Poll: Do you believe in global warming?

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Innegativeion

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Feb 18, 2011
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TWRule said:
I'm referring to a worldview that broadly follows the dictates of modern science,
You mean... proven facts and theories substantiated by hard evidence?

i.e. that everything, including us, is entirely material (sub-atomic particles)
Everything is made up of information. That information just tends to be expressed as energy and subatomic particles.

I've always felt the insistence that if something is tangible, it's automatically less special than "soul", "spirit", or whatever to be entirely arbitrary.

, that the universe is governed by universal, impersonal natural laws apprehendable by science,
As opposed to laws that are flexible, and bend to our needs? Because if that is the case, please tell me more.

that humanity as we know it originated through a series of accidents of natural selection, etc.
Natural Selection is no more composed of "accidents" than is the romance between your parents that resulted in your conception.
 

Wyes

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Oh man, this is a can of worms. It's nice to see however the the majority of Escapists do believe in climate change caused by human activity.

Dead Century said:
No. But I do believe in climate change. This planet has gone from subtropical temperatures when dinosaurs roamed the earth, ice ages, etc. I'm still all for trying to keep the air clean. The environment needs respect and due care.
We're also changing from an circular orbit around the sun to an elliptical orbit, like an oval. We're going to be closer and farther at certain points.
I'm really not sure what the first part of this is trying to say. The second part however is even weirder. The Earth's orbit is not 'changing' from a circular orbit to an elliptical orbit, it has always been an elliptical orbit. However, the difference in distance caused by the eccentricity of Earth's orbit has very little effect on temperatures (e.g. some people seem to think this causes the seasons, which is really easy to disprove, because of the fact that the hemispheres have the opposite seasons occurring at the same time). Even if it did have a noticeable effect, it happens on a yearly scale - cause y'know, the whole point of the year as a measurement of time is its how long it takes the Earth to complete one orbit of the Sun.

Silvanus said:
Ahh, okay. You want a term like, "diminishing effect", or somesuch. Logarithms are used for measurement, so the above phrase on its own wouldn't mean anything.
A logarithm is not strictly used for measurement - they describe a particular kind of behaviour. They are useful for displaying measurements, but that is not all they do. Logarithmic behaviour is a type of behaviour that shows extremely large changes at first but then quickly dies off to a slower change. See this link [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Plot+log%28x%29+between+0+and+20] for a plot of a logarithm.

thewatergamer said:
I understand your concerns, but it is important to remember that what we want does not change what is. While it is true there are a lot of political agendas behind the green movement and it's hard to disentangle it all, the actual science behind climate change is solid and without agenda. Science merely reports the facts. If you find actual scientific papers (which may be behind a pay wall, which has always irked me), you will find they are without any kind of political bias. Those papers show that man-made climate change is, unfortunately, a reality.

Now, as for how people like those in your family who earn their living working for oil companies and the like - this is honestly a serious problem that needs to be addressed. I suspect that a wise strategy would be to retrain a lot of these people to work in the clean energy industry. This would obviously be a gradual process, outright banning fossil fuels would be economically disastrous. You must also remember however that we cannot afford to destroy the environment because it puts some people in a hard place financially. Yes it sucks, but that's reality.
 

TWRule

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Innegativeion said:
TWRule said:
I'm referring to a worldview that broadly follows the dictates of modern science,
You mean... proven facts and theories substantiated by hard evidence?

i.e. that everything, including us, is entirely material (sub-atomic particles)
Everything is made up of information. That information just tends to be expressed as energy and subatomic particles.

I've always felt the insistence that if something is tangible, it's automatically less special than "soul", "spirit", or whatever to be entirely arbitrary.

, that the universe is governed by universal, impersonal natural laws apprehendable by science,
As opposed to laws that are flexible, and bend to our needs? Because if that is the case, please tell me more.

that humanity as we know it originated through a series of accidents of natural selection, etc.
Natural Selection is no more composed of "accidents" than is the romance between your parents that resulted in your conception.
I'm not interested in a fruitless debate with someone who is intent on straw-manning me; I was giving a broad response addressed to the general question of the person that asked in good faith what I meant in my answer to the thread topic.
 

