Let's prize climate skepticism

By Swaminathan

S. Anklesaria Aiyar

The latest Nobel Prize for chemistry has confirmed what science students are taught early on: that all scientific theories are intrinsically uncertain; that science progresses through skepticism and attacks on existing theories, and that successful attacks are sometimes rewarded with Nobel Prizes. It follows that skepticism about global warming, far from being antiscience, is in keeping with the standard scientific approach - and could one day fetch a skeptic a Nobel Prize.

The Nobel for chemistry was awarded to the Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman for his discovery of "quasicrystals," which violate standard theories about crystals. Scientists had believed that all crystals form in repeated periodic patterns, and commercial production of crystals was based on that understanding. But Shechtman exploded the conventional wisdom by discovering quasicrystals, which form regular patterns that never repeat.

When Schechtman first announced his discovery, his superiors were scornful, telling him he should review his basic chemistry textbooks. When he persisted, he was asked to leave his research group. His first paper on the topic was rejected by the Journal of Applied Physics. But Schechtman persevered, and he proved that what 99.9 percent of scientists believed was wrong.

Sound familiar? We keep hearing that 95 percent or 98 percent of scientists believe catastrophic, man-made global warming is proven. Climate skeptics are widely denounced as science deniers. However, as Schechtman showed, 99 percent of scientists can be and have been wrong.

Science proves nothing beyond all doubt. Rather, it progresses by knocking down existing theories in favor of better ones, which in turn are subject to fresh attacks. Skepticism is at the very heart of the scientific method. The scientific approach is at odds not with climate-change skeptics, but with those who claim global warming is completely proven, contestable only by madmen and blackguards paid by oil companies.

A recent experiment at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland is casting doubt on another idea believed by about 100 percent of scientists: Einstein's theory of relativity. CERN scientists have found particles called neutrinos that seemed to have traveled faster than light, challenging a fundamental plank of modern science. According to the theory of relativity, a particle traveling faster than light will go backward in time.