[Politics] Science is Opinion?

I'm not sure how we got to the point in society where scientific principles are something the lay person believes they can have an opinion on. You certainly didn't see this back in the big space exploration days, with Joe Shmoe decrying that crazy Buzz Aldrin and his "moon landing" story. Ok, admittedly there were a few people that denied the moon landing, but we generally called them paranoid schizophrenics or possibly crazy Uncle Steve.

The most obvious victim of this scientific normatism is global warming. It seems every week here lately I encounter someone that chortles whilst denying that global warming could possibly be real because it's been really cold this Winter. This generally causes me to reevaluate my relation with that person and decide whether I should lose my composure on them or if I should just smile, nod, then never speak to them again. The frequency of this conversation has caused me to ponder how this came about, and I've come up with a few reasons:

1. Science as Politics - The science of global warming has somehow ended up in the lions' cage of the American political arena, and as such people reason it must have bipartisan stances. "If Al Gore says it, and he was a Democrat, and I'm a Republican, then I must not agree" seems to be a logic I see applied; Nay Nay. The world is getting warmer, period. Whether we humans have a significant amount to do with that is the debate, not whether it's happening at all.
   
2. Everyone is an expert - I think there is a sense that because the weather is so observable and such a frequent topic of conversation people feel reasonably qualified to weigh in. "I can discuss the weather with my hair dresser and people I bump into in a diner." The leap is then made from feeling qualified to say "It's cold outside" to "The world is not getting warmer". This also stems from...
3. Myopic Viewpoint, a.k.a. "America is the World" - When people attempt to take what's happening "right now" as proof one way or the other, they generally only consider what's going on in America, at best. This precludes what's going in areas like Greenland, which is experiencing vastly different weather currently. The presence of global warming cannot possibly be rationally evaluated without a global viewpoint.
   
4. The Real 'Experts' are Idiots - The public views meteorology as inaccurate. Frankly, it is. People therefore presume "If these guys can't dial it in further out than a week, how can they possibly predict years into the future?" The error in logic here is that the study of global warming doesn't at all resemble that of weather prediction.Temperature trends are determined the same way trends are in almost every other field of study: take a set of past measurements (in this case temperatures) and project out where they will be based on trends over the past several years.This is a well vetted technique. In this particular case their are decades of data; it's pretty accurate.
5. Parsable vs. Observable Difference - The overall global temperature change that's being discussed is very minute. It's not something where your gonna step outside and notice that it's 5 degrees warmer every day this summer than last, and if you are seeing that, that's not global warming. The trend that's being discussed is statistical; it's small but will accumulate up over time such that in 50 years there will be an observable effect.
   

[Dogs] PETA hates breeders

So, PETA managed to get through Westminster security this year and stage a protest, holding up signs that said “Mutts Rule” and “Breeders Kill Shelter Dogs’ Chances.” Having gone the route of getting a rare breed dog from a breeder I'm often asked, with varying degrees of disdain, why I opted to go that route versus getting a dog from a shelter. My answer is that my wife and I did a lot of Internet research, quiz taking, and visiting to find the breed of dog which best matched our lifestyles. This usually quells the inquisition, with only the hardest of core pursuing beyond that. This has prompted me to learn the life lesson that people don't like the breeder vs. shelter decision being compared to that of having your own baby vs. adoption.

I certainly understand peoples' frustrations, though; I don't like the fact that shelters are as prevalent as they are myself. I by no means encourage people away from shelter dogs either. However, it's a tad irritating that people's ire in the situation is directed at people who celebrate dogs instead of the people that actually cause dogs to end up in shelters. Admittedly, it's hard to track down all the irresponsible dog owners who don't fix their dogs (because of the minor expense, apathy, or naive feeling of "keeping them natural") that ultimately leads to unintended litters, in turn creating the majority of dogs in shelters. However, since when is it acceptable to attack a tangentially related party because you can't get at the actual culpable party? I'm gonna let you think that one over.

As for how PETA should go about tracking down the real responsible parties, might I suggest Wal-Mart as a more apt protest location? I'm just throwing that out there.