[LINK] The meaning of climate change denial

[Richard Chirgwin]

Stephen,

The easiest answer is "buggered if I know", but that's a cop-out, I suppose.

I find it a depressing irony that the Internet - itself an artifact of 
multiple scientific disciplines - is the medium for transmitting a 
hangar-load of idiots telling us that science can't be trusted.

People seem happy to trust engineering while saying that the science, 
into which engineering spreads its roots, isn't true.

As for the "maverick scientist"; much of it is a media artifact, 
journalists who can't grasp the actual science seizing on a story that's 
easier to tell (I'm a journalist, but I try to never touch a science 
story if I don't think I can understand it or grasp it). They forget, 
for eg, that Galileo wasn't at odds with science, but the Catholic 
Church. Very few true "mavericks" have ever been right, and nearly none 
have created something entirely "new" that has no pre-existing 
theoretical or empirical frameworks. In almost every case, the radical 
theory is developed because an empirical observation needs to be explained.

In the case of climate change, the "radicals" and "mavericks" aren't 
trying to explain an observation: they're trying either (a) to say that 
the observation doesn't exist, or (b) that the most tenable explanation 
for the observation is wrong.

What distinguishes the working theory from junk is prediction.

The strangest prediction I can easily recall is in quantum physics 
(warning, what follows is abbreviated): since Heisenberg's uncertainty 
principle puts a limit on what you can know about anything, there can 
*never* be any region of space that is completely empty. In a "complete" 
vacuum, quantum fluctuations will occur to preserve uncertainty - 
"virtual particles and anti-particles", the theory predicts, will come 
into existence spontaneously and annihilate each other. That was 
predicted long before it was observed - but the noise from quantum 
fluctuations HAS been observed.

Compared to that, climate science is very mundane and easily grasped.

Not only that: the impact of carbon dioxide is not some "new" 
prediction. The first such prediction was made by a 19th century 
scientist. The mechanism, in other words, is not hard to understand, and 
at the gross level, is easy to predict. What's difficult is the impact 
of the gross, easy prediction - a rise in temperatures - to the complex 
operation of climate and weather systems. "Warmer" is done and dusted; 
"the impact of warmer" is probably incalculable from our position, but 
you'd have to be a knave or a dupe to calmly say "nothing's going to 
happen. Stay calm and carry on".

RC

On 26/06/12 6:51 PM, Stephen Wilson wrote:
> I dip occasionally into the interminable debate between Koltai and the
> Rest of the Link World. I wouldn't be the only one dumbfounded by the
> man's obstinancy.  What can it mean that an intelligent person feels SO
> VERY MUCH IN THE RIGHT to buck science?
>
> It's an instance of a very worrying and deeply ironic modern
> phenomenon.  Why is it that so many people feel they have license to
> ignore science?  Sometimes I fear we're heading back into a Dark Age
> when great segments of the population can feel they simply know better
> than science on such matters as:
> - anthropogenic climate change
> - vaccination
> - evolution
> - obesity
> - homosexuality.
>
> Why is scientific consensus these days reduced, in so many minds, to
> what they imagine is mere opinion?  Maybe lay people have lost whatever
> sense they had for the enormity of scientific effort: the training, the
> apprenticeship, the research, the peer review, the contest of ideas, and
> year-on-year sheer bloody hard work of millions of professionals in
> labs, doing their bit to build civilisation's body of knowledge.  Is
> that because the person in the street only glimpses science every few
> months on the TV when a scientist with a bit of research news has to
> subborn themselves to the sound grab and blandly predict when their work
> will produce a pill to cure something?  It was different when I grew up
> in the late sixties.  The Brisbane tabloid newspaper carried the
> "Frontiers of Science" strip, with a vastly superior signal-to-noise
> ratio that the execrable ABC TV "Quantum".  Back then ABC TV every
> morning broadcast serious physics lectures and the like for schools.
> Non scientists rejoiced in science.
>
> Now, science doesn't always get it right.  So yes, there is indeed a
> slim chance that scientific consensus is wrong on climate change
> (cornering a climatologist on this point is a pyrrhic victory comparable
> to getting Richard Dawkins to concede there just might be a god).
>
> But given the amazing -- nay, truly awe inspiring -- success rate of
> science, why would any non-expert presume to know better about what are
> deeply technical and empirical issues?
>
> Unfortunately, the public can be captivated by stories of the odd
> scientific maverick who goes their own way, heroically coming up with
> some new theory and prevailing at last over the establishment.  These
> rare precedents energise climate deniers in particular.  They legitimise
> the tiny number of quasi-qualified (or totally mis-qualified)
> technicians -- like Monkton or Plimer -- that "bravely" challenge the
> big bad hierarchy.  I say this to the lay person who thinks their chosen
> heroic climate change denier is the next Einstein: it is ALWAYS SCIENCE
> ITSELF that comes round to agree with the mavericks.  So, you have to
> give it time! If these brave souls are right and carbon pollution is not
> to blame, science will swing to their position, and swing fast.
>
> Meanwhile, consider that the Eric von Danikens and Peter Brocks of the
> world vastly outnumber the Darwins.
>
> I hope I'm not drawing a long bow, but humoring loonies like Koltai
> might regrettably embolden any number of others with fringe barrows to
> push.
>
> So in other words, yes, I think we should all, by and large, bow to
> science.
>
> Is that arrogant? Is it cultish?  Hell no.  Science works.  It amazes me
> no end that people can enjoy telephony, medicine, aviation, a fantastic
> standard of living, and incredible longevity, and at the same time
> casually, and with no real clue at all, poo-pooh climatology, immunology
> or evolutionary biology.  The scientific edifice that enables doctors to
> transplant hearts, and engineers to keep heavier-than-air craft aloft is
> the very same system that predicts devastating warming if we keep
> returning fossilised CO2 into the atmosphere.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Steve Wilson.
> Lockstep
> http://lockstep.com.au/blog/science.
>
>
>
>
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