Saw this posted in GD2004. Though it belonged here as well.
"The science journal Nature put 15 questions to Senator Kerry and President Bush. Read the candidates' responses on topics such as stem cell research, greenhouse emissions, and manned spaceflight to Mars."
link to slashdot discussion thread (sept. 16th):
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/16/0336247 and direct link to Nature analysis (sept. 15th):
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/uselection/index.html Here's a good analysis to shrub's response to the climate change question:
"As the second in a string of posts on the candidates' science policy positions, let's consider the president's response to Science magazine on the question of climate change science:
-snip-
Essentially Bush's handlers have cherry-picked two of the many responsible statements concerning scientific uncertainty in the report and hyped them. But Bush doesn't bother to note that these statements do not in any way conflict with the mainstream scientific view that we have a big global warming problem on our hands.
I doubt the Bushies even understand what the sentences above actually mean, scientifically. Consider the phrase "unequivocally established." I did a considerable amount of reporting with climate experts, including NAS report authors, to determine what was actually meant by that phrase and whether the sentence containing it poses any challenge to the mainstream view that human greenhouse gas emissions are heating the planet. The answer? No challenge whatsoever. In climate science, virtually nothing can be "unequivocally established." That would require a degree of scientific certainty that you simply won't get in a field like this, short of being able to replay the Earth's history and change the CO2 levels to prove a causative effect. You can't do that, obviously, so you can't "unequivocally" establish a "causal linkage" of the sort discussed above.
However, you can be reasonable about what the current state of climate science tells us: i.e., that scientists are pretty darn sure about that causal attribution, even if they aren't unequivocally certain about it. In short, scientists know enough now to justify action, uncertainties notwithstanding. In the passage above, the Bush administration is demanding a ridiculous degree of scientific certainty before political action can be warranted--the "sound science" strategy to a tee.
more anlysis at
http://www.chriscmooney.com/blog.asp http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x821644On edit: fixed links
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