more on the scientific process

I'm continuing in the same vein of thought as my last post, but I'll try to be a little less obscure about my point.

Science can be maddening. Thomas Kuhn describes the evolution of science as long periods of "normal science" punctuated by major paradigm shifts (earth goes from flat to round, sun orbits the earth to planets orbit the sun, Newton's laws of motion to Einstein's theory of relativity). I see the normal periods as also sprinkled with countless little shifts in thinking but with orders of magnitude of less immediate significance.

Each little bump results in the worker bee scientists scuttling and scurrying around behind it to see how well it holds up. Only with time and intense scrutiny do the majority of scientists begin to congregate behind the bump, elevating it to a slightly larger bump. And so on. I tried to make the plot trend upwards to show increased understanding even between paradigm shifts, because that's how I think it works.

Myself, I find the entire evolution of the gain of scientific understanding fascinating. Everything is empirically driven (observation) and any theory we come up with must describe those observations. (Which, in atmospheric sciences, can seem frustratingly contradictory at times.) However, the public really doesn't care much about the evolution of these shifts in thinking. What is important to them is how the current "state" of science impacts their lives. (Are pesticides harmful to humans? Should we use asbestos? What do you do to stop infections?) Normally, science only makes it into the process of general public knowledge, and sometimes into policy-making once it has withstood a significant amount of testing.

Then along comes global warming, hand in hand with the age of the internet. This mix of direct impact on the environment (and lives) of the human population, political and economic implications, and the ability to communicate every wrinkle, every possible theory to massive numbers of the population is new. Because now, much of what makes it into the press for public consumption are these tiny little wiggles that have not been subjected to the rigorous testing. With the internet, anyone is able to cherry-pick the scientific studies and find the ones that support their pre-selected point of view to be offered up as "scientific evidence"... which results in a mess of convoluted contradictions, rendering the public frustrated and completely skeptical of science.

I want to state here that I am absolutely 100% behind the public questioning the science behind global warming. They SHOULD do that. (Just as they should question the decisions our government, our president, makes about foreign policy, etc. but that's another day...). I teach my kids that daily - to question what they hear. To ask themselves if it makes sense. What annoys the #@$@ out of me is folks who walk into the global warming debate and arm themselves with obscure and untested theories (those cherry-picked wiggles) to "prove" that global warming is a hoax. That is no longer questioning, but is manipulation.

We don't know what is going to happen with the climate tomorrow or in the next hundred years. We are working with the empirical evidence that we have and those theories which have undergone and withstood rigorous testing, and have come up with a consensus of what we (scientists) currently believe will happen to our climate (the IPCC reports are the best source for what this consensus currently is). Again, these reports cannot offer absolute proof. They never will. But there is an enormous amount of confidence by most scientists in that report. It's not a guess. It is full of rigorously tested theories, including mountains of empirical evidence. While it is interesting and fun to talk about the evolution of scientific thinking and how theories constantly change, it is important not to forget that science works. We have antibiotics. We have learned the importance of clean water. We have traveled to the moon. We have identified the ozone hole and CFCs as the likely culprits, have passed laws to restrict emissions of CFCs, and the most recent empirical evidence is that the hole is gradually "repairing."

There is some level of uncertainty in science, but we must remember to keep any uncertainty in perspective. We must weigh the repercussions of action versus inaction. We must never stop questioning, but must also not tolerate manipulation of science. (We must, we must, we must).
There are frighteningly important decisions out there that we have the responsibility of making. What we need is solid, thoughtful leadership that is immune to the influence of any company, any groups with special interests. We need to calm the hysteria and bickering and find solutions.