(Analyst notes: Here are some thoughts from CSIA about the climate debate and the meaning of words to the politician and the scientist. The difference in their meanings is key to understanding the debate and taking action. The public must be careful when politicians speak about science. )
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We hear angry arguments about whether there is a “consensus” among scientists that global warming is happening, is caused by man, and is reversible by mankind’s actions. Politicians say the consensus is in, the debate is over, and the need to act is proven.
The argument’s focus is on the climate issue but little thought focuses what “consensus” means. The word does NOT mean the same to a politician as a to scientist. That difference is most critical.
In the scientific method, consensus involves when a hypothesis, or tentative explanation, is published for the world of science to examine for validity. Scientists everywhere are thereby essentially challenged to test the hypothesis in every way they can. Once their vigorous testing and examination of the idea is done, scientists each publish their results and conclusions. The scientific community considers all the tests, all the analysis carefully trying to objectively sort out the truth of the matter. Thus a community opinion, or “consensus”, is eventually formed as to the validity or error of that hypothesis. This consensus is held in abeyance as long as credible objections and alternate explanations to the hypothesis still exist. Alternatives must always be considered to the fullest extent before that hypothesis is accepted.
These tests and challenges are a critical part of the gathering of a scientific consensus. In this testing review process, every thought is given to the logic used to come to the hypothesis, but also tests are conducted to see if the expected consequences materialize and confirm the predictions, alternate hypotheses are advanced and tested as potentially more complete, more accurate in their predictions, more consistent with known truth, and more useful in application. These tests and publications are performed by a variety of scientists of varying qualifications. Generally however, the scientific community does not pay much heed to those of no formal scientific education and experience. They are generally not able to publish (“Reviewed journals” exclude their contributions.) or are vigorously protested by counter publications.
In political world, consensus means gathering the majority of public opinion. Opinion polls and votes are taken to discover the thinking of the group. Statistical validity rules are applied, rules relating to sample size of the tested group and the randomness of the sample questioned. In the event the sample meets the mathematical definitions of validity, the results are considered a good indicator of the whole group’s opinion.
At election time the sample is every voter rather than a smaller number of randomly sampled members of an opinion poll. No one expects a given vote to be 100% of all people involved. Only “qualified” voters may cast ballots. Even then, many of these do no choose to participate.
In either case, the nature and extent of the knowledge possessed by those sampled or voting is not factored into a political consensus. It is probable uninformed, disinterested, or mistaken individual opinions to be in the counts. Nonetheless, the vote or opinion registered still counts with the same weight as the expert’s vote or opinion. You may begin to see that political consensus might be a reasonable way to decide if a people will agree to obey a proposed law, but it is not necessarily a way to find truth about a natural phenomenon.
Scientists generally will not accept the idea that voting on a natural law would establish it. They would laugh at the idea that a majority vote could repeal the law of gravity, for example. These natural laws operate without human permission or opinion. Scientific consensus aims at bringing man’s understanding into correct alignment with nature’s behavior – to understand the truth.
In politics, consensus often is aimed at establishing the community agreement on decisions for human action – who shall assume office, what law will be lived, what money will be spent. Political consensus does not seek truth precisely; it seeks majority agreement and assent. This is a totally different kind of definition of “consensus.”
Blurring the major differences between definitions of “consensus”, politicians of late have asserted, with vigor and even occasionally anger, that a consensus has been achieved on climate change and we must act! Yet many scientists assert they have unanswered questions about the science of the matter. The politician wants to take his “majority vote” on the political consensus of the matter and stop the debate for a scientific consensus.
Politicians even want to create laws and spend money right away to address these “conclusions.” That is NOT based on scientific consensus. It doesn’t work like that. First scientists try to answer ALL the questions, only then do they conclude the understanding is right. Politicians want us to stop talking about the science because they feel they have a majority of opinion on their side. The scientific consensus in the matter is still being studied and debated in the global climate change/cause issue today. Only fools would act on questionable science.
What, you say, is still debatable about climate change? There are many issues still to understand. NASA satellites have recently measured the heat loss from the earth and find carbon dioxide is NOT holding heat in. The last 9 years of global temperature measurements show global cooling, how can we be warming then? To what do we attribute the variations of temperature of this magnitude? Can we predict them then? What is the true global temperature history? (We have only one collection of such data and those gathering and analyzing it are now very suspect. One measure is NOT sufficient evidence that warming happens.) What “corrections” have been applied to studying the temperature records? Will critics ever obtain these data collections and do their own study of them? What are the effects of solar flares and variations on the earth’s temperature? Are there non-man-made sources of pollution affecting “warming”? Natural radiation is decreasing over time, and therefore the resulting heat contribution to the earth, what effect does that have? There are many other issues too.
There are abundant examples of hasty actions based on ignoring the full process of scientific consensus in favor of “comforting” political consensus and action. They have lead to tragedies. Soviets raced to embrace Lysenko’s genetics over Mendel’s and they lost years of good crop yields and starvation reigned. America raced to protect the atmosphere against pollution of the supersonic jet only to find later there was no problem and other nations built the technology and gained the benefits. The popular opinion was that the Titanic was unsinkable but nature easily proved otherwise. An American legislature once voted that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle is exactly 3.14 (more convenient) but the ratio still remains to be pi. We can still ruin ourselves against the rock of truth if we choose to ignore it or to believe it is something other than a rock.
Environmental science is still young and climate science is far from exact. Only fools would bet the world economy on the validity of assertions that mankind is causing global warming and that national laws can stop or reverse it. Only naïve or calculating individuals would pressure America politics to lead the way there. Let us first truly seek knowledge, learn the truth, and then take action. The unintended consequences may be disaster.
