Two videos of the first Monthly Argument debate are now available. The topic for this first debate was “Immigration: Should we apply the brakes?”
The first video is short (just 6 minutes of excerpts). The second one is the entire debate (almost 90 minutes).
Both videos can also be watched and/or downloaded from the Vimeo website. (Debate Excerpts: here . The entire debate here.) I’ve embedded them both here but I think that some people will find that the longer video loads much faster at the Vimeo site.
Immigration debate: exerpts from Monthly Argument on Vimeo.
Immigration: should we apply the brakes? from Monthly Argument on Vimeo.
Towards the end an audience member asserted that science opinion was giving us warnings that ongoing rapid development was risky. Sinclair answered a different question to the one asked and then Arthur pointed out that the actual question had not been addressed. Arthur then answered the question along the lines that the real sciences like physics (as well as maths) had been relegated to the back burner in education and that a narrow “science” called ecology was now ascendant and taking over the curriculum. Quite true.
As an extension to that I want to draw attention to Pielke jnr’s book, The Honest Broker (review here), where he analyses the relationship between science and politics and the different roles that scientists can take. One of his insights which I found valuable is that science issues may range from tornado type (a tornado is heading your way, if you want to live then take shelter) to abortion type (value laden issues which also have a scientific aspect). What is happening with climate change and some other issues is that they are value laden and that some scientists have fallen into advocating policy without really being aware of where the science ends and the politics begins. This is also partly due to a failure to educate scientists in an all round way. Scientists are “allowed” to be advocates if they choose that role but it is not the only role they can choose – and they need to be aware of stepping into a role where they may lack expertise. Another possible role is that of honest broker. Pielke outlines 4 possible roles in his book, see the review.
test 2
Christopher Hitchens, who sadly is dying, points out that a form of subliminal racism in an age where it has become politically incorrect to be overt about it is White Fright: