"Post-normal science" of climate change. Environmental scientist says: "Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking,..." Piece at Melanie Phillips
I'd call it "post-modern" science. This is creepy. Help me send her piece around, friends, because I think it exposes an important undercurrent of what is going on in the climate discussion: the idea that the ends justify the means (which Al Gore defended here).
And what are those "ends"? As always (is it coincidence?) more government control of your behavior, your freedom, and your hard-earned cash - as if government were a fount of wisdom instead mostly a bunch of slippery, self-aggrandizing, smooth-talking sleazes who want easy jobs, with no heavy lifting, and with good pensions. (See "The government is endogenous" by Prof. B.)
Yes, in the heart of true Yankees, government is seen as a necessary evil. Dr. Frankenstein's monster - created by us, but then difficult to control, because these folks just want to keep their easy jobs. A big mistake not to put term limits in the American Constitution.
A quote from Melanie:
So the true battleground has now been illuminated for us. The real fight is between scientists who believe in empirical observation and the truth, and ‘post-normal’ scientists who believe in ideology and lies. It’s a battle between Enlightenment values of rationality and those who wish to return us to a pre-rational era where thought was controlled and truth was a heresy. The stakes could not have been delineated more clearly.
Are some things too important for truth? I doubt it. Here is Galileo recanting his heresy.
Image: Jacques Derrida, the now old-hat (and now dead from AIDS - or was that Foucault? Whatever) philospher who taught our young brains full of mush the fallacy that there is no truth but power. Sorry, Jacques, wherever you are, but that was high school bull session material before anyone ever heard of you. We moved past that rebellious fashion long ago.
