Who let the dogmatists out?
April 8th, 2008 at 00:50

“The earth is spherical”

“What?! That’s clearly not true! There’s just a big scientific conspiracy by the liberal left to give the scientists jobs! Anyone who talks about the shape of earth should give a balanced view and give equal time to the flat earth society!”

I hate it when science is politicised. This might surprise you, as I love needlessly politicising everything else: films, TV shows, abstract concepts, politics, I’ll find a political angle on them all. But I think that the politicians should stay the fuck away from science.

Case in point: dangerously credulous Tory blogger Iain Dale keeps posting tenuous stories about how climate change totally isn’t happening. Y’know, despite all of the stacks of evidence and the overwhelming scientific consensus saying that it is.

What bothers me about it that its a purely dogmatic thing: Tory Iain presumably is under the impression that because he’s a Tory, he hates taxes, and therefore, if there’s green taxes to try and manipulate the market away from fossil fuels and carbon emissions, its a bad thing, because taxes are bad full stop, and therefore, any crackpot claiming that climate change isn’t occurring is proof that it’s a New Labour nanny-state socialist money-grabbing exercise to increase state control of the economy.

Its the same with the new laughing-stock of a film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, about how how evolution by natural selection is a conspiracy orchestrated by “Big Science” and their Nazi agenda- the latter part of the title being a subtitle, not instructions to the cinema about who to turn away.

Obviously the thought process is even more clearly dogmatic here: “Our book says God created the Universe, therefore, despite stacks of evidence, evolution is totally untrue”.

I think it’s pretty clear that I disagree with them.

“But they just want a balanced view!”, defenders cry. That’s sounds fair, doesn’t it? Freedom of speech and all that? “If we don’t have freedom of speech then its Nazi Germany!”

Unfortunately for the global warming deniers and the creationists, science is not democratic, you cretins. Everyone could think something and it’d still be wrong, because science needs evidence. It’d be madness to suggest that (Godwin alert!) Holocaust Deniers should be allowed to give a “balanced view” of the Holocaust, because there’s stacks of evidence contrary to their ludicrous opinions.

And yeah, I know I’m not a scientist, but I do appreciate and understand the value of evidence – obviously if the scientific consensus on an issue were to shift, it’d be because some new evidence came to light. If the scientists launched a new satellite that scanned the earth’s interior and determined the earth had a honeycomb centre, and there was observations to back this up which falsified previous theories, then I’d be willing to believe the scientists.

So, please, politicians and dogmatists, please can you stay the fuck away from science, for the good of humanity?

Comments(3)

1. Iain Dale
   April 8th, 2008 at 9:36 am

   James, please do not represent my position. All I ask for is a debate. The Climate Change zealots wish to stifle any debate. I cannot understand why. They say the argument is won so there doesnt need to be a debate. Sorry, but it’s not up to them to make that judgement. I do not say climate change isnt happening. It clearly is. But then it always has been. What I remain unconvinced of is the causes and the remedies.

2. The French
   April 9th, 2008 at 7:47 pm

   Iain, that’s all very well and good, appealing to reason by “asking for debate”. In fact its a distraction from the issue, and an incredibly dangerous one.

   You “cannot understand” why debate at this time is a bad idea – its because its far too late for that. The time for debate was the last three decades, as the evidence slowly mounted up. It is now the time for /last-chance/ action in a desperate attempt to save the environment we have built our civilisation in.

   Its simply not acceptable to pander to good form, and make a jolly nice committee to debate the issues for ANOTHER ten years, while we squander the last few years in which we have a chance to turn the climate situation around. By the time the most pig-headed, obstinate, head-in-the-sand philistines are convinced, the point of no return is already reached.

   Our most pessimistic projections say this has /already happened/! Why else do you think the scientific community was in uproar during the Bali Conference at the bickering politicians slowing down the process for short-term gain for themselves or their nations?

   Now can you see why the “Zealots” are “stifling debate” (a carefully barbed way of implying that those who can understand the issues are undemocratic)?

   What exactly would your so-called debate acheive? Either you will beleive the consensus of the trained scientific community and the evidence base, or you wont. Evidence changes, yes, but unless you have some reason to expect that the entire climate change thing will go away in the next few years (incidentally, you /cant/ expect this, because such an assertion ought to be backed up by evidence, and then that would be part of the current evidence base), then all a period of debate acheives is delaying our one chance of solving the problem, so the 99% watertight evidence because 100% as we ACTUALLY SEE IT HAPPEN.

   You then say that “its not up to them to make that judgement” – ignoring that this is another oh-so-cunning attempt to make the scientific community some sinister dictatorial conspiracy – who is it up to? Our politicians? The idea itself is ludicrous – perhaps there should be a referendum, with everyone in the world weighing up the vast amount of scientific evidence and voting for whether they /beleive it/ or not(because you, along with a billion uneducated chinese peasants, and the indigenous amazonian tribespeople, and etc etc, have the training and ability to do that, right?). Either our politicians should take the advice of the scientific community, and thus the “global warming zealots”, as you put it, CAN make the decision that the argument is won, or you think they shouldnt.

   It boils down to this – do you think science is the best method we have of understanding how our world works and how we affect it? If you do, you have to accept its system of peer-reviewed evidence and its reccomendations to save the one known environment our species can survive in – Earth.

   If you dont, and think people should be able to make up their minds freely, completely uninformed (because without the relevant training how can you be truly informed?), then continue with your line of debate. Continue to suggest that you should be convinced before any action is taken using your precious resources. But accept that that position means you do not trust the scientific community, you dont accept their methods and you ought to both reject the other items given to you by such methods, including modern medicine, and also kindly not complain when your procrastination DOES cause the biggest humanitarian, economic and environmental disaster in history.

3. Pauli Ojala
   April 12th, 2008 at 10:48 am

   I think an analogous documentary film should also be made concerning the DINOGLYFS or dinolits:
   http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/dinosaur.htm

   It seems that the ancient man not only saw but also documented the last megafauna (gigafauna, I should say).

   Other animations on the tiny cellular machineries apart from the Expelled movie can be seen in here:
   http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Videos_animations_flagella_evidence_existence_creation_contra_evolution.htm

   pauli.ojala@gmail.com
   Biochemist, Finland
   http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-the-Movie-Evolution-Intelligent-Design-ID.htm

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