Innegativeion

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TWRule said:
I'm just baffled how someone can "not subscribe" to science.

It's like... "I don't subscribe to the idea that 2+2=4"

or

"I don't subscribe to the idea that the sky is blue"

It's fucking science. It doesn't get much more matter-of-fact than science. The only thing that can refute science is new information... brought about by more science. There's a reason we've been refining this shit for thousands of years.
 

TheYellowCellPhone

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Regardless on the debate of belief versus evidence, and the real question of whether everyone in this thread thinks active steps should be taken toward change, I like to input this image each time.

 

TWRule

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Innegativeion said:
TWRule said:
I'm just baffled how someone can "not subscribe" to science.

It's like... "I don't subscribe to the idea that 2+2=4"

or

"I don't subscribe to the idea that the sky is blue"

It's fucking science. It doesn't get much more matter-of-fact than science. The only thing that can refute science is new information... brought about by more science. There's a reason we've been refining this shit for thousands of years.
I said 'the scientific worldview' and explained what I meant by that. I did not say 'science'.

You've made it pretty clear that even if I had any intention of dislodging you from your current way of thinking (I do not), it would be a futile effort. You're welcome to your view - I just don't share it. Thanks.
 

Innegativeion

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TWRule said:
Well your standpoint still seems silly to me. Perhaps we can elaborate on this and reach some mutual understanding.

-If not
universal, impersonal natural laws apprehendable by science
then what is there?

-What do you define "material" as? Specifically. Reality is made up of a lot of stuff. Some of it might not fall under what you consider to be material.

-Natural selection is not a system built primarily upon chance.
 

prpshrt

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I'm pretty sure many people have done EXTENSIVE research on the matter and they have proper evidence to show that global warming is real. I honestly feel this is kinda like asking someone whether they believe in evolution or not.
 

HoneyVision

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I've always found this question more or less irrelevant. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter. We should still be doing our best to make sure our environment is clean and healthy. Obviously moderation is key, but even if Global Warming is a whole lotta crap, it doesn't mean we should be dumping endless amounts of garbage into the sea.
 

Evil Smurf

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I believe the truth OP, so yes. I believe in climate change bought on by humans.
 

TWRule

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Innegativeion said:
TWRule said:
Well your standpoint still seems silly to me. Perhaps we can elaborate on this and reach some mutual understanding.

-If not
universal, impersonal natural laws apprehendable by science
then what is there?

-What do you define "material" as? Specifically. Reality is made up of a lot of stuff. Some of it might not fall under what you consider to be material.

-Natural selection is not a system built primarily upon chance.
Alright then, if you seriously want to understand...

I meant that science, by its method, makes certain presuppositions - metaphysically and epistemologically. These include, among other things, materialism and empiricism. Basically, that everything is material, and that we can gain knowledge of how the cosmos operates by using our sensory surfaces to directly observe and apprehend those material processes. I did not mean to imply that I subscribe to the same 'material/non-material' distinction that gave materialism its name, I was merely describing a common school of thought. The distinction is empty to me, but I imagine many would define it positivistically, as that which can be affirmed to exist through 'objective' empirical means. Moreover, in the same way that this distinction being empty to me means that I do not experience things as 'material', I also do not experience them as 'being composed of particles/energy', etc.

The idea that there are universal laws is an ancient idea, but they were thought to be either rational laws (which were intelligible to us primarily because it was assumed that both the cosmos was inherently rational, and that we were rational beings) or divine laws (which in many cases were 'personal', in that they had moral force founded in a relationship to one or more divine beings). These would be 'personal' or human-sensitive laws.

Modern science however, eschews the idea of any such ordering force in the universe that it cannot detect (naturalism, another of its presuppositions), leaving us with the predominant idea of a universe that is totally indifferent to our existence, and a nature that would as readily wipe us from existence as the next species. Our entire existence is and will always remain arbitrary and incidental - not significant for the life of the cosmos. This is what I meant by 'accident of natural selection', and because I have heard many prominent figures in the scientific and philosophy of science communities describe human consciousness as such - not because I meant to accuse all those with scientific worldviews of being indeterminists or some such (I was generalizing - I know there are many differing views that fall under what I'm referring to as 'the scientific worldview').

