Infallible Science?

One cornerstone of global warming alarmism is the assertion that the science and scientists of global warming are infallible. The evidence for warming has been called “unequivocal” by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Scientists who raise contrary concerns about the methodologies and conclusions of global warming science are dismissed as industry hacks and science quacks.

In the 1972 World Book Science Annual, Dr. Reid A. Bryson, Director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and Dr. John E. Ross, the Associate Director, wrote that the “most important factor in changing the climate, and the one for which man has the most responsibility, is dust… After the eruption, summers in the Northern Hemisphere were cooler than they had been in the years preceding the Krakatoa eruption.” (p. 99) Concerning warming and cooling trends, these scientists wrote, “Incidentally, the spread in temperature from an Ice Age to a no glacial world climate is only about 9 degrees F. Many glaciers have advanced since 1945. We are now nearly two-thirds of the way back to the averages of the early 1800s - a colder time than any living person can recall.” (p. 102)

According to contemporary global warming science, these and other scientists from 30 and more years ago were in error. We are told now that the most important factor is changing the climate, and for which man has the most responsibility, is carbon dioxide emissions. Why were the scientists of previous years wrong? I am willing to acknowledge that new technology and new evidence can change prior scientific conclusions.
However, the rational person must ask, “What, then, makes today’s global warming science and scientists infallible? What if there are new technologies in the making that will uncover new evidence that alters today’s scientific conclusions? If that is the case, then today’s scientists are no more infallible than yesterday’s scientists. And, if that is the case, then do we really want to enact laws and policies that will likely bankrupt us?” After all, had America and the world enacted laws and policies that institutionalized an alarmist fight against the global cooling patterns observed by scientists such as Drs. Bryson and Ross, what kind of climatological mess might we be in today?

Already the term “global warming” is being replaced by “climate change” to reflect that the actual temperatures are not matching the intensity of the scientific predictions. Yet, global warming alarmists continue to espouse that the methodologies and conclusions of their scientists are infallible and are not to be challenged. Is this the kind of thinking upon which we want to impose new laws that will radically alter our lives in ways yet to be imagined? I suggest that we give this some serious thought.