here's a really excellent piece on the state of play in the climate-change debate, by two scientists. i like it all, but particularly this graph.

That myth [of pure science] has allowed politicians to shirk their responsibility to be clear about the values, interests and beliefs that underpin their preferences and choices about science and policy. Better to recognize that decision-makers, depending on their political beliefs, will weigh the evidence and risks of climate change differently when evaluating policy options. Their choices will influence the distribution of benefits and costs, and will have varying and uncertain prospects for success. Voters should evaluate the decisions on that basis, rather than on the false notion that science is dictating the choices.

right. and the same goes for the scientists. the first thing i would do if i was editing a scientific journal on these questions, is to demand that in each scientific paper, the authors declare their position on the political questions. the idea that you have no position is absurd in a case like this, as the emails show in spades. state and try to allow for - but in any case reveal - sources of funding, political commitments/connections and so on. that is as close as you can come to enabling people to assess your results objectively. and it is an aid in actually becoming objective. this is why, as a teacher, i don't try to pretend i don't have any opinions. the audience has to know the angle to assess the terrain.

i'm trying to tell you what it would take to actually begin to convince me. because the approach y'all are taking so far just sets off my jive detector like a series of screeching sirens. if you're an actual scientist, you ought to want the suspicion of others on any reasonable grounds. and you ought to suspect yourself: that's the essence of the procedure of seeking truth.

 i want to say how refreshing the piece is in its reasonableness, its humility, its sincerity. it doesn't pretend like everyone else that the science is settled. it doesn't equate puzzlement about masses of difficult or obscure or equivocal data about massively complex systems to holocaust denial. it just pfrobes for the truth with some humility.

it's a paradox. it might seem obvious that only expressions of total certainty will convince people. in a case like this, the reverse is - or at least obviously ought to be - the case. give me something that sounds like you're open and thinking, and you might bring me along. give me exactly one side of the story in your tone of absolute authority and i not only don't believe you, i start to think maybe freedom requires me to emit maximum carbon.

anyway: let the dogma be discredited. that is the best thing that has ever happened to the global warming movement. i'm telling you that in a year, when these people are recovering from their felicitous humiliation, when they are carefully reconstructing the data in the face of objections they have been forced to take seriously, when their degree of certainty is commensurate with their evidence, when the assertions are truth-oriented rather than merely strategic or manipulative, then i will believe them. then i will be mobilizable.

oh yeah, and tell al gore to shut the fuck up.

"Vapors rise as

Fever settles on an acid sea

Neptune's bones dissolve."

indeed. but your lame ass endureth eternally.