Furthermore, it lends itself to the assumption that there are universal laws, knowable to us, but only because it posits hypotheses that, although technically tentative and always falsifiable, are assumed to hold so long as statistically significant correlations under a certain number of reproduced experiments (of very specific types in accordance with the presuppositions of both the overarching scientific method and the hypothesis in question).

However, no amount of experimentation can ever validate much less prove the metaphysical presuppositions that science began with; there is no scientific way to validate the picture of the world that modern science has loosely cobbled together over the past few hundred years, nor would consistent, modest scientists ever pass off their work as 'truth' or 'fact' in an unqualified sense.

I have my own reasons for not taking on the metaphysical baggage that comes with a scientific worldview - namely, I don't think it provides us with a self-consistent or accurate understanding of human identity, but it does leave us imagining ourselves in a meaningless universe in which nihilism is the only pseudo-consistent philosophy. I prefer to continue the search for meaning rather than accept the popular authority of scientistic (that is, science-worshipping) persons who declare that my struggle is futile.

Because of this, I do not fear any form of the ever-so-common talk of the myriad ways the natural forces of the universe could possibly bring about humanity's downfall (the threat of global warming among them). I would not fear death in any case, but since I do not strictly and wholly identify my body with my self, I am even less concerned than I would be about its damage or destruction, and I see it as a weakness in others should they obsess over such things. To me, the real threat of the end of human life would be when we all embrace (consciously or not) and wallow in the meaninglessness of our existence.

So there you have it. Keep in mind that, as I said, I do not endorse negligence to the environment - but I do not think of the 'environment' in scientific terms.

I hope you understand my position better now - let me know if you have questions.
 

Innegativeion

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TWRule said:
You seem to disagree with nihilism, labeling it arbitrary as the "scientific worldview", which will only get you weird looks.

Philosophy is a science (according to philosophers), but it's not THE science.

The purpose of science is in the dealing of facts. I find the idea that science necessarily demands a nihilistic worldview to be absurd. Plenty of scientific theories, particularly the anthropic principle or bio-centricism, run specifically counter to that regardless.

Quantum mechanics suggests that without observers, the universe would be static, since probabilities only collapse when observed; a cloud of super-positioned particles with no definite meaning or attributes. Every possible event occurring at once.

If that doesn't imply meaning, I don't know what does.
 

Billy D Williams

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Well I don't have enough information to really come to a full conclusion, but from what I do know I'd say I'm about 70% sure. But still, I don't know, don't really care. I'm a fairly green person but there's nothing I can do to fix the environment past that so there's no point in my giving a shit.
 

Something Amyss

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Billy D Williams said:
Well I don't have enough information to really come to a full conclusion, but from what I do know I'd say I'm about 70% sure. But still, I don't know, don't really care. I'm a fairly green person but there's nothing I can do to fix the environment past that so there's no point in my giving a shit.
You could petition your government, whatever one that might be. It's not really that you can't do anything beyond yourself, but if you don't want to, there's nothing anyone can really do to change that, probably.
 

