Tuesday, December 01, 2009

No matter what, I want cleaner air (day 95)

I came across an article in the BBC talking about the new role of science in the democratic process.  It's a well written article with lots of insightful comments about the possibility of science becoming corrupted when faced with a high stake issue like climate change.   We've had separation of church and state for good reasons and it's worked out well.   But we don't have separation of business and science.  Maybe we should.  Perhaps all science should be publicly funded.  The issue is further compounded because predictions coming out of climatology are easily attacked on the basis of potential biases from the choice of data sets and methodologies.  It's too easy for factions to form on the basis of beliefs in a particular set of ingredients to the complex system.   Add to this observers which have a stake in shopping for the right climate change answer and you have an explosive mix which leads one's belief (or not) in climate change to be treated as a religion.  It's a sad state of affairs and it points to the general fear around what we we might have to change about our lifestyle to be kinder to the environment, to breathe easier.  Seems to me no matter why or if the climate is changing, we stand to gain a lot from decreasing pollution.  Unfortunately lots of money has been made on the fast pace enabled by oil.  Many have been successful with the current system and understandably want no change.  But we go faster than anything else, to our detriment.  We forgot the rhythm of the earth.

A song for this post.

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