Millions to hundreds of millions of years ― The solar system's transit of the galactic spiral arms, causing variation in overall cosmic ray intensity. This variability regulates the cycles of ice ages and hot-house periods.
Add to these cyclic climate factors the complex interactions within Earth's atmosphere—including the effect of greenhouse warming, regulation of the carbon cycle by Earth's biota and active volcanism—the complexity of the heat engine that is Earth's climate is placed into perspective. Further complexity is added to the chore of deciphering the mechanisms of climate regulation by the slow movement of the continents. The constant rearrangement of Earth's land and oceans is reflected in changes in atmospheric circulation. It is as though Earth's climate system is constantly being re-designed, making understanding its structure even more difficult. No wonder climatologists cling to the relatively simple explanation that CO2 is responsible for recent climate change.
This chapter on cosmic rays completes our survey of the science underlying climate change. As we have seen there are may different factors involved and several competing explanations that do not get mentioned in the publicly presented case for human-caused global warming. We need to return to our examination of the IPCC's case for human-caused global warming. But, before we do that, we need to take a look at the way science itself works. To understand how so many people can be lured into supporting the IPCC's simplistic explanation of global warming requires an understanding of the scientific method and scientists themselves.
How Science Works
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That's funny...’”
— Isaac Asimov
As great as the impact of science has been on the lives of human beings, it still remains a mystery to the average person. Scientists are partly to blame for this sad state of affairs, failing to communicate the results of their work in ways that non-scientists can understand. The public's perception of scientists has never been accurate and it certainly hasn't been helped by the popular media. Scientists are portrayed as intelligent bumblers, like the “Doc” in Back To The Future; cold, emotionless automatons like “Mr. Spock” on Star Trek; or crazed, power-mad villains like “Doctor Octopus” of Spider Man fame.
The simple truth is that scientists are just normal people, like every one else on the planet. They have the same range of personalities, the same strengths and weaknesses as other human beings. They can be stubborn, willful and prideful. Because they possess a great deal of intimate knowledge about a particular area of scientific inquiry, they often think they know more than they do in other areas as well. This is usually not the case.
Though trained to be objective, careful observers, scientists can be as easy to fool as non-scientists. James “The Amazing” Randi, a well-known magician and debunker of paranormal claims, has said that scientists are easy to fool because they are trained to observe nature, and nature doesn't lie.366 Similarly, scientists can be as vulnerable to falsehoods hyped by the media, and accepted as “common knowledge,” as non-scientists. These normal human tendencies are not expected in scientists, but they are present just the same. Ask scientists who may not be familiar with climatological study at all, what they think about “global warming” and they are apt to repeat the same stories presented in the media.
This is not to say that scientists are untrustworthy, foolish or deluded—just that they are human. When scientists are asked a question about a field that they have studied, they will usually provide as honest and accurate an answer as they can. But scientists are cautious, and it can be notoriously hard to get a simple answer from them. Sometimes, you need a translator to understand that the answer is really, “I don't know.”
If scientists have the same weaknesses that normal people have, what does it mean to be a scientist? How can we interpret what science has to say about hard, complicated subjects like climate change and global warming? Where did science come from in the first place? To answer these questions, we will again start with a bit of history.
The Invention of Science
Science is usually traced back to the ancient Greeks, in particular, the early Greek mathematicians and philosophers of nature. This is because their writings have been preserved and passed down, forming the basis of the western scientific tradition. But science and invention was not restricted to the Greeks or Europeans. Printing, the magnetic compass and gunpowder weapons were all Chinese in origin. We have already mentioned the history of detailed astronomical observation in pre-European Meso-America. India, Persia, and Mesopotamia all have rich traditions of early scientific inquiry. But it was science in the western tradition that fueled the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, so we will start our story where western science started, Ancient Greece.
Archimedes of Syracuse was the greatest mathematician of his age. His contributions to geometry revolutionized the subject and his methods anticipated integral calculus 2,000 years before Newton and Leibniz. He was also a thoroughly practical man who invented a wide variety of machines including pulleys, cranes and other ingenious devices.
Archimedes was born in 287 BC in the Greek city state of Syracuse, on the island of Sicily. His father was Phidias, an astronomer. We know nothing else about Phidias other than this one fact stated in Archimedes' book, The Sandreckoner.
When he was a young man, it is thought that Archimedes visited Egypt and studied with the successors of Euclid in Alexandria. Later in life, he often sent his results to the mathematicians working in Alexandria with personal messages attached. While he was in Egypt, he invented a device known as Archimedes' screw. This is a device with a revolving screw-shaped blade inside a cylinder for pumping water. It is still used in many parts of the world today. It was this practical side of Archimedes that distinguished him from many Greek mathematicians and philosophers of his day.
Illustration 116: Archimedes of Syracuse (287 BC-212 BC).
