Following debate about climate change / global warming policy in radio, TV and newspaper. There has been direct and indirect debate between the skeptic and the pro over and over again. And one of the argument put forward is that if majority of scientist in the world agree on something, then it must have been true. Then I start questioning my self, well, yes a prime minister or president of a country can be determined by the majority of voter, but is Global Warming / Climate Change is one of those that became true if the majority say so ? No, I don’t think so.
Know It or Just Shut Up
Reducing footprint on environment
From my engineering background, there is a phrase that I know it very well “Talk with data, No Data No Talk”. I think that’s really a good advice.Too many people now pretend to be expert in climate change without really know about it. What they count on is what called “hear say”. If Professor X say this, then since he is a prominent figure of the community, he must be right. Sounds familiar ? Now what happen if it turns out that Professor X was wrong, then they can put the blame to others: “Sorry,it’s not my fault he said this and this, how do I know it’s not true?”. Again, sounds familiar?
What I am trying to say is that if you want to stand on something, know the fact first. Don’t do something because somebody say so. If you don’t know anything about it, just shut up. So, know it or just shut up. I guess this rule should apply to all aspect of your life not only about climate change.
Science Is Not Democracy !
Since you are reading this article, from now on if you hear the argument that because majority of scientist agree on something, then it is true, straight away scream to them “SCIENCE IS NOT DEMOCRACY!!!”
In science, it doesn’t matter if 99,9999% of “scientist” say one thing, but if there is just one that say otherwise, then until proven it is absolutely wrong, then there is a chance that that 99,9999% are on the wrong. Remember our knowledge is limited and we still learning as the time passed !
If you don’t agree with my statement above, let me take you back to around 1615. Around that time 99.9999% scientist say that the earth is the center of universe and sun and other space object are circling the earth. A man called Galileo Galilei, inspired by Nicolas Copernicus’s work, say publicly that no that’s not true. Earth is not the center of universe, actually earth is circling the sun. Of course, he was ridicule by all people, ex-communicated by Catholic Church, etc. Well, guess what, he was actually the right one, not the other 99,999%.
Galileo Galilei
See the resemblance ?
So, again, science is not democracy. If just one scientist on its field say the opposite of the popular belief, then it creates a reasonable doubt that need to be investigated. Until this reasonable doubt proven to be absolutely wrong, then there is a chance the popular belief is the one not right.
Additional Tax for Global Warming
Don’t you have enough tax to pay ? Yes, the issue of climate change and global warming is now become everybody problem since all leading government will try to put up a carbon tax/polluter tax which at the end force everybody to pay more than what it is now to reduce global warming. The logic from government is like this: if you are a big polluter, you need to pay more (penalty) tax, the less you pollute the less tax need to be paid. So by then, the government hope thatthe total polution will be less as everybody try to save and not to pay the tax.
The question is will it actually reduce the global warming ? With all the money in the world is Fiat Currency and can be created from thin air, then as long as a company have the money to pay the tax, a company can keep polluting the earth without reducing it a bit. So, this carbon tax scheme is not direct effort on the problem. It is possible, that after all the hassle and everybody already have paid more tax, the effect of the effort is probably not significant.
So, shall we doing nothing, then ? No… absolutely not. We should be doing what is right. If we pollute the sky with burning coal, we should try to reduce it and change to solar energy. But not because we need to avoid paying higher tax, but because it’s just something that’s right.
Want to know my stand on global warming? Yes, global warming do exist. But, no, it doesn’t caused by human activity. Read more about this here.
