In this way, the accumulated body of knowledge that is science continues to grow. New, better theories replace or supplement older ones. But always new theories must be in agreement with others that are accepted as valid. A new idea cannot contradict a large volume of accepted theory. Not because the weight of the old theories makes them inviolate, but because the new theory would have to offer satisfactory explanations of all the things the old theories had explained. As Marcello Truzzi372 put it, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”
Regardless of the field of inquiry, the process of investigation must be objective in order to reduce biased interpretations of results. Another basic expectation is that scientists document their work and share all data and methodology with other scientists. This is to allow other researchers to verify experimental results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called “full disclosure,” also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established. It was lack of full disclosure by Mann, et al, that initially led to the flap over the “hockey stick” temperature graph promoted by the IPCC.
The Aha! Moment
Scientists' challenge is to create new theories, based on observation, that build on and are in general agreement with the existing body of scientific knowledge. In pursuit of this goal, scientists spend many years studying and learning to do research. In the American academic system, the highest degree granted is Doctor of Philosophy, or PhD, from the Latin Philosophiæ Doctor, meaning “teacher of philosophy.” Though requirements vary, a PhD candidate must submit a thesis or dissertation consisting of a suitable body of original academic research. This work must be deemed worthy of publication after peer-review, and the candidate must defend the work before a panel of expert examiners appointed by the university.
Often there is coursework associated with getting the degree, but not always. If all a student desires is mastery of a particular field there is a lesser degree, the Masters degree, that can be earned with significantly lower investment of time and effort. What the Doctorate degree signifies is not mastery of a particular area of study, that is assumed, but a demonstration that the candidate can do scientific research. To earn a Doctorate an aspiring new scientist must be able to frame an hypothesis, construct experiments to demonstrate its soundness, and finally, defend his work before scientific peers. A PhD in a scientific discipline signifies that one has learned, and is a practitioner of, the scientific method.
After the years of preparation, hard work and testing, that a scientist in training is subjected to, it might be assumed that life becomes easier after earning the title Doctor. This is not the case. A working scientist will continue to formulate new hypotheses, do research, and publish papers that are reviewed by peers. Given the training and work environment, the volume of knowledge to be mastered and the rigors of the scientific method, it is easy to assume that scientists are logical, methodical individuals. This implies that the moment of discovery in science is arrived at in a slow, methodical way. More often than not, the exact opposite is true.
We began this chapter with a quote from Isaac Asimov373 that made reference to Archimedes exclamation, “Eureka!” What Asimov meant was that, despite careful planning and experiment, it is often the unexpected, unanticipated result that brings scientific insight. Accidental discoveries have always played an important role in science.
Sir Horace Walpole374 coined the term Serendipity for such accidental discoveries. In 1754, he wrote a letter to a friend, Sir Horace Mann, describing a story that had made a profound impression on his life. The story was a “silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip; ... as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.” 375 Serendip was an old name for Ceylon, nowadays called Sri Lanka, but then a mysterious island in the East. The tale described the fate of three princes who left their home to travel the world seeking great treasures. They rarely found the treasures they were looking for, but discovered others of equal or greater value, which they were not seeking.376
More than a century ago, Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind.” By this, he meant that sudden flashes of insight don't just happen, but are the product of careful preparation. Pasteur was a master of experimental research. Though he wasn't greatly interested in theory, he made many important discoveries through careful observation. Pasteur didn't always know what he was looking for, but he was capable of recognizing something important when it occurred.
The lesson in all of these observations is that scientists should be as prepared as possible when investigating nature, but above all, they must keep an open mind. Deep insights can occur at the most unexpected times. Archimedes had such a moment when he discovered the Archimedes Principle in his bath. Herschel must have thought “that's funny” when his thermometer unexpectedly registered increasing temperature even though placed outside of the visible spectrum of light. Moments of sudden insight are often called “Aha!” moments.
An “Aha!” moment occurs when a key concept, mechanism, or relationship suddenly comes into focus. It is the moment that scientists hope for all their professional careers—clear thoughts crystallize in “Aha!” moments. Often, scientists aren't even sure what they are looking for, as in the case of Pasteur, or as Wernher von Braun said, “Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.”
Luigi Galvani discovered the true nature of the nervous system when an accident in his laboratory made a dead frog's legs twitch. Based on the serendipitous observations by Galvani, Alessandro Volta designed the first modern electric battery in 1800. Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity (page 184), Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto on the basis of Lowell's flawed calculations, and Fleming's discovery of penicillin when it contaminated a bacterial culture are only a few of the unexpected discoveries that have changed science.
