According to Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, a plenary session speaker at the July 2011 American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) annual meeting, anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fact and the reason that many Evangelical Christians do not believe it is that the “science is complex and they cannot see it happening in their own backyards.” In her opinion, Christian groups are exacerbating the problem by “lying and spreading false information” about global warming, even though “98% of scientists agree that it is settled science.” She said that this is an example of where science and faith are in conflict (?) and we need to educate our churches about the issue so that they understand that questioning anthropogenic global climate change is anti-science. Of course, it seems to me, that if they are willfully lying about the issue, questioning must also be anti-Christian.

Now, hear me accurately. I am not saying that anthropogenic climate change is or is not true—I am not a climate scientist. And I do agree with Dr. Hayhoe that we should be responsible in how we use the Earth’s resources and mindful of those who are victims of natural disaster. I have implemented her only suggestion for remediation by using Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs and have even gone one better—I walk to the grocery store. But seriously, I do not consider it to be anti-science or unChristian to be intrigued that Dr. Ivar Giaever, Nobel prize winning physicist, and Dr. Harold Lewis, physics professor emeritus from University of California, Santa Barbara resigned their memberships at the American Physical Society (APS) over the APS’s refusal to consider all the scientific evidence surrounding this issue. I believe that evidence should be heard and considered and that those who do not agree with the politically correct consensus should not be labeled as uneducated or unChristian. Naturally, after a talk like this, those who had questions about the veracity of manmade global climate change or the cost/benefit ratio of governmental policies on controlling carbon dioxide emissions did not feel free to ask questions.

As a current ASA member, I was in attendance at the ASA meeting entitled, Science-Faith Synergy: Glorifying God and Serving Humanity. The result is that I have become very concerned about this organization. It appears that the ASA has forgotten who they are supposed to be: “a fellowship of men and women of science and disciplines that can relate to science who share a common fidelity to the Word of God and a commitment to integrity in the practice of science.” Instead, the meeting was explicitly slanted towards promotion of consensus science, theistic evolution (TE) and what appeared to be a very watered down version of Christianity. ASA says that they have “no official position on evolution” and are a Christian organization that “accept the divine inspiration, trustworthiness and authority of the Bible in matters of faith and conduct,” but the content of several of the talks and the attitude of some of the speakers at the conference failed to embrace this commitment. The below paragraph was taken from the ASA website:

As an organization, the ASA does not take a position when there is honest disagreement between Christians on an issue. We are committed to providing an open forum where [scientific] controversies can be discussed without fear of unjust condemnation. Legitimate differences of opinion among Christians who have studied both the Bible and science are freely expressed within the Affiliation in a context of Christian love and concern for truth.

Although this statement projects the appearance of an environment where integrity in science and scientists who want to discuss their thoughts and follow the evidence where it leads could thrive, this is far from accurate. The purported openness to discussion of scientific controversies expressed on the ASA website is clearly disingenuous.

In fact, the organization appears to have strayed far from both their commitment to integrity in science (telling the whole story) and their Christian identity and is now ostracizing both scientists who question consensus science and those who are self-identified evangelical Christians. As a result, science-based reservations about evolution, global warming, and other controversial topics were not openly discussed. One scientist, who believes that Intelligent Design (ID) theory has merit from a scientific viewpoint, identified himself to me with the words, “feels like hostile territory here.” Speakers who made lock-step derogatory remarks about “conservative Christians,” “creationists,” and “ID people” doubtless fueled this perceived hostility.

Of the presenters I heard, Dr. Mark Winslow of Southern Nazarene University in Oklahoma was particularly offensive, labeling anyone who does not accept all aspects of evolutionary theory as “scientifically and theologically illiterate.” His paper was on how 15 Christian students moved from an “immature Young Earth perspective” with “little tolerance for ambiguity” to an “adult faith” that can “accommodate degrees of dissonance” after accepting the “authority” of the “trained evolutionist” professor. Take home message: If one questions aspects of evolution, one is an immature Christian. Those who are faced with educating recalcitrant churches full of Darwin-doubters were counseled to show patience until the creationists come to understand that the scientific evidence should be more important than the Bible in their formation of a worldview. I hope he did not mean that!

