Smolin argues from the outset that viable hypotheses must lead to observable consequences by which they can be tested and judged. That is, they have to be falsifiable.... But string theory by its very nature does not allow for such probing, according to Smolin, and therefore it must be considered as an unprovable conjecture....There's another unfalsifiable, speculative, and as yet unproveable theory that is being widely touted. Christopher Lingle suggests that the media's coverage of environmental issues portray un-falsifiable scientific models
If we accept string theory as valid while it evades observational tests, how can we legitimately rebut arguments about the "intelligent design" of the universe? The honest answer is that we cannot. For these arguments, too, are not falsifiable; they do not allow testing by measurements. To me, string theory and intelligent design belong in the same speculative, unproveable category....
Since climate is always either warming or cooling and ice is either melting or accumulating, the current warming trend is not unusual. Climate changes are just as certain as continental drift or growth and decay in mountains. And to suggest there is a scientific consensus for the extent of anthropogenic (human-caused) warming is simply false. Whatever the extent of the warming effect, it is impossible to discern whether it is due to human influences or a natural fluctuation."An Inconvenient Truth" is being touted by an adminstrator of our college. I remain skeptical, but I don't dare really speak out.
It turns out that evidence indicating an appreciable human contribution to current climate warming is quite weak because many natural causes, like the sun or volcanic activity, affect climate. And these have effects of greater magnitudes than greenhouse gases emitted by all of mankind. A recent report by the former chief economist of the World Bank, Nicholas Stern, has received considerable press coverage. It should be remembered that economic projections are notoriously controversial and often wide of the mark due to the complexities of human behavior.
But what makes his finding more problematic is that his economic analysis relies upon forecasts from climate models that are based upon very subjective assumptions. As such, climate models should be considered even less reliable that short-term weather forecasts! Climatologists admit that the complexity of the microphysics of clouds requires that their models include highly-arbitrary parameters. Consequently, most models provide imperfect representations of the real atmosphere since they do not reliably represent clouds or account for the effects of water vapor.
Despite these criticisms of causes and consequences of climate change, suggestions are made that the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere should be stabilized. But this would require emissions to be reduced worldwide by between 60 to 80 percent. Such a dramatic reduction would come at an enormous cost that would be shouldered today against uncertain benefits in offsetting warming in the future. For example, the most optimistic estimates are that implementing the Kyoto Protocol would delay the increase in greenhouse gas levels by about six years and scarcely affect climate. But the cost to the US economy alone would be about $4000 per family of four per year.
Frank Furedi writes on Denial
Ironically, even though I'm a skeptic, I live a comparatively "green" life. Although I do take international flights regularly, I walk to my office every day, only driving on the week-ends. I note that many of my colleagues seem to want the government to impose a solution, but don't change their lifestyles.Once denial has been stigmatised, there are demands for it to be censored. Consider the current attempts to stifle anyone who questions predictions of catastrophic climate change. Such sceptics are frequently branded ‘global warming deniers’, and their behaviour compared to that of anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers. Some advocate a policy of zero tolerance towards the climate change deniers. ‘I have very limited patience with those who deny human responsibility for upper-atmosphere pollution and ozone depletion’, says one moral crusader, before declaring: ‘There is no intellectual difference between the Lomborgians [those who adhere to the arguments of the sceptic Bjorn Lomborg] who steadfastly refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence of human-caused global warming from scientists of unquestioned reputation, and the neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers’ (8). The heretic is condemned because he has dared to question an authority that must never be questioned. Here, ‘overwhelming evidence’ serves as the equivalent of revealed religious truth, and those who question ‘scientists of unquestioned reputation’ – that is, the new priestly caste – are guilty of blasphemy. Such a conformist outlook can be found in the writings of sanctimonious British journalist, George Monbiot, who recently wrote: ‘Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and unacceptable as Holocaust denial.’ (9)
Heresy-hunters who charge their opponents with ‘ecological denial’ also warn that the ‘time for reason and reasonableness is running short’ (10). It seems that ecological denial, refusing to embrace the environmentalist world view, makes one complicit in a long list of ‘eco-crimes’. Some journalists argue that, like Holocaust deniers, those who refuse to accept the sacred narrative on global warming should simply be silenced in the media. ‘There comes a point in journalism where striving for balance becomes irresponsible’, argues CBS reporter Scott Pelley in justification of such a censorious orientation (11). From this illiberal standpoint, the media have a responsibility to silence global warming deniers by whatever means necessary...
