Gene Logsdon is one of my favorite writers on issues of food and farming and common sense. But sometimes he gets on my nerves--which is completely intentional, I don't doubt. He blogs over at The Contrary Farmer ( thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/ ). His post today is about what he perceives as his reasonable skepticism over some of the facts and fears presented by climate scientists writing about climate change. I've copied this post below and follow it with my response.
The Fallibility of Numbers
February 27, 2013 at 7:21 am
From GENE LOGSDON
Those of you convinced that global
warming is a grave danger should try to forgive skeptical farmer types
like me. We deal with potential destructive weather change every day of
the growing season. Feeling helpless in the face of an uncaring human
society is part of our daily lives.
When Budd Shepherd said that global
warming has become “a belief and an ideology… it stimulates the god
center of peoples’ brains,” he expressed my opinion dead on. I think
what is happening today is that science is assuming the mantle of
religion, and climate change is only one example.
I looked up the links some of you kindly
suggested, as I have looked at numbers about climate change before. My
problem is that my brain is not capable of comprehending those numbers
and I don’t think yours is either. When I am told that there are an
estimated total of 210 gigatons of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere I have
to wonder, especially since science has not yet determined the total
size of our “space.” My first question is who is doing the estimating? A
gigaton is a BILLION tons. I can’t wrap my brain around one gigaton let
alone a flock of them. Even a tiny miscalculation could mean a huge
difference. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is reckoned at around
391 ppm at the moment, as I read the numbers. Between 2000 and 2009 that
amount increased by 2 ppm. That is an infinitesimally small amount in
terms of parts per million over nine years. Am I to be shunned and
criticized if I wonder whether such a slight change is significant
or if there could be a very teensy weensy error in the calculations and
in fact the ppm might have decreased by 2 or remained the same? The
scientific community is demanding of me a blind faith in its numbers
when there is reason to be skeptical.
But there are better examples of how
science is changing into theology. I have been trying to wade through
the literature about the discovery of what scientists call a “Higgs
boson.” Actually, they don’t think they discovered it yet, after all the
hullabaloo. The language of the Higginites is ludicrously obfuscating. A
Higgs boson, by definition, is a sub-atomic particle. It has no size.
Right away red flags go up in my brain, like when theology tried to
convince me that there are three divine persons in one god. In trying to
describe this strange boson to poor ignorant farm boys like me, the
Higginites resort to amazingly imaginative metaphors. One writer on
Google likens a boson to a pure white snowflake in a blizzard of pure
white snowflakes, falling on an unlimited blanketing landscape of pure
white snowflakes. Another describes the Higgs “field” where bosons roam
as “dark energy” in an “invisible mist.” Another tries to make bosons
intelligible by alluding to windblown dust sifting off a wall— but the
wall isn’t really there. This is the kind of horse manure language that
poets and theologians are fond of. I’m actually fond of it myself. But I
surely can’t accept deductions drawn from it as fact, especially when
the thing with no size hasn’t even been found yet. I think maybe bosons
are angels. I wonder how many of them can dance on the head of a pin.
The scientists involved don’t like it, but the Higgs boson is being
called the god particle. Perfect. Science is trying to identify and
define infinite intelligence. It is trying to reinvent God.
When science starts resorting to
unfathomable numbers about CO2 or anything else, it is time for
skepticism. I am not going to pretend to believe scientific dogma just
because not believing it makes me a sinner. That’s religion.
~~
~~
Here's my response:
Gene,
That even scientist have to resort to metaphor to attempt a description of the indescribable in the natural world does not (necessarily) mean their language falls to the level of dogma or nonsense. It's simply an admission that some things (or, more likely everything, if you look closely enough) is beyond our comprehension. While most dogma is ignorance, not all ignorance is dogma.
I don't understand the microbial life of healthy soil. I can't imagine how you get uncounted millions of the little buggers in a teaspoon of dirt. I have no idea what they are doing to and with and for each other. But I do believe that if I mess with the delicate system and society of soil life, by pouring on poisons for example, unpleasant consequences will follow both for them and for my food.
In the same way, I can't tell you what a ppm or a gigaton of CO2 is. But the "greenhouse effect" of CO2 in the atmosphere is pretty basic and describable science. 392 ppm is infinitesimally larger than 390 ppm. But 450 or 650 ppm is a whole lot more than 250 ppm; and given what we do know (not what we believe) about how CO2 affects temperatures and climate, reasonable cautions suggests we wouldn't want to go there. That CO2 in the atmosphere (whatever that is) increases as carbon sources are burned on the earth and that our species has been burning a lot a carbon over the last few hundred years and the conclusion that all this will have unpleasant consequences for our children, are not matters of faith or dogma. They are relatively simple statements of science and history and reasonable expectations for the future.
I am not a scientist, I'm a preacher. If you think finding words to describe the mysterious workings of the natural world, without sliding into dogma, is difficult, try finding words to describe the ineffable or the impossible without sounding downright silly at times. So cut the climate scientists a bit of slack. We're all in this together and the best of them are doing the best they can.