Damned if you, damned if you don't

Global warming scientists often complain: we have all the calculations, verifiable or falsifiable science, peer-reviewed of course, why don’t you listen to us, you politicians, you Joe Publics. Indeed, it’s very sad. It is disgraceful that the politician should decide what is sound science and what is not.

But once bitten, twice shy. This year marks the anniversary of the final exposure of the Millennium bug fiasco. What was the Millennium bug? In the words of Stephen Fry: ”All computers have internal clocks and calendars and the first programmers cut corners by expressing the date just in two digits. “73” instead of “1973” and so on. It was thought that the date “00” might be interpreted by older, uncorrected computers as 1900 not 2000. In other words, on the dot of midnight, New Year’s Eve 2000, the Internet would think that it is 1900 again and turn into a pumpkin. The party would be truly pooped, unless we lavished billions on it”.

And we did. Governments spent lots of money to fix the bug. Special projects were created. But the countries which did little or nothing (Korea, Italy, Turkey) did not have any bigger problems than the countries which overspent (like Clinton’s USA).

So if the precautionary principle is a valid one, perhaps it says that one should be cautious about the predictions of scientists who often cry wolf. But equally we should look into the facts of science (if we can understand them, because they are presented by intelligent people. We are in a cleft stick.

Marco (on a very snowy day in Warsaw)