The simple explanation for why climate change deniers are simply wrong
Occam’s razor — or, less flamboyantly, lex parsimoniae, Latin for “parsimonious law” —first made popular (to non philosophers, anyway) in the 1997 movie Contact, is famous not just for it’s impossibly cool name, but because of its beautiful simplicity and apparent truth in the real world:
Given two or more alternative solutions or theories to explain a thing, the simple solution is often the right one.
This is immensely powerful stuff, and when applied to both micro and macro scales, it can have a profound impact, if only by virtue of massively simplifying any decision making process.
Despite having studied a bit of philosophy at UCLA, I’m by no means any sort of philosopher, yet this particular principle really resonated with me. I’ve done my best to apply it all my life, not just in personal affairs, but in professional matters, too: I can’t count the number of times we’ve made changes to our startup just because the simple solution ended up being the right one (or the least bad!) again, and again, and again….
I don’t think this is any mysterious coincidence; I don’t think Occam’s razor is a particularly surprising thing. Complexity by definition brings with it more variables, each of which sets off an exponentially growing tree of other branching variables, each of which could affect the thing in question. With each layer of complexity then, the likelihood that any one of those branching paths proves the hypothesis in question thus becomes less.
Looked at graphically, trying to reverse engineer something with n branching nodes is far more daunting a task than reverse engineering a thing with a single path from A to B.
Put another way, the whole point of the scientific method — its beauty, really — is precisely that it’s premised on trying to prove hypotheses wrong. Only once an hypothesis cannot be proven wrong is it deemed to have been proven true.
Arguing that climate change doesn’t matter because it’s not manmade is like arguing that we shouldn’t care about a meteor about to strike the earth simply because we didn’t cause it.
The problem that arises with any scientific experiment, however — and the logic behind Occam’s razor — is that for any set of failed explanations, a virtually infinite set of hypotheses may be put forth to prevent them from having been falsified in the first place. A corollary to this is that it’s very easy to prove a thing wrong; it’s far more difficult to prove a thing right.
Today we’re faced with the issue of whether climate change is, well, a thing. Despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of climate scientists around the world — some 97% — agree that climate change is both manmade and a legitimate danger to life on earth — both biologically as well as geopolitically — there exists a large subset of the population that remains adamant that all those PhDs are wrong, and that either (a) climate change simply isn’t a thing at all; or (b) that climate change is a thing, but it doesn’t matter because we didn’t cause it. Note that this alternative argument is like saying that a huge meteor about to strike the earth also shouldn’t matter, just because it too is not manmade.
For every data point, for every analysis, for every climate variable studied, it’s extremely easy to (try to) falsify it; alternatively, every time it appears an explanation has been disproven, it’s very easy to come up with some random hypotheses to prevent the failure in the first place. The oft-cited claim, for instance, that the earth simply cannot be warming because of a particularly cold snowstorm in Boston, is a good example of this failed and foolish logic.
In fact, if we broaden our discussion beyond this issue of climate change, the absurdity of trying to falsify so many otherwise logically sound arguments becomes quite apparent:
Evolution isn’t a thing because we can’t see it happen (actually, we can, because antibiotics and vaccines).
Vaccines are dangerous because a few people got sick (the whole correlation isn’t causation thing).
The moon landings were faked because the shadows aren’t right (really?).
The earth is flat because (er… um…).
The point is, it requires exceedingly little imagination — to speak nothing of intelligence — to just play a drunken devil’s advocate, one who just rambles at the mouth espousing factually false beliefs simply because the english language allows such detritus to flow from one’s mouth with no checks and balances on its veracity, or lack thereof.
Put another way, any idiot can blindly negate or otherwise fault per se factual arguments without any industrious study on the matter whatsoever. To use a far more sensitive analogy, take the insensitive, historically ignorant imbeciles who try to argue that the holocaust never happened. It’s easy to throw about empty, academically unsound statements; anybody can do it. What’s hard, unfortunately, is to argue the truth of something. Because that requires study. Lots and lots of study.
This is why philosophy professor Patrick Stokes at Deakin University in Australia argues that no, you’re not entitled to your baseless opinion:
An opinion is a view or judgement about something. So, by definition, an opinion has attached to it a certain degree of uncertainty or subjectivity, and using it as a defense only works in certain situations…. There’s no way you can argue with me if I were of the opinion that ginger tastes horrible. You might actually like ginger’s taste, but my preference against it is beyond question. But you have all the rights to argue with me if I were of the opinion that global warming is a hoax. After all, there is overwhelming scientific evidence to show that there is very little uncertainty in the “opinion” that global warming is happening.
Climate change is a brutally unfortunate truth; a sad and dismal reality of the (only) world we call home. But a meteor on a collision course with the earth would also be brutally unfortunate, not least of which because, at least until the last possible moment, there would probably still be a few percent of the earth’s scientists whose calculations may conclude optimistically — ignorantly? — that the meteor could, in fact, just skip harmlessly off our atmosphere.
But whether talking about climate change or a potential meteor strike, embracing the most simple and most likely solution isn’t just easier, it’s wiser: first, when the odds are so heavily in favor of what the scientists say, why would you want to gamble with that; secondly, if the scientists are wrong, we don’t lose anything by preparing for the worst, while if they’re right, and if we do nothing, then we stand to lose a lot.
The overwhelming evidence today supports the fact that the climate is changing, precariously so, to our detriment. The further argument that mankind is causing this precipitous change also cannot be seriously faulted; alternatively, this theory is less likely to be false, than to be true. Indeed, manmade climate change is not only the most likely explanation for what’s happening, it’s the simplest solution to explain everything; it requires the least jumping through hoops, and the least convoluted rationals.
Manmade climate change satisfies Occam’s razor as the simplest solution to the question of what’s causing Earth’s climate to change like no other explanation can. So even if you want to argue a contrarian theory, it’s just plain foolish to do so.
You might as well keep trying to argue that evolution isn’t a thing, too.
NB. Before people start ripping me apart for this piece, arguing how science changes all the time, that science has proven itself wrong on countless occasions… that’s a good thing! The whole point of science is always to keep seeking the truth, and to disprove itself swiftly and thoroughly, as soon as possible; otherwise it ceases to be science, and is relegated to little more than a religious belief.
