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Global Warning - Dec 18, 2004 - Printable Version
- They Laughed at Galileo, They Laughed at the Wright Brothers...(They Laughed at the Marx Brothers)
by Robin Buckallew
The debate on global warming is heating up. With reputable scientific establishments all over the globe collecting persuasive documentation (not to mention the Pentagon report), the President is beginning to feel the heat. The Queen has even taken the unprecedented step of speaking out, urging President Bush to take steps to fight global warming. The penguins are out shopping for summer wear, and the Eskimos, who have hundreds of words for snow, are now having to invent a word for robins, something they have never seen before. Into the fray steps Michael Crichton. It seems Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) is urging us to be cautious, to listen to the global warming skeptics. After all, he asserts reasonably, the skeptics who have stood against scientific consensus in the past have almost always been right. Look at Galileo, look at Newton. It seems to make good sense, and now this argument is cropping up in chat rooms all over the internet, and who knows where else. We should listen to the skeptics. The skeptics know what is best for us, and the rest of the scientists must be wrong. So, let's take a close look at this argument, before we decide whether we are following the skeptics into the Garden of Eden or off the edge of a cliff. Once upon a time, science believed the sun moved around the Earth. Galileo dared to speak up and challenge that belief, and the scientists all laughed at him and ridiculed him, and now we know they were wrong, and Galileo was right. WHOA! Back up just a little bit, my friends. This nice, pretty bedtime story only works if you do not really understand the history of science. In the days of Galileo, science was conducted as just another part of Philosophy, and was under the domain of the Church. All science was conducted with the idea of discovering the glories of God's creation, and the expectation was that nothing would go against revealed scripture. At that time, most interpretations of scripture concluded that the Bible said the sun moved around the Earth. It was the Church that ostracized Galileo. Science had little choice but to follow along, since all funding was through the Church, and since the Church could easily limit scientific access to polite society. Like they did to Galileo, who lived the rest of his life under house arrest. But Galileo wasn't really discovering anything all that new. This had already been put forth by Copernicus. Also, it could be seen in the work of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Giordano Bruno had been burned at the stake for just such a proposition. Galileo simply made the idea commonplace and mainstream. It is now scientific consensus that the sun stands still, and the Earth and all the other planets move around the sun.
This brings me to my next point. You see, Michael Crichton has presented us with a logical paradox. If the skeptics are always right against the scientific mainstream, what then are we supposed to do when the ideas of the skeptics move into the mainstream? There will still be skeptics. Logically, we must then listen to the skeptics, even though they may be the folks who were the scientific mainstream a few years before that we weren't supposed to listen to. Uh, oh, I feel a headache coming on. However, I think I have a solution that can help us work this out. You see, there are different roles for skeptics in scientific thought. Some skeptics are folks who are proposing new ideas to challenge old paradigms. Other skeptics are simply holdouts as the scientific community shifts in the face of new evidence. Other skeptics are simply paid to be skeptics. For many people, the global warming skeptics appear to be the first kind. Again, this is a problem of history. You see, the concept of global warming is everywhere now, and for most people, we first became aware of it within the past couple of decades. It seemed like an idea that just sort of burst on the scene fully formed, scientists all lockstep in agreement, no one willing to step out of line until these few brave souls came forward to challenge the authority of those who said global warming was for real. Once again, a bedtime story that doesn't stand up well to close examination. You see, the idea that humans might be threatened with a warming world created by their own folly was first posited in the late nineteenth century. At first, this idea was greeted with jeers by most of the scientific community. Most climate scientists believed we were headed in a natural cycle into another Ice Age. In fact, I still remember being taught this as I was growing up. In other words, the global warming proponents were the skeptics. (That's OK, you can take a break to gulp your aspirin). In the latter part of the twentieth century, as evidence of warming trends and carbon dioxide saturation began to mount, scientists abandoned the theory of a coming global ice age. The theory of global warming remained controversial. In fact, throughout the 1990s, scientists were still arguing back and forth about this evidence or that evidence. When they did decide it was a real threat, they had to begin arguing about whether it is already happening or whether it is in the future. If it is in the future, is it 50 years, or 100? Maybe 1000 or 10,000? Meanwhile, the ice sheets in the Arctic began melting. Average global temperatures began rising. Sea levels began rising, and some islands in the Pacific have already suffered devastating losses from flooding. And the Inuits now have a word for robin. You see, the skeptics have become mainstream. Now we have a handful of holdouts who remain skeptical, because scientists do not change easily (pretty much like everybody else, we hold on to what we have always believed). Especially scientists who work for giant oil companies. So, what do we do when the skeptics become mainstream? Anyone for a return to geocentricity? After all, Galileo's ideas are now the mainstream, but there are still skeptics out there.
There is one other issue that needs to be dealt with before we part company. In all the debates on this topic, I have yet to hear anyone ask the most crucial question of all: is the basic premise of Crichton's argument accurate? Are the skeptics usually right? It seems logical enough. After all, they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. And, the correct answer to that argument is..they also laughed at the Marx Brothers. Sometimes people laugh at things simply because they are funny. It is very easy for someone who has an idea that is out of the mainstream to point to Galileo, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, and say that most of the people who went against the scientific mainstream were eventually proven right. No one ever asks for any further proof of this contention. I am here to answer that charge. It is simply not true. Yes, there are some very famous cases of scientists who challenged the establishment and were vindicated in the end. Science moved forward, and their ideas became commonly accepted in the scientific literature. For every brilliant scientist that has blazed a new trail against seemingly insurmountable odds, there have been dozens (perhaps even hundreds) of kooks who put out some silly idea that gets laughed at and falls into the dustbin of history. Some of the ideas that come to mind are mesmerism, phrenology, magnetism, numerology and astrology, to name just a few. In the current literature, there are hundreds of psychics, astrologers, levitation artists, remote viewers, ufologists and creationists who insist their ideas must be listened to because the skeptics are always right. And rarely does anybody challenge this argument, when in fact the "skeptics" are wrong by an order of magnitude more often than they are right. It is also worth noting that, in the case of the brilliant iconoclastic scientists listed above, the obstacles that were placed in their path were often not nearly as insurmountable as we now make them out to be (in our search for a good, romantic story). Science for the most part responds positively to groundbreaking new innovations, even though it might take them a while. You see, scientists are by their very nature skeptics. You might say we are all from Missouri - you really do have to show us. But in the passage of time, an idea that has merit (and is backed up by good solid research) will be accepted by the scientific community. Such was the ultimate fate of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. This is, in fact, the very reason that such individuals faced the wrath of the Church, because they were perceived as a threat. Copernicus suffered no problem from the Church, until Galileo brought his ideas into the mainstream of common thought. Global warming scientists faced no real serious challenges from the "skeptics" - until the ideas of the few moved into the mainstream, were supported by an impressive body of evidence, and became a threat to someone. So go ahead, laugh. At the Marx Brothers. After all, they were very funny indeed.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74
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