Despite the fact that the ASA conference brochure says presenters should maintain a “humble and loving attitude towards individuals who have a different opinion,” a moderator in the session then repeated Dr. Winslow’s slur about illiteracy as if it were a joke, instead of deeply offensive to those who have science-based reservations about the merits of some aspects of evolutionary theory.

Until this ASA meeting I did not really think that the debate about evolution was terribly relevant to Christian faith and, as a former research scientist, I knew that doubting the evolutionary dogma does not affect my ability to “do” science. Personally, I “believed in” evolution for twenty years after I made my decision to profess faith in Christ. It was not my faith that caused me to question aspects of evolution or to consider that there is merit to ID. Rather, it was the science, the cell biology.

I am currently a self-confessed evolutionary agnostic—I see that there is intriguing scientific evidence for some aspects of evolution, but also acknowledge that there are holes in that evidence. For example, my knowledge of the cell shows me that the stated mechanism whereby macroevolution is said to proceed does not work. I see logic in the view of ID proponents, but also realize that ID is a theory in process. I find TE both academically and theologically frustrating. Academically, I am unwilling to commit to having the faith necessary to believe that the whole of evolutionary theory will be proven right eventually. Theologically, I am confused about the presupposition that, even though God created the world, His action must by definition be completely undetectable. I thought that I would find many like-minded people at a conference for Christians in science. After all, scientists are known for having questioning minds and Christians value humility, so Christian scientists should be very willing to consider that their scientific or theological understanding is probably incomplete.

But, what I learned at the ASA conference was that reason the debate over evolution matters is that it is a symptom of a much more serious disease: the elevation of the authority of science and the scientific community above the claims and values of the Bible and Christianity. Scientism is a belief system where science becomes the preeminent way to ascertain all truth, making scientists—well, very important people. Symptoms of scientism much in evidence at the ASA conference were the repeated assertions that “all real scientists think…” and the communicated attitude that we need to accept the consensus of the scientific community and, if necessary, change our interpretation of the Bible to fit with the science.

Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), exemplifies this type of thinking when he says, “And people are beginning to argue in very irrational ways based on a lack of understanding what the science says. If we could back off from all of the, sort of, hard edged rhetoric and really say, okay, what is science teaching us, I suspect that the moral dilemmas [involved with the use of embryonic stem cells for research purposes] are not nearly as rough as people think they are.” The idea that science should inform our interpretation of Scripture contains some truth and some untruth (e.g. science being able to teach us morality), as do most harmful ideas. Unfortunately, at much of the ASA meeting, it was the first step on a slippery slope to so much more.

Dr. Gareth Jones gave another of the plenary session lectures. During the first part of the talk on neuroscience and reproduction, he set up a hypothetical situation wherein a couple already have a child with a genetic disease, have a ¼ chance of their next child also having the disease, do not feel that they could cope with the stress and work of another sick child, but would like more children. Dr. Jones outlined that this couple has four options.
1) Decide not to have more children,
2) Take the risk and have a child,
3) Conceive a child, have pre-birth testing, and abort if the child has the disease, and
4) Donate eggs and sperm for in vitro fertilization and genetic testing,
with the intention of not implanting any defective embryo. Dr. Jones stated that Options 1, 2 and 4 are the only ones that would be acceptable for a Christian, making it appear as if he is assuming that human life does not begin at conception. A questioner who asked about a 5th option (birth followed by adoption) was shot down with the reply that that this would still allow a “defective” person to be born and that “freely chosen ignorance is not a virtue.”

