Public discourse seems to increasingly suffer from a confusion between fact and opinion, argument and belief, the rational and irrational. Accordingly, society now possesses a declining capacity to make these critical distinctions and comprehend their import for public policy, decision making, and governance. As a result, society is losing or is about to lose its guiding rudder at a time when it is most needed. This capacity is needed to respond swiftly and effectively to the unprecedented multiplying and accelerating challenges of global economic unsustainability and to seize the opportunities for greater, durable economic and community prosperity arising from an effective response. Climate change is simply the front line of the larger challenge and opportunity.
The recent publication of a paper in the scientific journal Remote Sensing is a poignant example of this declining capacity. The paper's minority argument claimed to refute the overwhelming evidence and theory supporting the notion that climate change is occurring and being driven by the bio-chemical-physical impacts of the human economy. The paper's publication in a respected, peer-reviewed scientific journal was seized upon by the climate denier community and conservative, non-scientific opinion- and belief-based public media as the fatal blow to climate change science.
Unfortunately for the climate sceptics, the truth-seeking scientific method prevailed and revealed the article's fatal flaws and those of the climate denier argument.In a public protest to take responsibility for a momentary lapse in collective process and judgement in the scientific process of knowledge production, the Editor-In-Chief of the journal resigned saying the following:
. . . the paper was reviewed by scientific experts that in hindsight had a predetermined bias in their views on climate that led them to miss the serious scientific flaws in the paper, including “ignoring all other observational data sets,” inappropriate influence from the “political views of the authors,” and the fact that comparable studies had already been refuted by the scientific community but were ignored by the authors.
Summarizing the scientific methodology for knowledge production,
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence because they usually contradict claims that are backed by extraordinary evidence. The evidence for the extraordinary claim must support the new claim as well as explain why the old claims that are now being abandoned, previously appeared to be correct.
As the article concludes with a further point on scientific method:
The Spencer and Braswell paper fails in these requirements. But this is also the way science works: someone makes a scientific claim and others test it. If it holds up to scrutiny, it become part of the scientific literature and knowledge, safe until someone can put forward a more compelling theory that satisfies all of the observations, agrees with physical theory, and fits the models. Once again, despite the fervent desires of climate skeptics and deniers, the vast body of literature and the basic conclusions about the growing threat of climate change remains intact: the climate is changing rapidly and humans are the dominant cause.
Read the short article in Forbes Magazine for a summary of the events and links to sources.