To be able to benefit from an unexpected discovery, from serendipity, a scientist must be prepared to accept change. Experiments do not always yield the expected results, and theories must sometimes be modified or discarded when the universe reveals its true nature. Just as Luis and Walter Alvarez recognized the importance of the unexpectedly high concentration of iridium at the KT boundary, new discoveries constantly arise to challenge scientific dogma. Unfortunately, even correct new theories are seldom easily accepted.
Accepting New Ideas
In many chapters of this book, we have presented the stories of scientists and their discoveries. Though we hope the stories of Cuvier, Agassiz, Wegener, Milankovitch, the Alvarezs and all the rest have been entertaining, we had a deeper purpose for describing their labors. There is a common theme to the stories of discovery we chose to present, and that theme is how difficult it can be to overcome weak, erroneous, but commonly accepted theories.
Cuvier fought religiously inspired dogma by claiming species went extinct. It took Agassiz's theory of ice ages thirty years to overcome resistance and be accepted by the geological establishment. Wegener did not live to see his theory of continental drift proven. Both Croll and Milankovitch witnessed the initial, tentative acceptance of orbital cycles' influence on climate, only to see their theories fall out of favor. Neither lived to see the ultimate acceptance of the Croll-Milankovitch Cycles as the main driver of glacial-interglacial variation. It is hard to unseat accepted theory, compelling proof must be provided—that is the scientific way. In all of the cases presented, final acceptance depended on experimental proof of the physical mechanisms underlying the theory. This is how it should be, even if the proof takes more than a lifetime to arrive.
What is necessary for a new theory to supplant an existing one is for the new explanation to be more compelling than the old. More accurate, more demonstrable, more straightforward than the old theory. In short, the old theory must be unable to provide as good an explanation as the new one. Sometimes, as mentioned earlier, the new theory adds to the old—extending, refining or augmenting i
ts predictions. Other times, the new theory is simpler, more elegant than the old.
Illustration 118: William of Ockham (1288-1348).
In science, there is a principle known as Ockham's Razor, named after William of Ockham, a fourteenth century English monk and philosopher. Also called the law of economy, or law of parsimony, the way Ockham stated it was “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate,” Latin for “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” Today, some translate this into “keep it simple, stupid,” or the KISS principle. But that is an over-simplification of Ockham's rather subtle rule for judging ideas.
Suppose there are two competing theories which describe the same phenomenon? If these theories produce different predictions, it is a relatively simple matter to find which one is better. Experiments are performed to determine which theory gives the most accurate predictions. For example, Copernicus' theory said the planets move in circles around the Sun, in Kepler's theory they move in ellipses. By carefully measuring the path of the planets it was determined that they move in ellipses—Copernicus' theory was then replaced by Kepler's.
Sometimes things are not so clear cut. The adoption of Kepler's theory of elliptical orbits was really just an improvement on Copernicus' theory. The initial adoption of Copernicus' theory was a much more radical change. It was not the shape of orbits that formed the central idea of that theory—it was what was at the center.
Illustration 119: Ptolemy's heliocentric model of the Universe.
Before Copernicus, the widely held view of the cosmos was that described by Ptolemy377 more than 1,400 years earlier. The Ptolemaic universe placed Earth in the center with the Sun, the planets and the stars traveling around it. His geocentric planetary system represented the universe as a set of nested spheres, with heavenly bodies embedded in the spheres. But the observed motion of some of the objects could not be represented by simple circular orbits around Earth.
For instance, the path of Mars across the sky doesn't progress in a single smooth ark. Its motion can be seen to stop, reverse course for a time, and then resume its forward progress. This retrograde motion cannot be reconciled with simple circular orbits in an Earth centric system. A more complicated model is needed and Ptolemy's solution was ingenious. It was possible to approximate the planets' observed motion by having them travel on smaller circular paths, called epicycles, imposed on top of the main orbit. Apply enough additional circles and you can come arbitrarily close to the observed path.
Copernicus took a more radical approach. He placed the Sun at the center, with all the other heavenly bodies, including Earth, orbiting it. This accounted for the observed apparent motion of the planets using simple circular orbits. No complicated epicycles were needed. Under these conditions, Ockham's Razor allows us to decide which theory is best. The circles within circles theory is much more complicated than the heliocentric theory, so Copernicus wins. All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one.
Kepler's modification improved on Copernicus' original idea, making the orbits more accurate with only a modest increase in complexity. As Einstein said in his version of Ockham's Razor, “So einfach wie möglich und so kompliziert wie nötig,” or “As simple as possible and as complicated as necessary.” This criteria for judging competing theories is widely accepted in modern science.
Karl Popper378 argued that preferring simple theories does not need to be justified on practical or aesthetic grounds. Simpler theories are preferred to more complex ones “because their empirical content is greater; and because they are better testable.”379 Popper called this the falsifiability criterion: A simple theory applies to more cases than a more complex one, and is thus more easily refuted.
