McLarenblog

The Wall Street Journal, September, 20-21 (weekend), Review section, page C1 had an article titled “Climate Science Is Not Settled” by Steven E. Koonin.  I have learned my lesson with this newspaper to look at the brief bio for the writer included with some stories to better measure their credibility.  This is especially true in the opinion section where it appears that the writers lick the boots of the oligarch who owns the paper.  I do find the paper very informative outside the opinion section.  So, I look at the writer’s credentials, in the Review section, and they seem sort of impressive until I see this guy is a former employee of BP.

The article about climate change, in short, portrays the situation as not being nailed down by science, not definitive by the science results.   If you sit back and reflect upon what the article describes you may see that it takes on one narrow viewpoint, that being that science tools have not been too successful at determining what is going on to any degree of exactness.  Implied in this is we are this expected to wait until the science comes back with better results.  How convenient for some that we should  kick the can down the road some more.  Mr. Seven Koonin even paints a picture in my mind that science is so far behind the curve that we may die before they know the cause, which is my point of this post.  What I find disturbing about this article is that this fellow seems to be looking at his computer simulations and not going outside to see that in real terms the climate is changing in ways that are, in some cases, dramatic.  If we look past the portrayal of the science not currently adequate to the job then why not dump science from any serious consideration of “not knowing” until they can catch up to what many of us see every day as being “alleged” climate change.  Gee whiz, for once, the common man may be way ahead of the scientists.  Why then get a science degree if it only gets you a seat at the back of the intellectual bus?