I was scanning through my newsfeed one morning in the last week of May and came across this.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06083-8

This article is behind a paywall so these are a couple of the published scientific articles the article is based on:

https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/identifying-a-safe-and-just-corridor-for-people-and-the-planet

https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/a-just-world-on-a-safe-planet-first-study-quantifying-earth-system-boundaries

Why is this worthy of note?

This ‘scientific paper’ purports to define what is ‘safe’ and ‘just’. A scientific measure of safety is a hard metric to define. A scientific measure of justice is a gross dereliction of science.

These studies attempt to define a set of safe limits for different climate metrics and then assess whether or not the human race has exceeded the metrics. These are two very difficult things to define and will involve a high degree of supposition, projection and assumption.

They then attempt to do the same thing with ‘justice’.

Lets examine this in two ways, scientifically and politically:

1. Science is the process of formulation of a set of hypotheses that are strengthened or defeated by rigorously questioning and testing. There is no such thing as a fixed idea of definitive truth in science. Justice is a subjective moral judgment that is made via societal consensus. The two are not comparable and cannot be combined. It is worth noting that of late the idea that science is created by consensus has been used by the political climate lobby. This is definitionally false. The degradation of the understanding and perception of the scientific method has led us to the point where science has adopted the role of moral judgment by scientific decree – by scientists themselves. An inversion of the scientific method as morals cannot be interrogated or challenged, as to do so is inherently immoral. It is immoral to take the position that murder is just. Therefore couching ‘science’ in moral language has the effect of actively discouraging rigorous testing. It is an anathema to the basis of the scientific method.
2. Through the decades of the recently changing climate (it’s never changed before!) and now COVID, no matter your position we can all admit that our government employs ‘science’ to effect their political will. In the western world this has happened in the same period when the state has taken over the role of defining morals in society. This used to be an important part of the separation of powers between church and state. Totalitarian governments eliminate or subvert religion so they assume the power of deciding what is moral and what is not, this is a very useful power. In the western world as the church has declined in power this has left a power vacuum that the state has expanded to fill. As the state has politicized science to amplify its political power it follows that with the assumption of moral authority by the government, the moralization of science would eventually follow.

So let’s look at the good news.

OK, after examining the good news, let’s draw some negative conclusions. There are some examples where science has made moral judgements. I am not sure we need to go beyond considering eugenics as an example of the intersection of science, social engineering and morals:

“…..modern societies, as a matter of policy, should promote the improvement of the human race through various forms of governmental intervention. While initially this desire was manifested as the promotion of selective breeding, it ultimately contributed to the intellectual underpinnings of state-sponsored discrimination, forced sterilization, and genocide.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2757926/

The government has decided it is immoral that you heat your home, or drive across town to visit a family member, or immoral that we attempt to make enough food to feed the world population, or immoral that you defend children against sexualization, or immoral that you oppose state promoted sterilization of children against their parents wishes, or immoral that you decline a medical procedure. They use fake scientists to make and support these moral edicts.

When science gets involved in gender theory, climate justice and what medical procedures you should be required to accept. What exactly will you be compelled to do against your will for the common good? – what will happen to you if you disagree with a set of astonishingly weak scientific hypotheses with fabricated yet absolute moral justifications?