If you have the time, you should watch the following video of the launch and landing of the Curiosity Rover on Mars. It demonstrates the amazing feats that can be accomplished by scientists. You can decide for yourself which feat is the most amazing.
Figuring out how to launch a rocket into space and have it travel into Mars’ orbit is pretty astonishing, but figuring out how to land a rover without damaging it is staggering. It’s all possible because science works. It isn’t about “belief” or “intuition,” as James Taranto argues in today’s Wall Street Journal. Climate scientists have tested their hypotheses in every way they can think to test them.
We don’t ask politicians or journalists or paid flacks or the man on the street to figure out how to land a rover on Mars. We shouldn’t ask them or listen to them when it comes to the causes of climate change.
Taranto tries to play amateur philosophy professor by saying that people who point to the 97% consensus in the climate science community are committing an “appeal to authority” logical fallacy. This is the logical equivalent of arguing that we shouldn’t take NASA astrophysicists’ advice on how to land a rover on Mars because there’s a chance that they might make an error in their calculations that results in a crash landing. While that’s true, you and I would never get the rocket off the launch pad, and certainly couldn’t get it into Mars’ orbit.
Likewise, climate science deniers have no basis for either their doubt nor for their expectation that public policy should be based on their uninformed opinion.
