Posted by
David C. Innes on Wednesday, July 01, 2009 8:17:05 AM
When I was in high school, a friend of mine who was distressed about
all social and political conflict and human suffering in the world once
asked, "Why don't we get six or seven scientists together, figure out
what's wrong with the world, and then just do what they say?" Perhaps
we could take a trial run at that proposal with something that pertains
strictly to natural science. The question of climate change, its
nature, direction, and human consequences, should do just fine.
Kimberley Strassel in
The Wall Street Journal and Paul Krugman in
The New York Times both recently summarized what we know about this issue, appealing to the discoveries of esteemed scientists.
So
they must agree on the what's what of the matter, right? Uh, no. They
could not be more sharply divided. Indeed, Paul Krugman calls
opposition to the Waxman-Markey energy bill that the House just passed
"treason against the planet" ("
Betraying the Planet").
The
fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists
expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying
rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise
in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be
considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome
if we continue along our present course.
He states our
situation in the gravest terms: "we’re facing a clear and present
danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself;" and he
asks,"How can anyone justify failing to act?"
Kimberley Strassel is not so unsettled over the matter ("
The Climate Change Climate Change").
She denies that this is a conflict between scientists and global
patriots on the one side, and opportunists and know-nothings on the
other.
The number of skeptics, far from shrinking,
is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700
scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who
authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne
Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology,
expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally
free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese
environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate
report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in
history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics,
decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led
by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society
revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and
Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)
Scientists
have found that climate change has stalled and disasters have not
materialized. Political leaders have been sobered by the economic
crisis and are reassessing the panic.
The collapse
of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth
is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite
growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked
doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria,
extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians
taking a harder look at the science that would require them to
hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.
With this much
passionate disagreement over climatology, I would not expect much
consensus from a commission of scientists studying moral and political
matters. Perhaps scientific inquiry is not as separable from moral and
political issues and the passions that attend them as we would often
like to believe.
Take a second look at Harold's post to which I added a response, "
Baby, It's Cold Outside!"
We reflect on Australian geologist and mineral economist Viv Forbes'
caution, "What we need to fear is a return of the cold, dry, hungry ice
ages."
Harold Kildow adds:
It
seems the Aussies are far enough out of the way to be safe from the
cloud of miasma surrounding the climate debate hussled up by European
and Amercian socialists. Two other Australians, Ian Plimmer (a
scientist and author) and Senator Steve Fielding are mentioned in a
great piece by Robert Tracinski,
"Could Australia Blow Apart the Great Global Warming Scare?" .
Plimmers book,
Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, The Missing Science,
is just about to be published in the US. It looks to be the one to read
to get the arguments straight. Fielding was sceptical of the warming
science, and decided to take a look for himself. Would that our own
legislators had the intellectual curiosity and honesty to follow the
actual science.
As to David's rumination, "
Perhaps
scientific inquiry is not as separable from moral and political issues
and the passions that attend them as we would often like to believe" see Thomas Kuhn's
Structure of Scientific Revolutions
where he argued strongly for the "sociology of knowledge"--i.e., that
scientific inquiry is not in fact seperable from the passions, morals,
and politics of the scientists.
Innes adds:
A student has just directed my attention to this at The Heritage Foundation: "
An Inconvenient Voice: Dr. Alan Carlin."
Ever
hear of Alan Carlin? Probably not, and that is the way the Obama
Administration wants to keep it. Dr. Carlin is an Environmental
Protection Agency veteran who recently wrote a damaging report,
warning that the science behind climate change was questionable at
best, and that we shouldn’t pass laws that will hurt American families
and hobble the nation’s economy based on incomplete information.
Despite its promise to put science above politics, the Administration has suppressed Carlin’s report,
banned him from writing or speaking about climate change, told him to
forget about attending any meetings that addressed his main job
function—climate change—and gave him a new assignment: updating a
grants database. One supposes that, by dedicating its distinguished
scientists to data-entry tasks, Obama’s EPA is able to free up
true-believing interns to do its research.
Here is a CBS News report of the suppressed report and gag order.
Dr. Carlin earned a B.Sc. in physics from CalTech and a Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T., and has been working in public policy since 1967.
In the comments section of this Heritage Foundation post, Tim from Australia writes:
Do you think that the alarmists have a good case ? This is the answer you get when you ask them for the evidence:
1) “Your not a scientist, therefore you have no right to ask the question”,
2) “There is something morally wrong with you to even to ask the question. Your putting us all at risk”.
3) “The time for debate is over”.
There
never was a debate. The real problem here is poor thinking in the
western world. We simply don’t tolerate any debate anymore. Instead
governments attempt to outlaw dissenting voices or at least condemn
them. That’s what happens when the media becomes the de facto policy
makers. It’s really very simple;
1) Media scares public with doomsday stories
2) Political parties assess public mood by focus groups and polls
3) Political parties make policy based on results
I hoped Obama would be a leader but it seems like he just looks like one. Where’s the substance?
If
a janitor at the EPA wrote a piece supporting doomsday global warming
scenario he would be held up as expert of some repute. No doubt he
could be sighted for his/her historical studies of the increasing water
levels in the toilet bowl.
These global warming
skeptics in scientific academia now know what Christians are suffering
who question the frail dogmas of the evolution establishment.