On the climate change debate
Reading this article about climate change consensus unraveling and recalling the snafu of hacked climate e-mails makes me — and hopefully a lot of people — sit back and think. I’m pretty committed to having a small carbon footprint and living in an ecologically and environmentally conservative manner. Recently I’ve gotten pretty excited about tiny houses and composting toilets, but the annoying, pragmatic part of my personality — the one that always butts heads with my idealism and is often aided and abetted by my cynicism – makes me question if I’m just some loony, leftie wannabe-hippie who sways with the gust captured by the nearest wind turbine.
Well, that may be, but I don’t think so. I’m beginning to see climate science not as a science with a defined (or definable) truth, but rather as a developing and evolving truth, much like a wiki. To take that metaphor further, imagine that the “climate change” Wikipedia article is just beginning to be written, and there are an awful lot of smart people involved. But, like all people, they have biases, beliefs, and politics that come into play, even though most strive to leave them at the door. The point we’re at is the nasty editing wars where accusations are hurled here and there, where people feel the dichotomous pull to one side or the other, even though there is a large and poorly defined area in the middle. There is not Truth, not yet, even though we’re working on it. Some of us feel we can dimly see where it’s leading, and others boldly plunge down that path, blind to obstacles and Reason and so forth. Others dig in their heels and refuse to budge. You see where this mangled metaphor is headed.
Remember when J Harlen Bretz thought the Pacific Northwest had been formed by catastrophic floods and everyone laughed at him? Truth wins out, if given time and energy. We’re just not to the point where we can quite see what that will be.