Thursday, February 11, 2010

Formal Equality= Global Warming Skeptics

For some reason, global warming skeptics seem to believe that a snow storm, or a cold snap disproves the basic and easily proven fact that the global temperature is, in fact, rising. No matter how many times reasonable people try to explain to them that warmer air means moister air and therefore large storms become more likely, or that single weather anomalies are not particularly relevant to the global climate, they will not believe any data unless it is easy and straight forward. What does this have to do with formal equality?
When people say that equality under the law is enough, they point to successful women and black men, rather than looking at the larger statistical picture which shows that schools are more segregated than before Brown v. Board, that neighborhoods are more segregated than before 1968, and that the unemployment gap continues to grow with almost 40% of black men in the District of Columbia unemployed. They would like to point to Barrack Obama and say, "see, there is no more racism because a black man is president."
Occum's razor applies to scientific theories, not the data being collected to prove those theories. Occum's razor does not support using only one datum. That's not how one simplifies a test. In order to be valid, we must collect as much data as possible and then find the most simple explanation for all of that data. When we collect all the data, we see that despite a cold winter here, or several big snowstorms there, the global temperature is actually rising, and despite a black man being president and a woman appointed to secretary of state, the senate is still mostly older white men. To ignore these facts is stupid, ignorant, or part of a deliberate attempt to undermine America and the world.

1 comment:

rightbedone said...

Climatologist Andrew Freedman on climate change. "When an unprecedented hurricane, blizzard or heat wave occurs, though, it should not be blamed on climate change, as no single weather event can be blamed on climate change. It is proper to say that such an occurrence "is consistent with what we expect to see from climate change," to draw attention to the very real risks that an increase in these extreme events will pose."