attitude toward saints, and assume that all hypotheses and theories are guilty until proven innocent.<\/p>\n

This genuinely scientific sensibility was recently described by physicist\u00a0Michio Kaku<\/a>\u00a0writing in the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0about another consensus-smashing experiment, this one suggesting that Einstein\u2019s cosmic speed limit, the speed of light, might not be as absolute as once thought. Writes Kaku, \u201cNo theory is carved in stone. Science is merciless when it comes to testing all theories over and over, at any time, in any place. Unlike religion or politics, science is ultimately decided by experiments, done repeatedly in every form. There are no sacred cows. In science, 100 authorities count for nothing. Experiment counts for everything.\u201d This doesn\u2019t sound much like the attitude of those self-styled defenders of reason and science Al Gore or Paul Krugman, who keep telling us that human-created climate change is an incontrovertible fact established by scientific \u201cconsensus,\u201d and so anyone who entertains doubt about the theory is akin to a holocaust denier.<\/p>\n

Non-scientists like Krugman and Gore are prey to such arguments from authority in part because of our culture-wide mistaken attitudes about what it is scientists do. Many of us assume that research scientists are cool rationalists objectively gathering evidence that conclusively establishes the truth of a theory. But science doesn\u2019t work that way, as philosopher Mary Midgley points out. Science is not \u201csomething so pure and impersonal that it ought to be thought of in complete abstraction from all the motives that might lead people to practice it.\u201d In addition to the usual human motives such as money, ideological prejudice, and fame, such a view leaves out \u201cthe importance of world-pictures. Facts are not gathered in a vacuum, but to fill gaps in a world-picture which already exists. And the shape of this world-picture \u2014 determining the matters allowed for it, the principles of selection, the possible range of emphases \u2014 depends deeply on the motives for forming it in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

These \u201cworld-pictures,\u201d Midgley goes on, necessarily involve \u201csymbolism,\u201d which thus \u201cis not just a nuisance to be got rid of. It is essential. Facts will never appear to us as brute and meaningless; they will always organize themselves into some sort of story, some drama. These dramas can indeed be dangerous\u201d for they can \u201cdistort our theories.\u201d The way to guard against this distortion that arises from our \u201cpreferences,\u201d Midgley suggests, is to practice the same sort of stern skepticism about them that Kaku recommends for all scientific theories. This means \u201ccriticizing them carefully\u201d and \u201cexpressing them plainly\u201d rather than hiding behind assertions of impartiality, objectivity, or arguments from the authority of some professional \u201cconsensus.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea that disastrous climate change is caused by human activity illustrates the truth of Midgley\u2019s observations, for it depends not just on the evidence (some of which itself is questionable), but on a \u201cworld-picture\u201d and a \u201cstory\u201d that often determines how the evidence is interpreted. That story is one of the oldest we know, the myth of the Golden Age, that time when humans lived without suffering, crime, or work because a benevolent earth provided like a mother everything humans need. Yet this paradise was lost with the advent of agriculture and cities, which brought in their wake oppressive rulers and laws, private property and greed for gain, cramped dirty cities, crime and punishment, trade and war \u2014 the Iron Age in which we unfortunates now live. The villain in this ancient melodrama is technologies like agriculture, metallurgy, and shipbuilding, all of which broke the harmony humans once enjoyed with the natural world, and thus alienated them from their true nature.<\/p>\n

The rise of industrialism, widespread urbanization, and ever more sophisticated technologies and inventions has kept alive the Golden Age myth. In 1930 Sigmund Freud gave voice to this received wisdom when he wrote inCivilization and Its Discontents<\/em>, \u201cWhat we call our civilization is largely responsible for our misery . . . and we should be much happier if we gave it up and returned to primitive conditions.\u201d These days, much of modern environmentalism indulges this ancient anxiety about the costs of civilization. Al Gore, the Elmer Gantry of the global warming gospel, preached the myth throughout his book\u00a0Earth in the Balance<\/em>, where he decried our \u201ctechnological hubris\u201d for its \u201cincreasingly aggressive encroachment into the natural world\u201d and the resultant \u201cfroth and frenzy of industrial civilization.\u201d In these new versions of the Golden Age, the apocalyptic scenarios claiming to show the effects of global warming provide a dramatic illustration of the wages of \u201ctechnological hubris\u201d and capitalist greed. Just as the Iron Age of myth would end when humanity became so corrupt that a disgusted Zeus destroys them, so too the climate change alarmists predict the end of our own civilization unless we begin to rein in our destructive, unnatural lifestyle of selfish greed and wasteful consumption.<\/p>\n

