Wednesday, March 11, 2015

CREDIBILITY OF CLIMATE SCIENCE

Dictionary definitions of Science are "a particular branch of scientific knowledge", or alternatively, "ability to produce solutions in some problem domain".  The word science originates from the Latin scientia, the meaning of which is "knowledge".  In turn, knowledge is defined as "the psychological result of perception, learning and reasoning". 

In other words, science is as often as not subjective, an adjective defined as "taking place within the mind and modified by individual bias".

Science, which to the individual scientist tends to be indisputable truth, has throughout history been hotly debated among opposing factions of dogmatists, often in less than polite terms and at times with fatal personal consequences to anyone expressing disagreement with generally held opinions.  Not much original scientific dogma has survived intact.  Were it so the Earth would still be flat and there would not be much sense in continued scientific research in fields already resting on generally accepted scientific opinion.

Research nevertheless continues to be undertaken, for which we have to give thanks lest momentarily accepted "knowledge" takes permanent hold.  However, researchers need funding to put food on the table and offspring through college, and entities or persons putting up the money not infrequently do so to elicit scientific support for their own opinions or vested interests in the subject at hand.  Human nature being what it is, this should not come as a surprise.

Climate change, and the role of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions into Earth's atmosphere, is one current area of particularly intense and high-stake disputation.  It was recently revealed that a certain academic, who happens to disagree with the majority opinion that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are prime movers of global warming, had been funded by industry groups with economic interests at stake.

If I may be so bold as to ask, where else do we imagine this particular academic would obtain funding for his alleged heresies against "the declared findings of 97% of the world's climate scientists"?

Let us not be so naive as to think that the funders of that 97% - mostly national and multinational governmental institutions and NGOs - do not have personal or collective axes to grind in return for the monies they bestow on their set of researchers.  We can expect equal amounts of preconceived bias on both sides of the table.  That is after all what debating is all about.

Unfortunately, if there are areas where "scientia" should be treated with a dose of scepticism, climate change causations are high on the list.  Fundamental changes in Earth's climate is a macro-millenial process, much of which is not well understood, or understood at all.  By lucky coincidence, Earth's climate has been uncharacteristically benign and stable during the latest 12,000 years, the period when homo sapiens set out on the social and economic evolution towards where we find ourselves today.  If Earth's past climate history is anything to go by, we can be pretty sure that the climate will in time again become a lot less amenable, almost certainly too cold rather than too hot.

Personally, I am all for finding viable long term energy and raw material alternatives to fossil fuels as soon as possible, but I would recommend we change our focus on the issue from disputable climate science to the undisputable fact that fossil fuels will one day be exhausted.