The Scientific Process and the Global Warming Debate

An article on Bill Moyers's website recently featured a brilliant interview on how our limited understanding of the scientific process influences our debate about issues like Global Warming. To quote climate scientist Michael Mann, as told by Joshua Holland,

Too often we allow the forces of anti-science, the forces of denialism, or contrarianism, to somehow frame their position as one of skepticism. But denying mainstream, well-established science based on arguments that don’t stand up scrutiny, that’s not skepticism. That’s pseudo-skepticism.

Real scientists embrace skepticism because that’s what moves science forward. That’s the self-correcting machinery, to use the language of Carl Sagan, which keeps science on this inexorable course toward a better understanding of the way the world works. If your ideas are wrong, if your theories are wrong, if they don’t hold up, if the data don’t support them, if other studies don’t come to the same conclusion, then science moves on, and it searches for a better answer. Scientists are always trying to find holes in each other’s proposed ideas, or in their own proposed ideas.

To belabor the point a little bit, Climate-change deniers are not skeptics in the true sense. They instead enter the debate with a preset agenda and cling fiercely to a limited amount of information in order to make their case. That's ideology at work.

When someone says "I'm waiting for better science," they often imply that their point of view would have to disappear from the scientific literature before they agree with the consensus. But that's not how science works. Since scientists are skeptical and contrarian by nature, you will always find literature that attacks the accepted framework of climate. This is their job, and it is how they build a professional reputation.

No paper is definitive. Each new publication part of a large, slow-moving debate that has many facets. Picking out a single paper (or even a small number) is like listening to only one debater. That's never how you reach the truth.

Actually assessing the literature is hard, because it is the work of thousands of different people. This is why major scientific bodies only do big reviews once every few years. The arguments need time to develop. Research needs to be reproduced so it can be confirmed or denied.

This is why the statements of big reviews matter. And this is why scientific consensus is so important. When the UN panel says it has reached an overwhelming consensus on climate change, it means that this is the irrefutable conclusion after working through thousands of papers. It's basically impossible to read the extent of the literature and honestly believe something else. At that point, if you are still denying climate change, its source and its risk, you are denying reality. You have no justification other ideology. You are wrong and behaving very dangerously, because denying reality has dire consequences.