ProJo and Patrick Moore not to be trusted on climate change

Rhode Islanders can breathe a little easier this morning, because despite the careful, scientific predictions of climate scientists, “Global warming poses little threat.”

Hear that Sheldon Whitehouse? You’ve been wasting your time with all those speeches in the Senate, trying to awaken a recalcitrant Congress so as to act on what turns out to be not so big a deal. Take a chill pill, Senator, and sleep in. Patrick Moore has got this.

Who is Patrick Moore, you ask? Why he’s a co-founder of the environmental group Greenpeace, established in 1970. Moore joined the group in 1971. How does someone co-found a group that’s already a year old? That’s the kind of stupid question only a climate scientist might ask. Why are you trying to impugn Mr. Moore’s character?

The Op-Ed in today’s ProJo was created from testimony Moore presented last week to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, chaired by Sen. Whitehouse. In his presentation, Moore explained that there is no “proof” of the existence of human caused climate change, saying, “No actual proof, as proof is understood in science, exists.”

Philosophers of science are slapping palms to their heads as they grasp the simplicity of Moore’s statement. Like Alexander cleaving the Gordian Knot with his sword, Moore has cut to the heart of the problem. Sure, you might know enough about the philosophy of science to realize that there is no such thing as a “scientific proof,” but Moore is smarter than the rest of us, and knows better.

“Proofs exist only in mathematics and logic, not in science,” says evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, as if he knows anything, “…all scientific knowledge is tentative and provisional, and nothing is final.  There is no such thing as final proven knowledge in science.  The currently accepted theory of a phenomenon is simply the best explanation for it among all available alternatives.”

So climate scientists do not have mathematical or logical certainty, because science does not deal in mathematical and logical certainty. Science creates theories based on evidence. All theories in science are held conditionally and they are either supported by the evidence, or they are not. Human caused climate change is as close to a scientific certainty as science can get, but the genius of Patrick Moore is that he ignores all logic even as he demands absolute logical certainty.

“‘Extremely likely’ is not a scientific term but rather a judgment,” says Moore, which is a statement most people would regard as an outright lie, but if he’s lying, why would the Providence Journal print this? Has the ProJo simply discarded any and all pretense of journalistic standards or (as is more likely) is the ProJo pursuing a whole new paradigm in the epistemology of science?

There is simply no way that the Providence Journal could be so irresponsible as to cull testimony from a climate change denier who has a history of lying, who abandoned the environmental movement for financial gain,  and whose company, Greenspirit Strategies Ltd, shills for some of the very worst corporate polluters. The Providence Journal, under the editorial leadership of Ed Achorn, would never stoop so low.

Right?