Way Of The Dodo

NOTE: this is another experiment in the blog-review process by Steve Lewandowsky. He'll be recording a podcast in a few days from now so please post comments on this draft:

Suppose a bloke drifts up to you and says, “Apples don’t exist”... You raise your eyebrows, and in the next breath he adds, “but they grow naturally on trees!”

What?

“Apples don’t exist but they grow naturally on trees?” Surely you wouldn’t trust that bloke with the lives of your children if their future depended on logical coherence.

Now suppose you walk down the street and some other bloke sidles up and says, “The price of sheep is unknown, but I’d buy some now because they are cheap.”

What?

The price of sheep is unknown but they are cheap? Surely you wouldn’t trust that bloke with your kids’ lives either, if the future depended on logical coherence.

Now here’s the surprising fact: Your kids’ future, and the future of their kids, very much depends on logical coherence—very much hinges on protecting them and their future from the incoherent claims of so-called climate “skeptics.”

One of the great things philosophers of science have discovered is that scientific knowledge is never incoherent. In science, a hallmark criterion of whether you can possibly be right is whether or not you are coherent. If you are coherent, you might be right. If you are incoherent or contradict yourself, then you must be wrong.

The beauty of this is that you don’t need data or peer-reviewed science to be sure: If an argument is incoherent or mutually contradictory, then you can be confident that it is wrong.

What does this have to do with so-called climate “skeptics?”

Everything.

Because the sum total of so-called “skeptic” arguments is an incoherent muddle of contradictions.

On a Monday morning your resident “skeptic” might tell you that global warming does not exist. On the Monday afternoon, she may tell you that the warming is all natural, just the same way that non-existent apples grow on trees.

Nothing can be right that’s this incoherent.

And on Tuesday, a so-called “skeptic” may drift into town and make claims about the temperature record not being accurate. To top it off, he might assure you that there is nothing to worry about because it hasn’t been warming in the last 23 days anyhow. So the sheep are cheap but no one knows their price.

Nothing can be right that’s this incoherent.

By Wednesday morning, your excited “skeptic” may have invented the possibility that the sun is causing global warming, and by afternoon tea time it might be cosmic rays, or El Niño, or Inspector Clouseau or whatever.

Now, you may find it hard to believe that anyone could be so muddled, but in fact, an analysis of a single “skeptic” website reveals 239 such contradictions. 239 instances in which apples were said not to exist but then happily grow on trees. 239 clear indications that this so-called “skepticism” amounts to little more than muddled mutterings.

There is, of course, a coherent alternative. It is the coherent and overwhelmingly supported scientific fact that the Earth’s climate is warming and that humans are largely responsible for it. That is coherent, backed by peer-reviewed science, and endorsed by all major scientific organizations in the world.

For more details about the importance of coherence in science, and to comment on this piece, visit www.skepticalscience.com , which informs about climate change by relying entirely on the peer-reviewed literature.
Posted by Stephan Lewandowsky at 09:39 AM