The widely accepted proposition that man-made pollution is driving radical climate change drives the call for the world to gear up for equally radical solutions. The failure to agree on such solutions at Copenhagen has only served to increase the urgency with which environmentalists are pressing the case that, unless carbon emissions are curbed and curbed soon, the resulting change to weather patterns will be both irreversible and catastrophic.
Even though so many Western political leaders have now bought into this doomsday scenario, it is assumed with some confidence that they understand no better than any other layman, the complex science underpinning all the alarming predictions. Nor should they be expected to.
There is, however, one core principle of science that everyone can understand — that it is underpinned by a discipline, which insists results must constantly be challenged. Data have always to be assessed objectively. This can be a hard rule for a scientist who has spent years developing a theory which, when tested, throws up results contradicting the original hypotheses. In an ideal world the scientist goes back to the drawing board and thoroughly checks the integrity of methods used and the data they generated. In the greater scheme of things, there is no such thing as a failed experiment. This is because the fact that something did not work may point researchers toward something else that does.
The power of all scientific endeavor rests in its honesty, in its frankness and in the absolute willingness to have new work reviewed by peers. Likewise, accepted scientific wisdom must itself always be open to question as technologies improve and insights develop. Scientific knowledge is kaleidoscopic with some branches, such as medicine, rarely offering precisely the same pattern for very long.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the body that has produced the science that is driving the call for far-reaching commitments and investments in the reduction of carbon gas emissions. It is currently beleaguered. Just before the Copenhagen summit, it emerged that a UK university had been editing out results that did not fit the overall thrust of the IPCC’s argument. Now it is denying vigorously a comment by one of its scientists that much of its core data is being reviewed. It has also had to apologize for a mistaken statement that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.
The problem is not that the IPCC has made mistakes but the way in which it reacted when the errors were revealed. When an Indian glaciologist first challenged the prediction about the Himalayan ice cap, the IPCC’s boss R.K. Pachauri rounded on the luckless eminent researcher and accused him of “voodoo science.” Despite subsequently admitting the error, no apology has been forthcoming.
This really is not the way to inspire confidence in findings, which carry such heavy implications for us all. The IPCC should instead be actively encouraging any competent researchers to challenge their data. This is what good science does. Name-calling seems the defense of a scoundrel, not a scientist.