In light of these principles, when the CO2 theory of climate change is examined, it is found wanting. We have shown that known mechanisms involving greenhouse warming do not account for the amount of temperature increase the IPCC's climate scientists attribute to it. The total amount of warming is not in dispute, but the magnitude of carbon dioxide's contribution is questionable. The IPCC's case fails to correctly account for all the physical observations.
The second failing of the IPCC theory is that, in order to account for the observed warming, a number of assumptions about feedback mechanisms must be made. These assumptions are not supported by experimental data or observations, yet they are included in the GCM, the computer models on which the IPCC's case rests. Because of this added baggage, the IPCC theory of human-caused global warming fails Ockham's Razor. They have multiplied their entities unnecessarily—in this case, assumptions about climatic feedback—instead of searching for more fundamental explanations for the observed temperature rise.
A huge question remains—why the climatological establishment has not looked further afield for better explanations for global warming? As we have shown in the previous two chapters, theories have been proposed by astrophysics that offer explanations for much of the warming. When taken into account, these theories reduce the amount of warming attributable to CO2 to empirically supportable levels. Yes, humans are causing some global warming by way of greenhouse gas emissions, but the levels are much lower than those proclaimed by the IPCC reports.
Even though their existing theory is weak, climatologists cling to the belief that their computer models can accurately predict the future. Their resistance to change is similar to that faced by Agassiz, Wegener, and Alvarez. This resistance is strengthened by the fact that the proponents of change are from outside of the insular climatological community. Just as Agassiz, known for working on fossil fish, was an outsider to geologists when he proposed his ice age theory, and Wegener, a meteorologist, was an outsider when he proposed continental drift. The Alvarezs—one a physicist and the other a geologist—were outsiders to paleontology when they declared that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs. Today, climatological dogma is being challenged by outsiders.
In the words of American philosopher Charles S. Peirce, “Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else. On the contrary, we cling tenaciously, not merely to believing, but to believing just what we do believe.”380 It is human nature to resist change. To accept change and embrace a new theory requires what Thomas Kuhn381 called a paradigm shift.
The term paradigm shift was first used by Kuhn in his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, to describe a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theories of science. It is more than simply changing your mind. It is more like a revolution, a sudden transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. Paradigm shifts do not just happen, but rather must be driven by agents of change. Agents in the form of determined, stubborn scientists who believe they have found better solutions than the current ones. This situation is absolutely normal for science. What is abnormal, and deeply harmful, is that the course of scientific debate has been warped by being catapulted onto the world political stage by the IPCC.
Why Consensus is Meaningless
The most commonly heard argument during public debate of the global warming question is “there is scientific consensus” agreeing with the IPCC's conclusions. This is an example of what logicians call argumentum ad verecundiam, Latin for “argument from authority.” Logically, this is a fallacy because the validity of a claim does not follow from the credibility of the source. Nonetheless, this type of weak argument is used all the time in advertising (e.g. “Four out of five doctors recommend...”). In simple terms, it means “all these smart people say it's true, so it is.”
In science, theories are strengthened when other parties can repeat an experiment providing evidence that the theory's predictions are accurate. This helps validate the theory's correctness. But, outside of providing specific empirical data or experimental verification, asking scientists what they think is just an opinion poll.
It may be hard
to understand why asking a large group of experts their opinion is an unreliable way of deciding a question. Recall the examples of scientific discovery cited in the preceding chapters. In almost all of those episodes, scientists had to fight existing opinion, the consensus of the time, to get their new theories accepted. Here are some past examples of scientific consensus:
Consensus said the Sun, the planets and the stars orbited Earth, which was the unmoving center of the universe.
Consensus said Earth was no more than 10,000 years old.
Consensus said no animal species had ever gone extinct.
Consensus said that masses of glacial ice could not have covered Europe or other temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere.
Consensus said that the continents were fixed in rock and could not move.
Consensus said changes in Earth's orbit could not affect climate.
Consensus said that the planet and its creatures were only changed by slow gradual processes, an asteroid could not have killed off the dinosaurs.
And now, in the absence of solid, definitive proof, consensus says that people are causing dangerous global warming. More specifically, that rising CO2 levels are going to cause an unprecedented temperature rise that will threaten all Earth's creatures. As we have shown, the theory is uncertain, incomplete and far from definitive. Every day, new criticisms of existing climate orthodoxy arise yet claims of consensus are widespread. Many scientists are not in agreement with the IPCC's public pronouncements but, for some reason, the proponents of human-caused global warming find it important to claim unanimity exists within the scientific community.
The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity Page 24