Does Thomas Kuhn have something to say on Global Warming?

In a classic one-two, during the week Al Gore gave a speech to a group in Silicon Valley and a distinguished group of scientists issued a periodic report (under UN auspices)- both argued that the evidence for global warming is overwhelming. Gore even made the statement that he was involved in a campaign more important than a run for the presidency. When as ambitious a politician as Al Gore (Harvard Cum Laude in Government, dropped out of Vanderbilt in both Theology and Law - so without legitimate science credentials) seemingly renounces his ambitions to run for president, it makes one stop and think.

Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which at least when I first started my doctoral program was required reading, in which he argued that science goes through a predictable set of changes to come up with new ideas. Kuhn's theory is not unlike Kessler's cycle(discussed earlier in this blog) on technological innovation. In both, the established orthodoxy elaborates their idea or system until some upstart comes and destroys their organizing principle. Until Nicolaus Copernicus figured out that the sun is the center of the universe, there was a lot of scholarship suggesting that the earth was the center. As you look at science's involvement in public policy issues - you see this orthodoxy defense mechanism in many places. It seems to be especially vigorous in this discussion - that may be because the science is good or because we are going down the wrong path. The vehement statements by a large portion of the scientific community seem incongruous with the scientific method that all of us learned at some point.

There are several reasons to take what these "eminent" scientists have purported to find with some skepticism. The consensus is a bit too neat.

#1 -The chair of the House Science and Technology Committee (Bart Gordon - Graduate of Middle Tennessee State University and a law degree from University of Tennessee - not exactly a real background to be able to say this) said of the report "a unanimous, definitive world statement" on climate change that, if anything, was too conservative. "It's time to end the debate and act," Gordon said. "All the naysayers should step aside." That is pretty strident - why should they step aside?

#2 - The NYT in its coverage of this has one small item which raises some concern about the report. They offer the following quote from an opponent "At the George C. Marshall Institute, a think tank that receives funding from Exxon Mobil,(It has become hackneyed to see the Times do these biased appositives) chief executive William O'Keefe and President Jeff Kueter issued a statement urging "great caution in reading too much ' into the report until the panel releases its detailed scientific documentation a few months from now. Claims being made that a climate catastrophe later this century is more certain are unjustified," they said, adding that "the underlying state of knowledge does not justify scare tactics or provide sufficient support for proposals . . . to suppress energy use and impose large economic burdens on the U.S. economy." - It bothers me that they point out funding for one source of the story (which they disagree with) but never look at the sources of the funding for the pro-Global Warming people.

#3 - There are some pretty eminent scientists on the other side of the ledger. For example, Richard S. Lindzen
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Member of the National Academy of Sciences and a whole lot of other eminent scientific places) thinks the global warming supporters are sloppy with their data. Ditto for David H. Rind, climate researcher at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and adjunct professor of geological sciences at Columbia. Roger Pielke, a respected atmospheric scientist at Colorado State who was involved with the drafting process of one of the reports and said, "I'm disappointed in the whole process. This has been the most closed, unhealthy scientific process I've ever been involved in." That type of opposition should not simply step aside as the congressman suggested.

#4 - Then there is the inventor of the internet, Al Gore (During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the internet). It is hard to take this guy seriously on anything. He was a dogmatic member of congress, a dogmatic VP and he remains a dogmatic public figure. His certainty is troubling. To give you a good idea about Gore - look at the picture. His recent speech in the Silicon Valley has him using a contact mike and the normal mike on the podium.

#5 - Research from ice cores suggests that the temperature of the earth has been rising for the last 200 years. (Most of it coming before 1900). Core temperatures have been rising at about .9• Fahrenheit. The case on the other side of global warming should give everyone a bit of a pause. Lindzen even believes that the computer models which suggest that the gasses will create a linear degredation of our planet that will continue in perpetuity is nonsense - create more greenhouse gasses and the process begins to slow down because of the very trends that the supporters of global warming argue are there. There is some pretty good evidence that climate for a very long time has run in 1500 year cycles.

#6 - The Kyoto Treaty was a travesty. It was a classic lousy political decision that all of the developed nations have rejected - it is just that the US took an overt step. Like many things negotiated under the UN (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - UNFCCC) the solutions in it seemed like a pat set of answers to increase the size of government.

#7 - At one point in the last 30 years, a large group of scientists (at least some political ones) made the claim that we were going into a new ice age - so why the change - from a non-scientist's perspective that inconcruity is something to watch.

So what's a person to do? I guess I do not know. This is one of those bizarre notions where a good part of the political world and scientific world are in concert - and yet it is increasingly hard to understand when the political world is infecting the scientific world. One wishes that there might be a bit more balance in the discussion, but in this case wishes are not likely to happen. With all of those reservations, we should proceed with caution. But with people like Gore and all of the cognizanti of the left, we may not be given that chance. I come back to the quote from Einstein "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."