[Coral-List] political arguments on coral-list

[Ulf Erlingsson]

It's a good principle to separate science and politics, but different persons have different frames of reference which influence their assumptions when making a decision. When it comes to climate change and corals, virtually all biologists seem to assume that it would be a disaster if 90% of corals were to die. I'm not saying coral species, but coral individuals, or coral reefs. They also seem to believe that something like that would be a consequence of the climate change. Geologists on the other hand tend to not see that scenario as a disaster. It's happened before, it will happen again, it's no big deal, seems to be their point. If that is the difference in point of view, we will not settle it with science. It's a difference in world view, not in scientific facts.

Another example: In my opinion there can be no doubt that a new Ice Age will come, the only question being when, but that it is on it's way is virtually certain. Ice Ages tend to start slow and end abruptly, so we probably wont know that it has started until at least thousand years after it started. Which is to say, it may already have started. The burning of fossil fuels may have temporarily halted it, just as Svante Arrhenius speculated in the 19th century when he presented the greenhouse gas hypothesis. Instead of staring ourselves blind on the next decades and centuries, we should look in a time perspective of millennia, tens of millennia, and hundreds of millennia.

Ulf Erlingsson

On 2014-05-21, at 17:15, John Cubit wrote:

> On 11/11/2010 Eugene Shinn wrote on Coral-list:
> 
> "...Many of us older types come from a long-standing culture that
> says science should be pure and not influenced by politicians,
> kind-of-like separation of religion and government. The agency where
> I spent 31 years had existed for well over a century because it stuck
> to the science and was seldom accused of bias. That agency produced
> hard data that could be used by people on both sides of the political
> aisle...."
> 
> Instead of diatribes about bias, let's return to Gene's more positive
> philosophy of 3.5 years ago and foster science based on
> objectivity--science of open minds who base their work on critically
> evaluated data, sound logic, and scientific principles.
> 
> John Cubit
> John.Cubit at gmail.com
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