Global Warming

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Too often, we hear about the supposed “scientific consensus” regarding global warming. To me, those words are an oxymoron.

“Consensus” is a term spawned by politics, such as when a group of people come to a compromise or agreement in which the outcome is acceptable to them all.

“Science” involves a procedural methodology for recording, examining, and drawing conclusions from physical, real-world data.

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That these two words are used together when discussing global warming is indicative only that there is a large group of scientists that are dependent on government grants…

The current climate debate fails to mention one significant factor: Scientific knowledge has nothing whatsoever to do with consensus.

The origin of today’s so-called “scientific consensus” on climate change is based on a survey of the abstracts of 928 science articles published between 1993 and 2003 which showed that none disagreed explicitly with the notion of anthropogenic global warming. Scientific consensus, as used by political and other groups to form the basis for changes in business, society and the law is, then, merely a general collection of opinions that do not question anthropogenic global warming. Yet, on an individual level, quite the reverse occurs. The peer review process in most scientific journals does not use a consensus based process at all; instead, referees submit their opinions individually and there is no concerted effort made to reach a group opinion.

Scientific consensus has been used as a means of protecting the accepted worldview for centuries – look to the examples of Galileo, continental drift, and the much more recent Helicobacter controversy, for a start – and is a political construct, not a scientific one. Even the act of seeking such a consensus as a form of proof goes against all tenets of empirical science.

The claim of a consensus in scientific opinion is simply a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. The true test of science – making a theory more robust by stridently attempting to disprove it with experiments, rather than attempting to “prove” it with computer simulations – has fallen by the wayside through socio-political pressure, it would seem.

The science debate is at the heart of the global warming campaign. On one side of that debate we have those prominent scientists who preach the gospel of anthropogenic (man-made) carbon dioxide generated global warming. Without exception, their careers have been made in the shadowy world where science and politics intersect; a world described by the once celebrated but now forgotten novelist of the 1950s, CP Snow. Lord May and Sir David King in the UK, and James Hansen in the US, are outstanding examples of the genre.

On the other side of the debate is a long and growing list of scientists whose careers have been built on successful research into the extraordinarily complex physics and chemistry of the earth’s atmosphere and oceans, and the influence which the Sun has on the earth’s climate. The most recent example of devastating critique of the anthropogenist carbon dioxide school comes from William Gray, the doyen of American hurricane scientists. Commenting on the apparent one-sidedness of the debate Gray said:

Most of the strong advocates of human-induced global warming appear to be too personally invested in global warming both from a scientific and a career perspective. They cannot (and will not) back away from their unrealistic warming ideas. It appears that only a new set of climate researchers who are not already committed to the warming straight-jacket will be able to render an objective assessment of human influence on climate.

Despite the influence within government and the media which the science-politicians such as Lord May and James Hansen have in their respective domains, the weight and authority of real experts who are able to refer to real data is beginning to impinge upon the public debate. One consequence is the increasingly maniacal desperation of the anthropogenist school, who seek to impose censorship and even imprisonment of their critics.

To Quote Michael Crichton, “Aliens Cause Global Warming”, lecture at the California Institute of Technology (Jan. 17, 2003).
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period… I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way…