That Used to Be Us_ How America Fell Behind in thted and How We Can Come Back - Friedman, Thomas L. & Mandelbaum, Michael [107]
At the same time, scientists, who tend to focus on what they don’t know more than on what they do, also tend to be poor communicators and defenders of their positions. As Romm put it: “Scientists do live in ivory towers. They believe that facts win debates and speak for themselves and that you don’t need to market your ideas or repeat them over and over again. And they are even distrustful of people who repeat themselves or cultivate too high a public profile.”
Eventually, though, the irresponsible campaign against the science of climate change reached the point that it triggered an open letter signed by 255 members of America’s National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s top scientific society, which was published in Science magazine on May 7, 2010. Here is what the scientists said:
All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.
Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial—scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That’s what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of “well-established theories” and are often spoken of as “facts.”
The letter went on to list the fundamental, well-established scientific conclusions about climate change:
(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact. (ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. (iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes. (iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic. (v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.
Honk If You Think Like Dick Cheney
The conclusion that emerges from the summary is that while climate change does involve substantial uncertainties, they concern when and how, not whether, it will affect the planet. Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, concluded in its February 2007 report for the United Nations that the only sensible response now to the reality of global warming is a two-pronged action strategy to “avoid the unmanageable (mitigation) and manage the unavoidable (adaptation)”—because some significant climate change is coming, even if we don’t know when or how much damage it will do.
In other words, uncertainty