Do4600

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thewatergamer said:
Personally if you read any non biased research not made by crazy environmentalists with their own agenda
Let me make a list of the major organizations that have concurred with the findings of the UN IPCC(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change):
-Australian Academy of Science
-The Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium
-The Brazilian Academy of Sciences
-Royal Society of Canada
-Caribbean Academy of Science
-The Chinese Academy of Sciences
-Institut de France
-Leopoldina
-Indian Academy of Sciences
-Indonesian Academy of Sciences
-The Royal Irish Academy
-Accademia dei Lincei
-Akademi Sains Malaysia
-Royal Society of New Zealand
-Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
-Turkish Academy of Sciences
-The Royal Society
-The Japan Academy
-The Russian Academy of Sciences
-Mexican Academy of Sciences
-Academy of Science of South Africa
-Cameroon Academy of Sciences
-Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences
-Kenya National Academy of Sciences
-Madagascar National Academy of Arts, Letters and Sciences
-The Nigerian Academy of Science
-The Academy of Science and Technology of Senegal
-Sudan Academy of Science
-Tanzania Academy of Sciences
-Uganda National Academy of Sciences
-Zambia Academy of Sciences
-Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences
-African Academy of Sciences
-Polska Akademia Nauk
-American Association for the Advancement of Science
-Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
-United States National Research Council
-European Academy of Sciences and Arts
-European Science Foundation
-InterAcademy Council
-International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
-American Chemical Society
-American Institute of Physics
-American Physical Society
-Australian Institute of Physics
-European Physical Society
-American Geophysical Union
-American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America
-Soil Science Society of America
-European Federation of Geologists
-European Geosciences Union
-Geological Society of America
-Geological Society of London
-International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
-National Association of Geoscience Teachers
-American Meteorological Society
-Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
-Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
-Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
-Royal Meteorological Society
-World Meteorological Organization
-American Quaternary Association
-International Union for Quaternary Research
-American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians
-American Institute of Biological Sciences
-American Society for Microbiology
-Institute of Biology
-Society of American Foresters
-The Wildlife Society
-American Academy of Pediatrics
-American College of Preventive Medicine
-American Medical Association
-American Public Health Association
-Australian Medical Association
-World Federation of Public Health Associations
-World Health Organization
-American Astronomical Society
-American Statistical Association
-The Institution of Engineers Australia
-International Association for Great Lakes Research
-Institute of Professional Engineers New Zealand
Every last one of them, crazy organizations of environmentalists with their own agenda...

Do you want to know the list of QUALIFIED individuals(they hold a degree in a science relevant to climatology) who dispute anthropological climate change? There are 35 of them.

At this point anybody who disputes climate change is little better than those people who insist that man hasn't landed on the moon. There is a scientific consensus on climate change, just like there is a scientific consensus on the speed of light and the scientific consensus on evolution.
 

Bara_no_Hime

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Dirty Hipsters said:
Anyone who doesn't believe in global warming is an idiot, since the a change in the earth's temperature is a measurable and indisputable fact. The question shouldn't however be whether or not you believe in global warming, but whether global warming is caused by humans, or whether it's a natural phenomenon.
See, I've never understood the issue over that. The answer seems like "both, obviously" to me.

Sure, things were getting warmer before the Industrial Revolution. But they've been getting warmer faster since then. Thus both seems like the obvious response.

And, if both is the answer, then it is even more important to be concerned with the human side. Global warming is bad (for humans) even if it is natural. Making it worse because of a hair-splitting semantics just seems idiotic to me.

Then again, idiotic is how I describe most things that occur on Fox News, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.
 

TWRule

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Innegativeion said:
You seem to disagree with nihilism, labeling it arbitrary as the "scientific worldview", which will only get you weird looks.
I did not mean to draw an identity between nihilism and the scientific worldview - only to say that the logical consequence of the scientific worldview (in broad strokes) amounts to nihilism. There are plenty of other ideologies and worldviews that I think amount to nihilism at base. I've yet to see a consistent modern scientific account of 'value', for instance, that wasn't an absurd reductionist view.

Philosophy is a science (according to philosophers), but it's not THE science.
I've not encountered these philosophers that claim philosophy is a science (besides some of the ancients, but 'science' meant something very different for them). I certainly would never claim that philosophy was a science, myself - least of all in comparison with what we usually mean when we speak of 'modern science'.

The purpose of science is in the dealing of facts.
It's here that my skepticism comes in. If you consider a fact a certainty (or reliably high probability) that something is the case, then I think even many practicing scientists, and certainly many philosophers of science, would disagree with you; every scientific theory is tentative, even the most commonly accepted ones, and they must all be falsifiable to be considered scientific.

My main skepticism isn't even with the epistemological gap between scientific theory and 'fact' or 'truth' though, it's with the underlying assumptions that are added to those theories when they are embraced as fact. Namely the highly questionable assumption that because the scientific method discovers what it is designed to be able to possibly discover, those findings are evidence not only for the specific hypothesis in question, but for a specific greater metaphysical picture. That is, how do we get from "such and such statistically significant correlations have been found between X and Y natural phenomena when measured by method A" to "We live in a universe of such-and-such a nature where it is a fact that Q"? All too commonly are broad, invalid conclusions drawn from the results of scientific experiments.

