This past year, my middle-schoolers were treated to a free showing of Al Gore’s fright film about the projected impact of human CO2 emissions on global warming. They did not get to see a similar treatment of legitimate opposing scientific views.
When I studied science, “back in the day,” the concepts of peer review and the scientific uncertainty principle were fundamental.
For over 200 years, scientific uncertainty was defined to mean that, although very few things can be proven with 100 percent certainty, a scientific concept can be considered truth as long as it is 95 percent certain, and had been reviewed and confirmed by a scientist’s peers.
But something changed in the scientific community at the end of the 20th century. In an article aptly titled “The Uses of Scientific Uncertainty,” published in Rachel’s Environmental & Health Weekly on July 1, 1999, Peter Montague revealed a “revolution” that dropped the time-honored uncertainty principle.
He traced the beginning of this revolution back to 1992, when the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, meeting in Rio, declared that “lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective [my emphasis] measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
The environmental community’s disdain for scientific truth and peer review has far surpassed the Rio declaration, as we saw in the recent United Nations conference in Bali. Credentialed scientists who dispute the data massaging and computer models used to predict an imminent catastrophe, were not allowed to voice their skepticism or to present their own findings at the official forum.
In the 15 years since the Rio declaration, we see that the concept of “cost-effective” measures no longer applies to the still-disputed global warming crisis. Instead, we are all expected to ante-up exorbitant taxes to “pay” for our carbon dioxide “pollution,” and the world’s economy be damned.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Questions about saving energy and money with energy efficient light bulbs?
Sign up here for a free mini-course
Six Startling Facts You Need to Know–BEFORE Changing Another Light Bulb!
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Loading …