Inconvenient Science June 8, 2008

Both of our presidential candidates agree on global warming:  Senator Obama states that the notion that human use of fossil fuels is leading us toward catastrophe is “scientifically certain.”  Senator McCain is among the most environmentally aware of capitol Republicans, and he wonders whether our “government is equal to the challenge.”

This isn’t going to be a post that agrees with them.  It’s also not going to be a post that disagrees (except with Obama’s notion that it’s all so certain).  It’s going to be a post about the new religion of science, and how that religion deals with heretics.

Let me begin by stating my position on global warming: It seems patently obvious to me that pumping carbon emissions (or, really, almost anything else) into the atmosphere isn’t a good thing, just as filling landfills with plastics or styrofoam that won’t biodegrade is intuitively stupid.  The globe is warming, we may have something to do with it, and we might even be a proximate cause.  We should be taking serious steps toward reducing our footprint on the earth.  I am, fundamentally and at my core, an environmentalist.

But I also like people to tell the truth about things.  Some things that are at least as true as the warnings about carbon emissions:

1.  We cannot be certain what effect our carbon emissions are having.  We can’t possibly know: this is a science that is fundamentally about computer models, and our best models cannot even predict the path of a single relatively local event, a hurricane that is already in progress.  It’s quite a stretch to think that we can predict a more complicated worldwide result many years into the future with any degree of accuracy.  The doomsday predictions posit a massive chain of conditional probabilities that make them all but useless.

2.  We don’t know enough about our climate’s natural variability to be able to assert, as “scientifically certain,” that we are anything more than a minor cause of the current climate change.  For just one example: It was as hot or hotter in the Arctic in the 1940s.  For another: the much-discussed Greenland ice sheet is actually growing lately.  Glacier science overall, in fact, is so new that we don’t know as much about glaciers as you might think.  We’re just learning about them.

3.  While it’s true that Alpine glaciers have been retreating more rapidly in the past 20 years, those glaciers have been retreating since the 19th century, and they were advancing for centuries before that.

4.  We don’t really know about the effect of tons of things other than greenhouse gases on global warming: sunspots appear to have a huge effect, for example (and paradoxically, some researchers last week projected that we are entering an 11-year phase of very low sunspot activity that may cool the earth quite a bit).  Water is 90+% of greenhouse gas.

5.  Is is not even a certainty that global warming is a bad thing for species on the planet, nor is it necessarily bad for humans.  Plant and animal diversity thrives in warm climates; as the earth has warmed over the last several decades, so have harvest yields on the world’s farms.  You think global food supplies are a problem now?  They’d be at least 15% worse if the earth were not experiencing a warming trend.

This does not mean that we should not husband our natural resources very carefully.  It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t enact policies to slow carbon emissions.  It definitely doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t reduce our dependence on a resource (oil) whose most abundant reserves exist in unstable nations who are not necessarily our friends.  (At minimum, our oil dependency is a dangerous addiction: we fund our worst enemies, we pollute the environment, and we allow ourselves to be held as economic hostages.)

No, what it means is: there’s a lot we don’t know, and it’s not helpful to pretend that we do.  It’s particularly not helpful to shout down opposing viewpoints in an argument that is fundamentally about the interpretation of data, and that is exactly what we are doing.

My issue here is represented by a recent Newsweek article that declares the global warming debate over.  It’s a widely-held opinion: Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider says not only that there is really no legitimate opposing view to the notion that man-made carbon emissions drive global warming, but also that to suggest or support otherwise is “irresponsible.”  At the Chatauqua Institute last month, Al Gore reiterated the same point, several times stating that there is no science on the other side.  If you hear differently, according to Gore, you’re being duped.  The implication is that this is akin to tobacco pseudoscience: whoever suggests something other than the norm is in the pocket of the oil companies.

Only this is nonsense, and more pointedly, it doesn’t sound like science at all.  Where, in genuine science, do we attempt to squelch debate?  We don’t.  Science is about continuing to question, about always looking for more and better data, always seeking only what is true.  Special relativity can be questioned, Newton’s laws of motion can be improved.  But somehow an assertion about the cause of global warming can’t?

Schneider has a formidable opponent in MIT’s Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology Richard Lindzen, who called Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth “shrill alarmism,” while suggesting that we simply do not know the extent of humanity’s contribution to global warming.

Predictably, Lindzen has been vilified.  Amazingly, Laurie David, whose scientific credentials amount to being the wife of comedy writer Larry David, had the gall to brand Lindzen (I remind you: a professor at MIT) “a shill.”

Mrs. David can feel comfortable in that accusation because this has stopped being science — it’s a religion now, and human beings as a primary cause of global warming is an unassailable tenet of that religion.  One of the greatest scientists of our generation, theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, bemoans this:

“There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible.

The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good.

The worldwide community of environmentalists — most of whom are not scientists — holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate.

Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true.

Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice.

Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.”

So.  We can agree on a lot.  It is probably useless to debate the precise extent of global warming: how high the seas will rise, when catastrophe will occur.  The truth is, we are in a warming trend (whatever the reason), and it’s a big deal.

What’s the danger, then, in being shrill?  Well…

I’ve been asked, “What if all the scientists are right?”  It’s a good question.  But it is asked as though the opposing question (“What if they’re wrong?) has no value, and yet it does.  On the one hand, we could under-respond to a serious issue.  On the other, we could respond to the wrong stimuli, and fail to solve our most pressing problems while we’re throwing all of our energies at the wrong one.

The reason it’s important to keep this in the realm of science is that simple: It’s not important to be politically correct, it’s important to be right.  We need to decide what our most important issues are, and respond appropriately.  Maybe our contribution to global warming is the biggest issue of all.  Maybe it’s the rise of terrorist threats throughout the world.  Maybe it’s the lack of clean water.

We won’t know what it is as long as Gaian priests continue to stifle debate (and science!) on their pet issue.