In Defense of Science

To the Editor:

These armchair critics of climate change, one wonders, just how far does their interest and enthusiasm for science extend? Do they, for example, own a backyard telescope? Can they readily identify the phase of the moon or the formation of a cloud? Is Science Daily bookmarked on their browser? Do they commemorate, in some small but meaningful way, the birthday of Isaac Newton? More curiously, is their skeptical voice heard in other scientific debates, say, on
string theory or the collapse of bee colonies?

Or is this all too much and they are really better described as a one-subject critic, limited glumly to the talking points and point-of-view fed them on corporate radio and television? I don’t mean to imply that there is no value in this. There are good things to be said for such an approach, convenience being one of them, no heavy reading another. But if that is the only well from which they drink, they simply cannot be taken seriously, is my point.

Our serious consideration should be reserved for the climate scientists themselves. The task of earning a PhD in this field is arduous and complex in the extreme. The colleges and universities
granting these degrees must themselves be accredited and their faculties highly accomplished and esteemed. Moreover, the findings and conclusions of these scientists, before ever being published, must first be vetted in a rigorous, often brutal, peer review.

And all of this is to be “debunked” by a chattering head on TV? I think not. In fact, our society does trust science in the most profound and fundamental way. Who among us boards an airliner questioning the methodology behind jet propulsion or the calculus of aerodynamics?
Yet we are all well aware there have been “issues” with flying machines.

I contend what is before us in this climate debate is not bad science, but science that has drawn too near the food bowl. There is big money in burning carbon fuels. And to say we should do otherwise makes the monied interests growl and bare their corporate teeth. Let there be skeptics and hard criticism. This is what makes science good. But let’s also cast the skeptic’s net more broadly to include the financial and political motives of its critics. And let’s not be shy to identify this brand of criticism for what it is: corporate pandering and willful blindness.

Jerry DeMartin
Beach, ND