Ron Smith: Scholarship and the 'end of days'

Over all of the last week, the airwaves and print media have been telling us that humanity faces an unprecedented challenge due to the increasing use of fossil-fuels.  The carbon dioxide produced by these carbon-containing materials is progressively accumulating in the atmosphere, where it causes the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’.  The inescapable consequence of this is destructive sea-level rise, an increasing incidence of weather calamities (hurricanes and floods), and particularly a rapid increase in average global temperatures.  

All this from the Secretary General of the United Nations, an internationally-celebrated railway engineer (Dr Pachauri), and numerous experts from home and abroad.  Interestingly, these experts did not include anybody who had any contrary opinion on the thesis as a whole, or on any particular claim.

The crucial question to ask about this most recent spate of claims about imminent climatic disaster is whether it is to be taken as an essentially scientific claim about how things are, or, rather, whether it simply reflects an essentially middle-class liberal unease, about the consequences of human civilisation on the global environment, which has coalesced into a political movement. 


Concern about the impact of technology on human society is at least as old as the onset of the industrial revolution.  More generally, claims of impending social doom are equally familiar, as are the political activists who proclaim the end of life as we know it - ‘the end of days’.

As far as whether the collection of propositions is science is concerned, there is a straight-forward test for this.  As the philosopher, Karl Popper, pointed out more than fifty years ago, the essence of science is that its hypotheses are, in principle, falsifiable.  Science makes predictions and these are checked against how the ‘world’ behaves.  If the world conforms, the theory is vindicated.  If it does not, its veracity is challenged.  This is the situation of the central thesis of (human-induced) climate change.  Following the third report (which contained the infamous hockey-stick diagram), the fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted (‘with 90% confidence’) that global temperatures would rise by anything from 3 to 6 degrees by the end of the present century.  In fact, average temperatures have not risen at all over the last eighteen years and there is nothing about recent trends that suggests it will.  To be sure, global temperatures rose over the period 1980 to 2000 (by almost half a degree).  On the other hand temperatures fell by 0.3 over 1940 to 1980.  Towards the end of that period, some scientists were worried that the earth might enter another ‘little ice-age’ like that of the sixteenth/seventeenth century.  Over all this period (1940-2000) levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide from human activity were steadily rising.  This calls into question the other central thesis of ‘global warming’ that it is directly related to variations in carbon dioxide levels.  One might also add that higher ambient carbon dioxide levels are not necessarily a bad thing.  Carbon dioxide is an essential plant food and raising its level is what is routinely done in greenhouses, anyway.

Similar doubts arise if we look at temperature variations over longer time periods.  The earth was warmer a thousand years ago than it is now and, whatever else may be the explanation, it is clear that the ‘medieval warm period’ was not due to human industrial activity.  As I noted in an earlier blog (April, 2013), it was also warmer than it is now 2000 years ago.  They grew grapes at Hadrian’s Wall.  Given these facts (and plenty of others that could be adduced), it is hard to have anything like 90% confidence in the deliverances of the IPCC.  It is clear that the anthropogenic global warming thesis is inadequately supported by the facts and that conclusion also applies to auxiliary theses about the incidence of extreme weather events and concern about rising sea-level.  In both of these cases, there is scientifically respectable data which challenges the oft repeated claims.  Adelaide University, for example, has been collecting data in a technically sophisticated way for the Australian government on sea-level trends in the Pacific, for some decades.  No dramatic increases have been reported.

So why has none of this played any part in the recent public debate?  The explanation turns, in part at least, on dominant group think.  I wrote about this in my very first blog (‘The Tyranny of Fadism, September 2008).  People are afraid of saying something that others might ridicule them for (or which might jeopardise their employment).  Media persons are afraid that others might mock them if they invite comment that seems to suggest that the ‘king is actually naked’.  There is also the fact that persons in a position to influence these things may have their own agenda.  Former Canadian Minister of the Environment Christine Stewart is quoted as saying, ‘No matter if the science of global warming is all phony … climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world’.

Sadly, this impulse to stifle debate applies even to the leaders of our universities.  I commented a little over two years ago on the fact that the University of Waikato had formally committed itself to teach ‘sustainability’ and ‘how to achieve a society that values people, the planet and profits, etc.’  I was fearing indoctrination rather than education.  Now the Vice Chancellor of Victoria University has declared himself ‘against the fossil fuel industry’ and committed his university to ‘Educate for environmentally responsible citizenship’.  As I have indicated, I think that many of the questions that are begged by the pious declarations of Waikato and Victoria are still live questions and that they ought to be considered so in a university.

John Stewart Mill’s classic argument for freedom of speech applies here.  At a minimum, you are more secure in your judgement, if you have met the contrary arguments and defeated them.  On the other hand, if, against all prior appearances, you are shown to be wrong, you have been done a great service (however much you might dislike the experience).  The principle applies to scholarship in general and to universities in particular.  It is crucial to their role as ‘critic and conscience of society’.  Having regard to their central role in the democratic process, it is also plainly a responsibility of the media to make a genuine attempt at fairness and balance.