Huntsman: Earth not flat; Christie: Sun does not revolve around Earth

[TJ in Oregon]

I think an awful lot of the problem here is that politicians and mass-media outlets tend to present science in a "debate" sort of way rather than just reporting findings. This leads the general public to often lose actual results under a heap of political emotion.

On global warming, the reality is that the majority of data collected suggests that the earth's temperature on the whole is rising. The correct representation for viewing this is to evaluate a surface integral of temperature over the earth's surface. This cannot be evaluated in actuality of course, so we collect many data points and perform a sort of numerical integration/averaging on them to determine the earth's temperature. In recent years, it is almost (never say never) undeniable that there has been a temperature increase. To gather historical data is less straightforward because the availability of reliable temperature data from centuries ago isn’t perfect. We’ve used a variety of other techniques, such as fossil records and tree rings, to develop a fairly reliable estimate of temperature changes historically. The charge of data falsification aimed at a handful of scientists was primarily in this area of research. However, difficulties aside, it seems highly likely that the earth’s temperature has in fact been rising for a few hundred years.

The next question we need to ask is “Why?” There are several possible answers to this, although the consensus answer in the scientific community is the increased presence of greenhouse gasses. That is not to say there aren’t other complicating factors, such as minor changes in the sun’s radiation. But even after we ascribe to the ‘theory’ (see evolution discussion below for the definition of ‘theory’) that greenhouse gasses are in fact the cause of global warming, an accurate model of what will happen is still difficult to obtain. There are hundreds of complicating factors involved in creating a material balance for carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. The largest counter-intuitive factor, however, that is the most difficult to understand is the increased amount of carbon dioxide uptake by plant life when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases. This is bound by carbon dioxide levels released into the atmosphere and the second law of thermodynamics would prevent the uptake increase to truly counteract the increase in carbon dioxide release. But, the two so nearly balance that the degree to which they are different almost entirely drives the concentration change. This discrepancy prevents too good a prediction from being made about what will happen in the future.

Now, of course, most of you aren’t interested in that aspect of modeling, persay, but interested only in the way the debate has been framed and what the consequences will be. The Republican position in so much as it seeks to deny the existence of global warming is faulty. The Republican position that seeks to accept that global warming is happening but blame it on something other than greenhouse gasses is a bit disingenuous since political movements likely know very little on the subject. On the other side, the Democratic Party has taken the idea of global warming and moved toward a rally cry against fossil fuels when we really don’t have any legitimate alternatives. In my opinion, the entire global warming debate is framed completely wrong; it needs not to be about whether or not there is global warming, but what to do about it. I suspect part of our current economic issues can be attributed to attempts to address global warming using technologies that aren’t ready and/or aren’t suited for the role they’ve been used it.

On totally different note, evolution always seems to come up when discussing politics and science. More often than not, it is also framed in a way that suggests a poor understanding of what science is, what it tells us, and what it doesn’t. Too often I hear some kind of retort about how evolution is “a theory not a fact” or lambasting people for not “believing” in evolution. First of all, a theory is not a fact, nor is it an opinion; it is something of a nature completely different than both. A theory is a falsificationable hypothesis that has been tested and has not been proven wrong. The contrast between a theory and a fact or between a theory and an opinion is entirely semantic in nature and only seeks to distort the actual meaning of the subject in question.

To ask someone if they “believe” in evolution is a stupid question. No one who understands science at all “believes” in evolution. Evolution is simply accepted as the only falsificationable, scientific explanation we currently have for the history of life on this planet. That’s it, nothing more results from science because science can only answer questions which are falsificationable, which means that an idea or explanation is capable of being proven wrong. A belief in entirely different in nature, since it deals with ideas that cannot be proven wrong. Anyone who takes evolution as a “belief” violates the idea of what science is. Now, it is of course possible to believe that science provides all answers about our world and that no idea is true unless it can be proven wrong. This may sometimes be what is meant when someone says they “believe” in evolution but it answers an entirely different question. Science cannot ever determine “truth”. Any time I see the words “believe” or “truth” in a story about science I cringe.

In the realm of politics, these distinctions seem lost on everyone since framing the debate correctly and semantics can replace the intrinsic value of an idea in the minds of the public. Both parties are guilty on occasion of misrepresenting or just misunderstanding science for political positions. Heck, no one completely understands science. I do, however, find the idea that liberals are the sole purveyors of truth in the realm of science while conservatives are clinging to an alternate reality that doesn’t accurately portray the world. The two examples I used here are areas that Republicans generally take more flak over their opinions on, but there are other areas such as organic food or nuclear energy where the less scientifically sound position is more often taken by liberals.

