Melting Glaciers?
Recently, Mark Steyn, a commentator known for incisive observations about culture and politics from a conservative point of view, wrote a very good article about global warming/climate change. In it he discusses the turmoil that has erupted over the scientific research upon which those who insist that global warming is an immanent threat to our planet base their conclusions. Steyn traces the route that one specific “scientific” conclusion followed in the process of becoming a consensus: the claim by the institutions as disparate as NASA and the UN Environment Programme, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the World Wildlife Fund, and the respected magazine the New Scientist that the glaciers of the Himalayas would completely disappear by 2035 due to global warming.
Steyn asks, “But where did all these experts get the data [upon which they based their consensus conclusions] from?”
“Well, NASA’s assertion that Himalayan glaciers “may disappear altogether” by 2030 rests on one footnote, citing the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report from 2007.
In fact, the Fourth Assessment Report suggests 2035 as the likely arrival of Armageddon. . . They rate the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing as “very high”—i.e., more than 90 per cent. And the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for that report, so it must be kosher, right? Well, yes, its Himalayan claims rest on a 2005 World Wildlife Fund report called “An Overview of Glaciers.”
WWF? Aren’t they something to do with pandas and the Duke of Edinburgh? True. But they wouldn’t be saying this stuff if they hadn’t got the science nailed down, would they? The WWF report relies on an article published in the New Scientist in 1999 by Fred Pearce.
That’s it? One article from 12 years ago in a pop-science mag? Oh, but don’t worry, back in 1999 Fred did a quickie telephone interview with a chap called Syed Hasnain of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. And this Syed Hasnain cove presumably knows a thing or two about glaciers.
Well, yes. But he now says he was just idly “speculating”; he didn’t do any research or anything like that.
What struck me in reading this article was the incredible propensity for “group think” to take over among a group of scientists who were supposedly pursuing in a dispassionate manner empirically verifiable facts for the purpose of establishing the best possible understanding of what is actually going on when it comes to the future of the planet.
I am not taking sides here in the climate change debate, but am suggesting an even more controversial possibility: that science, because it is practiced by scientists, who are human beings prone to prejudices and peer-pressure, should not be held in any sort of unassailable esteem. Of course, science is responsible for many, many, many (enough manys?) advances that have made life on planet earth far more tolerable and significantly delivered from the state of existence described by Thomas Hobbs in the sixteenth century: “The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” So, we owe much to the scientists.
However, Christians should remember that while we may owe scientists much, we do not owe them unquestioning fealty in all their pronouncements. This is what the article of Steyn caused me to ponder anew. For instance, in the case of neo-Darwinian evolution and the “naturalism” (the belief that there is an adequate natural explanation for the existence of the universe and all of life) that drives it, the consensus that is touted as unassailable fact is not, in fact, FACT. It is a theory that offers an interpretation of empirical data. Strangely, however, when someone such as the Intelligent Design theorists (many of whom are scientists) offer an interpretation of the data that has an operative inference (key word) that the best explanation for the nature of life and the universe that supports it is an “intelligent designer, the beratting begins. The neo-Darwinians yell that the ID people have transgressed, by the assertion of an inference to the data, the very nature of the scientific method itself. Never mind that ID at least offers an explanation for the “how” question, that for some of the data is yet to be explained by neo-Darwinian naturalism.
Perhaps there is a “group think” going on, not entirely unlike that pointed to in Mark Steyn’s article. This possiblity does not mean we should dismiss evolutionary science altogether and embrace automatically a literalistic reading of Genesis. It does, however, provide one more reason that Christians should cease to feel defensive anytime a “naturalist” opines about the origin of the universe. Be informed, be thoughtful, be intelligent and be a confident believer.
Tags: Christian apologetics, evolution, global warming, Intelligent Design, Science