Written by -- Stephen Rader
Prince George
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Monday, 14 July 2008 |
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Mr. Ferguson’s column on climate change and junk science is an excellent demonstration of one of the pitfalls of the Internet revolution. On the web, there is no distinction between accurate information and tripe. Tripe can easily be dressed up as rigorous science, and rigorous science can be sensationalized to gain publicity and attention.
The tricky part of this is that it is no longer possible to tell which information is reliable. People can simply find something on the web that supports their preconceptions and then trot that out in favour of their point of view. Rather than furthering public discourse - which requires thinking - this bolstering of biases makes discussion and debate more difficult, because it degenerates into arguments about whose source is more reliable.
What are we, the beneficiaries of this flood of information, supposed to do? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. The best way to form an opinion is to become an expert yourself.
A more practical approach is to think carefully about who stands to gain from a particular point of view. ExxonMobil has been funding climate change skeptics for years because it felt that society’s response to climate change might threaten its business. There is an obvious financial motive for denying climate change.
What about climate scientists? It was suggested by one writer to The Citizen that scientists are trying to alarm people so that there will be more money for research. That is a reasonable proposition, but, in fact, climate scientists are not asking for more money for research. They are convinced that climate change is occurring, and they are now asking society to do something to prevent it.
Another way to think about the climate change issue is in terms of potential consequences. Dramatic climate change may or may not be occurring, and we may or may not decide to do something to prevent it.
There are two possible wrong choices: the first would be to try to prevent climate change when it is not actually happening. This would involve spending a lot of money to make our technology more efficient, use fewer resources, and generally be better stewards of our planet.
The other wrong choice, doing nothing when the climate is, in fact, changing, leads to massive extinction, catastrophic flooding of the world’s coastlines, drought, famine, and so on.
Which mistake would you rather make?
-- Stephen Rader
Prince George
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 07 September 2008 )
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