Global Warming - Science by intimidation

[Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Bron:   Globe and Mail
Datum:  28 juni 2008
Auteur: Rex Murphy
URL:    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/GAM.20080628.COREX28/TPStory/TPComment


Global Warming - Science by intimidation
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Truth may enter the world by many doors, but she is never escorted by
force. I thought that was a lesson learned long ago, and learned by none
more tellingly than scientists. Real scientists, actually, have learned
it. A new amalgam has emerged however, the scientist-activist, and for
that specimen it's a lesson passed by.

In the dawn of the Enlightenment, it was scientists who were hauled before
tribunals and inquisitions. Galileo is the arch example, the pioneer
empiricist who rejected the ancient Earth-centric model of the (then
known) universe, and for his pains earned the attention and wrath of the
distinctly unscientific Inquisition.

I am drawn to these thoughts, and to the long-decayed example of the
Inquisition, by a most curious outburst this week by James Hansen, the
principal voice of NASA on the subject of global warming, a man who played
- as it were - John the Baptist to Al Gore's messianic teachings on the
subject. Dr. Hansen is largely credited with "sounding the alarm" on
man-made global warming, and he has been a persistent, high-profile and
very aggressive proponent of the cause for over two decades now. Dr.
Hansen doesn't take kindly to those who dispute his apocalyptic scenarios.
I choose the term, apocalyptic, deliberately. According to Dr. Hansen,
mankind may have reached the tipping point with global warming. Should
that be the case, wide-scale calamity and catastrophe are inevitable. And
should we not have reached the point of absolute crisis, should there be a
minuscule interval for the human species to act and avert the very worst,
according to Dr. Hansen, what yet remains to be faced is still horrible
enough indeed.

Not all the world shares Dr. Hansen's vision of imminent ecological
Armageddon. Serious minds, seriously disinterested in the subject, throw
up caveats all the time. They question the models of climatological
speculation; they question the peculiar mix of man-made and other likely
sources of climate dynamics; they question some of the data gathering and
some of its interpretation; and they question the very maturity of the
highly complex, and experimentally deficient science of global warming
itself.

They seriously question, too, the massive policy prescriptions that are
being insisted upon as necessary in response to the scientific
determinations of man-made global warming. There is lots of room for
different, honest opinion on questions so large and complex, questions at
the terribly complicated intersection of science, politics and economics.

But, to Dr. Hansen's agitated mind, those who raise such questions, who
inject skepticism into the global warming debate, are "deniers." The word
here is becoming commonplace, but it remains a singular slur. A clutch of
the global warming believers like to cast all who would argue with them
into the polemical pit, the pit being that dissent from orthodox opinion
on global warming as the equivalent of Holocaust denial. It is a shameless
and vicious tactic, and hardly accords with the nobility that is suppose
to drive the conscience of those out to save the planet. Dr. Hansen is
overfond of the specious and chilling analogy: He has written of the
"crashing glaciers serv(ing) as a Krystal Nacht" and, although he later
repented of the metaphor, compared coal trains to "death trains - no less
gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with
uncountable irreplaceable species." This week, Dr. Hansen went a step even
more noxiously forward.

He called for a tribunal, or as I prefer to call it, an Inquisition, to
put on trial for crimes against nature and humanity, the CEOs of the big
oil companies who, according to Dr. Hansen's frantic view of things, feed
the public "misinformation" about the climate crisis. Again the implicit
model is to Nuremberg, as the man attempts to put concern for a future -
let us call it a probability - on a moral and factual par with the
unquestioned, historical, shattering enormity of the Nazi Holocaust.

Is this a scientist speaking? If so, it is more than curious that in the
21st century it is the scientist calling for the secular equivalent of an
Inquisition. More to the point, are these the words of a man really
certain of his truth, or one who - with the anxiety of the fanatic - is
trying to shield it from all rigour of skepticism and inquiry? In either
case, I do not question at all the assertion that it is the voice of a man
who is neither a friend to reason or science. This is the voice of the
scientist-activist consumed with his own virtue and fearful of all
dispute.

Science has no need of tribunals or trials, no need of Nuremberg justice,
or analogies with the Holocaust. James Hansen's words this week were an
offence, an offence against inquiry, against science, against moral
seriousness. They were a piece of insolence against the idea of debate
itself.

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(c) 2008 Globe and Mail

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