U.S. Chamber of Commerce seeks trial on global warming
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.
Chamber officials say it would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” — complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.
What a bad idea for science.
This doesn’t bring the Scopes trial to my mind, as mentioned in the article — that wasn’t primarily about whether evolution was valid science. This is more like the story of how the Indiana House once unanimously passed a bill to make pi a rational number (3.2; the bill died in the senate). Our legal system doesn’t get to decide what is sound science or not; if it attempts to make such a decision, mother nature won’t care at all and won’t serve any contempt-of-court sentence for disobeying the judge.
The legal system doesn’t argue the same way that science does, which is why this is a common tactic for anti-scientists. Creationists putting Darwinism “on trial” in literature is not uncommon. The absurdity of calling evolution “Darwinism” aside for the moment, these “trials” include appeals to ridicule that might sound convincing to some, because there is much about science that isn’t intuitive. In physics, one could probably convince a lay person that quantum mechanics and relativity are wrong using a legal style of argument, just by pointing out some of the counterintuitive, nonclassical (or non-Galilean) aspects (A single particle goes through both slits? Absurd! Twins can age at different rates? Preposterous!) But QM and relativity are true, regardless of how much they contradict classical experience.
It can’t merely be lining up experts, either, because there is no science so well-established that you can’t find a somebody, somewhere, who has a degree and disagrees with the mainstream. There are physicists who disagree with QM and relativity, just as there are biologists who are creationists (or cdesign proponentsists). The bench isn’t very deep of course (there are more biologists named Steve who agree that evolution is true than all who are touted to disagree), but they are out there. What matters is the empirical evidence, and the people best qualified to tell us this are the scientists who do the kind of work in question, not a judge. True, the judge might/should rule in favor of the scientists in this kind of case, but if he didn’t, that wouldn’t change the fact that smoking causes cancer, evolution is true, photons interfere with themselves, pi is irrational and humans are causing global warming. That’s what the evidence tells us.
To pick a nit, pi being irrational is not a matter of the evidence telling us so. We know pi is irrational (transcendental in fact) because it is proven from axioms. Interestingly, I’m having a hard time thinking of an experiment or observational evidence about the irrationality of pi.
The verdict is already locked in and a suitable RFP for judge stamped with aprpoval. All that remains is the show trial and some public whining afterward. When Nikita Khrushchev built the Mosow subway system he suffered chronic employee attrition (as in “dead). He had a standing RFP with Lavrentiy Beria. The courts performed magnificently, hod carriers to structural engineers. Many of those departed employees provide support for the Moscow subway even today, in situ.
Pi contains itself, e.g., 314159265358 from the 1,142,905,318,634-th digit after the decimal. One wonders why anybody bothers to calculate it from scratch. Start out well toward the end and read it off the rest of the way. “8^>)
Re: Rob
I agree that to show that pi is transcendental you need math, but to realize that it’s not 3.2 can be done experimentally. You can make some cylinders and measure their circumference. Or pour water back and forth between rectangular and cylindrical containers. You don’t have to do a super-good job of this to realize that 3.2 is inaccurate at a level of a few percent.
Thanks for the awesome note on the scientific process; that is always the annoyance I’ve had with the scopes trial. Our own false beliefs, and self- induced ignorance does nothing to alter the reality of things. It doesn’t matter whether this trial will change public opinion (well it will have consequences on our habits, but does nothing to alter reality itself) on the topic of global warming because nature is absolute, and has no cares for the opinions of the “majority.”
Thanks for the cool info and input. Yay Swansont!
I really do not know which way science wants me to think. Back in the 70’s science told me I am about to enter an ice age with global freezing. Now, science has decided they were wrong then and I’m going to burn up with global freezing. IN 5 or so years what then? Can science be trusted with the economy of the world? Can politics
be trusted dispensing ‘science’ based reaction to obviously inconclusive evidence? No. Nor can science be trusted to guide politicians because there is always a hidden agenda. Hitler had one of those and numerous
‘leaders’ like him in desires also. After all if Al Gore invented the internet what is to prevent him from
re-inventing science and giving it a crown of politics, all based on blaming the human race for what
the sun and electrodynamics of the solar system are doing unnoticed my certain “Scientist”.