« Climate Change »

Roger, thanks for your post, a minor clarification. Yes, we are clearly stating our values. We are advocating for consideration of this issue by the public and policy makers, without being policy prescriptive. The reason we are advocating this is because of a combination of science and values. We are not discounting science in any way here; much of the purpose of this alliance is reframing of global warming and other environmental issues for the education of the evangelical community (the "Gore frame" is not very effective for this community). Its time to clarify our collective values on this subject. Short term economic prosperity has been the dominant value in this discussion, and the controversy surrounding the Stern report is largely associated with how to value the economic situation for future generations. Creation care, a future for the poorest of the poor, etc are all things that should be weighed in national and international policy decisions on this issue.

Moral imperatives based on values gained from the reading of a religious book are OK, but moral imperatives based on values gained from the understanding scientific findings are not.

Even though both are ways of knowing. Interesting. Is there an equivalency here similar to a Manhattan Project, where a scientist can oppose killing people on rligious grounds, but not on scientfic grounds?

"a beautiful, rich, and healthful environment" - sounds like we might want to enhance the base of the food chain, eh? Green things up? :-)

Hi Judy- Thanks for your participation. I think that the notion of "policy prescriptive" is not particularly useful. There is not a line separating "not policy prescriptive" from "policy prescriptive."

If I come out saying that I am against the war in Iraq but I don't endorse a specific plan for doing so I don't think that is too important a distinction. One can always drill down to ever more specific levels of policy when engaging in political advocacy.

I'm glad you have laid your cards on the table -- discussing options, trade-offs, and costs/benefits for helping the "poorest of the poor" is exactly what we ought to be doing.

Thanks!

Dan- Thanks for your comment.

We have often written here that values do not come from scientific findings. This is a variation of the "is-ought problem." See Wikipedia for an intro:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem

Thanks!

Dan -

I think there is indeed an "equivalency here similar to a Manhattan Project" but it is to increase our knowledge of what the myriad feedbacks will do, regionally.

Some take global results and use them as boundary conditions for regional models. That doesn't count - it's highly simplistic. The summation of regional models needs to be the global model. There is a big difference in magnitudes of complexity and computational power.

Dear Mr. Pielke,

Beautiful use of irony and understatement on the state of some "science" today.

Congratulations on a comment worthy of Clemmons.

Regards,

WJR

How come no one is shouing "THEOCRAT" or "CHRISTIANIST"?

I mean, they are using their religous beliefs to help determine their positions on important issues.

Numerous other sources have informed me that this is "wrong" and "products of the American Taliban"...

I'm deeply offended by these evangelicals trying to impose their extremist values on me.

Whatever happened to separation of church and state!

When will we see the NY Times reporter writing a book denouncing these fascist theocrats?

I followed Dans invitation on RC, and came and had a look at this blog. I just wanted to see what substantive arguments were being cooked up up at this end of the 'debate'. I'm yet to find anything i'm particularly impressed with. On balance, I think RC just shades it ;-) Thanks for the link though Dan!

You guys in the US must be having a tough time at the mo. I guess if you can stop people looking out the window, or going outside, or voting, you might hang on to a good portion of your support. I tell you what guys, you stick with Crichton, and I'll stick with Hawking.

regards, Mark

Say Mark, point me to a single post here that suports 'State of Fear'. More importantly, if you measure the amount of discussion of Crichton here and over on RC, you'll see that RC "wins" hands down.

My experience has been that this blog sticks to the issues and does not get off-track and spend time and resources discussing popular movies, PowerPoint presentations, fictional novels, press releases, informal institutional reports, and other such sources that generally lack any content of actual true facts.

In some sense, I agree that it is good that these people identify some forms of religion and irrational confusion as the real driving force of their behavior.

Except that tomorrow, we will again hear that they are completely rational scientists whose conclusions result from careful research. And if we're unlucky, they will explicitly try to extend the "scientific consensus" to include creationism and God's anger, as indicated in their recent statement.

If the politically correct leftist journalists and other groups join with the equally irrational creationist supporters in this country, America has nothing to be optimistic about because the 16th century will have to be repeated.