I find the idea that science necessarily demands a nihilistic worldview to be absurd. Plenty of scientific theories, particularly the anthropic principle or bio-centricism, run specifically counter to that regardless.
It's not that a nihilistic worldview is a precondition to doing science, it's that if one embraces the metaphysical picture that modern science as it is widely practiced paints, then the logical consequence is nihilism (there is no coherent place for robust human consciousness, meaning, or value). We can derive no coherent ethical norms from the results of science, nor can science coherently model values without diverging significantly in method. I understand bio-centrism to be an ethical position, not a scientific theory, and the antropic principle as a metaphysical position, not something falsifiable and thus not a viable scientific hypothesis either.

Quantum mechanics suggests that without observers, the universe would be static, since probabilities only collapse when observed; a cloud of super-positioned particles with no definite meaning or attributes. Every possible event occurring at once.
That's right - and you'll note the enormous difficulty scientists are having with this; some want to deny this hypothesis and find a more traditionally reductive picture that better coheres with the conventional picture that all the other areas of modern science have been filling out for some time now, others think that these developments might call for a radical transformation of science itself (after all, as I said before, science as it is now is not self-aware as a method - the scientific method would have to be changed to take its own existence into account). I'm on board with the latter party, and perhaps a self-aware scientific enterprise would not suffer from the same criticisms that I've launched against modern science up to this point.

If that doesn't imply meaning, I don't know what does.
It does seem to imply that we are responsible for assigning meaning to the world; the question is, what should we do with this power? Modern science is not equipped to answer that question, hence why I've turned to philosophy.
 

Innegativeion

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>>>First of all, don't mis-define my terms for me. A scientific fact is a notion upheld by repeatable experiments.<<<

The rest all sounds like entirely arbitrary, subjective interpretation.

There is no authoritative consensus in the scientific world that says how anyone should interpret the world outside of provable concepts, as most philosophy tends to be (outside provable concepts that is).

Your insistence that science, our most reliable and enduring method for understanding reality, invalidates human agency is laughable to me still.

Most religions and philosophies are unprovable; They can't be substantiated or unsubstantiated, so they fall within the realm of what science does not even concern itself with. Science is not out to get your spirituality or sense of meaning or whatever. Your only reason to think so is your own repeated insistence.

Science does not make moral judgements.

Science does not make aesthetic judgements.

Science does NOT tell you how to use scientific knowledge.

Science does not draw conclusions about the supernatural.

Science just doesn't work the way you insist it does.

TWRule said:
(in broad strokes)
I think this here is your problem.

I don't know what got you on this "science logically points to inherit meaninglessness" shtick, but in terms of broad strokes, it's broader than the English channel. Broad sweeping generalizations tend not to mesh well with a lot of people. Myself in particular.
 

Silvanus

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TWRule said:
I did not mean to draw an identity between nihilism and the scientific worldview - only to say that the logical consequence of the scientific worldview (in broad strokes) amounts to nihilism. There are plenty of other ideologies and worldviews that I think amount to nihilism at base. I've yet to see a consistent modern scientific account of 'value', for instance, that wasn't an absurd reductionist view.
I don't think you really understand what science is. It doesn't prescribe an ideology-- there's no such thing as a "scientific worldview".

Take the concept of "value", the example you gave. Science simply does not tell you what you should value, because that's subjective. That doesn't mean that those who believe in science don't value anything-- that's simply absurd. You'll notice that scientists tend to place different value on different things. Science does not prescribe value or morality. It deals with fact and theory.

Saying that you haven't seen a "scientific account of value", is like saying you haven't seen an "Economic account of why kittens are cute", and concluding from that that the "economic worldview" is bunkum. Economics deals with the economy, and Science deals with objective conclusions and theories that accurately account for observation. This is what Innegativeion is saying (probably better than myself).
 

TWRule

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Innegativeion said:
>>>First of all, don't mis-define my terms for me. A scientific fact is a notion upheld by repeatable experiments.<<<

The rest all sounds like entirely arbitrary, subjective interpretation.