Denial, it seems, is the contemporary equivalent of what traditional religion used to classify as a sinful or dangerous idea. A long time ago, theocrats recognised that the authority of their belief system would be reinforced if they insisted that ‘God punishes disbelief’ (15). Moreover, blasphemers had to be punished because of the evil impact their blasphemy might have on others. Today’s inquisitors have adopted this approach, insisting that repressing arguments is ‘responsible behaviour’ since it protects people from ‘wrong arguments’ and disbelief. The transformation of denial into a taboo reflects the conformist dogmatism that is widespread today.It’s worth recalling, as Arthur Versluis reminds us in his important book The New Inquisitions, that the term heresy derives from the Greek word hairen, which means ‘to choose’. ‘A “heretic”, then, is one who chooses, one who therefore exemplifies freedom of individual thought’, notes Versluis (16). And what connects the Inquisition with the activities of heresy-hunters today is ‘perhaps the most important of all: the “crime” in question is fundamentally a “crime” of thought.’ (17)
Denial
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word denial denotes the act of ‘asserting (of anything) to be untrue or untenable’. That is why denial has been inextricably linked to critical thought throughout the ages. Those who deny the official version of events have always faced hostility, and sometimes physical repression. Today, the word denial has become denuded of its radical and critical associations. Instead it is used as a synonym for refusing to acknowledge the truth – as in Holocaust Denial. In its colloquial and everyday usage, denial is seen as an act driven by base and dishonest motives. This draws on the psychoanalytical usage of the word. In psychoanalysis, denial means the suppression of painful and shameful recollections and experiences. In today’s therapy culture, people who express views that contradict our own are often told that they are ‘in denial’ (18). It has become a way of discrediting their viewpoint, or shutting them up.
Contemporary culture encourages the public disclosure of emotion – and it encourages the recognition and acknowledgement of others’ feelings (19). In these circumstances, denial has come to be seen as a negative emotional response. One account says denial represents the refusal to ‘recognise a disturbing or painful reality’ (20). So being in denial is the polar opposite of acknowledging pain and other uncomfortable facts. In an age that prides itself on public confessionalism, the charge of denial is a powerful expression of moral disapproval. People can be forgiven for doing drugs or drinking too much, so long as they go on a 12-step recovery programme and acknowledge their wrongdoing. Denial, on the other hand, is seen as a symptom of a destructive and dangerous personality; part of a disease that dooms the individual to behave self-destructively. According to one account, alcoholism is ‘the disease of denial’ and ‘denial is the life-blood of addiction’ (21). In popular culture, denial often serves as a marker for a sick mind. One self-help website informs the world that the ‘disease of denial kills more people every year than any other disease’. Apparently ‘it also maims, cripples, disables and incapacitates more people, and those close to them, than anything else’ (22).
When denial is then attached to a painful historical event like the Holocaust, it ceases to be merely self-destructive and apparently becomes a threat to others, too. Denial is not simply the psychological attribute of an individual – it has become a cultural force that threatens people’s wellbeing. In the domain of culture, denial has acquired powerful physical and existential attributes with apparently grave consequences for its victims. The criminalisation of denial is most developed in debates about genocide. According to Gregory Stanton, former president of Genocide Watch, denial represents the final stage in what he calls the ‘eight stages of genocide’, and moreover it is among the ‘surest indicators of further genocidal massacres’ (23). From this perspective, denial is not simply an act of speech; it is part of the physical act of extermination.
