Petroleum Institute Quotes

For an example of what Senator Jeffords was referring to, see {610719}.

This was his last House debate and whereas almost all scientists had agreed that climate change was a serious challenge to the nation, an ideologically driven majority of his Republican Party denied that that there was any climate change that was different from the usual vicissitudes of nature, he tried to persuade his anti-scientific, conservative colleagues to face reality.

Eugenics was an intellectual movement of the first half of the 20th century that was mostly junk science and was debunked. While the analogy is clever and makes her political point about climate change science, there are actually several major differences. Eugenics was never a set of scientific laws that had near unanimous support of all the scientists in that and related fields while climate science is. Eugenics was not an experimental science where its principles were subject to refutation with data. So called Eugenic scientists did no experiments, analyzed almost no data, and were more philosophical and political than scientific. Most of the Eugenics advocates were not scientists at all and had little or no training in science.

The conclusion that almost all scientists who have studied the problem of climate change and global warming us that there is a substantial change ongoing. That conclusion is reached as the result of literally thousands of observations and studies about the many aspects of climate change. Like any other science, a number of studies have flaws and there are many who fear that government funds will be used to cope with climate change at a cost to the economy. They point to the flaws of individual studies or researchers and have spent millions of dollars to produce uncertainty into the mind of the pubic and politicians. Science, however, ALWAYS has uncertainty and flaws are ALWAYS discovered in established scientific principles. It does not mean that these larger theories and principles are wrong if several of the studies or points are wrong and are understood in a larger and more sophisticated context. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity could be foolishly be called wrong because Einstein did not take account of what would become Quantum Mechanics and there were some contradictions. None the less Relativity is still the most important physical discovery of all time and influences all thinking in physics even though he could not account for the very small physics of quarks, electrons and other atomic particles.

Less than an average of 5 feet above sea level, Maldives is the lowest country in the world. It’s highest point is less than 8 feet high. The small increase in the world sea level resulting from climate change has already affected Maldives, and an increase of only a foot would wipe out a large part of the country.

[While the Obama-Biden administration had done much more than the previous George W. Bush administration to reduce the rate of increase in environmental damage to the planet, many critics also fault the Obama-Biden administration for not doing more than "laying the groundwork". However, there was a Republican-controlled congress whose major objective was to prevent any bill from passing for which the President and the Democrats could claim credit. In addition there was a strong element of the Republican party which was ideologically opposed to admitting that man's activities—–especially industrial activities—–were having any kind of harmful effects. So, there was little operationally that the Obama-Biden administration could do other than build the "groundwork"].

This is a classic technique used by politicians of the left and right when they are faced with scientific findings that do not comport with their ideological, religious, or political view of the world. Namely to point out that the science is not settled and the field is still in flux. Therefore, they are, that it si too early to make public policy on the basis of that. And they have little trouble finding that the scientists themselves who did the research that they do not like are the first ones to say that the science is in flux. For ALL SCIENCE IS IN FLUX and new findings are being introduced literally every day in most scientific fields. That very rarely does the new knowledge contradict the older science in huge and dramatic ways. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity turned the field of physics and mechanics upside down but it did not change the calculations that engineers and scientists would make in over 99 percent of their measurements. Within a few decades of Einsteins theory being published, it was demonstrated to be wrong—not completely wrong, but inadequate to measure the mechanics of tiny partials like electrons adn quarks. Quantum mechanics was born. And every week or so these days there is more knowledge that makes slight changes in the way we understand quantum mechanics. No science has ever remained settled for 1000 years since the beginning of scientific inquiry, By the 19th century most science did not remain settled for 100 years. In the 20th century “settled” science rarely lasted more than a decade, and in the 21st century, few are stable for even a year.

Here is a case of where an absolutely true quotation is used inappropriately politically. In this case to imply that there is nothing we can do to stop global warming. Just as humans have created some of the climate change in the last centuries, humans can change behavior and stop that portion of the change that we are creating. In addition, there are scientific and technological techniques being developed to alter the climate beyond that which mankind has produced.