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Dr. Keller received her Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry from the University of New Mexico in 1992.
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Do you trust your local weather forecast?
An online article in last week’s edition of Spiegel Online International, A Superstorm for Global Warming Research, catalogs the sequence of events that led to the ruination of the distinguished career of Phil Jones, the former head of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. The article gives a good snapshot of what happened in the “Climategate” debacle. Notably, the authors point to the disturbing political agenda behind many climate science conclusions.
Many…fellow scientists…see themselves too much as political activists who want to get something done. This, in turn, harms the credibility of science as a whole..and it is also a more deep-seated cause of the Climategate affair… .
However, what is more astonishing is the apparent gullibility of both politicians and the public when it comes to the global warming scare. Several months ago I pulled into a parking spot with my SUV only to be given an obscene gesture followed by a colorful rebuke for contributing to global warming. This motorist clearly believed that New Mexico was soon to be flooded by melting ice caps and I was clearly a conspirator. As she passed, I wondered if she had as much trust in the forecast of our local weather.
Reinhard Huettl, head of the German Research Center for Geosciences, reminds scientists to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism.
Scientists should never be so wedded to their theories that they are no longer capable of refuting them in the light of new findings.
But the same is true for policy makers and the general public. As Michael Specter recently said in a TED video “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts, sorry you’re not”, and if the facts are inconclusive, then people need to find a way to work with inconclusive data and uncertainty. In New Mexico we work with the uncertainty of weather every day and it is helpful not to be too wedded to the theories of our local weather forecaster.
Real Science-4-Kids helps students become comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty in science. Every text has an accompanying set of hands-on experiments so that young scientists can learn how to critically evaluate their own scientific data, maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism around their own conclusions.
How recent was it that scientists were warning us that the Earth was cooling? 25-35 years ago?
I’m no scientist. My college degree reads “Bachelor of Arts.” The only math course I took in college was “Probability and Statistics.” Out of that, though, I understand that the data being used to push the idea of global warming is a very limited statistical sample. The smaller the statistcal sample, the greater the margin of error. Methinks mountains may be getting created out of molehills.
Now, if we want to tackle the problem of manmade pollution for the sake of cleaning our environment and the world we want to bequeath our progeny, then by all means let’s push for renewable green energy and a green economy. It’s the wave of the future regardless, and will put America and Americans back to work. If the CO2 levels in the atmosphere decrease in the process and the global warming scare goes away, huzzah! But, lets’s not place what needs to be done on the back of a still questionable scientific theory.