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General Climbing Discussion

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OT - new carbon tax 3-Mar-2011 At 5:03:50 PM Hendo

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On 3/03/2011 Gavo wrote:
>The discussion is literally over, the evidence is absolutely overwhelming.
>And all of this evidence has been peer reviewed and scrutinised across
>the board as per the scientific method. Its real.

I find these types of discussions quite interesting because it seems part of the conflict stems from people assuming that everyone has the same concept of science. From my casual observations this doesn’t seem to be the case. Certainly philosophers of science (including many practicing scientists who have an interest in such things) have not reached any kind of consensus as to questions like what is science and what distinguishes science from non-science? Nobody seems to be able to come up with a satisfactory scientific method that fits with what scientists actually do and have done, excludes things which people don’t want to be included in science (religion, astrology, creationism etc) as well as being philosophically acceptable. Ideas like falsification alluded to here just don’t cut it.

So given that there is such disparity in interpreting what to make of science, there is bound to be disagreement and frustration that other people ‘can’t see the science’ etc. Claiming that there is near complete consensus amongst scientists in a field probably also isn’t enough to those that are sceptical, big advances in science can come through overturning consensus.

So to some there isn’t enough faith in science to be convinced of making serious changes to lifestyle, the economy etc, not that people do or should make decisions based purely on science anyway. Believing that science tells us that humans are warming the planet does not imply that anything should be done, I would say that is outside of science. You have to have other non-scientific ideas to take it to this next step, like believing things will be/are worse for other people/species, humans will become extinct, life will never recover, whatever, and have some moral/ethical problems with that. Perhaps if you view the science as complete you should promote your related ethics and morals to argue reasons to act upon it instead.