There is no authoritative consensus in the scientific world that says how anyone should interpret the world outside of provable concepts, as most philosophy tends to be (outside provable concepts that is).

Your insistence that science, our most reliable and enduring method for understanding reality, invalidates human agency is laughable to me still.

Most religions and philosophies are unprovable; They can't be substantiated or unsubstantiated, so they fall within the realm of what science does not even concern itself with. Science is not out to get your spirituality or sense of meaning or whatever. Your only reason to think so is your own repeated insistence.

Science does not make moral judgements.

Science does not make aesthetic judgements.

Science does NOT tell you how to use scientific knowledge.

Science does not draw conclusions about the supernatural.

Science just doesn't work the way you insist it does.

TWRule said:
(in broad strokes)
I think this here is your problem.

I don't know what got you on this "science logically points to inherit meaninglessness" shtick, but in terms of broad strokes, it's broader than the English channel. Broad sweeping generalizations tend not to mesh well with a lot of people. Myself in particular.
Silvanus said:
TWRule said:
I did not mean to draw an identity between nihilism and the scientific worldview - only to say that the logical consequence of the scientific worldview (in broad strokes) amounts to nihilism. There are plenty of other ideologies and worldviews that I think amount to nihilism at base. I've yet to see a consistent modern scientific account of 'value', for instance, that wasn't an absurd reductionist view.
I don't think you really understand what science is. It doesn't prescribe an ideology-- there's no such thing as a "scientific worldview".

Take the concept of "value", the example you gave. Science simply does not tell you what you should value, because that's subjective. That doesn't mean that those who believe in science don't value anything-- that's simply absurd. You'll notice that scientists tend to place different value on different things. Science does not prescribe value or morality. It deals with fact and theory.

Saying that you haven't seen a "scientific account of value", is like saying you haven't seen an "Economic account of why kittens are cute", and concluding from that that the "economic worldview" is bunkum. Economics deals with the economy, and Science deals with objective conclusions and theories that accurately account for observation. This is what Innegativeion is saying (probably better than myself).
You both are misunderstanding me; I *agree* with you that science does not - and cannot - make value judgments or tell us how to think. That is exactly part of my point. I am not criticizing science itself, but a view that has been called 'scientism' - that is, taking science as an authority on truth and scientific models as being identical with the way the world *is* (a faith in science that could be seen as an attempt to have it serve the role of religion in someone's life). Everytime scientific results are unqualifiedly conflated with universal truths or 'facts', this ideology gains strength. It's exactly because these people still actually make value judgments, yet can't consistently do so while holding the other views they do, that I think the flaws in their thinking are shown. It is how science has been interpreted (by some scientists, but mostly by non-scientists), and a certain unreflective attitude toward it that I am against.

Put in terms of this thread, it is not that I am questioning the data that scientists have collected, I am questioning the attitude of fear that pervades these discussions on global warming - an attitude that I think stems from some people implicitly holding problematic metaphysical/ontological positions that they themselves have not properly challenged.

If we disagree, it's on the 'objectivity' of science. Like I said earlier, science makes certain presuppositions in its method of what counts as evidence or a phenomenon to be considered, it can only possibly find what its paradigm allows it to look for; these presuppositions imply *value* judgments having been made beforehand. Your saying things like 'science is the most reliable method we have...etc.' implies that you subscribe to those values and presuppositions. I do not. By this I mean that science may be an acceptable way to understand certain types of phenomena (keeping our conclusions limited to theoretical models), but not all types.

I've said this before, but it bears repeating. No amount of experimention conducted under the scientific method can prove that the method itself is apprehending 'truth'. At best, it gives us a conditional, limited, perspective-bound form of 'fact' in the form of "If X method is followed under R conditions, Y is the likely result." It fills out one way to look at the world, but it cannot say that that is the only or best way to look at it 'in general' or depending on our goal.

However the implicit question in these discussions isn't really "Do you believe that scientists found X data?" it's "Do you feel compelled to act in a certain in response to this?" A possible mishandling of the latter question is what I've been addressing.