Science Is Hott!
It’s fairly well known that science has been taking a bit of a beating these days—particularly from the religious right, with the support of the White House. Proponents of “Intelligent Design” are making headway in trying to get books banned in schools, to get their “side of things” represented in science curricula…you know. That sort of thing.
Don’t get me wrong: religion is fine. It has things to say about our humanity, and some of it even overlaps with the concerns of scientists, particularly in areas of ethical or moral questions arising from things scientists do. But to anyone who takes science at all seriously—take me for instance—when a religious person says, “Well, science tells us certain things about the world, and the Holy Book tells us other things,” I hear, “Well, Humans tell us certain things about the world, and Aliens tell us other things.” Uh…what aliens exactly? Religion can’t look at the world through its lens and call that Science any more than science can look at the world through its lens and call that Religion. They’re entirely different domains, operating differently in the world.
Which brings me to Global Warming. A comment made to me the other day summed it up. After I talked a bit about a video documentary I had watched that featured several prominent climate scientists shedding doubt on human-influenced climate warming, I was told, “Well, either you believe or you don’t believe.” I say, that’s where people have it wrong: those are the things you say about religion, but we should never say them about science. Concerning scientific debates, there’s only one thing to say: “I’ll remain skeptical and open-minded as I observe, until I come to the most reasonable conclusion based on the evidence found.” Anything else is not science.
But the science around this phenomenon has unfolded in a way that has me pretty concerned. First, the funding for studies in this branch of climate science has increased tenfold in the USA. That in itself is not a bad thing, but unfortunately at the same time a kind of religious dogma has overtaken the scientific community in addressing the issue. If you’re a climate scientist whose findings shed doubt on the evidence of human-influenced climate warming, you’re likely to have your grant renewal canceled; your tenure revoked, and possibly lose your job. What’s more, you’re likely to be subject to vitriol and called a “heretic.” A heretic. Like they called certain philosophers and scientists in the middle ages, just before burning them at the stake.
So if you’re a climate scientist and want to keep being one, what do you do? Given the unbelievable complexity of climate and the hundreds of assumptions that go into modeling future climate change, maybe it won’t be hard to just kind of get the prediction to come out right…so you can hope to have your study published instead of buried.
Meanwhile, the media has bitten down on this one to the bone. The media loves nothing more than a catastrophe. And a global catastrophe—man, that sells a lot of soap. And now there’s a new job title in the media industry: environmental journalist. If you’re a trained and established environmental journalist, and your editor’s looking at your latest piece about the environment and saying, “Hell, this is the same thing you wrote last week!”, what do you do? If a scientist, no matter how credible and prestigious, says that human-induced climate change may not be a problem, what do you do?
You do what journalists did in the ’70s, which was to jump on the disaster bandwagon and ride that baby to riches. Yes, back in the sexy ’70s we had our own looming environmental catastrophe: Global Cooling. The planet was getting cooler and was going to continue to do so until humanity’s very survival (the survival of your children!) was threatened. The BBC did a docu-drama (more drama than docu) that featured a dramatization of a gargantuan tidal wave destroying London. Seriously! It sold a lot of soap. What can I say—Here Come the Seventies. Between the chill (pardon the pun) in the scientific community and the media’s need for looming destruction, we’re probably just not getting the best information here. Might as well remain skeptical.
Don’t get me wrong: religion is fine. It has things to say about our humanity, and some of it even overlaps with the concerns of scientists, particularly in areas of ethical or moral questions arising from things scientists do. But to anyone who takes science at all seriously—take me for instance—when a religious person says, “Well, science tells us certain things about the world, and the Holy Book tells us other things,” I hear, “Well, Humans tell us certain things about the world, and Aliens tell us other things.” Uh…what aliens exactly? Religion can’t look at the world through its lens and call that Science any more than science can look at the world through its lens and call that Religion. They’re entirely different domains, operating differently in the world.
Which brings me to Global Warming. A comment made to me the other day summed it up. After I talked a bit about a video documentary I had watched that featured several prominent climate scientists shedding doubt on human-influenced climate warming, I was told, “Well, either you believe or you don’t believe.” I say, that’s where people have it wrong: those are the things you say about religion, but we should never say them about science. Concerning scientific debates, there’s only one thing to say: “I’ll remain skeptical and open-minded as I observe, until I come to the most reasonable conclusion based on the evidence found.” Anything else is not science.
But the science around this phenomenon has unfolded in a way that has me pretty concerned. First, the funding for studies in this branch of climate science has increased tenfold in the USA. That in itself is not a bad thing, but unfortunately at the same time a kind of religious dogma has overtaken the scientific community in addressing the issue. If you’re a climate scientist whose findings shed doubt on the evidence of human-influenced climate warming, you’re likely to have your grant renewal canceled; your tenure revoked, and possibly lose your job. What’s more, you’re likely to be subject to vitriol and called a “heretic.” A heretic. Like they called certain philosophers and scientists in the middle ages, just before burning them at the stake.
So if you’re a climate scientist and want to keep being one, what do you do? Given the unbelievable complexity of climate and the hundreds of assumptions that go into modeling future climate change, maybe it won’t be hard to just kind of get the prediction to come out right…so you can hope to have your study published instead of buried.
Meanwhile, the media has bitten down on this one to the bone. The media loves nothing more than a catastrophe. And a global catastrophe—man, that sells a lot of soap. And now there’s a new job title in the media industry: environmental journalist. If you’re a trained and established environmental journalist, and your editor’s looking at your latest piece about the environment and saying, “Hell, this is the same thing you wrote last week!”, what do you do? If a scientist, no matter how credible and prestigious, says that human-induced climate change may not be a problem, what do you do?
You do what journalists did in the ’70s, which was to jump on the disaster bandwagon and ride that baby to riches. Yes, back in the sexy ’70s we had our own looming environmental catastrophe: Global Cooling. The planet was getting cooler and was going to continue to do so until humanity’s very survival (the survival of your children!) was threatened. The BBC did a docu-drama (more drama than docu) that featured a dramatization of a gargantuan tidal wave destroying London. Seriously! It sold a lot of soap. What can I say—Here Come the Seventies. Between the chill (pardon the pun) in the scientific community and the media’s need for looming destruction, we’re probably just not getting the best information here. Might as well remain skeptical.
posted by Todd Dremver at
3:44 PM
1 Comments