Dr. Francis Collins, who is a self-proclaimed evangelical Christian and long time member of the ASA, also seems unclear about the ethics of using human embryos for research. He says that “human embryos deserve moral status” but that it may be more ethical to use the 400,000 embryos that are currently frozen for “breathtakingly” beneficial research than to “discard them.” If the leading scientist in our country believes this, why then should an ASA plenary session speaker commit to the Biblical view that human life from conception onwards is sacred, as is espoused in Ps 139:13? One may argue that the ASA is a place where all views can be discussed “without fear of unjust condemnation,” but this should surely be held in tension with their self-proclaimed acceptance of Biblical authority.

The ASA bias towards a liberal form of Christianity and elevating science above Scripture continued. During parallel session talks on the ethics of neuroscience and reproduction by a number of speakers, attendees at the ASA meeting were informed that science shows that sexuality is fluid and so it might be unethical to offer help to those wanting to change their sexual orientation (or identity). After all, the scientific consensus is that one does not choose to be homosexual, transgendered, or even a pedophile. Dr. Heather Looy, a psychologist from King’s University College, was concerned that we be compassionate and not keep homosexual people from enjoying a full sexual experience. A lovely person herself, who practices what she preaches, she stressed that we should not judge those different from ourselves. Dr. William Struthers from Wheaton acknowledged that the traditional family unit with a father and a mother is best for children, but also explained that gender is a spectrum and that Christians should hold science and Scripture in tension, realizing that God is love incarnate.

Of course, Christians should be aware that we are all sinners saved by grace and this should make us as compassionate to those caught in sexual sin as we would want them to be towards us in our sin. In addition, we all have character traits that predispose us to be more tempted by certain sins than we are by others. You may be tempted to sleep with someone of the same gender; I would be more tempted by a juicy piece of gossip. Giving in is sin, no matter the temptation. However, the traditional understanding of the Biblical teaching is that that the Lord gave us rules for our benefit and safety, not because He wants to be a spoilsport, and that obedience, no matter how difficult, is always the best way to attain fullness of joy. The current politically-correct scientific consensus does not negate this. For Christians science does not trump the Bible.

Finally, there were several presentations on why science must be methodologically naturalistic and why we should help our churches to accept that evolution is a fact. The final session was offered by Ruth Bancewicz from the Faraday Institute at Cambridge University on a course called Test of Faith. The purpose of Test of Faith, which is now travelling the country giving presentations at places like Gordon College, MIT, Wheaton, Fairfax Community Church, Bethel University, Point Loma Nazarene, and California Institute of Technology sounds wonderful and very in keeping with both good science and Christianity. It is to show how science is compatible with faith by highlighting various believing scientists. But, the producers have a self-admitted bias towards theistic evolution, as do the majority of the scientists (Francis Collins, Jennifer Wiseman, and John Polkinghorne), and so only represent a part of the entire community of Christians in science. Certainly, although there is a lot of recommended reading on their website, I could find no mention of Stephen Meyers’ Signature in the Cell or Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. Test of Faith has been working with Youth for Christ, ASA, and the Bible Society and is well-funded by the Templeton Foundation.

So, what is the worry? The entire picture. ASA and BioLogos, the organization started by Dr. Francis Collins, and Test of Faith, backed by Templeton Foundation money, working together to convert the Christian world to a belief in evolution and, if the parts of the ASA meeting that I witnessed were anything to go by, a very watered down version of Christianity. These groups are also working with InterVarsity Fellowship, Youth for Christ, and the Bible Society. They are targeting universities, seminaries, and churches with their message that belief in evolution is compatible with faith and that all people of intelligence should embrace evolutionary theory as fact. Quite apart from the scientific problems with this view, some people are questioning whether the faith that is being espoused is still orthodox Christianity. The fruit of the ASA meeting, which included arguing based on ad hominem attacks, advocating a type of Scientism, equivocating about the sanctity of life, and disregarding Biblical standards for sexuality, suggests that it is not. ASA has forgotten its stated identity. ASA has lost its way.