Therapy culture encourages people to interpret their emotional distress as being more painful and damaging than physical distress. And from this perspective, the pain caused by denial is portrayed as uniquely grave and hurtful. This is what Elie Wiesel meant when he characterised genocide denial as a ‘double killing’, because he believes it also murders the memory of the crime. This transformation of words and metaphors into weapons of mass destruction has also become part of the green alarmists’ strategy. Psychobabble about individuals in denial who cannot acknowledge the truth is cited as an explanation for why the public is not always in a state of panic about the impending environmental apocalypse. Indian journalist Mihir Shah has described it as the ‘environment denial syndrome’ (24). Others preach that ‘we can intellectually accept the evidence of climate change, but we find it extremely hard to accept our responsibility for a crime of such enormity’. In this case, the deniers are condemned for refusing to accept responsibility for an enormous crime. According to George Marshall, this shows that denial is a fundamentally immoral deed. ‘Indeed, the most powerful evidence of our denial is the failure to even recognise that there is a moral dimension with identifiable perpetrators and victims’, he argues (25).
Free speech is sacred
Is it ever legitimate to criminalise free speech? There’s little doubt that people who deny or attempt to minimise the significance of the Holocaust are motivated by the basest of motives. They often believe that the wrong side won the Second World War, and they wish to rewrite history in order to legitimise Nazism. They are sometimes obsessively anti-Semitic. There are some very good reasons for taking up cudgels against those who would write concentration camps and gas chambers out of history.
But there are also some very bad reasons for crusading against Holocaust denial. One is the idea that denial offends the sensibility of Jewish survivors. Free speech cannot be free speech if people do not enjoy the right to offend their fellow citizens. The demand that we acknowledge the pain and suffering of any particular group of victims has more to do with moral policing than a desire to affirm historical truths. One critic of Holocaust denial, the author DD Guttenplan, argues that the debate is not about the minutiae of historical detail. ‘To fail to acknowledge the pain felt by Holocaust survivors at the negation of their own experience – or to treat such pain as a particularly Jewish problem which need not trouble anyone else – is to deny our common humanity.’ (26) Perhaps. But turning history into a form of therapy designed to affirm the feelings of victims risks transforming a debate into a method of social engineering.
Some argue that Holocaust denial is a problem because, as more and more of the survivors die, there will be no one left to counter the claim that this terrible event was a myth. Others worry that young people surfing the net will inevitably encounter anti-Semitic websites and will lack the historical nous to see through the propaganda. Yet bureaucratic intervention and censorship cannot prevent such ideas from gaining people’s attention. Even from a narrow pragmatic perspective, the policing of speech does not work. In the age of the internet ideas cannot be banned out of existence.
However, free speech is not a matter of pragmatic convenience; it is a fundamental democratic principle. This was recognised by the French National Assembly in 1789 when it stated: ‘The free communication of thought and opinion is one of the most precious rights of man; every citizen may therefore speak, write and print freely.’ This right has become divisible, it seems. Western societies find it difficult to live according to their principles. Pragmatic politicians and legal theorists continually lecture us about how free speech is not an absolute right. Others claim that free speech is an overrated myth. We spend more time discussing how to curb free speech than we do extending it. And every time curbs are introduced on one form of speech, they serve as a prelude for censoring another form. Thus, the criminalisation of Holocaust denial has led to the repression of other denials of conventional wisdom.
It is particularly unfortunate that science has been mobilised to assist the policing of free thinking. Sections of the science establishment argue that the debate on global warming is finished, and that those who deny the so-called scientific consensus ought to be ostracised. But science cannot be legitimately used to close down debate. At its best, scientific research can provide us with evidence of important problems – but how society interprets that evidence is subject to controversy and debate, to political, moral and cultural factors. Every culture has something different to say about what is an acceptable level of risk, how much pain people should be expected to put up with, and about what is safe. Claims made about safe sex, child safety and environmental pollution are the product of cultural interpretation, as are the many threats to the world that apparently lie ahead. Science has some very important things to say about these problems that cannot and should not be ignored. But science does not provide the answers as to what a problem means for society, and how we should deal with it. That is why no subject should be treated as a taboo. It is also why science should not be used to end a discussion. In our search for meaning, we are entitled to argue and debate and freely express our views about everything. And in our conformist era, a healthy dose of disbelief is no bad thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment