The theory of global warming has become the top
issue in science news.
The media and about half of Americans are convinced
that the Earth is threatened by climate change of such proportions
that we ought to make significant changes now
in order to avoid global catastrophe later.
A few common-sense scientific questions can be asked
to see if there might be some problems with the temperature data
and the theory of global warming.
When politicians and religious leaders
become committed to
the theory of global warming,
they sometimes embrace the belief system in dogmatic ways —in
ways that cannot be modified or disproven by further evidence.
OUTLINE:
I. REAL SCIENCE IS SELF-CORRECTING
A.
HOW
HOT IS IT?
B. WHERE DO WE MEASURE THE TEMPERATURES?
C. HOW MUCH TEMPERATURE-VARIATION IS NORMAL?
D. WHERE ARE THE 'GREENHOUSE GASSES' GOING?
E. WHY HAS THE SEA-LEVEL NOT RISEN AS MUCH AS
PREDICTED?
II. MEDIA SCIENCE IS NOT SELF-CORRECTING
III. DOGMATIC 'SCIENCE' DOES NOT RECOGNIZE EVIDENCE ON THE OTHER SIDE
IV.
RELIGIOUS
DOGMATIC BELIEF
V.
POLITICIANS
WHO BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING MIGHT BE DOGMATIC
VI. UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM AND GLOBAL WARMING I. REAL SCIENCE IS SELF-CORRECTING
The natural sciences operate according to the
scientific method,
which means presenting hypotheses and then testing them.
The hypotheses must be presented as testable conjectures
rather than firm conclusions.
And the methods of testing —the
kinds of
evidence that would
be relevant—
are implicit in the ways the hypotheses are formulated.
With respect to the hypothesis of global warming, —that
the over-all temperature of the atmosphere of the Earth is
increasing—
the principles of testing, data-collection, & reporting are fairly
straight-forward.
The possibility that the air-temperature is rising
is not something beyond our normal senses.
And we all understand how to measure the temperature of the air.
A. HOW HOT IS IT?
The measurement of air-temperature is not string
theory.
We human beings have been measuring temperatures for hundreds of years.
And we now have thermometers so accurate
we can measure temperature changes to a small fraction of a degree.
And weather stations all over the planet Earth
have been
keeping good records of temperature
at various times of the day and night
for at least a century.
Thus, it is a matter of data collection and summary
to determine the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere.
Different scientists will collect temperatures from different places
and they will use different methods of calculating the average,
but they should all come close to the same number
when asked "How hot is it?"
The answer is somewhere in the middle
50-degree-Fahrenheit range.
And when different ways of collecting temperature data
and different ways of calculating the average are compared,
the results should be very similar, that is, within a few degrees.
And the scientists should include an estimate of the margin of error
in their readings and methods of calculating the average.
B. WHERE DO WE MEASURE THE TEMPERATURES?
I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which began as
Fort Snelling
located where the Minnesota River runs into the larger Mississippi
River.
150 years ago, the place where my condo now stands —south
of downtown Minneapolis— was
all prairie with only Buffalo and a few Indians.
Daily temperatures were recorded at Fort Snelling
as a part of the U.S. Army's regular record-keeping.
Now, a century and a half later, Fort Snelling is a
State Park.
And nearby is the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
The Indians and first white settlers in Minneapolis
could not have imagined this kind of change ahead of time.
They had no idea of the flying machines we now take for granted.
Now our airport handles 1,000 flights per day.
The official temperature for Minneapolis is recorded
hourly
at the weather station in a southern suburb of Minneapolis,
near the airport.
I live near downtown Minneapolis,
where the temperature is usually a few degrees warmer
than at the weather station.
Fort Snelling and the weather station are less than 5 miles apart,
but everything has changed in the last 150 years.
Should we compare the temperature at Fort Snelling in the 1850s
with the temperature at the weather station in the 2000s?
Which adds more to the air-temperature:
1,000 buffalo grazing on the prairie
or 1,000 airplanes landing and taking off?
If we want to determine temperature-changes over a
period of 100 years,
we must find a place where the temperature was recorded
in an unchanging environment.
In Minnesota, this would mean in a rural environment,
far from the human effects created by
jet planes, automobiles, homes, & other buildings.
Farming also changed considerably during the 20th
century.
But the change from horses
to tractors
probably has not affected the temperature significantly.
Thus, in order to measure air-temperature most meaningfully
for the hypothesis of global warming,
we need a wind-swept hill in rural Minnesota,
far from any town or freeway.
And we should pick a place what is not likely to change in the next 100
years.
What is farm land now must be farm land in the 22nd century.
Suburban sprawl or retired people building lake homes
must be taken into account when picking a place to measure how hot
it
is now
and how hot it becomes in the next 100 years.
By the end of the 21st century,
there might be 2,000 flights per day at our airport.
And there will be thousands of more people with homes, cars, &
businesses
near the present weather station. Suburban development near the
thermometer is certain to affect the
measured temperature.
Perhaps the ideal place to measure temperatures
would be an uninhabited island in the middle of the ocean —where
no human activities nearby
will have any effect on the measured
temperatures.
It would also be relevant to measure the temperature of the water
at this isolated location.
Since the global warming hypothesis is talking about
a temperature rise of only one
degree in the last one hundred years,
how much of this might have been due to urban development
near where the temperatures were taken?
And is that one-degree rise within the margin of error?
Real
climate scientists will seek the best places to
measure temperatures.
Can we find locations for taking the air-temperature
that all agree are
ideal for measuring how hot it is?
And can we find ways of discovering the temperature of the air near the
Earth's surface
that do not rely on any mathematical adjustments of the observed
readings?
Let the skeptics and advocates get together
to see if they can agree on a few locations on Earth
that will not be affected by such factors as those mentioned above.
Can they find places where the temperature can be measured
directly —without
making mathematical adjustments for one reason or another?
C. HOW MUCH TEMPERATURE-VARIATION
IS NORMAL?
We all know that the weather is never the same from
one year to the next.
But weather scientists can tell us about trends and cycles of climate
change.
A challenge for them would be to project
just how much variation is normal —from
year-to-year, decade-to-decade, & century-to-century.
Here again, climate scientists are allowed to have different numbers
because of their different ways to collecting weather data
and making summary statements of what has been happening.
But they should at least be able to give us some estimates
of what the weather would look like if there were no global warming at
all.
In the even-longer sweep of history and pre-history,
we know that the long-term
trend is toward another ice-age.
The piece of the Earth that I now own (with my fellow condominium
owners)
was once covered by a glacier
one mile thick.
This was just a few thousand years ago.
In a few thousand more years, the ice might be just as thick on this
spot.
D. WHERE ARE THE 'GREENHOUSE GASSES' GOING?
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is widely blamed for global
warming.
We know that carbon dioxide is one of two major products of all burning.
(The other is H2O—water.)
When we burn fossil fuels such as coal, oil, & natural gas,
we create lots of carbon dioxide—a
colorless, odorless gas.
Fossil fuels are made up almost entirely of carbon and hydrogen. All of the carbon that
burns becomes carbon dioxide.
And all of the hydrogen that burns becomes hydrogen dioxide—water
vapor.
These are both released into the atmosphere wherever the burning takes
place:
from the smoke-stacks of coal-burning power plants,
from the exhaust systems of our cars, trucks, trains, & planes,
and from the chimneys of our homes and office towers.
(Every time we breathe out, we add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.)
As the population of the Earth has increased
and as each member of the human race has used more fossil fuel,
there has been a tremendous increase in the release of carbon dioxide
into the
atmosphere.
From the years 1957 to the year 2007,
the human population of the Earth more than doubled.
And the carbon dioxide we produced quadrupled —from
2 billion metric tons per year to 8 billion.
