There's some new environmental buzzwords, and they aren't "green" or "sustainability." The new phrase is much more grounded. What everyone seems to be talking about these days is "sound science."

 

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain outlined his global warming attack plan last month, calling for "scientifically sound" emission reduction targets. Of course, he's the latest to evoke the scientific method in the climate change debate. Both the global warming alarmists and skeptics have rooted their argument in sound science. It brings to mind what Abraham Lincoln said during the Civil War: Both sides have claimed God is on their side, so at least one of them has to be wrong.

 

But it's not just the greenhouse gas issue where we want the scientists to be judges. The debate over whether or not mandates for corn-based ethanol are the cause of rising food prices is being argued largely based on what exactly is that good old sound science. And at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agen¼cy, career scientist and now administrator Stephen Johnson came to the top post saying his decisions will be based on science. Today his opponents attack him for what they see as his abandonment of that same scientific reasoning.

 

It's a sound approach to want to base an argument on sound science. Science is after all supposed to be an unbiased pursuit of fact. But obviously it's not that simple. Facts can be used to support both sides of a debate. We choose to give one part of the science more credence than another. And then we're back where we started from.

 

Can we ask science to work harder to resolve our conflicts? It would be comforting to think that, at least for us non-scientists who look at scientists as sort of geek geniuses we don't understand, but we're glad they're there when we need them.

 

But science aims to document if not explain a very complex world. Often those facts are conflicting, and more evidence just means more conflict.

 

It shouldn't be surprising, but scientists often can't agree on what's right and what's wrong any better than the rest of us.

 

We certainly should use sound science to help us come to conclusions. But it still comes down to weighing different opinions. We still have to make decisions with our own often un-scientific minds.

 

Allan Gerlat is editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

 

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