a dirty stain in one corner is ‘dirty’ regardless of the fact that 99.9% of it is clean!
This book
This book is about evidence. It challenges some of the assumptions that we have come to accept as fact. It presents evidence that either supports the hypothesis or indicates that it is not necessarily the only, or even the best, explanation of observed events. In some instances, even the best analysis of present dogmas is unable to answer concerns about future uncertainties. Austin Williams points out in this book how mankind has, in the past, survived by overcoming the problems posed by nature while the doomsday soothsayers advocate a retreat into a primitive world of doing less, having less and achieving less. On the other hand, few would question the view put forward by Vincent Marks, in his chapter on population, that there must ultimately be a limit to unbridled population growth and consumption. However, no one knows what that limit is or how it will be affected by new technology and by world events.
We live in an uncertain and unpredictable world – but none of us enjoys uncertainty. Nevertheless, we have to make decisions, and do so on the ‘balance of probabilities’ when we know what the alternatives are. Some scares, such as the probability that we will suffer a human bird flu pandemic sometime in the future, are justified by scientific evidence; some, such as the effect of unlimited growth, depend upon unpredictable future developments; while yet others are patently wrong. The millennium-bug scare was groundless. So were prophecies that AIDS and new-variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) would decimate the population. Similarly, the prediction, made in the 1970s, of the coming of a new ice age and the authoritative forecast in 2006 that rainfall in England would decrease to a point where drought would be usual. All were pronouncements that made headline news but all have proved to be wrong.
The paradox that many of the world’s great scientists are or were (religious) believers will not have escaped our readers’ attention. The ability to accommodate a belief system at the same time as a rigorous scientific inquisitiveness, in the same brain, is far from rare. Few things in life are certain beyond having a beginning and an end – and some even question this.
In our present society, government bodies and authorities increasingly make decisions for us about the kind of life we live. It is essential, therefore, that their recommendations are based on sound evidence. Too often they are the result of an ill-conceived overreaction to pressure by special-interest groups, a media campaign or zealots presenting their beliefs in the guise of fact. As a result, the way we live, what we eat, what we do and how we spend our money is often based on a doubtful dogma that originates from often well-meaning government circles. This can be dangerous, as it undermines the influence of credible government warnings and advice, such as the benefits of using seat belts in cars, and dangers of drinking excessively or of smoking.
Good advice is helpful and should be welcomed, but it must be based on evidence and not on questionable dogma. It should be permissible for governments to admit that the evidence upon which they have to base policy is at the civil rather than criminal level of certainty and often not even as good as that.
STANLEY FELDMAN
We have to ride the theory of global warming, even if it is wrong.
—Timothy Wirth, ex-president,
United Nations Foundation
Solutions to climate change must be based on firm evidence, not dubious ideology… Policies must be based on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement.
—Pope Benedict XVI,
December 2007
DOGMA
Manmade CO2 is causing global warming, which will cause catastrophe.
SINCE THE INVENTION of the telescope, the possibility that there was life on other planets has excited astronomers. As we learned more about our galaxy we soon came to realise that most planets are such inhospitable places that life, in any recognisable form, is improbable. One of the most compelling arguments against there being life on most of the planets is the extremes of temperatures that occur on their surface. When they are exposed to the full effect of the sun the temperatures soar, but once the sun sets the cold is so intense that most forms of life would freeze.
The reason why Earth is not subjected to these extremes of temperature is the presence of its peculiar ‘atmosphere’, which provides a protective blanket of gases, containing nitrogen, oxygen, water, argon and a tiny amount, 0.038 per cent, of carbon dioxide. Without this atmosphere the average temperature on the planet would be about minus 18ºC. It is thanks to their effect that our planet is habitable.
It was the observations of the French mathematician Baron Joseph Fourier in 1822 that led to our understanding of the importance of the atmosphere in making our planet habitable. He suggested that it was the presence of particular gases in the atmosphere that moderated the extreme heat produced by the sun. Some years after Fourier, John Tyndall – the Irish physicist who described the Tyndall effect caused by refraction of light – demonstrated that, of the various gases in the atmosphere, only a few of them had a significant effect in preventing the full force of the sun’s energy reaching the surface of the Earth, causing it to become unbearably hot and, by preventing the warm surface losing its heat at night, they prevented it from freezing. He suggested that these gases captured and stored the sun’s energy that made the Earth warm. As a result, they acted as a buffer for solar energy. He studied some of the gases that occur in the air and found that, of the gases he investigated, CO2 was the most important buffer.
In fact, molecule for molecule, water is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, since it absorbs energy over a far wider energy-wave spectrum. One has only to consider the effect of supplying energy, in the form of heat, to water in a kettle, or in the form of microwaves in an oven, to appreciate its ability to absorb energy. It is this energy-absorbing property that makes it useful in dowsing fires.
Methane is also about 20 times more potent than CO2 as a buffer of energy because it absorbs energy over a larger energy-wave spectrum than CO2, but it is present in only minute amounts in the atmosphere and its overall contribution to this effect is very small. In spite of their high concentrations, nitrogen and oxygen do not absorb energy in the infrared energy spectrum and do not contribute significantly to this buffering effect.
Birth of the greenhouse analogy
It was the Swedish polymath Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927), who in his dissertation in 1896,‘The influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air on the Temperature on the Ground’, first used the greenhouse analogy. He prepared the way for our understanding of the ‘greenhouse-gas effect’. In his experiments he confirmed the importance of CO2 in preventing the Earth from cooling rapidly when the sun
