On "The Fallibility of Numbers"

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

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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.
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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.