Facts Matter; Or, It's Hard to Argue Space Policy with a Flat-Earther

In an off-hand remark on a blog, I said "it's very hard to debate space policy with a Flat Earther." The problem should be obvious - without agreement on basic facts such as the fact that one can orbit the (round) Earth, discussing whether we should spend the money to do so is impossible.

Unfortunately, I find that many people seem to enjoy making facts up, and then arguing based on those "facts." The anti-vaccination crowd is one example. Another example is the anti-climate-change group.

In the book SuperFreakonomics, I am told that Steven Levitt, a board-certified economist and presumably able to do math, argues that replacing coal with ground-based solar energy is actually bad, because it increases the waste heat absorbed by the Earth.

This certainly sounds counter-intuitive, and one would think Levitt or somebody actually cranked through the numbers. One would be wrong. The folks at RealClimate, using Google and an Excel spreadsheet, showed that, among other things, waste heat from switching to solar cells is even smaller than the fossil fuel waste heat. The total "forcing" from solar cell waste heat? One / one-hundred and twenty-fifth (1/125) of the forcing from CO2 from burning coal.

It's easy to win an argument with made-up facts. But that doesn't make the winner right.