Argument Clinic

There are scientific arguments and there are political arguments.

They are different.

• Science proceeds from evidence. It often moves slowly. Minority views are respected, so long as they bring evidence to the party. Evidence is data. Without data there is no argument. Even after a consensus is reached, new evidence may still upset it. But without evidence the argument will not be re-opened.
• Politics proceeds from belief. It can move quickly. Minority views can be suppressed, and the smaller the minority the more possible this becomes. All is fair. You can argue based on anything you like. Consensus is rare, the majority rules. Well-organized minorities can beat loosely-organized majorities. Heat is often prized over light.

ClimateGate is politics. It is not science. It brings nothing new to the party, save for some wild charges based on a deliberate misreading of stolen e-mails. It alleges a grand "conspiracy" among the world's climate scientists, motivated by hope of financial gains, but even here its evidence is weak.

It is the big lie, meant to distract us from what must be done to save the lives of our grandchildren. It represents short-term values, which are powerful in politics.

Most political arguments are, at heart, economic arguments. In this case the carbon industries do not want to pay the external costs of extracting or using resources. If forced to do so, through cap and trade or some other mechanism, they would find it impossible to compete against renewable sources for capital. Their costs would rise, and in time renewables would undercut them, because costs there are declining.

So it's no coincidence that on the eve of the Copenhagen conference they have thrown up this wall of FUD, claiming (despite a scientific consensus to the contrary) that carbon dioxide can't possibly contribute to global warming. After all, it's a natural substance, it's necessary. So is salt, but that doesn't mean I don't have high blood pressure from using too much of it.

Thus we have politics being used in an attempt to overthrow science, because it has become inconvenient for people with a lot of money to lose.

In this case, the difference between the oil industry and the people who destroyed looms two centuries ago in the name of Ned Ludd becomes less-and-less clear. You can't beat science through politics except by destroying science, the same science that created the industrial revolution, that gave us plastics, air conditioning, and life spans twice those of our grandparents.

It's trying to kill your opponent at craps because the dice fall against you. The blood is on your hands, it won't wash off, and even if your victim survives no one will play with you again.

If you wish to argue with science bring your data and let's have it out. But let's have it out scientifically. You can't cherry-pick. Everything comes out. You can't attack the motives of others and not have your own questioned in turn.

In politics, many assume that everyone is an interest group, that there is no such thing as right or wrong, that everyone's motives are cynical or at least suspect, and that political might makes right.

Science doesn't work that way.

It starts with someone offering a startling new theory, something that throws past assumptions into question. We can make a molecule of nearly-infinite length, or dinosaurs evolved from birds, they survive.

OK, what's your evidence. Let's argue, let's seek new evidence, let's conduct experiments. Let's pick all those apart, and build new theories based on evidence. The best theory is the one that proves most useful, either in asking new questions or being engineered into things that work. Gee, we found feathers on dinosaur fossils. We can engineer a space elevator that takes us to the stars without rockets.

ClimateGate is not just an attack on a scientific theory, it is a political attack on science itself. It needs to be seen as such. And that needs to inform our politics, now and in the future.

The carbon industries have jumped the shark, and can no longer be taken seriously.