When scientists don’t agree we are left in a bit of a hole, after all they are the experts. And I wholly support questioning the accepted answers where there is room for doubt. I’ve been aware of the Global Warming debate for ages and the two extremes of “Man is creating a catastrophe” and “Chill its just natural”. And the debate rages on it seems.
What happened to global warming?
The BBC posted an article today entitled What happened to Global Warming? which raises the question from evidence on the side of the “its only a natural cycle” of the argument. Its great that we are informed of the issues as widely as possible.
Where I have a concern, why I am afraid of the scientists, is that the current “Green Agenda” in the political arena is so heavily focussed on Climate Change which most people consider to be the man-made evils that create global warming. My guess is that the scientists will continue to argue for many years to come about the impact of human created Carbon emissions and the like. And at some point the political agenda will be swayed towards the more comforting side of the debate. After all – we like to hear it, and that is what politics is about is it not?
The concern I have is not that the issue will be swept under the carpet – but that the issue will be swept under the carpet and that the Green Agenda will be swept away with it. The concern I have is that the debate will go away with the currently politicised issue and leave behind the very real problems of energy depletion as oil peaks, the fact that the earth can not sustain the human population as it stands let alone the projected increase over the next couple of decades and that it seems that most people around me don’t really care anyway. After all its an uncomfortable picture with a probably unpopular solution in the short term.
Most people see climate change as the weather and polar ice caps when really we need to broaden the definition to the climate in which we live!
How will we face our fellow human beings in need as they challenge us, perhaps with dirty wars, because of our greed or even just the fact the we have something at all?
How will we face our neighbours losing their homes when economies face catastrophic events because energy becomes too expensive?
How will we face our children when they are old enough to realise that we have bankrupted our economies and ravaged the world’s resources, leaving not an inheritance but a desperate wasteland?
Surely the real climate debate should be about the one that we affect; its the one around us that we create by our attitudes and behaviours. The one we create both by action and inaction.
Its not just the scientists that win or lose in this argument. Its all of us who lose whatever the outcome unless we start to think and act now.
About Peter
Thank you for posting readers to this blog. It raises important points.
Our governments certainly need advanced political (thinking and) action, remembering Franklin D Roosevelt’s maxim that good neighborliness isn’t just good morals, but also good economics. However, this shouldn’t reduce efforts to solve the critical changes that the weight of evidence suggests must be dealt with.
A big deception of our time is the claim ‘you can’t trust the experts’. Not because experts are infallible; they aren’t – and none of the experts I know, in many and varied fields, claim to be. Experts make mistakes: but we still trust designers every time we set off in our cars, every time we comfort our babies while nurses inject them, and the four times a day I inject my insulin. (I had my worst diabetic problems in 20 years with the condition recently, and solved them not by dismissing what I’d heard from experts, but by seeing a diabetic nurse, telling her about them, and applying her expertise. Which so far has worked fine.)
Experts SOMETIMES disagree, and the mass media sees story opportunities which tend to ridicule and marginalise people whose conclusions we should be responding to.
One point, Peter: your use of the word ‘scientists’ may conjure up the media’s image of scientists as either comical figures in white coats, ridiculously ignorant of real world choices, or irresponsible Frankensteins who ignore realities that might blunt their insatiable devotion to their purpose (an attitude outside the definition of science; it’s more characteristic of religion).
You start by positing that scientists are a homogenous group, but immediately afterwards point out that they do indeed publically disagree on a big issue – hence discrediting the ‘sinister Big Science conspiracy’ meme.
Hope you & yours are all well!
Thanks Jeremy!
My brother-in-law has lent me a copy of “The Cult of the Amateur” by Andrew Keen (still to read!) which I suspect strongly reinforces the need for experts. Your comments reminded me of it and perhaps I’ll push it up the pile.
I do feel like and acknowledge that I am an amateur at all this but still feel inclined to share my opinions to initiate thinking rather than claim a “right position”. I’m glad we are allowed to debate – I just hope I’m allowed to be wrong too