Is the climate change debate....?

Question

....the most significant manifestation of positivism vs constructionism since the 'science wars' began?

Answer 1

Avast! a war, lemmee gather me cutlass and pistols, ARRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Answer 2

Is just a big con, if anyone was seriously tackling climate change through global warming them we would all be planting trees, if we stopped destroying the forests of the world and planted 10.000.000.000 trees then global warming and climate change, would be history in fifteen years and world peace a reality in ten.

These debates and conferences are just ways of wasting  tax-payers money by throwing it away, at scientists to go around  in circles, spouting their rhetoric, in unison, informing us about what we already know. But not one solution, just talk, talk, talk.

It is all a delaying tactic while greed and big business tear our planet to shreds.

Answer 3

Always remember Al Gore is an idoit.

Answer 4

what debate.

i have yet to find a global warmer that will debate global warming.

all the ones i see take the stance that they are right and everyone that is not a global warmer is wrong and that's the end of it.

all they can come up with is that if you are not for global warming then you are payed off by big oil.

yet the AGW research is payed for by the environmental money trusts and foundations

Answer 5

As one postmodernist now laments "... dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives. Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies? Is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we meant?"

From bottom of your Wikki page.

The ‘positivism vs constructionism’ (relativism vs realism) debate was yet another diversion up a blind alley. But the climate debate is just another manifestation of ideologically driven hostility to science that goes back to Galileo’s clash with the church through the ongoing evolution vs creationism debate. Inevitably the further right (conservative) someone is, and the less actual knowledge of science that usually accompanies this mindset, the more likely they are to resist new knowledge or to attempt to subvert it by trying to insist that all hypothesises should be treated equally (ignoring the small matter of providing evidence, building a case, testing a hypothesis etc) so that none are taken seriously or they can proclaim theirs as the 'true' one.

Just as a final thought, the debates (climate etc) in the western tradition countries are generally conducted as a 'war of words'. Fundamentalist Islam is creationist and its extremists hostile to anything modern, western or that questions holy writ. It has never had 'an enlightenment' as the west did several centuries ago. Any future rationalist/scientific vs fundamentalist debates in the Islamic world are likely to be quite violent affairs.

Answer 6

that is amazin that science war have started

Answer 7

I am not sure I am the best person to answer this, but I think that the science wars in many people's minds was put to rest at about the time "The Flight from Science and Reason" conference was held. The point however may still be at issue, as the label "science" and "scientific" is appropriated by anyone wishing intelectual respectability deriving from a method that yielded an impressive ammount of working knowledge for the benefit of humanking.

No, I do not think that Science is always and blindly an asset for our  benefit. Many disasters with technologies whose full implications where not known have occured, for us to be so foolhardy. Personally, I dread the idea of immersing our conscience in Matrix like Brave New Worlds out there.

To some extent scientific concepts and even the logical and mathematical language are cultural constructs, but I do not think gravity would be different if researched by a woman, developed by the Chinese or applied to healing (for probably absolutely no purpose). The notion that there are paradigms is reasonable, but not the extrapolation that then one is as good as any other. Nazism is not equivalent to Democracy, Astrology is not equivalent to Astronomy, Homeopathy is not equivalent to Pharmacology, nor is Feng Shui equivalent to Climate Research.

Our civilization may be plagued by ridiculously fraudulent beliefs or earnest ignorance, held by those who do not know and understand for the gaud of others that neither know or understand, but that does not make all claims of "science" to be effectively so, just like the many popular accounts of Zen are actually a philosophical shot in the foot. (The comparison is a bit wild, but you get the point.)

The way I see it, strongly influenced by Popper, is that Science is working knowlegde that conceivably can be shown wrong. Inverifiable claims on any subject are not science.

I'll ask you to draw your own conclusions on the climate change debate that has been going on here in Y!A.

Answer 8

I somehow missed that movie.

Answer 9

science wars? But it is a big issue that affects all of us so it is going to be the major scientific study of our time!

Answer 10

Did'nt know the 'science wars' had begun!

Answer 11

"Science Wars"?  Is it really elitists believing they know more than 'less educated'?  Many times the belief's of these 'elitists' is flawed & lacking any common sense.

Take the commonly accepted belief in the "Germ Theory" on which all of western medicine is based in.  Do you have (or anyone here) the common sense to reason out this web page?

http://www.tuberose.com/Germ_Theory.html

If you do - you might become truly 'enlightened'!