…the right to kill children before they’re born…

A person who makes such a claim is hardly making an argument based on science.

not a single person with a Phd. in a scientific area.

nuff said.

“Whether or not abstinence or abortion is good for the society or morally good or not is a political question and every opinion about it a political opinion, not a scientific one. Thanks, Science, for giving this important idea a boost.”

I think you are being too general. It is very useful to analyze where precisely science enters politics. IMHO, politics often starts with something most people agree with like “we want to avoid unwanted pregnancies and the spread of STDs” or “we want the economy to grow” – it is simple to decide whether these are good or bad for society as a whole. Have you not noticed that a lot of the disagreement is about how these goals that most people agree with (except of course various extremists) should be reached? Science has a very big role to play here, because it can inform us what routes to take, what will work. Let’s put it this way: we don’t need political science – we need scientific politics.

I respect the Heritage Foundation as an important think tank, and if I needed some scientific info about a topic they study, I would probably prefer Heritage Foundation over Concerned Scientists. You don’t need to explain me that people on the far Left prefer Concerned Scientists over Heritage Foundation.

Dear Invcit, similar comments apply to you. Whether or not abstinence or abortion is good for the society or morally good or not is a political question and every opinion about it a political opinion, not a scientific one. Thanks, Science, for giving this important idea a boost.

Dear Cynthia,

all of us know that you are very efficient in producing various bizarre catastrophic scenarios and combining words so that they sound hysterical, but what you have failed to offer was a rational argument that the processes that are parts of the “carbon cycle” are threatened by increased CO2 concentrations. While you provided us with zero of evidence, you would need a rather strong set of arguments to support your extraordinary statement. Extraordinary statements require extraordinary evidence. If you call my position “Climate Change Denial”, then it would be a good idea for everyone who is not in Climate Change Denial to call her psychiatrist and ask for help.

Dear Alex,

Peter Woit is not a physicist, while climate science, if done properly, is a part of physics and is within my qualification. But formal qualification is not as important as the fact that while Peter Woit has no idea about the technical content of our field, I have a pretty good idea about climate science, although there are of course much better people in this particular field.

Dear Sean,

you may succeed to make people discuss about more interesting things than me once you succeed to create a posting that is more interesting which quite clearly was not the case of this file that you created.

All the best
Lubos

That is an open question.

My presonal bias is to err on the side of caution and reduce greenhouse emissions. The conclusion I have come to, means increased nuclear energy to meet world energy needs over the next 30-50 years with hopefully a better long term solution.

You start by saying that the majority disagree with Motl, then you finish your comment by saying science is not political!

Tony Smith has quoted Carl Sagan’s view in his book Cosmos, 1980: “The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science.”

Sagan was constantly coming up with radical ideas. I think in 1983 he thought of “nuclear winter” (which eventually turned out to only have a chance of working if oil refineries are the primary targets). But if you don’t challenge orthodoxy, you’re not likely to achieve a radical advance. You learn more by trying things and making mistakes than by locking yourself into an orthodoxy.

It seems to me that what you mean by “hard science” is something that can be reduced to easily manageable, predictive numerical models.

This is hard for weather and climate, but the computer simulations are getting closer to the observed conditions and predicitions about climate change can be made with some degree of scientific accuracy, unlike the famous Time article about a new Ice Age in the mid 70’s.

“Climate change” is a superficial term that has been picked up by the news media, but I remember talking about the Green House effect in my Biology A Level class at school in the late 60’s. It’s certainly a valid term and certainly closely related to C02 levels. If anything the evidence about Ocean acidification levels indicates that there’s a danger that the oceans will soon become less effective at absorbing this C02.

Finally science is not political per se, but the uses to which science has been put have always been, particularly in the area of technology.
Edward Teller was an extreme right winger on whom the character of Dr Strangelove was modelled.
Einstein on the other hand was always a socialist and his political views are often ignored by those who write about him