Local Blogs - Guy Midkiff

What is science? I decided to pay a visit to my online Merriam Webster Dictionary and see how they described science. According to them, science means the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding.
In order to know something, it must be proven. To me, science is a proposition that has been proven by demonstrable processes that leave no doubt as to the truth of the proposition. For example, Copernicus did not hold as most scientist of his time, that the earth was at the center of the universe. This was the medieval period where science was fashioned and bent to powerful influences from the church and contemporary philosophers.
But true scientific findings should be free of external influences. Religion, money, philosophy, peer pressure, and politics have no roll in scientific determination. When these corrupting influences entwine themselves in the scientific process, the ultimate result is solutions before research - which is sham science.

To make my point, I recently entered into a discussion about global warming with a young man that was convinced of the phenomena. I asked him how he could be so sure that global warming existed and his admonishment to me was, "Don't you watch the news?" Well, he had me there. I actually don't watch the national news much anymore because they lost credibility with me, years ago.
I expressed my concern to him and he said it was the law of averages. So many scientists and politicians are on TV telling us about global warming, it must be true, he said. An then he said it... the "c" word, the bane of science.... " global warming is the consensus of thousands of scientist" he said enthusiastically.
I asked him if it was more important for 10,000 scientists to have consensus on global warming or that just one of them, through scientific processes, could actually prove or disprove global warming. The conversation ground to halt. It was like a Lost in Space episode where the robot was overwhelmed and could only babble..."that does not compute, that does not compute."
We parted ways with him shaking his head and me hopeful that I had planted at least a small seed of question in his young, malleable mind.
To the point of "consensus science," it simply can't be made better than the late Michael Crichton: "Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels: it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled."
And while historic temperature reading can be determined through various core sampling technologies, the reasons for ancient global temperature variances can not be reconciled any more than can future rates.
With respect to vaunted computer modeling, we are led to believe these impressive and powerful computer programs can tell us what global temperatures will be in 50 and 100 years, but ask them to use their computer software to predict the weather in one week and ... well, you know the story.
Global warming has become a cause celebre for powerful politicians and media giants. Actual scientific findings have not (and probably never will) caught up with the consensus and settled science groupies, though. And now we are to believe these same prophets of environmental doom that were preaching global cooling 3 decades ago?
Fiendishly, our pop-culture uses peer pressure to intimidate the un-believers. We are called polluters, heretics, and uneducated. How could we not "know" that global warming exists? We must have been dropped on our heads at a young age.
Ironically, I do believe that global warming does exist, though...just as global cooling exists. The earth does not have a thermometer. You can't set the perfect temperature. Our temperature has fluctuated wildly over millions of years. Was George Bush the reason for 15 degree warming oceans, 2 million years ago? Unless you are Michael Moore, your answer is probably no.
Should we do everything possible to be good stewards of the environment? Of course we must and America has improved greatly over the last 50 years. Our air should be clean and water pure. But that should have nothing to do with actual science and how scientific "facts" are derived.

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