Just a thought. This last weekend we were warned that a major winter storm was about to hit our area. This took me as a surprise because I had checked an online weather site less than 48 hours prior and nothing of the sort was predicted. My wife informed me of the forecast on Sunday - that it was supposed to start snowing Sunday evening and continue through the following day, leaving 10 or more inches of snow. I watched and waited until I retired Sunday night, wondering if schools would close and how long it would take to clear my driveway.
I woke up to find a modest 2-3 inches of snow - a minor inconvenience, not quite what was predicted.
I've seen this pattern repeated over and over, as has anyone who has tried to plan a spring camping trip. Listen to the weather reports on one TV station and you may or may not hear the same thing on another. Online weather services often show different forecasts. If you are looking at the next day forecast, the accuracy is usually pretty good. If the forecast is for three days out, not so much. If the forecast is for five days out - well, you'd better check back in a couple of days.
Now I don't doubt that weather forecasters are honest professionals. Nor do I think that the scientific principles of using temperature and atmospheric pressure and wind patterns to forecast the weather are invalid. I don't doubt that the tools and technology used are state of the art. I am not questioning science.
But I do think it fairly obvious that even with sound science and the most advanced tools, meteorologists simply cannot account for all the variables in real weather patterns. Things change. If we could gather more and more data points, we might be more and more accurate, but our ability to account for the variables is finite, much more finite than the variables themselves.
So, I have to admit that I am and have been a little skeptical of the dire predictions about manmade global warming. Not that I doubt there is evidence for global warming. I just doubt that all the variables have been accounted for. I doubt that contrary evidence has always been given a fair hearing. I am skeptical about the role of politics in the debate and the possibility that there might be money to be made in "green" industry adds a bit to the skepticism. Sure, I can recycle, ride my bike instead of drive and turn off unused appliances. Not sure I think we should ban all offshore drilling for oil or ignore Alaskan oil in times of a financial and national security crisis, but that is maybe a separate issue.
The point is, I don't think it makes sense that if my weatherman can't tell me whether it will rain five days from now some other guy can tell me with cocksure certainty that the world is irreversibly warming or that driving electric cars will reverse the trend if it is.
Do I doubt that global weather forecasters are being honest? Not really, though there is, after all, money involved at some level. There are the troubling allegations of ignored contrary data and unfair treatment of dissenters. Do I think that the scientific principles of using temperature and trend data are invalid? No. I don't doubt that the tools and technology used are state of the art. I am not questioning science. I'm just not sure the people involved are clear about the limitations of science, or the objectivity of fallen human beings.
And so, I'm more than a little skeptical that origins science, committed as it is to the unprovable assumption of uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, can look at bone fragments, rock formations, radiometric isotopes, and genetic sequences in the present and tell me with absolute certainty what took place billions of years in the past.
Do I doubt that most such scientists are honest? Not really – but there are, after all, research grants, degrees and prestigious university positions involved. There are the troubling allegations of ignored contrary data and unfair treatment of dissenters. Do I think that the scientific principles of biology and genetics and paleontolgy and astronomy are invalid? Not at all. I don't doubt that the tools and technology used are state of the art. I am not questioning science. I'm just not sure the people involved are clear about the limitations of science, or the objectivity of fallen human beings.
I suspect, like the meteorologists who got Sunday’s forecast wrong, there are variables scientists have not and never can account for. I suspect the science has limits in both the methodology of the science iteslf and reasoning powers of the scientists, who are, after all, only human.
But that is skepticism about the reach of science, an assessment of its limitation. It is not a repudiation of science itself.
It did, after all snow Sunday night, somewhat as predicted. - They were only off by seven inches of wet snow on a one-day forecast.
But who am I to question the experts?
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