And each of us can estimate how much carbon we are putting into the
atmosphere
by looking at how much we spend
on gasoline, natural gas,
electricity,
& all forms of travel and housing for which we pay the fuel-bill
indirectly.
Even tho the amount of CO2 emitted into the
atmosphere
has greatly increased over the last 50 years,
the measured amount
of CO2 in the atmosphere
has increased only slightly, from 280 parts per million to 380 ppm.
So climate scientists must explain this paradox:
Where is the vastly-increased amount of CO2 going?
Somehow the Earth is absorbing this increase
without showing much change in the amount of CO2 in the
atmosphere.
One of the most likely places is the oceans, which cover most of
the
Earth.
E. WHY HAS
THE SEA-LEVEL NOT RISEN AS MUCH AS PREDICTED?
The advocates of the theory of global warming or
climate change
tell us that the sea-level will rise as the temperature of the
atmosphere rises.
This is because of melting ice caps on land such as Antartica and
Greenland.
And the water already in the ocean will expand a little as it warms.
Prehistoric data shows that the oceans of the Earth
have already risen and fallen by hundreds of feet
at various times in the past.
Ice ages lock up more water as ice.
And when those glaciers melt, the oceans rise.
Thus, the measured level of the calm surface of the
ocean
(averaged for tidal changes) should be a basic fact
that can be discovered by scientific instruments and reasonable
calculations.
Not much change in sea-level has yet been observed.
But such numbers should be good indicators in the future
of just how much climate change we are experiencing.
The foregoing are all scientific questions,
which can be answered by reasonable scientists
who know the best ways to ask these questions
and to find out how the Earth will answer them.
And when one set of scientists gives one answer,
another group will be able to test that answer
by doing independent research and analysis of the data.
Whenever some mistake has been made by one scientist,
other scientists are able to catch that mistake and correct it.
And the first scientist is glad
to have the data challenged and
re-tested.
Whenever there was an error, real scientists are glad to
correct their earlier conclusions.
II. MEDIA
SCIENCE IS NOT SELF-CORRECTING
The mass media have almost unanimously endorsed the
theory of global warming.
This manifests itself in the number of news stories that presuppose
global warming
and then proceed to explain every variation of weather as the result of
climate change.
Especially when there is severe
weather of any kind,
the first explanation the media reach for is global warming.
Global warming is the 'news hook' for many
weather variations.
And other social facts are explained as the result of global
warming.
For example, different tribes in Kenya
have been stealing each other's goats for hundreds of years.
But a recent report by a Western news medium claimed
that goat wrestling was increasing because hot weather was killing more
goats,
causing tribesmen to steal even more goats to maintain their herds.
Would such goat-stealing be reduced
if the weather in Kenya got cooler?
All the evidence presented by the media supports
global warming.
And most stories make no reference to other possibilities
or only passing reference to the fact that other scientists are
skeptical.
When a past mistake of media science is finally
discovered,
the media give very little attention to any such correction.
This leaves the impression in the popular mind
that the original media claims continue to be true.
How many people in the general public still believe the following?
Cold fusion: that hydrogen atoms can be forced together at room
temperature.
Silicon breast implants: that they cause various ailments in women who
have them?
Toxic shock syndrome: that it is caused by defective super tampons?
The most careful and complete news media do report
these corrections,
but even they do not give the kind of prominence to the retractions
as they originally gave to the 'scientific' claims that they
reported.
This is just the nature of science-reporting in the news media:
A new source of energy is dramatic news.
And medical mistakes by large corporations
is always interesting to the
general public.
But when the original news story proves to have
been mistaken,
the media spend little time and space explaining the corrected facts.
Because 'news' must be interesting,
the news value of a discredited
scientific theory
will never be as great as the initial reports.
If and when global warming proves to be much less
than predicted,
the media will not pay nearly as much attention to that fact
as they did to the dramatic claims by the believers in global warming.
Thus, even years later, there will still be a large percentage of people
who believe that climate change is a life-threatening problem
after it has been shown to be much less serious than first reported.