Unlike philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, Archimedes didn't just think up theories to explain the natural world, he actually conducted experiments to test his ideas. It was his willingness to experiment that made Archimedes the forerunner of modern day scientists. His talent for solving practical problems also led to the most repeated story told about him. It involved a crown of gold made for his friend and relative, Hieron, the ruler of Syracuse.
According to the Roman historian, Vesuvius, a new crown had been made for King Hieron in the shape of a laurel wreath. Archimedes was asked to determine whether it was of solid gold, or whether other metals had been added by a dishonest goldsmith. Archimedes knew the density of the crown would be lower if cheaper and less dense metals had been added. The simplest solution would have been to melt it down and measure its density, but he had to solve the problem without damaging the crown. While taking a bath, he noticed that the level of the water rose as he got in. He realized that this effect could be used to determine the volume of the crown, and therefore its density after weighing it. So excited by his discovery that he forgot to dress, Archimedes took to the streets naked, crying “Eureka!” —“I found it!”
The story about the golden crown does not appear in the known works of Archimedes, but in his treatise, On Floating Bodies, he described the law of buoyancy, known in hydrostatics as Archimedes' Principle. This states that a body immersed in a fluid experiences a buoyant force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid.
Archimedes died in 212 BC during the Second Punic War, when Roman forces under General Marcus Claudius Marcellus captured Syracuse after a siege that lasted more than two years. Plutarch, in his Parallel Lives, gives the popular account of Archimedes' death. Supposedly, Archimedes was contemplating a mathematical diagram when the city was captured. A Roman soldier commanded him to come and meet General Marcellus, but he declined, saying that he had to finish working on the problem. Despite orders from Marcellus that Archimedes not be harmed, the enraged soldier killed the elderly mathem
atician with his sword.
Illustration 117: Archimedes' screw. Source Chambers's Encyclopedia, 1875.
Ancient Roman historians wrote several biographies about Archimedes' life and works. Unfortunately, only a few copies of Archimedes' own writings survived through the Middle Ages. Those that did were an influential source of ideas for scientists during the Renaissance and Enlightenment. But before the Enlightenment swept over Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, bringing with it the Scientific Revolution, there were many dark times. In the backward lands of Europe following the fall of the Roman Empire, one shining light was a Franciscan Friar named Roger Bacon.
Roger Bacon, also known as Doctor Mirabilis (Latin for “wonderful teacher”), was the most famous cleric of his time. An English philosopher, who placed considerable emphasis on empiricism, he was one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method. He is often considered a modern experimental scientist who emerged 500 years before the Scientific Revolution burst upon the European mind.
Bacon is thought to have been born near Ilchester in Somerset, though he has also been claimed by Bisley in Gloucestershire. His date of birth is uncertain, the only source of information being his statement in the Opus Tertium, written in 1267. In it, he wrote that forty years had passed since he first learned the alphabet. It is generally assumed that this meant 40 years had passed since he matriculated at Oxford at the age of 13, placing his birth around 1214. His family was wealthy, but his parents sided with Henry III against the rebellious English barons and lost nearly all their property. Several members of the family were driven into exile.
Roger pursued his studies at Oxford and Paris, and later became a professor at Oxford. There is no evidence he was ever awarded a doctorate—the title Doctor Mirabilis was bestowed by scholars after his death. His thinking was greatly influenced by his Oxonian masters and friends. Their influence created in him a predilection for languages, physics and the natural sciences. Bacon became an early advocate of experimental science, in an age generally thought to be hostile toward scientific ideas. Later, in Paris, he met the Franciscan Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt, whose influence led to Bacon entering the Franciscan Order.
In 1256, he became a Franciscan Friar hoping to be assigned to a teaching post, but this was not to be. Instead, his superiors imposed other duties on him. A restless spirit, he was often in trouble with church authorities for his theological writings. In 1260, the Franciscan Order forbade him to publish any work outside of the order without special permission from higher authorities “under pain of losing the book and of fasting several days with only bread and water.”367 Despite these restraints, Bacon managed to leave behind a remarkable legacy of independent thought and inquiry.
Bacon possessed one of the most commanding intellects of his age and made many discoveries. He performed many varied experiments, which were among the earliest instances of true experimental science. His Opus Majus contains treatments of mathematics, optics, alchemy, the manufacture of gunpowder, and the positions and sizes of the celestial bodies. In it, he anticipated such modern inventions as microscopes, telescopes, spectacles, flying machines, hydraulics and steam ships.
But Bacon was also a man of his time, not totally immune to the superstition and mysticism of the day. He studied astrology and believed that celestial bodies had an influence on the fate and personalities of human beings. Even so, he made discoveries that anticipated those later made by the giants of the Scientific Revolution. It was Bacon who first reported the visible spectrum of light created by a glass of water, four centuries before Isaac Newton discovered that a prism could split white light into a rainbow of colors. Reportedly, he planned to publish a comprehensive encyclopedia, but only fragments ever appeared.
