Scientific proof cannot be ignored in climate change

The writer of the letter calling climate change a myth lacking scientific facts simply doesn't understand science.

Science is never "settled." Good science demonstrates that yesterday's good science wasn't quite so good after all. Science converges on reality or, for nerds, it approaches truth asymptotically.

Fifty years ago I got into the nascent game of using computers to analyze environmental systems -- how they behave and how human activities affect that behavior. Trends of environmental degradation first reported in the 1970s continue unabated.

The United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to operate under the auspices of the UN Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization. It's tasked to issue periodic reports about climate change, based on the best available science throughout the world.

The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, published in several volumes (2013-14), involved 831 scientific experts from 80 countries. They reviewed, integrated, synthesized, and summarized information from more than 30,000 peer-reviewed scientific reports.

The process is transparent. Results include uncertainties associated with conclusions. During the two and a half decades the IPCC has been reporting, the science continues to converge, accuracy has improved, and uncertainties have diminished: trends are clear.

The IPCC is reliable, not infallible, and therein lies a problem. Changing technologies, data-collection procedures, and analytical techniques exacerbate uncertainties inherent in climate change research.

Worse, they provide opportunities for creating "FUD" -- fear, uncertainty, and doubt -- among the general public by exploiting cherry-picked data. Those who reject mainstream climate science cherry-pick imperfections from the IPCC analyses, distorting those imperfections out of proportion.

Because of uncertainties, it's taken more than two decades for a critical mass of scientists, government officials, and media to recognize realities and potential enormities resulting from our changing climate.

Nature was nature before man was man. In the game of life, nature bats last.

Peter Haug

Colfax, Wash.

This story was originally published November 8, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Scientific proof cannot be ignored in climate change ."