Personally, I hope that, with the help and support of those of us who disagree with the turn they have taken, the ASA will get back on track. I’ll be looking forward to next year’s meeting in San Diego! Meanwhile, why not check out a scientific association that really does encourage the open discussion of controversial subjects in a non-hostile environment? American Institute for Technology and Science Education (AITSE) is such a place. Our vision is to promote good science, based on impartial evaluation of evidence, not mere consensus. Our mission is ”…to improve science education and encourage scientific integrity” and “offer clear, reliable and balanced education with the goal of liberating science and technology from ideology, politics and the restrictions of consensus…”

Dr. Caroline Crocker, who holds an MSc in medical microbiology and a PhD in immunopharmacology, is President of AITSE. If you enjoyed this article, please “like” AITSE on Facebook, follow Caroline on Twitter, and sign up for AITSE’s monthly newsletter. If you would like to help AITSE with its work to restore integrity to science, please donate generously. Finally, if you are a scientist or physician of integrity, please consider applying to join AITSE’s scientific consortium. Together we can make a difference.

The topic of the lecture (which you can watch for yourself) was “Evolution and Global Warming Denial: How the Public is Misled.” There was little scientific substance in the presentation, particularly on the subject of evolution. Instead, Dr. Scott attempted to draw parallels between the political strategies employed by Darwin skeptics (whom she seems to think are all creationists) and Climate Change skeptics (whom she pejoratively labeled “deniers”). She linked “evolution denial” and “global warming denial” to the American religious and political Right. But she failed to mention that there are many of us (including myself) who reject Darwinian evolution not principally for religious or theological reasons, but simply because the scientific evidence doesn’t support it.

I don’t have the necessary expertise on climate change to offer an informed opinion of remarks on that score. However, some of Dr. Scott’s comments concerning evolution do warrant remark.

One guesses somehow that most audience members would never in their entire lives have considered the possibility that there could be a disconnect between being an establishment and being correct on either issue.

To be s skeptic today is to know that Truth and the Establishment are One.

It's science because he could have been wrong.

Canada’s Mark Steyn, in conversation with Hugh Hewitt, here:

HEWITT: I’ve got to begin this Thursday as I do when we are lucky with columnist To the World, Mark Steyn. … Mark, the biggest news of the day comes out of Geneva in Italy, where the CERN scientists have announced they’ve discovered a particle that is faster than the speed of light. I suppose this will be useful in measuring market drops, but it also says it would, “undermine Albert Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity, which says the speed of light is a cosmic constant, and nothing in the universe can travel faster.” Very unnerving, Mark, when you start the day knowing that Einstein was wrong?

MS: Yeah, I thought, what’s the line, the science was settled.

HH: (laughing)

MS: The science was settled. It’s odd the way science is never settled, really, in that sense. And it’s interesting, I mean, I find that fascinating, because obviously, there’s a scientific consensus on all kinds of things, and then some non-consensual scientist comes along and blows the thing out of the water.

Which is what sets science apart from many worthy enterprises:

… when a scientist, of all people, stands up at one of these climate change conferences and says the science is settled, and calls people who disagree with him deniers, that man is not a scientist. That man is a member of a religious cult. He’s worshipping at the temple of Al Gore or whatever, and that’s fine if he wants to do that. But when a man stands up and says the science is settled, he is everything but a scientist.

One way of seeing this: It’s one thing for a religion to proclaim, say, that having more than one wife is wrong. And to say that the subject is not up for further discussion. All that really means is that if you want to be a believer in good standing, you do not have more than one wife. And if most people in a given society agree with the religion on that point, you probably won’t be able to do so legally.

It’s another thing for a scientist to come along and say that his opinion, on reading a set of data is “settled science.” It does essentially make science a religion. It’s the difference between evolutionary biology and Darwinism.

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Greenland not under water yet/Connormah

If New Scientist is running an article like this, the jig is up.

Remember “Science’s biggest problem today: Not enough scientists are drinking the Fool-Aid”? Now this:

Erroneous data about how much ice is vanishing due to climate change are once more at the heart of an explosive controversy. This time, it’s not the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but the venerable Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World that is in the line of fire.