Other ideologies, of course, contribute to the acceptance of the climate change narrative. Leftover Marxists, socialists, big-government liberals, and other haters of free-market capitalism have found in global warming hysteria a useful stalking horse for collectivist or dirigiste economics. That\u2019s why at every anti-globalization rally you will see the hammer-and-sickle flying next to the Greenpeace banners. But for most people, the Golden Age narrative, dressed up in the quantitative robes of scientific research, provides what political philosopher Chantal Delsol calls a \u201cblack-market religion\u201d: a story of good and evil, sin and redemption, devils and saints that gives meaning to their lives and makes them one of the righteous elect. Unfortunately, too many scientists who should know better let this story distort their work and short-circuit, through professional shunning and gate-keeping, the \u201cmerciless\u201d testing of theories Kaku speaks of.<\/p>\n

So when it comes to climate change, who really is \u201canti-science\u201d \u2014 the skeptics demanding more empirical proof before accepting as fact an as yet unproven theory that could generate public policies costing trillions of dollars and weakening our economy; or the true believers shrilly insisting on the basis of a presumed \u201cconsensus\u201d that the question is settled, and that anyone who disagrees is \u201cvile\u201d (Krugman) or \u201cevil<\/a>\u201d (Al Gore), a dangerous heretic to be scorned and demonized?<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a92011 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine In any national election we can depend on the usual liberal\u00a0ad hominemattacks on Republicans and their candidates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[603,22,31],"tags":[620,291,234,429,554,129,585,1073,426],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-vQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5999,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/flat-earth-democrats\/","url_meta":{"origin":1974,"position":0},"title":"Flat-Earth Democrats","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The victims of the tornado that hit Moore Oklahoma had not even been counted when Democrat politicians made fools of themselves by trying to link the disaster to global warming and Republicans. California Senator Barbara Boxer said, \u201cThis is climate change. We were warned\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Global Warming"","block_context":{"text":"Global Warming","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/global-warming-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4113,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/anatomy-of-a-media-bias-nothings-more-closed-than-a-colonized-mind\/","url_meta":{"origin":1974,"position":1},"title":"Anatomy of a Media Bias: Nothing’s More Closed Than a Colonized Mind","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com One of the pleasures of reading the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0is spotting the myriad ways liberal ideology shapes stories and presents as fact what is a debatable supposition. Global warming, for example, is a \u201ccrisis\u201d about which the\u00a0Timeshas already made up its mind. Rather than a contested\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":932,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nature-fakery\/","url_meta":{"origin":1974,"position":2},"title":"“Nature Fakery”","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Defining Ideas At the turn of the twentieth century, President Theodore Roosevelt became embroiled in a public controversy over how some writers and naturalists described the natural world in overly anthropomorphic and sentimental terms. In a 1907 article attacking Jack London, among other writers, Roosevelt popularized\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1051,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-marxism-killed-keystone\/","url_meta":{"origin":1974,"position":3},"title":"How Marxism Killed Keystone","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The global warming apocalypse and its Elmer Gantry, Al Gore, may have faded from public view lately, but that old-time green religion is still making mischief. President Obama has just delayed until after November\u2019s election a decision on the Canadian Keystone XL pipeline. This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7090,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-anti-empirical-left\/","url_meta":{"origin":1974,"position":4},"title":"The Anti-Empirical Left","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Science is ignored when it doesn't support politically correct policy. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online President Obama entered office promising to restore the sanctity of science. Instead, a fresh war against science, statistics, and reason is being waged on behalf of politically\u00a0correct politics. After the Sandy Hook tragedy,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Global Warming"","block_context":{"text":"Global Warming","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/global-warming-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/599px-Aristotelesarp-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7072,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-pseudo-scientism\/","url_meta":{"origin":1974,"position":5},"title":"Obama’s Pseudo-Scientism","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Too hot? Too cold? Regardless, it must be global warming. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online\u00a0 President Obama came to California. He saw a drought. He announced the cause to be global warming and left. How accurate was the president\u2019s diagnosis of harmful, man-made climate change in stopping\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Global Warming"","block_context":{"text":"Global Warming","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/global-warming-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1974"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1977,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions\/1977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}