Science and Climate Change - A Reply

In science, Truth does not exist as other than an elusive goal that an inquirer hopes to approach ever closer. That lesson came hard and means that all facts are, in fact, tentative. Some facts are less tentative than others; after many tests, surviving facts become warranted, never yet proven, and must survive further trials as advancing means may become available. However, a single falsification, even after a thousand years of use, may greatly modify or even destroy a fact. The history of science is littered with examples.

Also, science holds that only potentially falsifiable notions can be scientifically investigated, otherwise the notion falls outside of science. "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" is an old example. Because no physical test can be made of the idea that angels can dance, even with the pin in hand we cannot prove or disprove the question by scientific means.

In other words, the most powerful proofs in science are those that break or falsify facts, in part or in whole. For that reason, studies supporting facts can add to or improve the fact's warrants, but even a hundred supporting studies cannot bring a fact to an ultimate Truth and so escape further testing, even when it comes out of a supercomputer.

Despite much and at times hysterical publicity, climate-change claims too often fall into the category of unscientific notions or conjectures. And instead of assisting skeptics in their proper efforts to falsify tentative climate facts, too many climate sophisticates have abandoned the role of skeptic for that of booster. Moreover, they deride and otherwise hamper and hinder by mostly political means further effort to replicate climate studies. One would think that a scientist with a portably useful finding would try to get as much scrutiny as possible, as quickly as possible, from each and every scientist, skeptical and otherwise, and so bolster the finding. Instead, a close-knit climate-catastrophe clan claims a scientific consensus and then attempts to close off further inquiry, even to the point of withholding data, refusing to publicize details of their often arcane methodologies, and trying to stifle even the right to question the wisdom of the clan. Surely fundamentally unscientific activity that attempts to scare the world into possibly unwarranted action bothers you? Surely you understand that science needs no consensus, whereas coercive politics requires it?

In science, those who would make spectacular claims should provide spectacular warrants, which in turn must be presented fully so that independent others might replicate the claims. All else is politics, and constitutes a warrant for skepticism among those whose lives would be fundamentally changed by any of an always-present chorus of self-appointed and coercive oracles.