We Need to Challenge Climate Change Consensus
Mary Dejevsky, The Independent | July 23, 2008
Scientists who challenge the mainstream theory of global warming and claim that the increase in global temperatures is not caused by greenhouse gas emissions struggle to attain funding and publish their findings. ++ Mankind's culpability for climate change has been elevated to orthodoxy and any dissenters are said to suffer from ostracism. ++ This is a mistake – an overwhelming embrace of any consensus limits constructive debate which is crucial to science: questioning the prevailing wisdom leads to innovation and progress.
Tags: | climate change |
Thu, Jul 31st 2008, 06:37
Patrick Edwin Moran, Wake Forest University, Silver Contributor (57)
The Internet is one place where anyone can publish, and many scientific papers are now being "pre-published" on the WWW to get the news out promptly. Contrary to what some people may think, scientists do not simply jump on a bandwagon and ignore all else. The scientist who discovered the "prions" that explain things like mad cow disease was initially treated very harshly in scientific publications because his findings went against a very long history of scientific development that had learned that microorganisms are the causes of infective diseases. But orthodox scientists did not burn that scientist at the stake. He had the evidence and he had the analysis, and over the period of a few years other scientists discovered that his work could not be refuted. He eventually received a Nobel Prize. Scientists do not get acclaim for substantiating what other people have established as the commonly accepted reason for some phenomenon. They get acclaim for discovering either something entirely new (which is hard to do) or for discovering a flaw in somebody else's work (which is slightly less difficult to do). They want to be on the side that turns out to be right, and they "jump ship" as soon as the ship is known to be sinking.
There is no evidence for an increase in ensolation that could explain the rise in the average global temperature. There is more and more evidence coming on line that indicates that the temperature of our world is (1) increasing, and (2) increasing at rates that are unprecedented. The extrapolation of researchers was originally that climatic changes would occur and would not become problematical for several decades, but, as the picture has become more and more clearly filled out with additional research, it turns out that the original extrapolations were too conservative.
Whatever the cause of global warming, the fact that things are changing with extreme celerity should counsel people to do anything in their power to avoid making things worse. Your house might be getting how just because it is summer and there are no clouds in the sky. That is something that you can't do anything about. But for you to go around turning on all the incandescent lights, turning the oven up to 500 degrees and leaving the oven door open, etc., would definitely not be a wise course of action.