Dear Editor:
In his Nov. 30 letter to the Burnaby NOW, Ziggy Eckardt asserted, "Deniers question all statements." This is an outrageous fabrication. The global warming deniers love to pretend that they are injecting a dose of healthy skepticism into a controversial subject. The reality is very different.
In the past 20 years, more than 10,000 peer-reviewed articles relating to global warming were published in the scientific literature. All but 25 of them support the position that first, global warming is happening; second, its current manifestation is primarily caused by human activity; and third, it presents an enormous threat to the survival of the human civilization.
Most people are probably unfamiliar with the peer-review process, and have no idea of the savage level of criticism you have to overcome to get articles published in the real scientific literature. Anyone who has gone to graduate school or beyond will have experienced it directly. When you submit your first draft paper to your supervisor, it doesn't matter how good you are, it will come back drenched in red ink. You learn pretty quickly that you have to get every statement you make exactly right. Even a one-per cent error rate means that you won't get published. This is where the real questioning happens.
Some people claim that science is mostly bogus, and that scientists just sit around trying to trick other people into giving them money. This is ridiculous. We understand many things about the universe
very well. We understand electricity well enough that when you flick the light switch, the lights go on, 100 per cent of the time. We understand electronics well enough that everybody on the planet could walk around with a powerful computer in their pocket. We understand classical mechanics well enough that we can send a spacecraft to any point in the solar system, and it will get there every single time. The list goes on, and on, and on. Science works, and it has generated an enormous amount of knowledge over the course of human history. And yes, we do understand a great deal about global warming.
The global warming deniers don't care about any of this. Their "questioning" rejects 99 per cent of the peer-reviewed science without any justification, and accepts without question any unvetted claims that fit with their world view. This is not skepticism.
There is truth, and there is nonsense. Some things are knowable, and some things are known. It is absurd to put nonsense on the same level as knowledge. When I teach thermal physics, I teach what is known, and I do not tolerate nonsense. If a student should insist that nonsense be acceptable, I don't have to "debate" anything. I just fail them. Such mechanisms are unavailable in public discourse, and unscrupulous people take advantage of it by insisting that people listen to their nonsense, so that public policy gets formulated on the basis of nonsense. At some point, the right of free speech needs to be restricted. Just as society does not permit individuals to run around and burn houses down, society needs to prevent individuals from trying to burn the global house down.
Victor Finberg, Burnaby