Bacon is thought to have died around 1294, but the date of his death is as uncertain as the date of his birth. Two years before his death, he composed his Compendium Studii Theologiæ, where he set forth a last scientific confession of faith. In it, he described the ideas and principles which had driven him during his long life. According to historian Theophilus Witzel: “he had nothing to revoke, nothing to change.”368
When asked about the origins of modern science, many people recall the leaders of the Scientific Revolution: Galileo, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton or, going back at bit further, Nicolaus Copernicus or even Leonardo da Vinci. But it was from early experimentalist like Archimedes and Bacon, that modern science evolved. As Isaac Newton put it, “If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants.”369 Generations of natural philosophers gradually came to reject supernatural influences and magical explanations of the natural world. Eventually, astrology and alchemy would become astronomy and chemistry, casting off their mystical past and embracing what has come to be known as the scientific method.
The Scientific Method
According to the Miriam-Webster dictionary, the scientific method consists of “principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.” Or, as more succinctly put by Meg Urry, “Scientists observe nature, then develop theories that describe their observations.”
The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating natural phenomena and acquiring new knowledge. It also provides mechanisms for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. The scientific method is based on gathering empirical evidence. This is accomplished by collecting data through observation, experimentation, and the testing of hypotheses. Empirical means simply what belongs to or is the product of experience or observation. The Science Fair Handbook puts it this way: “The scientific method involves the following steps: doing research, identifying the problem, stating a hypothesis, conducting project experimentation, and reaching a conclusion.”370
The advantage of the scientific method is that, if followed faithfully, it is unprejudiced. An hypothesis can be tested through experiment and its validity determined. The conclusions must hold regardless of the state of mind, or bias of the investigator. In fact, the cornerstone of modern science is the testability of theories. This means that a theory must make predictions about the way the physical universe behaves, so that it may be tested by investigators other than the theory's author.
The dual requirements of testability and empirical evidence disqualify mystical or religious arguments from scientific consideration. Such arguments are based on forces outside of nature, and science is only concerned with the natural world. You cannot test or measure God, so attributing some phenomenon to an act of God is not a scientific theory.
Religious truth is revealed to individuals, and must be taken on faith by others. Scientific knowledge is discovered through observation, and can be tested through experiments repeatable by anyone. Some religions are based on secret or hidden knowledge371 that must be accepted without proof, science is based on shared knowledge open to question. Religion requires acceptance of that which is unseen (see Hebrews 11 for an example), science is based only on that which can be observed. But, this does not mean that religion and science need to be in opposition.
Religion answers questions that science cannot, science answers questions that religion should not. Just as religious teachings cannot be viewed as a valid source of scientific knowledge, science has no authority in spiritual or ethical realms. Science is the study of nature and nature is neither moral nor immoral. Nature, at best, can be viewed as amoral, and even that is dangerously close to viewing nature as a sentient being. It is not.
Nature is a collection of physical processes, possessing no intelligence, no conscience, and no moral compass. Nature does not mourn the passing of a single creature or the extinction of entire species. There is nothing in nature that provides a scientific foundation for morality, though some have sought one. Galileo is credited with saying that religion “tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” The o
pposite also holds true, science does not provide moral guidance or satisfy the human longing for an underlying meaning to existence. Religion is religion, science is science and the two should never be confused.
Hypotheses, Theses and Laws
Scientific explanations are known by a number of different names. An initial scientific idea is called a working hypothesis, which consists of a brief statement of the explanation. After testing by experiment, an hypothesis that proves to be accurate becomes a theory. Sometimes theories pull together a number of hypotheses into a single, larger explanation. There is a great deal of misunderstanding about what scientists mean when something is called a theory.
Often, people will dismiss a scientific idea by saying “it's just a theory,” as though a theory is just someone's opinion or something made up on a whim. This could not be more wrong. To be accepted as a scientific theory means that the ideas expressed have been examined and tested by many scientists, not just the one who first proposed it. Theories that have endured the test of time come as close to “fact” or “truth” as anything known to science. Scientists tend to shy away from absolute terms like fact and truth, because they would give the impression that a particular theory is absolute and never subject to change. In science, nothing is above challenge or immune to modification. When a theory has survived for several hundred years, and its author has departed this life, it may be elevated to being a law—but in science, even a law is subject to change.
This is not to say that old, well-established theories are often discarded. As new information becomes available, old theories often remain valid, but the regions over which they are valid become more narrowly defined. For example, Newton's laws of motion were not “overthrown” by Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Instead, it was recognized that Newton's laws were limited to objects traveling at velocities much less than the velocity of light.
The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity Page 23