[TJ in Oregon]

Very smart post TJ. I might quibble with the idea that science always requires falsifiability or that evolution ultimately meets this test. I tend to think "belief in evolution," (like to a lesser extent "belief in climate change") is a problematic concept more because there are so many variants of evolutionary theory and how far one takes its implications that to say whether or not one agrees with it ends up not telling very much.

That's a good point: there isn't a real concensus on a lot of specific details of many of the larger issues.

As far as falsificationism, a lot of science is trying to disprove theories, either as a true attempt to achieve it or just to check for consistency. I don't see how you can conduct experiments or collect data on a hypothesis that can't be proven false.

Evolution could be proven false by digging up human remains that contain the same carbon dating age as dinosaurs. Or if we had found that remains thought to be older aren't actually older after using carbon dating. Or if we show our entire understanding of dating is completely wrong. Granted, evolutionary theory does still contain a few holes big enough to ride a T-Rex through in that we are missing a huge amount of proof intermediate states of tons of organisms actually existed. But, the way evolution could be disproven is to collect a bunch of evidence that contradicts it. This would be further complicated that most of the Linnean classification system has been constructed around evolutionary theory. Yet, if we had clear data showing evolution did not actually happen, an awful lot would change.

These examples are particularly thorny; most of the time an attempt to disprove a theory is just taking data and seeing if it follows an equation.

[TJ in Oregon]

A large part of the reason why many scientists vote for Democrats is because they are afraid Republicans will cut funding for NSF or other agencies that issue grants. The threat of funding cuts scares people chasing after that ever-elusive grant. And since Republicans tend to be the party of budget cuts (if there even is one) Democrats often reap the benefit.

Of course there are a ton of other factors involved too such as the stigma of becoming a professor that scare conservatives away from academia. The best and brightest of conservative engineers tend to gravitate toward industry.

[TJ in Oregon]

Thanks for your compliments.

I should admit I am a chemical engineer, not a biologist, so yeah, I may have messed up some details there.

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There. I didn't mean "proof" and really that is the type of slip-up I've been rallying against for most of this. I guess I was bound to say something stupid in this discussion at some point.

[TJ in Oregon]

Here's an example of why most academic scientists are Democrats:

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139852035/shrimp-on-a-treadmill-the-politics-of-silly-studies

[TJ in Oregon]

Oh, that's also an important point: the distinction between public perception of macroevolution and microevolution. I'd doubt pretty much anyone would even bother disputing microevolution unless they really haven't thought about it.

[TJ in Oregon]

For me evolution is "proved" by what we see in Bacteria. Now most people not in the sciences might discount that, or just not care about it, but Bacteria are the best organism out there to study whether evolution occurs or not. And the evidence is just piling up that yes, evolution does occur. Human evolution, or the evolution of dinosaurs is much harder to study, and is unnecessary to understand how evolution works. We can't really study human evolution (or evolution in most mammals) that well due to the large generation times. Bacteria on the other hand have a generation time of a few hours or less, which makes the study of evolution possible. Always remember, evolution takes a long, long time to occur.

That's not entirely true. Observing bacteria evolving proves only that bacteria evolve. It does not prove that humans evolved from another organism, or that anything other than bacteria have evolved. It does, however, support the theory. The existence of one type of evolution does not prove all have occurred.

[TJ in Oregon]

For me evolution is "proved" by what we see in Bacteria. Now most people not in the sciences might discount that, or just not care about it, but Bacteria are the best organism out there to study whether evolution occurs or not. And the evidence is just piling up that yes, evolution does occur. Human evolution, or the evolution of dinosaurs is much harder to study, and is unnecessary to understand how evolution works. We can't really study human evolution (or evolution in most mammals) that well due to the large generation times. Bacteria on the other hand have a generation time of a few hours or less, which makes the study of evolution possible. Always remember, evolution takes a long, long time to occur.

That's not entirely true. Observing bacteria evolving proves only that bacteria evolve. It does not prove that humans evolved from another organism, or that anything other than bacteria have evolved. It does, however, support the theory. The existence of one type of evolution does not prove all have occurred.

It does prove that species do change to adapt to their environment, over time.

Definitely, but it does not prove which species have changed over time beyond what has been observed. This is a delicate distinction that most in the scientific community will find meaningless but still important because it leaves open the possibility that something else happened, perhaps even something outside the bounds of what is falsificationable. It could even involve a deity of some sort. This isn't science (and anyone who claims it is doesn't understand science) but it's still important because it can affect the way people view the world.

[TJ in Oregon]

What's with the title? It has nothing to do with the articles linked to.

The OP is mocking the Republican Party for not "believing" in science.