8cddcedc_Quark_Soup_by_David_Appell__ode_Highlights_HIDE_HIGHLIGHTS
[Time] 19:38
Russ: I want to mention two more factual issues, and then I want to turn to the social issue of how the climate science issue is getting discussed and the polarization of it, being written about recently. The first factual issue I want to mention is, when I sometimes suggest that I'm somewhat skeptical of our understanding of the relationship between human activity and the climate, I often am greeted with the clever response: 'Well, 97% of scientists disagree with you. And you are only an economist. So how can you hold that view given that there's this massive consensus that 97% of scientists are convinced?' What's your reaction to that? Guest: Well, I'm in the 97%. That is to say if it's true that 97% of scientists are all of a particular view about climate, then let's go and ask what that view is. And if you go and look at the origin of that figure, it was that a certain poll--of 79 scientists, by the way, an extraordinarily small sample--said that, 97% of them agreed that human beings had influenced climate and that carbon dioxide was greenhouse gas. Well, I'm in that group. Pretty well every skeptic I know is in that group. I'm amazed they found 3% that disagree with that. If you see what I mean. So, actually, whenever you hear that 97% number, it's not referring to a consensus about dangerous climate change. It's referring to a consensus about humans' ability to affect the climate. And that covers everything, from a tiny effect to a big effect. In other words, a subsequent paper which claimed that 97% of papers published in this area supported climate change--but again, it was just about supporting man-made climate change. It wasn't about supporting dangerous climate change. So when President Obama tweeted that 97% of climate scientists agree with climate change is man-made and dangerous, the first word was right; the second word was wrong. It's just not true. And I'm afraid he was just telling a lie or misinformed about that. There has never been any study which has shown that 97% of scientists think man-made climate change is dangerous. By the way--there was a much bigger survey of members of the American Meteorological Association, most of whom are scientists and all of whom are climatologists in some sense; and that--the figure there, when asked about 'How many of you think that climate change is likely to be dangerous?' the figure there was 52%. That was a huge difference-- Russ: Well, they still win. I'm joking. I'm laughing. Because I really resent--and this happens in economics as well, I really resent the implication that science is a majority rule process. It's vulgar. Guest: Yeah. And of course, you know, the whole point of science is that, as Richard Feynman famously said, 'Science is in the business of proving that experts are wrong.' And you know, until very recently, 97% of medics agreed that cholesterol was the cause of heart disease. Now, that's gone. That theory is wrong. Pretty well everybody--well, not pretty well everybody, but gradually, most people are realizing that that just ain't true. Dietary cholesterol, I should say. Cholesterol is involved in heart disease. But it's not because you are eating it in your diet. And that was based on very dodgy science in the 1950s. Which was enforced by a pretty ruthless consensus-building exercise that was pretty brutal to people who disagreed with it. And we see this again and again in science.
Quark Soup by David Appell
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