"The Science is Settled", they say. The Data is Decided. The Experiments are Established. The Models have..er..Made Up Their Minds. I ran out of steam a bit there. Whatever, the phrase has been doing the rounds for the past few years, particularly on blogs such as Wattsupwiththat and misinformed newspaper articles like this one by the Wall Street Journal. That in itself raises an interesting question: can an article which contains no real research and comically overinflated conclusions still be called an article? Maybe I should just call it a shouty typetype. Anyway, that isn't the question I'm answering today. Today I'm looking at who exactly first said the "science is settled", and why it keeps coming up in the climate change debate.
The first and most obvious point to make here is that the science is obviously not settled. Very few aspects of science ever get settled. Newtonian physics is always going to be right about what happens when you hit a tennis ball, but most other things are up for debate. You're always going be able to find some rent-a-quote scientist arguing for practically any opinion out there. This is a good thing, because science wouldn't move forward if people didn't spend time probing and poking other peoples ideas.
Science seems to have been first settled by everybody's favourite climate campaigner, Al Gore. This NPR article has him saying it in a Congressional address, back in 2007. Poor Al. He does mean well. Unfortunately, he isn't really a climate scientist. He just likes dressing up as one in his spare time. Since then, this phrase appears to be used almost entirely as a way of undermining the climate change argument. "The science is settled they said, but LOOK! they were wrong about this one thing over here. It's all lies!". This is a classic Straw Man argument, where shouty typetype's like those in the first paragraph and this one in the telegraph newspaper attack a point of view no one really holds anyway.*
In the realm of climate change, we can be certain about what has been measured; ocean acidification, a global sea level rise and a global temperature rise over the last century, for example. The best theory we have to explain these three things happening at once is the Greenhouse Effect, whereby the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has led to a decrease in the amount of long wave radiation escaping to space. It is possible that there could be another theory better than this one. Then again, there might be a better theory to explain why stuff falls to the ground when you drop it than gravity. We're pretty happy to go with gravity though, as a society.
The real place for uncertainty is in paleoclimate, because using trees as thermometers is pretty difficult, and in future projections of climate change, where numerical models represent the best we can do with the information available. A great example of a subject which is far from settled is the prediction of tropical cyclones and hurricanes under a warming climate, something this paper sums up rather well. In the jargon of science, it's an "area of active research". In other words, we don't know, but we are fascinated by it. Get back to us.
In summary, the science is only settled if you plan on going on to explain why it isn't settled. That's the end of todays blog, as I have to go actively research the question: "what time do you have to go to bed on sunday to avoid feeling like death on monday morning?"
*As a random aside, someone in my apartment complex has a bumper sticker proclaiming to the world "I brake for Squirrels". Well...good! Who is disagreeing with that sentiment? Who in buggery is that bumper sticker aimed at? I'd hope that when it is reasonably safe to do so, most people who haven't given up on life would brake for squirrels. Unless of course they mean they brake for squirrels in every possible circumstance, in which case the bumper sticker should instead read "I will endanger both our lives, and the lives of everyone else who can see this bumper sticker, to save a squirrel".
