How Nonsense Masquerades As Science: Climate “Code Red” Example
BY BRIGGS ON OCTOBER 31, 2022 • ( 15 COMMENTS )
This post is also available as a podcast. As you can tell, I recently lost my voice; and the bad news is that it was found, partially. Or listen on YouTube..
One of the reasons for broken science is nonsense being passed off as science. Today’s example, and a prominent example, too, comes from the peer-reviewed journal BioScience. From the paper “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” by William Ripple and others.
Now the word emergency isn’t undefined or unfamiliar: we know the difference between an emergency and a matter of concern, or even a problem. Further, we know the word so well that we know the weather we experience is not any kind of emergency, even if it might, possibly, someday, perhaps, who knows, maybe be a problem. Which it now is not; a problem, that is, let alone emergency. The weather is not acting in any extraordinary way.
Even though we know the word, it doesn’t have a scientific meaning. Emergency, as a word, has no place in scientific discourse. And neither does code red, a term used in the article’s opening sentences: “We are now at ‘code red’ on planet Earth. Humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency.”
What—what precisely—is a code red? Is it different from a code orange or code puce? What—what precisely—differentiates code red from code indigo? How many codes are there, and how do we measure or categorize without ambiguity their characteristics?
https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/43218/
