Thoughts on Science

 

So I have been reading this book, the Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change by Marc Morano, who is famed as a "climate skeptic" or a "climate denier".

So, a little background. For many years, when anyone has mentioned man made climate change based on increasing levels of carbon dioxide, I have said that I am skeptical that it is true, but that I am not sure because I haven't made time for a deep dive into the subject.

I wouldn't say that I am currently taking a deep dive. It is more of a shallow dive. But I am making the time to study the topic a bit.

I am leaning more heavily to being a skeptic based on the book I am reading. Of course, if I read books by the people who claim that, without a doubt, humans are causing global warming due to increasing CO2 levels, I might think differently?

But probably not, because of my training and my personality.

So here is the thing. I spent almost ten years in college -- four years as an undergraduate student, and almost six as a graduate student. The truth is that scientific experiments, and theories, and models, all have people behind them.

And no one, anywhere, is a computer. We all carry our biases into our work. The truth is that climate change is super super complex.  We are not talking about something that can be studied in a laboratory.  This is in contrast to some issues in science.  As a materials science, if I want to study the effect of chromium on the hardness and oxidation resistance of steel, I can do experiments where I make up steel with increasing levels of chromium and study it.  It is a laboratory problem, so to speak.

Now with climate change we are not talking about something that can be studied in the lab, where we can control variables.  And the number of variables is awe inspiring.  Carbon dioxide levels, and sunspot activity, and volcanic activity, and a whole lot more.

Now, that doesn't mean we don't try to figure out what is going on.  There are other very complex systems which people are doing their best to evaluate by making models and so on and so forth.

But I think people need to be humble about their understanding of complex scientific issues like climate change, and many people are not.

This book claims, and I think it is undoubtedly true, that the so called "97% of scientists believe that carbon dioxide caused by humans is driving global warming" is totally grabbed out of the air. There are a great many climatologists and meteorologists who disagree, way way more than 3 out of 100.

There is so much money involved in this issue, and that frankly makes me even more skeptical.  Bobby Broccoli is a fascinating youtuber who has these amazing documentaries about science fakers.  One guy faked finding a new element. Another faked superconductivity in his experiments. A Korean scientist claimed that he had managed to clone human cells and that turned out to be a total fake.

Why did they do these things? For fame.  For fortune.  For both.

Scientists are people too.  They tend to gravitate toward where the money is. There is a ton of money in renewable energy and the like.  Furthermore, sometimes a person wants something to match his or her theory so much that she throws out any data which doesn't agree with their theory.

I have always been a very honest person. Now I have lied in the past because I wanted to stay out of trouble, or whatever, but in general, I have a black and white view on lying.  (To be clear, there are times when lying is right. I think of the Ten Boom family, who lied about the presence of Jews in their house during the Nazi occupation of Holland.)

But in general, I don't lie and I don't like lies, even white lies.  So Kevin and I told our kids from the time of conception that Santa Claus is pretend. My own parents told me Santa Clause is pretend, and I am very grateful for that!

So what is going on with global warming?  I think that well meaning people think that the earth is going to burn up if we don't stop carbon emissions and therefore are fudging the data to make things look like a slam dunk.

Which frankly outrages me because it isn't right to fudge data when lots of people are affected poorly.

And they are!  Definitely renewable energy like solar and wind power is good, BUT the technology isn't developed enough yet to reduce our use of petroleum products a great deal.

I don't think it is first world countries that will suffer all that much, but third world. If Nigeria and Chad and Kenya are strong armed into reducing emissions, then they may not be able to dig wells, and provide electricity to hospitals, and that kind of thing. 

This whole issue of global climate change is obviously terrifying to poor Greta Thunberg, who is convinced we really are going to die from global warming.  Many other kids are super worried too.  And the message is -- if we don't do something now, we are all going to die!

But I don't think the data supports that.  As recently as the 1970's, in fact, the message was that we were headed for an ice age and were all going to die from famine.

So yes, I think that the alarmists are fudging the data and showing a very one sided picture, and frankly are absurd to fixate on carbon dioxide emissions when there are countless other factors which affect climate.

I do intend to keep studying the topic, so maybe I'll change my mind.  Maybe.