Abrupt Climate Changing. Political Argument Dynamics Unchanging

In case you've missed it, some nice people are having a conference today and tomorrow about how they think global warming is overrated. (You probably missed it -- except for stories like "climate panel funded by oil mongers!" the press is staying away) Along those lines, I've heard rumors that 2007 was the coldest year in a long time and that more of North America is under snow cover than since 1966.

But I digress. I'm not smart enough to perform 17,000 variable Petabyte modeling with any real precision, so I know pretty much bupkis about the climate. I have spent a hundred hours or so being "educated" by scientists on both sides of the debate, and I can tell you that I find the politics of the debate despicable.

I just got through reading "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton. Crichton certainly stirred the pot a bit with this book, as you can tell from the reaction on the wiki page. To hear some of his critics, he's no better than Erich von Däniken and his "Chariots of the Gods" -- a book which claimed to have all sorts of science and such behind it, but really was just fantasy.

I see a lot of emotional reasoning going on, and most of it is from the "established consensus" crowd. Doubters are called denialists. The debate is pronounced "over" from major politicians. People who disagree are said to have been paid off by big oil companies. Most common folk such as myself are simply "uneducated" and "flat-earthers" Perhaps kooks.

Hey. Perhaps even as we speak we're destroying the planet for generations. The end is coming! Or perhaps not. I only have two simple questions: How much do I have to know to be considered an informed person with a reasoned case for disagreement? Seems like everybody that disagrees with Global Warming has something wrong with them. Secondly, can somebody please use a clear deterministic model to make an independent and verifiable prediction? Or is science simply a matter of polling people and getting a general feel for their opinions? I'd like to know average global temperature in the year 2020, for instance, or the sea level around 2025. I'm not picky though -- simply give me a model that has a prediction that I can verify. That's what science is all about. Then we all can test or refine that model. The spectral absorption pattern of CO2 and methane ain't going to cut it. Neither are complex computer models with lots of user-adjusted weighing parameters. That's not science -- it's a video game.

I'm perfectly happy not knowing which side to believe. Obviously the planet is changing. Just as obviously we have an impact on our world around us. But there is a long, long, long journey from those simple observations to some kind of moral imperative that the planet should be one certain temperature or another. Or even that it would be moral to try to keep the planet at any one temperature. Better still, that somehow the natural part of becoming a sentient species -- extracting solar energy from hydrocarbons from years gone by -- is somehow something that wouldn't be a natural part of any planet or something we should shun.

If the world is a park or a big office building and we are arguing about where to set the thermostat, fine. I'm willing to have that argument. But like the discussion around "I like ice cream", I'm not sure we're going to make much progress. Perhaps it is easier for some to feel as if they are on some holier-than-thou moral crusade. If so, let me know when you get back. I'll be here with science and reason -- the stuff that says all scientific knowledge is provisional and that model and reproducible experiment are what we use to advance it. But now I'm starting to sound downright kooky, aren't I?

UPDATE: Found an interesting comment over on Crichton's book pages while poking around just now. Seemed like a well-informed young scientist making what appears to be a reasonable observation.

I have to agree. I have found that in my research, the data can be viewed in several ways. In Biology/Zoology, making a statement is always a tough proposition. My disertation is a good example of this. Trying to make a thesis statement about the correlation of human involvement in the environment of certain African animals ( both on purpose and second hand). Now there are so many variables that it is often hard to make a statement. And let any other scientist see the same data and he might say the same thing.

This is why I stand by my statement that science is not an exact process, but a process of informed and educated opinions. There are very few Laws in science. Most is theory or Hypothesis. The first thing I teach my class is the Scientific method and the differences in these things (things ou would hope by college would be common knowledge). We would all be foolish to think that science is DEFINATIVE. IT is nothing of the sort. That is what makes it function. If it was so easy that we could all sit there and look at some data and say "oh yes GW is a problem and here is how to fix it" then we would all be scientists.

Can we spot the problem with this reasonable approach? The author confuses the politics of science and the use of heuristics with the science of science. Soft sciences, like sociology, have informed consensus. This is why we call them "soft sciences". This is also why we put them in a different category than say, astronomy.

At this point in modernization, to some degree all sciences have a soft spot to them. There are places where we have models and theories but no reproducible experiments. Yet, we all agree that the model is mostly correct. There's nothing wrong with that. Heck, you can even use that to make a nice profit. But it's not science. It's something along the lines of religion. "I don't know for sure about this, but most people mostly believe it's true, and I feel I should live my life according to this belief which I am unable to test" By anybody's definition, that's a religion. Religions are fine to have. Nothing wrong with 'em. I just wouldn't confuse them with science.

I think that's why this debate bugs the heck out of me so much -- at the heart of it, we're really talking about what science is and how it should fit into our life. Is it just a consensus of really smart people? If so, should we use a consensus of really smart people as a proxy to make political decisions for us? Not me. I think I'd rather die than abrogate my responsibility like that. Where are all of my fellow citizens who don't want a new class of Dukes and Earls? Surfing the net looking for more Britney Spears news?