5 Scientific Ideas Harder to Accept than Climate Change

On July 8, 2021, the US Senator Ron Johnson mouthed to a crowd that he thought climate change was bullshit. There’s nothing new about climate deniers, but the audacity to deliver such a line as the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia were literally in flames required a special aptitude to tune out reality.

It’s telling that even as the Senator was denying climate science, he couldn’t quite deny science completely - relying on dubious claims about sunspot activity. In some ways, it would be more consistent if he just broke from science altogether and attributed climate events to gods at war or malevolent fairies.

There are a vast number of stranger and more counterintuitive scientific claims that I have never once heard challenged by a single politician. And so I present 5 scientific ideas that Ron Johnson and his likeminded peers should also be vehemently denying if they would deny that human activity is causing the change in the earth’s climate. After all, if you are going to be anti-science, why not go all-in?

5 Science Claims for Climate Deniers to Also Challenge

1. A photon until measured can exist in more than one place at once.

2. It’s impossible to go faster than light.

3. Mass bends space itself and the curvature and wrinkles of space is what we experience as gravity.

4. The majority of mass in the universe consists of dark matter which cannot be readily detected as it does emit, absorb, reflect or otherwise interact with electromagnetic radiation.

5. Objects in space are receding from us in every direction, but this does not imply earth is the center of the universe but instead that space itself is expanding.

So what?

The point is even climate change deniers don’t question most scientific claims. And one need not look to examples from quantum mechanics or relativity to prove that point.

Even while denying climate change, politicians like Ron Johnson don’t question that carbon dioxide is a gas that consists of one part carbon and two parts oxygen. That carbon and oxygen are elements, consisting of protons, neutrons and electrons. That burning fossil fuels releases C02 when combusted. That trees need C02 for photosynthesis and when a forest burns down that C02 is released.

If you asked him whether he prefers to wear a dark shirt on a hot summer day or a light colored one, he would pick the light one. His knowledge in selecting a light colored shirt to wear to a photo op at a hot state fair event is the same knowledge needed to understand that white sea ice reflects more solar energy than blue ocean water and that as sea ice melts and turns into water it starts a feedback loop leading to more melting. In short, he would accept all of the premises in the chain of reasoning that is the basis for climate science without accepting the conclusion that entails from accepting those premises. It’s like correctly adding up all of the subtotals on an invoice only to botch the final summation. And if his issue is that final summation — the long-term climate modeling — well there too he likely relies on same types of statistical inferences used in climate modeling for understanding polling data relevant to his constituency or when he sees ESPN has favored one team being favored over another. The statistical principles are common even if the domains are quite different. His climate science denialism then is highly compartmentalized in a context of reliance on science.

But if someone accepts that the scientific process is capable of generating true statements about the world, then that person can’t capriciously pick and choose which statements to accept. This is because what is more fundamental than any given scientific claim is the scientific method itself which is repeated across a broad range of topics. Honestly challenging a given claim requires some attempt to show why the scientific method has failed on that particular topic. In the case of climate change that is very difficult as there is overwhelming consensus that human activity is responsible for warming.

To be consistent in their opposition to science broadly, these politicians should not be tweeting out their views on smart phones that are fabricated to incorporate and harness quantum effects or driving to events in cars that use AI in collision avoidance systems. Nay, communicating through a profoundly sophisticated product and testament to science and technology such as a smartphone would indicate their tacit belief in scientific progress — the same scientific progress that has allowed for detailed models showing humans’ unmistakable influence on Earth’s climate. To avoid hypocrisy these politicians should communicate their views the old fashion, science-free way — by shouting from a mountaintop!

Until then, I suppose, let’s just vote them out of office.