Science is a realm of discovery, skepticism, understanding, confirmation and challenge. But throughout history science has been polluted by political considerations.  In the Middle Ages the church considered any theory of the universe without the earth at the center heresy.

More currently science has been polluted by attempts to attach the certainty of science to the unknowable and the uncertain.  When science is hijacked to support political causes  skepticism and confirmation are treated as heresy the same as  the church condemned the heliocentric theories of the Middle Ages.

Wall Street bankers deluded themselves into thinking that the vastly complicated uncertainty of global markets and risk could be made certain with complicated mathematical formulas.  Blinded by vast sums of money they believed the ridiculous because they so wanted to. A philosophical understanding of risk was replaced with delusional mathematical certainty.

A political push to control wealth is served by the global warming/ climate change hysteria; credentialism and intelligence offers no more clarity to the future than the Gaussian Cupola Formula offered Wall Street.

That anyone could purport to know the future climate of the earth decades out with any degree of certainty defies common sense. The models offered to support such “science” are no more credible than the formulas created by the PhD quants on Wall Street who proposed to turn junk mortgages into AAA securities.

Thomas Sowell writes in the National Review

The ‘Science’ Mantra

Excerpt:

Today, politicized “science” has too big a stake in the global warming hysteria to let the facts speak for themselves and let the chips fall where they may. Too many people – in politics and in the media, as well as among those climate scientists who are promoting global warming hysteria – let the raw data on which their calculations have been based fall into the “wrong hands.”

People who talk about the corrupting influence of money seem to automatically assume that it is only private money that is corrupting. But, when governments have billions of dollars invested in the global-warming crusade, massive programs are underway, and whole political careers are at risk if that crusade gets undermined, do not expect the disinterested search for truth.

Among the intelligentsia, there have always been many who are ready to jump on virtually any bandwagon that will take them to the promised land, where the wise and noble few – like themselves – can take the rest of us poor dummies in hand and tell us how we had better change the way we live our lives.

No doubt some climate scientists honestly believe that global warming poses a threat. But other climate scientists honestly believe the opposite. That is why the raw data have had to be destroyed before the latter get their hands on it.

This is tragically the case as regards many other issues, besides global warming, where data are made available only to the true believers and kept out of the hands of those who think otherwise.

When climatologists such as John Coleman debunk AGW, the believers contest that he is not the right kind of scientist to dispute the “science”.  He is after all “just a weatherman”.

Al Gore is certainly no scientist and has less credentials than John Coleman on the subject.  Yet he is considered an authority on the subject by the believers. The “science” is debatable; the “certainty” is disturbing. Gore has consistently refused to debate the issue. “The debate is over” is certainly not the language of science. Nor is treating skeptics like heretics.

Climate Gate has shown that even “scientists” can be biased by the influence of money.  For every “scientist” that supports AGW there is a “scientist” debunking it.

The greater fallacies in the AGW argument are fallacies of logic, not science.  The idea of certainty in such a hugely uncertain and massive realm just defies common sense.

Science welcomes skepticism, religions generally do not.

It is hard not to gloat and feel some sense of relief at the release of the climate-gate e-mails.

The most bothersome aspect of the global warming mongers was the certainty.  I have no scientific back ground, but the idea that any group of scientists can pretend to know with any degree of certainty the cause and future of global temperatures just always seemed ridiculous.

Just as Wall Street caused a financial fiasco by refusing to recognize the unknown unknowns in the global financial market, climate scientists have refused to recognize their limits and have arrogantly claimed to know the unknowable.

Yet there were many scientists out there who for years have raised questions about the claims of global warming. Their professionalism was brought into question because they were not the politically recognized source. Using the word ‘denier’ to describe the skeptics made them seem like wingnuts akin to a holocaust ‘denier’.

The use of religious language to characterize the debate diminished any scientific credibility. It became clear that the science became secondary, the promoters of the theory wanted to believe it. It gave them a sense of comfort, a way to expunge their guilt.  Even the demonization of the skeptics seemed religious.

We spoke of using this problem to unite mankind in a common goal. This is not the language of science. Like a religion belief may be very resistant to any facts. The release of these e-mails is a critical tipping point in the debate and now the believers of global warming theory will be on the defensive.

We refused to believe that scientists could be corrupted by money. When money is thrown at one side of the debate we should expect information to lean toward that side, but we should question its credibility.

And yet again we see a compliant media more willing to confirm their own beliefs than to ask intelligent questions.

It is our nature to accept lies that give us comfort and certainty.  That is why the truth is so difficult for many to accept, much less work to uncover.  We owe a debt of gratitude to those who leaked the e-mails.

I would even nominate them for a Nobel Prize.

Bjorn Lomborg is an economist who writes on global warming.  He acknowledges that the global warming exists, but he doubts the severity of the problem and the potential for success from many of the misguided policies being proposed.

In the 8/28/09 Wall Street Journal Lomborg  notes in “Technology Can Fight Global Warming” that there are many much less costly solutions to the problem than onerous policies that restrict growth and seem nearly politically impossible.  Increase planting of trees, for example,  would absorb expelled CO2.

More intriguing is a proposal from J. Eric Bickel and Lee lane to have boats spray seawater into clouds above the ocean reflecting more sunlight back into space.  While costing billions it would seem small compared to the costs of the growth killing government proposals.  Similar proposals have been made to lighten the color of our asphalt and roof tiles to reduce heat absorption.

While these proposals are questionable the idea of seeking better and more cost effective solution in applications of technology rather than in cumbersome and destructive government policies is worthy of strong consideration if we can extract political ideology from the science.