Politics can be confusing. Similarly, the world of science can be just as confusing. But in this hyper-partisan world, the worlds of science and politics often mix. This mix is vividly illustrated with the global warming debate.
All rational Americans believe we must protect the environment, but that's not the issue here. The issue is whether increasing global temperatures are a result of human activity, or if they are due to something else. Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, dissented against popular opinion of human-induced climate change.
""Believe it or not, global warming is not due to human contribution of carbon dioxide,"" Ball said in the Canada Free Press. ""We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification.""
He goes on to call man-made global warming the ""greatest deception in the history of science."" Other global warming critics in the scientific community, some less strident, join Ball in his assertions including Richard Lindzen, a professor of atmospheric science at MIT. This is significant because it shows there is not a unanimous belief humans cause global warming, contrary to what some people may believe.
Ellen Goodman, a columnist for the Boston Globe, wrote this past week that ""global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers."" Goodman implies dissenting from popular global warming beliefs is now seen as delusional, much like Holocaust deniers. But I think she has it backwards.
By being skeptical of a theory, scientists are doing their job: They are being good scientists. Unfortunately, scientists today have little incentive to dissent because they are vulnerable to personal attacks and their careers are often in jeopardy.
Asking questions is one of the foundations of democracy. What weight does popular opinion hold if we derive the opinion from people who didn't question the facts or each other? As a nation, we have to question the theory of global warming so we don't make rash decisions based on false information or a lack of information.
This is not the first time climate change hysteria has gripped the United States. In the early 1970s, scientists and the public grappled with the idea of global cooling. A 1975 Newsweek article highlighted the views of a few scientists that dropping temperatures could lead to disaster. Now, more than 30 years later, we face with the opposite—gradual warming of the Earth.
What if scientists had not questioned the prevailing wisdom that the Earth was turning into a giant block of ice and rushed to put a stop to global cooling?
By looking at past history, it is also important to remember correlation does not imply causation. Scientists should not have assumed the Earth was forever going to cool down from a few years of data, much like they cannot assume there is undeniable evidence the Earth is going to get continually hotter down the road, no matter how strange the weather is from month to month or year to year.
It is vital that as a nation we face climate change effectively, because a stable environment is important to Wisconsin families. What would happen to the many farming families in Wisconsin who depend on the environment to make a living?
