I had to answer a letter to our local paper by one of our local citizens. here is what he wrote: Science supporting global warming fraudulent. I wrote back but I suspect that this individual is not open to any information that disputes what he believes. What is interesting is the format of his letter. He writes as if he were engaging in a reasoned debate. Yet nothing he asserts is reasonable. Scientists are in a peculiar position in our Nation. Their years of training and hard work is dismissed so easily that they may as well be sorcerers. The Irony is that we live in a culture so dominated by the fruits of science, especially in the form of technology, that it can easily be taken for granted. Read on below because there is more to all this.
The writer of this letter engages in many practices that would quickly be a sign of his lack of understanding of how the process works in a scientific discussion. However he is writing to his friends and neighbors most of whom will probably be impressed by his bluster. I have to tell you that here in the 1st CD of Virginia people vote 2:1 for republicans. The lines of the district were drawn from Tidewater up to above Fredericksburg in order to achieve this permanent congressional seat for them. If you go to our Congressman's "Town Meetings" you will find them packed with the tea bagging right. This makes writing rebuttals difficult since you know what you are writing to as an audience. What makes it worse is that this kind of dominance frightens lots of people who might engage in debate in a reasonable setting. The whole thing is a very self reinforcing system that just gets more and more difficult to change.
Well I wrote a letter back and those of you who read me here will find a lot of my usual arrogance in it. My idea is to bring it to a personal level to try to avoid the frames these people respond to from the right. Once you say "Don't think of an elephant" we are talking about elephants from then on.
Slander is not science
I was shocked when I read the accusation that my fellow scientists and I were engaging in fraud by Mr. Andrew J. Maggard in the March 4 issue of this paper. I was not aware that the paper allowed such things. I think Mr. Maggard has blasphemed God in that same letter. It is a shame. If he only were to apply a fraction of the critical scrutiny he directs at others to what he writes he might not come off as being totally arrogant. One of the least credible things one can do in a scientific debate is call names.
My contribution to the climate science that has established the growing concern over the effect of man made global warming on future generations well being begun in 1965. My first faculty position was in Biophysics at SUNY Buffalo. I was hired because I was one of the first to master the new approach of non-equilibrium thermodynamics having spent the prior two years learning at "the feet" of the experts. What was truly new was the ability to model complex interacting physical systems such as weather in the atmosphere. As time went on and mathematics developed further, along with the ability to make sophisticated computer models, the work I had been engaged in was taken over by others while I concentrated on things like using elaborate computer models for creating better forms of cancer chemotherapy with Dr. I. David Goldman when he was head of the Massey Cancer Center at MCV, for example.
My book Application of Network Thermodynamics to Problems in Biomedical Engineering and the book by Schneider and Sagan Into the Cool were both stepping stones to our modern use of large computer models to model complex natural systems. In their book they were very kind in thanking me for all my help in developing the story of how our global system is a whole involving living things as well as the atmosphere.
The fallacies in Mr. Maggard’s polemic are many, but the one he is most myopic about is the uselessness of bits and pieces of data to try to reason out what is going on in a large dynamic complex system like our planet and its climate. It seems like he might be astounded to learn that the instabilities that accompany Global Warming will actually lower temperatures transiently in some areas. As any system like ours destabilizes it does some very strange things. Unfortunately for us and those who follow, most of them are harmful in the long run.
Climate science is not at all like laboratory science where we can do controlled experiments. Every event is a one time shot. Prediction is very difficult but we are improving as the prediction of things like hurricane paths sometimes shows. So we look at the past and try to understand it. From that understanding we now know that man made technology has become a problem for the future of the planet. To deny this and even misuse religion to attempt to boost one’s hand waving claims is rather hurtful and dishonest. I think Mr. Maggard owes me and my colleagues an apology for his slander. We have worked hard serving him and the rest of our fellow humans. We only ask to be treated fairly.
Donald C. Mikulecky, Ph. D.
Senior Fellow in the VCU Center for the Study of Biological Complexity
I realise that I could have written a different kind of letter. I want to talk to friends and neighbors in the community and I want them to know that people are involved in these debates. They are not abstract and without human effects. This man saw no harm in making the accusation of fraud. He clearly does not see that the Global Warming issue is studied by thousands of people many of whom have been just plain wrong. To go from that reasonable assumption to the charge of fraud is propaganda fit for a demagogue.
Now back to why I wrote this diary here. I want to react to our own style of political conversation for we take liberties when we expect a mostly sympathetic audience. This merely gives others more reason to believe they can when they are mainly preaching to the choir. The level of so called political discussion in this country is sickening. The media have been in the forefront of this for all too long. I really don't see that we have much chance of changing this and this worries me a lot. The old quote from Faust comes to mind:
When concepts fail words arise!
. And when reasonable discourse fails we get situations like the Middle East. I hope we are not next.