Jorden Gemuend – Week 5 – Crichton and Oreskes

September 28, 2011 at 12:45 pm | Posted in Week 5, Weekly Responses | Leave a comment

As our class has discussed the debate between intelligent design and evolution, the most common figure thrown out in the support of evolution was the overwhelming scientific consensus. It is hard to be heard when there is a crowd surrounding you all shouting the same chant. The question that needs to be asked is whether a scientific consensus translates into something being true. In the case of “climate change,” a newer, more politically accepted term than global warming, the idea of a scientific consensus is again employed. Just because everyone agrees on something, does not make it right, but it may hold importance nonetheless.

Michael Crichton understands this dilemma of scientific consensus and attacks it at its core in “Aliens Cause Global Warming.” Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the article does not talk about why aliens cause global warming, but rather why science is wrongly mixing with policy. Crichton grew up during the Cold War, where fear and nuclear predictions were just another part of the day. This led him to a belief that science was the hope that would save the world. First discussing the Drake equation, an equation predicting the likelihood of aliens in our galaxy, Crichton points out that the variables cannot be tested. He relates this to the predictions made about how the atmosphere would be affected in the case of nuclear warfare, and avidly asserts that these types of methods are not science. They are religions based upon pure faith and nothing else. Turning his view to the concept of a scientific consensus, Crichton states plainly that this is an absurd and incredibly weak argument that is irrelevant to science. This is supported by a slew of examples where the scientific consensus was wrong, and he claims that consensus is invoked where the science is not solid enough. The issue of second-hand smoke is used to show how science has been mixed with policy and politics. Science is now elastic, a realm where “anything goes.” Not finished yet, Crichton turns his sights on computer models, and explains how past science and global warming have ridiculous dependencies on them. A humorous line talks about how people don’t believe weather forecasts 12 hours from now, and yet they are expected to believe climate forecasts 100 years from then. Crichton proposes double blind style computer models and unknown sources of funding. He ends by talking about how the scientific community is rife with policy.

On an opposite side of things, Naomi Oreskes published “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” an article solely devoted to proving that there is in fact a scientific consensus on climate change. Short and sweet, Oreskes first addresses the fact that people have attempted to attack climate change by saying there is not conclusive science or consensus. Immdetialy refuting these claims, she fills the bulk of her article with a list of publications and organizations that all support and agree on global warming. She deduces that without substantial disagreement, the scientific community is indeed in consensus that humans are causing temperatures to rise. Oreskes, however, decides to end the article with wisdom in saying that a consensus is not necessarily right, as the history of science has shown. She concludes that although the consensus may not be right, it does not want to risk not acting.

These two authors both took a logical approach to the debate of climate change. The interesting thing is that neither of them actually disagrees with the other, although it is difficult to see this. Crichton is asserting that a scientific consensus over climate change is a weak argument and in no way indicates the truth of the matter. Oreskes is merely asserting that there is a consensus, but also acknowledges that this does not necessarily indicate the truth. Whereas Crichton would argue that until there is hard evidence, despite any type of consensus, there is no debate. Oreskes, on the other hand, wants to use the consensus to generate action, and by relying on a science-expert framing scheme, she encourages support out of fear for what may happen. Both of these articles complement each other like two puzzle pieces being mashed together in order to fit; complementary, but messy. It is plain and obvious that these two authors’ completely disagree on the topic of climate change, but they have cleverly written these two articles so that they avoid the conflict. While Crichton enlightens about why a scientific consensus does not equal truth, Oreskes claims that it might be better than nothing.

My question: Do you believe that there is an absolute truth to existence independent of human conception?