VitalAccurateThinking

Global warming: Signed, sealed and delivered

Global warming: Signed, sealed and delivered

Not a single paper in a large sample of peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 refuted the consensus position, summarized by the National Academy of Sciences, that "most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."

In 1988, the World Meteorological Association and the United Nations Environment Program joined forces to create the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action. The panel has issued three assessments (1990, 1995, 2001), representing the combined expertise of 2,000 scientists from more than 100 countries, and a fourth report is due out shortly.

Its conclusions -- global warming is occurring, humans have a major role in it -- have been ratified by scientists around the world in published scientific papers....

I have no problems with this so far. However, then the article takes a nasty turn at demonizing any who dare dessent.

Those few who refuse to accept it are not ignorant, but they are stubborn. They are not unintelligent, but they are stuck on details that cloud the larger issue. Scientific communities include tortoises and hares, mavericks and mules.

A historical example will help to make the point. In the 1920s, the distinguished Cambridge geophysicist Harold Jeffreys rejected the idea of continental drift on the grounds of physical impossibility. In the 1950s, geologists and geophysicists began to accumulate overwhelming evidence of the reality of continental motion, even though the physics of it was poorly understood. By the late 1960s, the theory of plate tectonics was on the road to near-universal acceptance.

Yet Jeffreys, by then Sir Harold, stubbornly refused to accept the new evidence, repeating his old arguments about the impossibility of the thing. He was a great man, but he had become a scientific mule.

For a while, journals continued to publish Jeffreys' arguments, but after a while he had nothing new to say. He died denying plate tectonics. The scientific debate was over.

So, to those who even care to examine the evidence, the scientific debate is over. Dare discent and you are compared to Sir Harold or, in Freethought circles, those who believe in Intelligent Design.

To me, we could have a little less demonizing and a little more talking about the facts and discussing the issue. In order to convince me, on either side of the Human-Caused Global Warming debate, consensus means little - reason, logic, facts, observations and analysis do. Make your case. Don't hype or exaggerate to get attention to the cause. Stick to facts, not emotion. Don't rely of fear or attempt to make it a moral issue. Play by the rules of science. Declaring the discussion over like some petulant child is not helpful, in my opinion.

posted by Jim VAT @ 10:53 AM