In my humble opinion—which, after all, is what this blog is all about—the reason for so much anti-science thinking today is because of a lack of education about the fundamentals of science. So when people try to refute climate science, or believe vaccinations are harmful, or refuse to believe the Apollo moon landings happened, or think Earth is flat, it’s understandable. They’re looking at the top of the pyramid and they can’t understand what’s holding it up in the air, because they can’t see the rest of the pyramid below the top. They don’t know it exists, so they’re confused.
I’ve spent much of my life immersed in the scientific world. I worked as an engineer, a job in which you’d better believe the science or your career will be very short. Even in high school, I read some fascinating science-oriented books. The book Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif comes to mind. The book is getting long in the tooth now, but it offered a younger me a fascinating glimpse into the scientific hunt for the causes of diseases like malaria and yellow fever. Like reading a detective story, I saw how the building blocks of scientific discovery fall into place.
The human urge to explore and colonize may be pushing us in a bad direction. We are actually considering going to a planet with no liquid water and almost no oxygen. It’s an unlivable place, at least without advanced technology. The danger is that it steals our responsibility to take care of our own planet because, if we mess up here, we think we’ll have a “backup planet”. We won’t.
Too many people today want to live in a fairyland of conspiracy theories and secret technologies. That’s okay as long as we remember it’s just a fairyland—a fun place to visit—but sooner or later we have to come back and live in reality. We humans are changing the world in ways that are not good. Species go extinct every day. There have been five mass extinctions in Earth’s history. A sixth mass extinction is underway. According to a UN report, one in four species are at risk of extinction today as a result of habitat loss, over-exploitation of animal populations, the spread of invasive species and diseases by humans, pollution and climate change.
Is the globe getting hotter and are humans causing it? There is no doubt the world is getting hotter. We have decades of temperature measurements from all over the planet. We have evidence from our own eyes, as invasive species move north, temperate forests recede, ice packs become thinner, sea levels rise and cause more frequent coastal flooding, etc. But is human activity causing all this?
More than 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists answer “Yes” to that question. Numerous scientific societies, science academies, government agencies and intergovernmental bodies agree that human activity is making the Earth warmer. (List)
If we take steps to reduce our impact on climate and it turns out the scientists are wrong, then at worst we will have had no significant impact on climate and its warming is out of our hands. But if we wait until the tipping point is behind us and we have iron-clad proof humans have changed Earth’s climate, we may have no chance to stop it.
According to Wikipedia:
The campaign to undermine public trust in climate science has been described as a "denial machine" organized by industrial, political and ideological interests, and supported by conservative media and skeptical bloggers to manufacture uncertainty about global warming.
Do you want to be scientific and use logic and your own brain? Or do you want to allow vested interests to tell you what to think? You decide. But make your decision as if the future of our planet—your planet—depends on it.
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