“In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”~ Dr. Michael Crichton, MD, in a lecture at Caltech titled “Aliens Cause Global Warming”, 2003.
To understand how challenging scientific consensus serves to advance the state of knowledge in science, I think it is instructive to analyze in some detail how Albert Einstein challenged the greatest scientist in history at that time, Sir Isaac Newton. Einstein’s willingness to challenge Newton resulted in what is arguably recognized to be one of the greatest advancements of science in the 20th century.
Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) was an English polymath who has been described as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists of all times. In 1687, Newton published “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”, known as the “Principia”. In the “Principia”, Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, as well as developed the mathematical technique of infinitesimal calculus which led to integral and differential calculus.
Newton’s work was so revolutionary in nature in so many fields that he did not contradict scientific consensus, he established it. Newton developed his law of universal gravitation to account for Johannes Keppler’s laws of planetary motions as well as the trajectories of comets and actions of tides, among other phenomena. Newton’s contributions to mathematics, mechanics, thermodynamics and acoustics were instrumental in the development of those fields of science. Newton’s work represented the pinnacle of “established scientific consensus”. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, knighted by the Queen, President of the Royal Society for 24 years, a member of Parliament and Master of the Royal Mint.
Over 200 years after Newton, in 1905, a clerk in the Bern, Switzerland, patent office named Albert Einstein (1879-1955), published a paper titled “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”, later to be called “the Special Theory of Relativity.” The world of physics would never be the same. It was one of four papers that Einstein published that year, dubbed the annus mirabilis. Ten years later, Einstein published what is perhaps his most famous paper, “The General Theory of Relativity.” In summary, Einstein’s General Theory questioned the views of the greatest physicist in history and proposed a radical revision to the concepts contained in Newton’s law of universal gravitation.
With his General Theory of Relativity in 1915, Einstein challenged Newton’s linear theory of gravitational force with the metric theory of gravitation. At its core are Einstein’s field equations, which describe the relationship between the geometry of a four-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold representing spacetime, and the energy–momentum contained in that spacetime. Einstein’s field equations not only solved for the anomaly of the precession of Mercury’s orbit about the Sun at its perihelion, but they also accurately predicted the amount of the deflection of light by the Sun’s gravitational force in an observation of a solar eclipse by Sir Arthur Eddington in 1919. Einstein’s General Theory upended scientific consensus about gravitational force and paved the way for the prediction of the gravitational red shifting of light, black holes, gravitational waves, and an expanding universe.
So, what does all of this have to do with the so-called “scientific consensus” that supposedly exists in the field of climate science today as regards the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis? First, it should be noted that there is no consensus. Over 1400 (and growing) scientists and professionals throughout the world, including more than 270 in the US, have signed “The World Climate Declaration” stating that there is no climate emergency. The list includes Nobel Laureates, distinguished academics, scientists, and professionals in related fields from virtually every country. In addition, there are thousands of scientists around the globe who have publicly opposed the hypothesis in recent years in addition to those who signed the Declaration. Second, there have been many peer-reviewed, published scientific papers that refute the hypothesis. In my book titled “Global Warming: The Great Deception-The Triumph of Dollars and Politics Over Science and Why You Should Care”, I cite published, peer-reviewed scientific research, employing the first principles of the relevant scientific fields of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, atmospheric physics and spectroscopy that prove that CO2 does not cause global warming. I use publicly available data from the world’s temperature databases maintained by NOAA and NASA to prove that there has been no significant global warming of the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, or land mass.
Unlike the scientific consensus that existed in the past regarding Ptolemy’s geocentric view of the universe or Newton’s gravitational law, the supposed consensus on global warming is contrived. It has been created and promoted by special interest groups such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (“UNIPCC”), certain world politicians and global investment firms for political and financial gain. It is a fraudulent hypothesis because it has been designed with the intent to deceive. The temperature of the troposphere, measured by satellites using microwave sounding technology, shows a cooling each year from 1979-1998, during a time when the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increased by 25%. This fact falsifies the global warming hypothesis, ipso facto.
If the scientific facts clearly falsify the fraudulent global warming hypothesis, then why is it still being promoted by the proponents? It is all about the money. Over one trillion dollars has been spent on climate research in the last 50+ years with nothing to show for it. The UNIPCC has been the recipient of much of this largesse, as well as universities, academic societies, and scientific organizations. It would be professional suicide for a young scientist or academic to oppose the “consensus.” They would lose funding and be ostracized within the ranks of climate scientists. The world market for trading carbon credits and offsets is fast approaching a trillion dollars a year. Global investment firms stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars of profits each year managing investments in “green investment” vehicles.
The latest UN climate conference held in Egypt concluded with the agreement that wealthy nations like the US should pay climate reparations of 4-6 trillion dollars per year to the third-world countries most affected by “climate change!” There is an old saying among poker players: “if you look around the table and can’t spot the sucker, you are it!” When it comes to climate deals, Uncle Sam is the sucker.