Ignoring the Obvious

There is little doubt that we have had a hotter than normal summer here in the United States. (Whereas the Earth’s southern hemisphere is experiencing a deep freeze.) And global warming enthusiasts are relishing the opportunity to regroup after the East Anglia e-mail-exposure debacle and again are trumpeting their crusade against carbon dioxide. However, there is another, less publicized event taking place: Our one and only sun has exited its solar flare minimum period (labeled a Maunder Minimum) that had been on the decline since 2000 and is now pushing out solar flares with a vengeance. See: Solar Flare.  Even our increasingly politicized NASA has recognized that sunspots (solar flares) are again on the wax … and can affect our Earth. See Sunspot Cycle.  (Interestingly enough, as the chart in this link shows, until earlier this year, the last decline in sunspot activity tracks to the year 2000 when global warming is thought by many to have last peaked.)

Which brings me to my main point … when our global climate goes through its myriad cycles … causing charlatans then to preach that the Earth’s is about to burn up or, once again, freeze over … why do we dance to their pipings? Clearly many things cause our orb’s climate to “change”-- altered ocean currents, the sun’s cycles, the Earth’s shifting orbital mechanics, the changing chemistry of our atmosphere (including among many things, carbon dioxide levels) and maybe even the Earth’s position in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Now, there is nothing that we mere mortals can do about most of these events. We are powerless to change sunspot activity … or alter the Earth’s tilt or its path around the sun … or change the flow of our mighty oceans. So what do we then do to assuage our angst about our human feebleness in dealing with such climate exigencies? We seize on carbon dioxide as the bete noire of the Earth’s climate’s fickleness. We see our society’s growing use of fossil fuels as an environmental evil and convince our fellow planet-mates that this is the one and only reason that our climate is getting warmer.

And, if the climate is not really getting warmer, what do we do? We falsify (fudge) data to prove that it is. We browbeat scientists into this orthodoxy about climate change through the use of giving or withholding of government grants … or the publishing or trashing of “scientific” papers in “scientific” journals. We brainwash left-leaning and scientifically-naive “journalist” into continuously echoing this orthodoxy and suppressing any dissent. We give Nobel prizes and Oscars and Pulitzer prizes and other awards and rewards to those willing to suspend their skepticism and don the emblazoned mantle of this new religion. We bury science and laud pseudo-science. All because we need to believe that man can control the climate in which we are forever captured … when it is abundantly clear that we are at the mercy of forces far greater than what we can ever dominate. But, like so many foolish times before, we once again strive to be our own God.

Tao

I recently read the following anonymous quote in an SAT reading comprehension passage:

There are those who believe that science consists entirely of disproving alternative hypotheses, as if when you eliminate the alternative views, the one you have left is right. The problem is that there is no way to think of all the possible hypotheses that nature can devise. More than that, you have to prove which is the most reasonable. But any hypothesis can, with a limited data set, be reasonable. There is at least a touch of truth in the idea that any variable affects another. If you look long and determinedly enough, you will find that almost any variable element you chose to examine apparently affects the behavior you are studying.

Now, other than helping to explain a lot of the current mania surrounding carbon dioxide's effect on global warming, this passage exhibits a few inadequacies which I believe are reflective of our Western culture:

1) It still allows that one hypothesis (independent variable) alone is most often sufficient to explain the behavior of a dependent variable. In my experience "most reasonable" may mean that this hypothesis explains say only 50% of dependent variable behavior. Another independent variable may explain 45%. Ignoring this second one might be catastrophic.

2) Multivariate analysis seems to be eschewed in Western culture possibly because of its complexity. Witness how we tend to gravitate to a single "silver bullet" approach to many of our conundrums. Whereas we desire taking a single pill to cure a health problem, Chinese herbalists will compound a time-tested mixture of many herbs, minerals, and even animal parts to cure even a simple headache. They seem to understand that variables do indeed interact. Independent variables "A" and "B" might explain 90% of a dependent variables behavior. But "A", "B", and "C" might explain only 40% due to "C"'s deleterious effect on "B". Alternatively, "B"'s effect might be magnified by "C". This is comparable to the effect that a catalyst has on a chemical reaction.

3) There is a poorly understood concept in statistics called "homoscedasticity". This means that some independent variables are equivalent in explaining the behavior of the dependent variable. Think about both cake and ice cream being blamed for the increase in diabetes.

So we see that Western cultures have the unfortunate tendency to propound phantom truths often with devastating consequences ... witness the banning of DDT (sacrificing million of human lives so to protect the population of peregrine falcons), the false belief that thimerosal causes autism (and probably setting back investigations into its real cause), and, of course, the pejorative rhetoric surrounding carbon dioxide (a life-form essential gas). This may be why the Chinese seem to be laughing up their sleeves over the U.N.'s attempt to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

I know that it seems treasonous, but perhaps we do have something else to learn from Eastern cultures ("the way").