Journalists across the UK received glossy press packs last week for the launch of a new edition. It included a press release declaring that: “For the first time, the new edition […] has had to erase 15 per cent of Greenland’s once permanent ice cover – turning an area the size of the UK and Ireland ‘green’ and ice-free. This is concrete evidence of how climate change is altering the face of the planet forever.”

Today glaciologists have been crying foul, saying that the 15 per cent figure is wildly inaccurate.

In a good cause. Just like fake miracles conveniently timed for a crusade.

What fascinates ID types about the global warming controversy is that it is pseudoscience mushrooming over a short period before collapsing, instead of a long period before petering out.

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Mr. Giaever [eminent physicist dissenter] was an American Physical Society fellow, an honor bestowed on “only half of one percent” of the members, according to a spokesman. He follows in the footsteps of University of California at Santa Barbara Emeritus Professor of Physics Harold Lewis, a former APS fellow who resigned in 2010, calling global warming “the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.”

Other dissenters include Stanford University physicist and Nobelist Robert B. Laughlin, deceased green revolution icon and Nobelist Norman Borlaug, Princeton physicist William Happer and World Federation of Scientists President Antonino Zichichi. Our point is not that all of these men agree on climate change, much less mankind’s contribution to it, only that to one degree or another they maintain an open mind about warming or what to do about it.

Which makes them a big problem in what passes for science today.

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Barry Arrington commented on the Nobel scientist (Ivar Giaever, physics, 1973), who will not renew his membership in American Physical Society (APS) because of the claim that “the evidence is incontrovertible.” Barry quotes his riposte, and says,

Dr. Giaever truly is what the other scientists in the society only claim to be – skeptical – and he took exception when the society carved its global warming politics into stone by announcing that the evidence is “incontrovertible.”

Dr. Giaever has undoubtedly noticed that physics has been whacked upside the head since the Large Hadron Collider has failed to confirm confident claims about the theoretical particle, the Higgs boson.

Which is good news, because that shows that physics works. If physicists had decided to proclaim the boson as “incontrovertible” – well, then, even the Large Hadron Collider couldn’t provide evidence against it.

A bit of background:

The official position of the American Physical Society (APS) supports the theory that man’s actions have inexorably led to the warming of the planet, through increased emissions of carbon dioxide.

Inexorably? Along with “incontrovertible,” that’s a way scientists usually don’t talk.

From Edward Sisson:

You may have seen the story of the Nobel prize winner, Ivar Giaver, who just left the American Physical Society (devoted to physics, 46,000 members) over the statement adopted by its council (basically its board of directors) in 2007 that the evidence for global warming is “incontrovertible” and its refusal in April, 2010, to remove that word despite printing a supplementary statement to the 2007 statement. Here is the link to the 2007 statement and the 2010 update. Here is the link to Giaver’s statement:

Sisson found this in its own statement of its history:

The American Physical Society was founded on May 20, 1899 … “to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics … , and in one way or another the APS has been at that task ever since.

In more recent years, the activities of the Society have broadened considerably. Stimulated by the increase in Federal funding in the period after the second World War, and even more by the increased public involvement of scientists in the nineteen sixties, APS is active in public and governmental affairs, and in the international physics community. In addition, the Society conducts extensive programs in education, public outreach, and media relations.

He observes,

The APS thus states in its own words on its own website that due to (a) “the increase in Federal funding” after 1945 and (b) “increased public involvement of scientists in the nineteen sixties,” it became a political advocacy and government lobbying organization, and a media relations enterprise. The organization made this change due to the desire to get ever-increasing federal funding for physicists and institutions of physicists, and to pursue the political and social goals of the 1960s.

No scientific reason is cited for the change in the nature of the institution.

None was possible.

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Here. Won’t renew his subscription to The Economist. Due to them fronting  the supposed “death of Earth” “anthropocene” era, like where we are now, only death. We’re all dead.

The cost has always been steep. The best deal I’m currently being offered is $230 for a two-year extension. That’s a lot of money. The same amount will buy me two dozen e-books, a tall stack of DVDs, or half an iPad.

