Before I get into my thoughts on Lawrence Solomon's book, I'd like to reproduce the first few paragraphs from his article Why I wrote Deniers from April 5th's National Post column.

Global warming has become a question for citizens, and not only scientists. Citizens must decide how serious the threat is and what to do about it, which cures make sense, and which might be worse than the disease. Alas, the answers to these questions depend on scientific issues of fierce complexity that few laymen are capable of confronting directly. So what are we to do?

Al Gore has an answer, and in some ways it is a very sound answer. Mr. Gore says, essentially, that we must rely on "the argument from authority." We must accept the word of experts who know directly what we can "know" only because they tell us. Go to the scientists and ask them. They have the right training and access to the best data. They understand the equations.

And what the scientists say, according to Gore and the United Nations and an overwhelming consensus of the media, is that "the science is settled." There is no longer any serious doubt that global warming is a grave problem already, that it is rapidly getting worse, that it is caused primarily by human activity, and that it will lead to catastrophe if those activities continue unchecked.

Then what of the "deniers" we have all heard about, those holdouts in the global-warming debate, complete with PhDs at the end of their names, who refuse to accept the obvious? Gore and company have a ready answer, repeated again and again: Pay no attention. These alleged scientist dissenters are either kooks or crooks who take the pay of the oil companies to spew out junk science and confuse the issue. Here's what Mr. Gore says about them: "Fifteen per cent of the people believe the moon landing was staged on some movie lot and a somewhat smaller number still believe the Earth is flat. They all get together on a Saturday night and party with the global-warming deniers." Newsweek, in a now famous cover story, called these scientists part of "the denial machine," funded by the energy industry and organized by corrupt right-wing lobbyists.

In his bestselling book The Deniers, Lawrence Solomon profiles numerous 'deniers' - leading scientists who oppose the commonly accepted view on global warming.  It's food for thought and an important book becuase it gives a voice to these scientists whose conclusions spin counter to the popular media.

I haven't read the book yet, but certainly one can judge that it is a book meant to stir up trouble and get people thinking.  Even after reading his article i'm not entirely certain of Solomon's motives.  Perhaps he want to disrupt the cult of global warming.  Or maybe he wants to provide a perspective that's not as alarmist as what's presented in popular media.

I think anytime we enter a world of blind consensus we are in a dangerous place.  People who oppose the majority belief may not be popular and may have little support socially or politically, but sometimes those people turn out to be right.  Do we have to listen to every crackpot with a crazy idea?  Certainly not.  But every crackpot certainly has a right to voice his opinion, whether anyone wants to hear it or not.

Especially in the realm of science, there should always be people working to break consensus.  Once a theory is "proven", there should always be people working to "un-prove" it or to improve upon the findings.  That's what science is about: exhausting every possible option in search for absolute truths.

Al Gore is not a scientist.  He's a very well-spoken politicial who has done more for the environmental movement in the last 4 years than in the 40 years before he made his big splash.  All of the stuff in his influential charts and scenarios came from scientists and he relies on their expertise and does his best to consolidate and simplify the information so that common people can understand it.  He believes those scientists and so do we, by proxy.

I'm not a scientist, either.  But I know that we live on a planet with disappearing forests, polluted waterways, species that go extinct faster than we can discover them... oh, and the goddamn ice caps are melting.  Maybe the future doesn't align perfectly with Mr. Gore's fancy charts and scenarios, but you don't have to be a scientist to see that our planet is going through some rapid changes and we're the cause of it.  You don't have to be a scientist to feel the urgency that we need to change how we live.

If there are scientists who disagree or can disprove the science being presented by Al Gore, I say let them be heard.  At the same time, let's not deny our own common sense and blind ourselves to the changes around us.

» National Post (via Energy Probe)