III. DOGMATIC
'SCIENCE' DOES NOT RECOGNIZE
EVIDENCE ON THE OTHER SIDE
However, in every generation of scientists,
there are a few who are not
happy to be corrected by further research.
These are 'scientists' who are so convinced of their original results
that they will not listen to
any evidence that might contradict
what they have now come to hold as 'gospel truth'.
Dogmatic 'science' cannot even specify what would
count as contrary evidence.
Whenever something that might be considered
evidence on the other side
is presented,
the dogmatic believer will seek to discredit the contrary evidence.
In the end, however, real science will displace dogmatic 'science'.
And media science will have to admit that it was wrong
if the predicted temperature-rise does not materialize.
IV. RELIGIOUS DOGMATIC
BELIEF
This is where 'scientists' veer off into being
closer to dogmatic religious believers.
When a religious person holds a certain belief with such certainty
that there is no possibility of anything ever shaking that belief
system,
then we rightly call that a dogmatic
belief.
And historically in the Christian context,
we have called such believers "fundamentalists".
Christian fundamentalists can tell us the five basic truths of their
faith
that will never be shaken by any new evidence.
And when advocates of global warming
have a similar unshakable faith in their conclusions,
would it be accurate to call them "global-warming fundamentalists"?
V. POLITICIANS WHO
BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING
MIGHT BE DOGMATIC
The basic mark of a fundamentalist
is the inability to
recognize contrary evidence.
And when we listen to politicians who firmly believe in global warming,
we notice that the evidence they present is all on one side.
Story after story is presented to show that global warming is real.
But never do we hear a story
that might count against
the theory of
global warming.
Everything presented points to one conclusion.
Real scientists carefully collect all of the data,
including data that initially does not support their
hypothesis.
And when deeper research shows that
the contradictory data does not support the conjecture,
they change the hypothesis
to take the new data into account. Dogmatic believers challenge
and reject all new data
that does not support their belief-system. And they keep believing
whatever they believed in the beginning.
VI. UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM AND
GLOBAL WARMING
As odd as it should seem at first,
the most liberal and scientific of organized religious groups —namely
the Unitarian Universalist movement—
is not immune to dogmatic thinking.
We have the example of "toxic shock syndrome".
Because the media were blaming infections women experienced
when they left their super tampons in place too long
on one particular brand of tampon,
this brand was withdrawn.
And the Unitarian Universalist Association
passed a resolution
condemning this brand.
Later scientific investigation discovered
that there
was nothing wrong with that tampon.
The problem arose because of poor hygiene by some women who were using
it.
The media did not report this conclusion nearly as widely
as they had the hypothesis that a certain product was defective.
It makes a much better news story to blame a huge corporation
for terrible things happening to women
than to say that the women themselves were to blame.
But this episode of media-mania illustrates how
the majority of people can be convinced of a scientific hypothesis
that ultimately proves to be wrong.
And when the media repeats a false conclusion often enough,
even an enlightened denomination like the Unitarian Universalist
Association
feels moved to pass a resolution against the offending product.
The UUA is also taking one side in the
global-warming controversy.
And only several more decades of real scientific research
will determine the degrees of correctness of any hypothesis.
Probably the truth lies somewhere between the
extremes:
Global warming is not as great a danger as originally affirmed
by those who thought it was the most important problem the world faced.
And it will not be an insignificant as some on the other side have said.
Real science will help us to sort out just how serious this problem is.
And real science can help us to find meaningful and cost-effective
answers
to whatever degree of problem we face.
Undogmatic thinkers are willing to go wherever the
evidence leads.
But dogmatic thinkers know 'the truth'
before all of the evidence has
been collected.
AUTHOR:
James Park is an existential philosopher and
ecological advocate.
He began his college education in the natural sciences
and later turned to philosophy.
He lives very simply without a car
or other energy-consuming habits.
Much more about James Park will be found on his website:
An Existential Philosopher's Museum: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/.
About half of the 1200 'rooms' in this museum
are devoted to Unitarian Universalism.