What I’ve traditionally received in exchange for that high price tag was solid analysis that put the mostly superficial fare in Canada’s national newspapers to shame. I was happy to pay for – and support – The Economist‘s grownup, realistic, nuanced, and informed perspective on the world.

But that was before this publication chose to substitute critical thinking for cheerleading with respect to global warming. That was before it decided it was good policy to pepper all sorts of unrelated stories with gratuitous references to climate change. (For example, see this piece masquerading as an obit of television actor Peter Falk, this one on the death of an al-Qaeda operative in Somalia, and this coverage of the drug war in Latin America.)

One way of seeing it: Guy doesn’t understand.

Legacy media are stuck with stupid, out of date stories they cannot depart from. Just cannot. Even if they knew their stories were not making any sense, they’d have to stand by them. They will go under before they reform.

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NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models. (Has NASA decided to stop co-operating with the US government because the data cannot fit the “you gotta give up light bulbs,but we don’t” narrative? File to watch.) “The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.” So can we get some of those “denialists” out of jail? How about: Real science, that we can obligate the public to fund, is about facts, evidence. Not about theories, scares. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Dennis Prager, reflecting on last weekend’s “Prepare to Meet Thy Doom“-fest observes that secular apocalypses (that never really happen) have done our work for us:

There is one major difference between leftist and religious doomsday scenarios. The religious readily acknowledge that their doomsday scenario is built entirely on faith. The left, on the other hand, claims that its doomsday scenarios are entirely built on science.

That there is little truth to the left-wing claim is not as important as the fact that these doomsday scenarios have undermined the status of science. How many scientists have been compromised by their joining the research-money and fame bandwagons of left-wing apocalyptic predictions? And how has this affected the public’s perceptions of science and scientists when it comes to contentious issues?

- “When It Comes to Doomsdays, the Left Shouldn’t Laugh at the Religious,” Townhall (May 24, 2011)

A great many people respond by discounting, as an argument for a given proposition, that x hundred scientists believe it.

Question of the week: How many times has the world ended since 1975 (36 years ago)? The US median age is about 37 years …

(Note: Here’s a reality-based account of how Christians actually reacted to the failed prophecy.)

But there are important parallels between these topics that too often goes largely ignored – ones which shows that in many ways, the actual science is largely moot. In fact, it’s practically a non-issue when you get right down to it. I come at this from a largely TE perspective on the evolutionary front, and someone who until recently was largely content to shrug and say “Sure, I suppose AGW is at least a reasonable conclusion.” (The Climategate fiasco did serve to nudge me into more of a neutral column.)

Below the cut I’ll explain just what I’m talking about, and how Al Gore has accidentally supplied a crystal-clear example “in the field”.

It’s pedantic to point out, but it still must be said: What motivates most people to get others to “accept AGW” or “accept (Darwinian) evolution” has little to nothing to do with knowledge itself, and far more to do with the actions they hope such a belief will prompt. In the AGW case, the point isn’t to teach others some useful, inert fact like “beavers mate for life”, much less to make people have a firmer grasp of science in general – the express hope is that if someone accepts AGW, they will therefore accept and support specific policies ostensibly meant to combat AGW.

Likewise – I trust I’m not really saying anything groundbreaking on this one – what motivates many people to get others to “accept Darwinian evolution” isn’t the hope that some people will now have this particular belief about biology, period. The hope is that the acceptance of Darwinian evolution will detach them from their religious (and therefore, with luck, social and political) beliefs. You don’t have to go that far to find some very prominent biologists and philosophers saying this explicitly. Now, I did say ‘many’ rather than ‘most’ here, because I think there some who have different, even pro-theistic motivations on this topic – but I’m speaking frankly. And frankly, the draw of evolution for many has been its apparent utility as an anti-religion weapon (among other things), and this has been the case for a long time now.

