The Science is Settled?

 

“The Science is Settled.” We hear that statement frequently from politicians. Lately, we have heard this in regard to measles vaccination and climate change. Politicians who do not understand science will latch on to a theory, or the results of one scientist and run with it until the public actually thinks the theory is true. In fact, science is never truly settled. A scientific conclusion is accepted and adopted until someone comes along and disproves the conclusion or creates an alternate hypothesis with equal validity.

An example is the measles vaccine. In 1998, Andrew Wakefield published a report in The Lancet, a British journal of medicine, linking the MMR vaccine to autism. This report was widely received and resulted in a large drop in the use of the vaccine in Britain and the United States. This was accepted as settled science until other scientists were not able to reproduce Wakefield’s results and it was later found that Wakefield had conflicts of interest and had manipulated data to produce his desired result.

In 2003, The University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit published report that greenhouse gas had reached levels that were making the Earth’s temperature graph look like a hockey stick and would shortly become irreversible, causing hurricanes, tornadoes and economic collapse. This panicked the environmentalists and the politicians like Al Gore used it to enrich themselves by hyping it and funneling money to cronies in the green industry, like Solyndra. Later, emails were leaked that showed that the research team had manipulated data to get these results. This theory was so discredited that the proponents had to change the name of the crisis to Climate Change. Now when they say “97% of climate scientists agree the climate is changing,” they are stating the obvious. The archeological record shows the Earth’s climate is and always has been changing.

The climate change theory is two stage. The first is that man’s activity on the planet can cause a big enough impact to be measurable. The next stage is that the impact will be large enough to create the feared climate destruction?”  There is scientific theory on both sides of that question, but the data so large that they can’t do a reliable model. The studies on the amount of temperature rise accountable to man’s activity in the last century ranges from 0.02 degrees to significant (no number stated) based on what the study assumes to be man caused activity.

They can prove parts of it, but not the entire theory. In field experiments, scientists have difficulty showing a long term rise in CO2. They can measure the amount of CO2 being put into the atmosphere, but they cannot reliably predict the long term effect.  When the CO2 levels rise, plants grow faster and increase the levels of oxygen in the atmosphere. This runs counter to the theory. Some alarmists are now adding uncontrolled plant growth to the fears. As for methane, termites and cows create more methane than man. The University of San Diego has done research on cows and have determined that corn fed cows produce significantly more methane than grass fed cattle and is even trying to develop grass pellets for cattle feed to keep down the methane level.

So, when someone tells you the science is settled, they are really telling you their mind is made up and they have found a report that backs up their preconceived notion. My best advice is recycle, don’t waste things, drive a fuel efficient car, don’t pollute and above all, DON’T PANIC. Oh, then there is that Middle East thing. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, we might have to dig up the late Carl Sagan’s speeches on nuclear winter.