{"id":80,"date":"2005-01-06T15:22:14","date_gmt":"2005-01-06T19:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=80"},"modified":"2012-05-03T06:57:59","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T11:57:59","slug":"state-of-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=80","title":{"rendered":"State of Ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The editors of *Thenonsequitur.com* would like to apologize for their rather long vacation, which they enjoyed doing their regular jobs. The editors also apologize for not posting a notice to that effect. The fact is, however, they never intended to take a vacation; it took them. But, in addition to that, they have to admit that op-eds<\/span> have been much less argumentative lately. After the election, David Brooks even apologized for one of his numerous distortions of Kerry's record. And Will has taken a turn to frequent reportage. Today a wikipediaen<\/span><\/a> discussion of the theory of relativity for the enjoyment of the habitues<\/span> of the *Washington Post*.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

With that out of the way, let's open a new year of logical analysis with a late December piece by George Will, in which he argues, on the strength of a fictional novel, that all the talk about global warming–we mean "climate<\/span> change"–is only so much hot air. The novel of course is Michael Crichton's–no<\/span>, you heard it right, the author of *Jurassic Park* and the creator of *ER*–*State of Fear*. What sets this thriller apart from the ever thickening treacle of the genre of ecothrillers<\/span> (cf<\/span>. such films as *AI* and *Day after Tomorrow*) is the auctoritas<\/span> of its author. Yes, Michael Crichton<\/span> has a degree in Medicine (which we suppose makes him an expert in science-related things). But not only that, he seasons his book liberally with charts, graphs, footnotes and appendices:<\/p>\n

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"State of Fear," with a first printing of 1.5 million copies, resembles Ayn<\/span> Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" — about 6 million copies sold since 1957 — as a political broadside woven into an entertaining story. But whereas Rand had only an idea — a good one (capitalism is splendid), but only one — Crichton<\/span> has information. "State of Fear" is the world's first page turner that people will want to read in one gulp (a long gulp: 600 pages, counting appendices) even though it has lots of real scientific graphs, and footnotes citing journals such as Progress in Physical Geography and Transactions — American Geophysical Union.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Naturally all of this research for the fictional novel is meant to establish the credibility of the authors<\/span> real non-fictional scientific conclusions. Our colleagues in the sciences–the non-fictional ones–assure us, however, that the mere presence of charts, graphs, appendices and footnotes does not alone suffice to justify conclusions of scientific merit. This is the case even if those conclusions are seconded, as they are in Will's piece, by the added authority of journalists for respected conservative British publications:<\/p>\n

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Climate-change forecasts, Harvey [of the *Financial Times*] writes, are like financial forecasts but involve a vastly more complex array of variables. The climate forecasts, based on computer models analyzing the past, tell us that we do not know how much warming is occurring, whether it is a transitory episode or how much warming is dangerous — or perhaps beneficial.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From a strictly logical point of view, the really interesting thing about this op-ed<\/span> piece is its unique one-two of oft-neglected fallacies of informal reasoning. As we can see from the above, Will has concocted a pretty obvious appeal to unqualified authority, or what the Latins<\/span> call the *argumentum<\/span> ad verecundiam<\/span>*, with his attempted credentialing of Michael Crichton<\/span>, TV producer and author. And now he attempts to tip the balance away from the world's scientific community (and towards Crichton<\/span>) with a fairly transparent appeal to ignorance. Scientists cannot claim with geometrical certainty that something is the case, so therefore it must be the case that it's not the case: <\/p>\n

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One of the good guys in "State of Fear" cites Montaigne's<\/span> axiom: "Nothing is so firmly believed as that which least is known." Which is why 30 years ago the fashionable panic was about global cooling. The New York Times (Aug. 14, 1975) reported "many signs" that "Earth may be heading for another ice age." Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned about "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation." "Continued rapid cooling of the Earth" (Global Ecology, 1971) could herald "a full-blown 10,000-year ice age" (Science, March 1, 1975). The Christian Science Monitor reported (Aug. 27, 1974) that Nebraska's armadillos were retreating south from the cooling.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We might offer, however, that that is just the way that science works. Just because the *New York Times* or perhaps even *Science* seem to have gotten a few things wrong in the past in their environmental reportage, does not at all mean that they are likely to be wrong now. They could, of course, be wrong. But they're having been wrong about something in the past does not mean that they are wrong *now*.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The editors of *Thenonsequitur.com* would like to apologize for their rather long vacation, which they enjoyed doing their regular jobs. The editors also apologize for not posting a notice to that effect. The fact is, however, they never intended to take a vacation; it took them. But, in addition to that, they have to admit … Continue reading State of Ignorance<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,7,4,2,18],"tags":[1966,484,1373,129,1371],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appeal-to-ignorance","category-will","category-fallacies","category-op-ed-writers","category-unqualified-authority","tag-appeal-to-ignorance","tag-climate-change","tag-denialism","tag-george-will","tag-michael-crichton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3573,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/3573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}