Well, despite the political fallacies inherent in drafting such reports, the answer is an unequivocal "hell yes!" But a piece at the SCQ by Sarah Burch (which constitutes the second part of an FAQ about the IPCC reports) is better at telling you why:
Given the deluge of noble mandates and far-reaching policy proposals emanating in ever-increasing numbers from that devious hub of sycophants and climbers that we call Ottawa, we must (being the ever-so-enlightened socio-scientific critics that we are) carefully evaluate the straw that broke dear Stephen's back: that is, the most recent IPCC report. The questions posed in Part II of this FAQ (Essentially: Are IPCC reports scientific or political? What are the criticisms of the IPCC? Are there possible alternatives to the IPCC?) become even more pertinent when a report like this one causes such a stir. Are we to trust the findings of this daunting collection of scientific expertise, or discard it, as some critics suggest, as the indulgent and intensely politicized meanderings of self-interested pseudo-scientists parading as authentic consensus-generators?
Anyway, this FAQ (both part I and part II) is worth checking out.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Last month I wrote about how junkscience.com and The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition were fronts set up by tobacco companies to oppose regulatioon of smoking. Chris Mooney published a very interesting article in the Washington Post on the use of the phrase "sound science" by other industry…
Do you ever have the experience of a book you've bought from abe or ebay turning up, and you can't remember why you bought it? I got "The long-term impacts of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide" by MacDonald today (The Long-term Impacts of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels, By Gordon…
Chris Mooney has been nice enough to help promote our effort, and points us to some more helpful information about the Office of Technology Assessment. Now would be a good time to go over what the OTA did, how it was set up, and why I think it would be rather easy to set it up again as a non-…
So, I didn't like the IAC prescription for the IPCC. So I need my own. And I forgot that I already had one. PK said it well in the comments:
How many IPCC reports does it take to screw in a light bulb? The bureaucratic solution for inefficient bureaucracy always seems to be more bureaucracy. If the…