Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
To avoid falling prey to this sort of “expert” advice, we need experts to explain to us how they reached
their conclusions, and make sure they are not overstepping the bounds of their knowledge, which is in-
credibly common.
No scientist is an expert on everything; each specializes in some particular field. For example, a climate
scientist might be a specialist in paleoclimatology (the study of using ancient evidence to deduce what
ancient climates were like), and even then he might be an expert in only one period—say, the Cretaceous
(one of the periods in which the dinosaurs lived). He is not going to be an expert in climate physics, and
the climate physicist is also not an expert in human adaptation.
Whether our escalating use of fossil fuels is good or bad for us is a complex interdisciplinary question,
and everyone is a nonexpert in many relevant issues . In this respect, we are all in the same boat. To reach
an informed opinion, we need to draw on the work of experts in many fields, working to understand and
evaluate their opinions and to interrelate them with one another and with our other knowledge.
Each of us is responsible for taking these steps—for doing his best to find the truth and to make the
right decision. This means treating experts not as authority figures to be obeyed but as advisers to one's
own independent thought process and decision making. An adviser is someone who knows more than you
do about the specifics but knows only part of what you need and can be wrong. An honest and responsible
expert recognizes this, and so he takes care to explain his views and his reasons for them clearly, he is
up-front about any reasons there may be for doubting his conclusions, and he responds patiently to ques-
tions and criticism. He strives to give the public access to as much information as possible about his data,
calculations, and reasoning. In this topic, all the graphs are based on data collected from nonpartisan in-
ternational sources (including arguably the three sources most respected by scholars: the World Bank, the
International Energy Agency, and the BP Statistical Review of World Energy) and in-depth information
about the graphs and how to re-create them can be found at www.moral caseforfossilfuels.com.
SEEK THE BIG PICTURE
Ultimately, what we're after in examining the benefits and risks of fossil fuels is to know big picture how
they affect human life and what to do going forward.
What experts in specific fields give us is knowledge that we can integrate into a big-picture assessment.
For example, by learning from a combination of scientists and economists and energy experts, we can
know how the risks of burning coal compare to the benefits of burning coal.
Looking at the bigpicture requires looking at all the benefits andrisks tohuman life ofdoingsomething
and of not doing it. To do otherwise is to be biased in a way that could be very dangerous to human life.
One thing I noticed repeatedly when looking at the wrong predictions was a distinct bias against fossil
fuels. The focus would be exclusively on the negatives of fossil fuels, which were often exaggerated, and
not on their positives , which, given the results, were clearly overwhelming.
Often the cause of bias is an unacknowledged assumption.
For example, among those who disagree with catastrophic climate change predictions, it's a common
assumption that it's impossible for man to have a catastrophic or even a significant impact on climate. For
example, Indiana Congressman Todd Rokita says, “I think it's arrogant that we think as people that we can
somehow change the climate of the whole earth . . .”—as if there is some preordained guarantee that we
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