Thank you for posting this. I, too, do not agree with pronouncements that man is causing climate change (and I don’t know about you, but I have been a Democrat for life …). It saddens me that science journalists today think they are doing the world of science and society a service by basically refusing to follow up on the numerous, very specific complaints about how climate science and PhD’s are done today. The lack of real investigative journalism is what is hurting this country right now.
I think these quotes by the astronauts are poignant, in part because they have gone to space, where the vastness of space compared to the incredible thinness of our atmosphere is startlingly obvious. To think that it is us – instead of that vastness of space – which is causing these changes is really an over-estimation of our role in the universe. We cannot even yet accurately predict the solar cycle, nor explain the circulation patterns of other planets within our own solar system, nor even explain many basic features of the Sun’s observed behavior without using archaic analogies (technical terms like “bubbles”!), and yet we are to believe that these models are sufficient to pass legislation with. We have an inverse temperature enigma at the surface of the Sun which still perplexes us, and a solar “wind” which fails to appreciably decelerate even as it passes the Earth’s orbit. Neither observation should inspire confidence in our global climate models.
… And all of that within an atmosphere at our universities where graduate students are not even capable of disagreeing with that which they are told to memorize, without fear of being kicked out of these programs. The pattern of behavior is all very well documented by now in books like Disciplined Minds (by Jeff Schmidt). The investigation that should be happening is simply being passed up, it appears, because people seem to feel better about themselves when they think they are saving the world.
It goes to show that very well-intentioned people can in fact do great, great harm. Collins and Pinch were right; Science is like a Golem, an incredibly powerful – yet also clumsy – beast that vaguely lurches forward.
People, be very careful what you ask for, or demand. Please listen to the whistleblowers, instead of just dismissing them. What system of checks and balances is ensuring that competing models which CAN be created ARE being checked out?
