Disputes - Scientific and Otherwise

Scientific controversies are not uncommon and often are necessary and valuable in areas where conclusions are conjectural and the known information is changing. An obvious example is the question of whether the best guess from the facts and analysis available  is  that the universe will continue expanding indefinitely or eventually contract back into a state leading to another big bang. Each side of the question has seemed the more likely at various times, and the disputes have been lively and useful. However, in this and in other such controversies, those favoring one side or the other -  while they might get excited and even consider their opponents foolish, hidebound, or just not smart enough to get the right answer – would not think of labeling them as  unbelievers, deniers, or embodiments of evil.  That sort of disputation belongs in the areas of politics and religion, not science.  Yet it is precisely what we see from the advocates of global warming as an apocalyptic disaster in the making and something totally and unquestionably due only to people’s burning fuels.

Their  mode of expression thus should serve as a clue to an objective observer that the public discussion on global warming has left the realm of science and entered that of religion and politics. The political aspect is obvious. Politicians and bureaucrats  of the left have  hopes  to use a scare over warming to increase their power. In some ways it is a last refuge for them. The religious is almost as obvious. The green movement posits a former ideal state corrupted by humanity’s sins, offers sinners a path to salvation based on self denial, threatens the world and its unbelievers  with a horrible future fate,  condemns its critics as not merely mistaken but evil, offers believers an assurance of righteousness  and superiority based solely on holding correct beliefs, and is uninterested in facts  which contradict its doctrines  or events which invalidate its prophecies.  By what is commonly called the quacking duck test, it is a religion, and a dogmatic and crusading one at that. The apocalyptic view of global warming is part of its holy writ. 

A very  instructive illustration of how far all this is from science or scientific behavior came in the last couple of days from a US senator from Rhode Island who, representing what one might call the jihadist or Dominican branch  of the green faith, suggested throwing dissenters into prison for their heresies. That should help to show a fair minded person just how much  this  business really has to do with science and how much with faith and power lust. It should also brand that senator as an anti-American authoritarian unworthy of holding any office in a free country ( and also as an opponent of free scientific inquiry).

Of course the behavior of scoundrels and fanatics does not prove there is nothing to  the notion of   burning fuels contributing to warming as some conservatives have claimed.  Burning fuels does have an effect, and it would be useful to have a better understanding of what sort of effect that is and through what sort of feedback  or other mechanisms it occurs.