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Sound and fury: Thoughts on climate science and the media
painting of Sir Isaac Newton and his hair (image public domain)
A cool thing about science is that – just like the climate – it’s always changing. It isn’t that ‘reality’ changes in the sense that the fundamental laws of physics somehow alter, but what does change, continually and without exception, is how we understand and interpret phenomena. This is the normal progressive route that all science takes – physical, medical, social, humanistic, whatever. Science and the scientific method are not things after all, but mutable practices which are continually built upon and modified.
Newton did not write ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants’ because he felt that everyone before him was wrong, but rather because he was part of a cumulative process that stretched back – and forward – for thousands of years; a process that encompasses observation, experiment, review and modification. It also includes hypothesizing and even (gasp!) making mistakes. Newton felt that he was dependent upon the work of other scientists that preceded him and he was grateful and humble about it.
Yet we – and by ‘we’ I mean other people – treat scientists and doctors as if they should already know everything. If it turns out that they don’t, then they are idiots or liars. Of course, sometimes they are actually idiots and liars, which makes us feel even smarter, without ever having to do anything ourselves. We can sit back, shake our heads and laugh at the stupid weatherman who actually had the gall to predict rain because he saw something on the old Dopplar radar. Meanwhile we can just stick our heads out the window and use common sense, which is sort of like the populism of the scientific world. Heat wave = global warming confirmed, cold snap = global warming debunked. Sorted.
So when scientists predict and calculate risks associated with climate change and global warming, they are not gods or prophets heralding calamities. If they were they would get more leeway. Imagine finding one erroneous paragraph in the Bible. Front-page news, right?
Oh you didn’t mean the Earth was created 10,000 years ago? Well then that just discredits everything else in the book then, doesn’t it?
OK, OK, we should keep religion and science separate. I personally believe the world is going to end in 2012 anyway, so I’m all right, Jack.
But seriously, never before in my knowledge has a complicated scientific issue been debated like global warming and climate change are being debated day in, day out – and in such a widespread, confusing and all too often blatantly political manner. Everyone seems to have an opinion and likes to express it with vitriol in any public forum they can find. And by ‘any’ I mean on the Internet. Sometimes I think it must be some people’s full-time job to write insulting things about ‘warmers’ or ‘deniers’ in the comments section following any remotely climate-related article in the Guardian, New York Times, London Times or any other newspaper which bafflingly allows anyone to post comments in their online editions.
Yet this is the reality when politics, science, journalism and ‘hey, look at me!’ converge and conflate in an ever-changing, evermore mediated world. There is both good and bad in the constant flux of media and science, despite the sometimes-confusing, bitter cleavages. Heck, just like global warming may turn out to actually improve the climate in some places, some comments – sandwiched between the sound and fury – are actually pretty helpful, useful and informative. Even to a smug, idiotic warmer like me.
by Graham Land
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‘Climate skeptics’ vs. climate science: a layman’s view
Media oversimplification of climate change frustrates scientific community… and me
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Tags: change, climate, climate change, comment, media, Newton, science
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