A vote that never happened, and why that matters more than the aerosols
By John Locke
I observe a familiar disorder in this geoengineering story: men are made to fear, or to hope, upon reports of a great public act that, upon examination, appears not to have been done at all. The point is not merely pedantic. When we mistake the fact of authorization, we mistake where accountability lies, and we invite passions to govern judgment.
In matters of public concern, my rule is plain: probability stands chiefly on two feet, what accords with constant experience, and what is supported by credible testimony, weighed by the number, integrity, skill, and design of the witnesses. @The grounds of probability are fundamentally two: the conformity of a proposition with our own knowledge, observation, and experience, and the testimony of others reporting their observation and experience; in evaluating testimony, we must consider number, integrity, skill, authorial design, internal consistency, and contrary testimonies. Here the alleged UN vote, worldwide protests, and legal challenges come to us without that solid footing, while the better attested record is of moratoriums, withdrawals, and dispute.
There is also a special danger in tradition and repetition. A thing does not grow truer because it is often said, and each remove from the first witness weakens, rather than strengthens, the proof. @In matters resting on testimony, each remove from the original witness weakens the force of proof: no chain of second‑hand reports can make a proposition more probable than it was on the testimony of the first voucher, so age and repetition do not increase but rather diminish the evidential weight of traditional truths. So a confident rumor, carried through many mouths and posts, may end by looking like a settled act of the world.
If stratospheric trials are ever to be considered, they must be handled as acts that touch many nations’ safety, and therefore require open evidence, stated terms, and something like consent, not a haze of hearsay and authority.