So one parallel between proponents of AGW and proponents of Darwinism is this: While the topics in question are framed as scientific, the purpose of promoting them are social and political. The goal isn’t really “Get people to believe A”, but “Get people to do B and C”. It’s just that they think “If people believe A, then they will do B and C”. Perhaps because they think there’s something about A which makes B and C more reasonable to do, or even necessary to do. The problem is this complicates matters: It’s possible not only for A to be correct or incorrect, but for B or C to not be necessary or reasonable even given A’s truth. In fact, A may be true, and conceivably (in these abstract terms) B and C may be bad ideas or wrong conclusions.

Let’s move from the ABC talk to a real-world example, helpfully provided by Al Gore.

I’m sure many of you recalled the fairly recent news of Al Gore saying he made a mistake by endorsing ethanol subsidies. Gore, one of the most prominent faces of the AGW movement, had previously boosted corn ethanol subsidies for numerous reasons – and corn ethanol was touted as a way to combat AGW. Gore had this to say about his past commitment on the subject:

One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for President.

Let me pause here a moment to point something out. Gore isn’t saying that he believed corn ethanol was a great idea, but he misunderstood the data, ergo he made a mistake. He’s saying that he wanted to be elected president, certain constituents wanted corn ethanol subsidies, and he was willing to sell this as a great thing for the environment and the nation in exchange for their support. Has the word ‘mistake’ come to mean ‘any act which in retrospect a person claims to regret for any reason, even if they knew what they were doing at the time’?

But that’s beside the point. More central is this: Corn ethanol subsidies would be an example of one of those Bs and Cs that are supposed to follow given the truth of A. But Gore just illustrates the fragility of that move: AGW can be true, but a given policy (touted as necessary to ‘address AGW’) can still be a lousy idea. Corn ethanol subsidies are just a great and prominent example. Maybe the Kyoto treaty was a rotten idea regardless of the truth of AGW. Maybe carbon trading is a lousy idea. Maybe prevention is worse than adaptation. Maybe none of the most popular policies are good ideas. And, as it was with Gore and ethanol, maybe they aren’t being promoted for the reasons their proponents claim.

I want to stress that even if someone is skeptical of AGW, these points – points which assume for the sake of argument the truth of AGW – are tremendously important to raise. Again, what motivates most AGW proponents isn’t the data itself, but the policies they attempt to justify in light of the data. But if the data – even if true! – doesn’t justify their policies, that needs to be noted time and again. Part of the strategy is to make people miss that there’s an extra step beyond simply establishing the truth of “A” in the formula “If A, then B and C are necessary/very reasonable”. But the promotion of B and C are the whole point – and if B and C don’t really follow from A, that’s a point ignored at one’s own peril.

Which brings me back to evolution. As I’ve said before, I’m a TE of sorts. I don’t object to the possibility of intelligent design, or front-loading, or even intervention in nature’s past in one way or another. At the same time, I have no particularly strong ire against the mere claim of macro-evolution and so on – really, they seem like potential design strategies to me. But I do find that very popular line that gets drawn – “If evolution is true, then people should be atheists or reject design/guidance/purpose in nature” – to be utter crap. Rhetoric unjustified by the data, even if the data (not the philosophy or metaphysics often smuggled with it) is taken as true. I admit, the more I look at relatively ‘mainstream’ evolutionary science, the more I see teleology, guidance, and purpose – even as its defenders struggle to ignore, downplay, and deny it. Even if AGW is true, current corn ethanol technology as a way to combat it is a pretty bad idea, and even if evolution is true the atheistic and anti-guidance/design conclusions drawn from its truth are largely inane.

Let me end on this note: Notice that I’m not arguing for the truth of AGW or evolution here. I’ve moved into a more neutral column regarding the former, and the truth of the latter isn’t my focus. But I’m trying to point out, for both AGW skeptics and evolution skeptics, that there are more fronts to fight on than simply the topic of whether AGW or evolution is, at the end of the day, true – because the truth of both AGW and evolution aren’t what matters, even to most of their proponents. It’s what follows, the policies and intellectual conclusions they want to sell you on, given their truth. And if what they want doesn’t follow even granting this truth for the sake of argument, you have everything to gain by pointing this out.