Some readers might be interested to know that it is unclear whether the National Association of Evangelicals, representing the 30 million members of its 45,000 member churches, actually endorsed the launching of this coalition or the release of its "Urgent Call to Action." A media advisory the coalition released January 12 claimed it was "spearheaded by the" NAE and scientists at Harvard. On January 16 the NAE board chairman e-mailed me that the board had not officially acted on the matter. That is significant because in January 2006 the executive committee of the board had issued a letter saying that for lack of consensus among evangelicals the NAE would take no position on climate change policy and instructing its staff not to go beyond the position stated in the Association's "For the Health of a Nation: An Evangelical Call to Social Responsibility"--which never even mentioned global warming or climate change. At the press conference January 17, asked by Religion News reporter Adelle Banks whether NAE officially endorsed the proceedings, NAE VP for governmental affairs Rich Cizik replied that the board had "endorsed this dialogue." On January 19 the board chairman e-mailed me that another board member had informed him that "there was approval
for VP Cizik to pursue the dialogue," but the chairman could not clarify whether the board's approval was only for dialogue or also for launching an organization and issuing a "Call to Action" as official actions of the NAE. Granted that the NAE has never rescinded the commitment of its January 25, 2006, letter or adopted a new document in place of "An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," it seems likely that approval was only for dialogue, not for offical cooperation in launching a coalition or issuing a call to action that took a firm (alarmist) position on global warming and supported (mitigationist) policy. To date I'm still trying to learn precisely what the NAE approved.

Calvin-

Thanks for these clarifications. We'd welcome further updates!

Thanks

The poorest of the poor will learn, given the opportunity, at least some of the children anywhere, no matter how poor, are astonishingly bright and capable.

Scientists fortunate enough to study something that is beautiful -- beyond pure puzzle value, and that goes on being interesting and beautiful -- have learned something they can teach beyond what scientists whose subject, while fascinating and forthcoming of good research, isn't beautiful.

I recall the first time, while I was a grad student, that an instructor made a point while driving of trying to hit a starling. They were his area of research, but he also knew they were pushing out the native birds on the campus, having two clutches of eggs each year to the native birds' single chance to raise young. It wasn't the same as studying smallpox, maybe, but the same sort of feeling.

Some things scientists study touch the sense of beauty in a way that says preserve this. It's always interesting when they speak out and say what they find beautiful and worth protecting, eh?

Usually they are seeing something they can teach, given the will to learn it.

Obviously, science alone cannot compel the adoption of particular policies, since, as you say, "is' cannot imply "ought".

But the point of this statement is that the value in question is something like "we have an obligation to protect the earth" which is very widely shared including (at least ostensibly) by many opponents of Kyoto and similar policies. By contrast, as your post is written it suggests that the signatories of this letter have values that are very different from their opponents.

So far, it has been the scientific facts leading to the inference "therefore we must reduce CO2 emissions" that have been in dispute. The signatories are right on the facts and their opponents are wrong

I remember that there was a few years ago a web page in UK, which made public a statement of a religious group about climate change; a very concerned statement. It was signed by, among others Sir John Houghton (who signed in his capacity of former IPCCC chair), Bon Watson and other brass of the IPCC guild. Thus, the disclosure of the encrouchment of religion into top climate science levels is nothing new. It would have been better if this group had been open about this fact earlier.
We all are bound by certain culturally constructed values; religion is just one, and it has been particularly barbarian in times. In other times rather humanitarian. For a scientist the problem is that these values interfere with our analytical skills; not in the sense that we would execute statistical tests in a biased manner or that we would fail in our maths. But in the way we ask; in our preparedness to accept certain answers or to remain skeptical to certain answers. And finally, it may lead us to misuse our scientific authority to push for conclusions, which are beyond the realm of science.
None of us is free of this interference: this group is to be applauded for being explicit and honest. But they should also accept that claims of independence have to be given up when speaking about the social implications of anthropogenic climate change. They are, and likely have been, issue advocates. They are certainly still scientists, but they are advocates as well. In a sense they are publicly paid NGOs. NGOs play an important and welcomed role in the public discussion and decision process, like most other lobbying groups – but everybody knows what their agenda is.
Those of us who want to try to limit the influence of our values on our scientific analyses, should try to analyse these values and their potential influence on our professional performance. We should see our present activity in a historical context and reflect upon our cultural and social conditioning. We may be able to limit the degree of subjectivity of our work to some, maybe just a very minor, extent.

Lubos, why do you specifically refer to the 16th century? -