There’s been a lot of hubbub lately about the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s nascent investigation into a very particular set of climate science. This science, conducted by Dr. Michael Mann and two colleagues (who have also been requested to present documents for this investigation), demonstrates that that average global temperature has risen in complete correlation with human activity over the past century. It, along with a large body of other evidence, has been entered into scientific documents and policy statements on climate strategy.
“An editorial in the Washington Times”:http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050727-083748-5674r.htm made the claim that this congressional investigation, conducted without the input of the government’s scientific review body, the National Academies of Science is not dangerous or aberrant. Certainly, if serious questions have arisen about Mann et al’s conclusions and/or methods, we must review them if they are otherwise be the basis of climate policy.
On the surface, this could be a reasonable opinions. However, the situation is more complicated than that. A congressional body like the House Energy and Commerce Committee, while it does have involvement in science (for instance, it’s responsible for review of the Department of Energy, which includes its Office of Science), is not a scientific peer body with the training or expertise to make a serious, detailed investigation of the work. It also has vested political interests, each particular to the members of the committee, that might cloud its judgement. There are other avenues, independent of the individual politics of members of this committee, which Congress has at its disposal.
The other problem with the opinion piece is the following statement:
“The problem is that the study is an outlier – it dramatically overturns the accepted view of paleoclimatologists, who generally believe that the planet has experienced many warming and cooling trends in the past 1,000 years. Some scientists think that the 14th century, which came at the beginning of the Little Ice Age, was warmer than the 20th century. Other critics have found flaws in the study’s use of certain data sets and methodology. But since the study fits perfectly with the argument of global-warming supporters, they don’t want to see it robustly debated.
The study is not an outlier. In the last hundred years, the earth’s average temperature has changed dramatically. This change tracks exactly with the rise in human production of greenhouse gases, such as CO2. Now, that said, the Earth has **certainly** warmed and cooled in the past. What is different is that human’s weren’t the sole actor initiating this change. Scientists know that climate change is a complex phenomenon, perhaps neither irreversible nor permanent. However, one cannot lump past warming trends into the current one, which many independent observations (ice cores, ocean probes, satellite imagery) link to human activity. Therefore, if we have caused this than surely we have the power to slow it, or even end it.
Opinion pieces like this one demonstrate the exact problem with science in America. If you cast doubt on a conclusion, not by attacking the method but by avoiding the details, your average American – starved since birth of a proper science and math education – will sense doubt. Scientists debate these details all the time in a myriad of forums, including journals and conferences. The chaff is whittled away by inquiry, leaving a hard core of undeniable evidence (which is tantamount to fact, in science). The hard core truth is this: we humans have induced on this planet a climate change not seen in almost a 1000 years, through rapid and uncontrolled industrialization. But we can use the fruits of industrialization – a plethora of innovative energy sources and technologies, pollution controls, and personal investment in conservation – to build a wall that at least stems the tide of this warming. And in the process, instead of derailing our economy, maybe we will reshape it by transforming human innovation, designed to sovle this warming problem we created, into environmental industry. To the writers of this opinion piece I say this: let’s have a little more respect for science and its process, and a little more optimisim about what this could do for our economy.
