by Patrick Appel
Kevin Williamson is getting pilloried, mercilessly, for saying that we shouldn't care about politicans scientific beliefs because they aren't qualified to hold scientific opinions. For example, Williamson writes that are "lots of good reasons not to wonder what Rick Perry thinks about scientific questions, foremost amongst them that there are probably fewer than 10,000 people in the United States whose views on disputed questions regarding evolution are worth consulting." Chait fillets this argument:
Williamson argues that the "real" debate is whether "the policies being pushed by Al Gore et al. are wise and intelligent." Well, that is one debate. Another debate is whether we should pursue a different set of policies to fight climate change. It's true, as Williamson argues, that one could accept climate science and argue that doing anything to stem climate change is simply too expensive. Yet this position clearly represents a weaker commitment to the values of the conservative movement than full-out climate science denial. One could argue that the costs of climate change are X and the costs of mitigating climate change are Y. But that's a view that implies that if X rises, or Y falls, perhaps we should consider a different answer. Perry is convincingly demonstrating to the right that he will never make that kind of calculation because he denies the entire empirical basis of climate science.
Drum piles on. Williamson, ignoring the portion of Chait's post I've quoted and Drum's questions, digs in. Jim Manzi focuses on the stronger part of Williamson's argument and improves it. Manzi calls out liberals for attempting "to drape the label 'science' over assertions that do not have the same reliability as physical science in order to create political advantage":
[S]cientific findings in some area are used to justify some related political or moral opinion. Key examples are exactly the topics you touch upon: global warming and evolution. In one example, the indisputable scientific finding that CO2 molecules redirect infrared radiation is used to argue that “science says” we must implement a massive global program of emissions mitigation, when in fact, the argument for this depends upon all kinds of beliefs about the growth of the global economy, Chinese politics, technological developments and so on for something like the next couple of hundred years. In the other example, the incredibly powerful scientific paradigm of evolution through natural selection is used to argue that “science says” we have just eliminated the need for God in the creation of the human species, when in fact, as a simple counter-example, the genetic operators of selection, crossover and mutation require building blocks as starting points, and therefore leave the classic First Cause argument unaddressed.
The Dish 