Further Cartesian Follies- Science and the Environmental Movement

A few years ago, I came across an article in the Economist about Bjorn Lomborg’s book The Skeptical Environmentalist. The editorial itself didn’t say much about the veracity of the book choosing to focus instead on the interesting fact that Scientific America devoted an entire issue to slamming it. The author thought if a such a book was capable of provoking such a response, it must be worth reading. I agreed and immediately went out to buy it. The Skeptical Environmentalist is Lomborg’s application of hard statistics (of which he is a professor) using the same numbers that the environmental movement uses to justify their positions. In some cases, he came to the same conclusion they did. In most others he did not. When he arrived at a different conclusion, he was very clear why and usually went on to explain how faulty statistical reasoning skewed their results.

Much more recently, I read an article by a scientist attending the climate change conference in Montreal. He was stunned by how few scientists were actually there. It was mostly politicians, various government officials and the detritus that accumulates around them. While there is no dispute that global climate change is occurring, what is up for debate is whether or not this is natural or caused by man. Until we understand the mechanism, we can do little to change it. The indicator is NOT the mechanism. Global warming is the indicator. What’s the mechanism? There’s absolutely no scientific consensus on that.

I don’t trust scientists when it comes to making judgment calls. That’s not what science is about anyway. It’s about hard facts and finding them by trying every possible way to invalidate a hypothesis. One of my professors once told me that science has nothing to do with proving something right. It’s about trying like hell to prove it wrong and begrudging admitting you can’t- for the moment. Judgment is a humanistic skill and one most scientists don’t have a natural proclivity for- at least the ones I've met. Good judgment requires introspection, self-awareness and a desire to uncover one’s unconscious biases. I don’t know many hard scientists who take studies into the “softer” skill sets very seriously. And that is their failing. It’s that damned Cartesian mode of thought again. The very same philosophy that puts reason above all fails miserably when it comes to regulating itself. If science is there to keep religion honest, how do we keep science (or scientists) honest?

A friend of mine is a rising star in a geological department of a major university. She explained to me one day that the earth had a long (geological time long) history of violent weather. In fact, the earth experience violent extremes and massive storms in periods tens of thousands of years in duration. These periods of unrest were bracketed by roughly ten thousand years of relatively mild weather. This unrest-lull-unrest pattern happened with enough regularity that its acceptance is widespread among the geological community. In fact, she mentioned, human civilization started at the beginning of one of these "lull" brackets adding that it was probably due to the more regular weather that larger human encampments were able to develop. I asked when this lull was ending (already anticipating the answer given the history of civilizations) to which she replied, “Oh, about now.” Not less than 10 minutes later, she launched into a rant on how fossil fuel consumption was causing weather pattern changes. I asked if she saw the incoherence of her viewpoints but she couldn’t or wouldn’t see what I was talking about. One was based on hard scientific data. The other was based on emotion. As I’d like to get printed on a T-Shirt, “The indicator is NOT the mechanism.” On the back, it can say, “Causation and correlation are two different things.” But it’s easier to change the facts than it is to change a tightly constructed mental and emotional framework. Here, many scientist aren't that much different than religious zealots. Challenge their core beliefs and you won't be met with a reasonable response. When it comes right down to it, "sacred" can apply to any idea or conept that you fervently believe but can't really explain. Stuff like that tends not to bend. Push it too far and it generally snaps.