Saturday, August 27, 2011

The "Anti-Science" Trope

The "Anti-Science" Trope

Everywhere I go, I see that those who resist the global warming movement are always called "anti-science." I object to the sobriquet, a reversal of reality actually, of "anti-science." I was a physics major, and have followed climate and weather for fifty years. The science is in, and we have no idea what drives our climate, because there is no consensus among scientists.

There is a bunch of so-called "climate scientists" who make their living by ginning up hysteria, but in the real, peer-reviewed world of science, there is no agreement. The planet (the biosphere really) may or may not be warming, but it is historically colder than long term proxy studies suggest is normal for an interglacial period, and no warming has factually been seen for over a decade. We have much better ways to observe these things now, and the better we get at it, the less "warming" can be detected.

IF there is warming, and that's a big IF, there is no scientific consensus of what might be causing it.

If humans are causing it by carbon dioxide emissions, no possible way to reduce these emissions currently exists.

No matter which political stripe you come from, no matter how many times you scream "Bullshit!" (as Al Gore did last week) these are the scientific facts. Anyone who says differently is misinformed.

Now, that being said, there is some validity to adopting clean air and water policy. The hysterical claims of Gore et al make sensible environmental regulation almost impossible, as pols try to ride the hysteria to even bigger budgets and ever more power.

The "anti-science" group is the warming alarmists who claim that policy can alter weather and climate, and that is incontrovertible fact. The republicans like Rick Perry who see that there is no consensus, and no actual understanding of the drivers of climate changes, are the ones who follow the science where it has led us.