IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2017 - 24

value as an engine for progress. Yet,
once reputable authorities establish a
theory, the skeptic needs to offer up
sound evidence in order to debunk it.
Mr. Pruitt claims to be "an expert
in Constitutional law," which he
apparently thinks somehow quali-
fies him to deal with the impact reg-
ulations have on the environment.
He asserts President Obama's Clean
Power Plan would have the effect of
shuttering coal-fired power plants,
thereby increasing electricity costs,
amounting to a cap-and-trade sys-
tem for carbon emissions, which
Congress already rejected. True
enough. But supporting his stance
on the grounds that the environment
will be none-the-worse for it flies in
the face of global warming science.
It's also true that fields such as phi-
losophy, history, and, even law and
political science, often point to where
scientific answers might be found. But
unlike law, science adds the neces-
sity for empirical evidence: multiple
observations, testing, data, which
draw conclusions subject to verifica-
tion, and the ability to falsify the the-
ory advocated. Unlike law, science
discovers, and in so doing expands
the body of universal, epistemic
relationships - steering clear of
emotion, ideology, or politics. And,
although science works to conserve
established theories, it has a capacity
to undergo revision when assump-
tions and data fail to account for
what more cogent, deeper analysis
or instrumentation reveals. That being
said, not every skeptic has a vote.
Those who depend on experts
for answers, including elected or
appointed officials, should want to
know how these specialists justify
their claims. Under what conditions
do they form hypotheses from small
samples of facts to create more
encompassing theories? When a sci-
entist reports a year-over-year rise in
the Earth's temperature, what links
this to the use of fossil fuels or sim-

24

ply some natural phenomenon? What
links empirical evidence of one thing
to the causation of another? If Mr.
Pruitt disagrees with the majority
of experts on the cause of climate
change, he should enlighten us about
what explains the precipitous thaw-
ing of our permafrost, the lengthen-
ing of the growing season in middle
and higher latitudes, the poleward
and upward shift of plant and animal
ranges, the decline of some plant and
animal species, and the earlier flow-
ering of trees, emergence of insects,
and egg-laying in birds. Environmen-
tal science attempts to answer these
kinds of questions, which should
have served as points of entry to Mr.
Pruitt's confirmation testimony, but
these sorts of details never came up.
A baseball pitcher needn't study
physics to pitch well, and fans will
not much care if the physicist ex-
plains why the pitcher's fastball
works well in the ninth inning. Like-
wise, politics, law, ethics, and other
social constructs can reduce to irrel-
evance the physical part of an under-
taking, the slice that science deals
with. Politicians simply may not care
about the science. But this ambiva-
lence must not be allowed to per-
sist, if through policy, we have any
chance in slowing down and finally
arresting climate change.
Pruitt can invoke many good
reasons for rejecting scientific-like
explanations about global warming.
Indeed, we look to science itself to
help separate true science from junk
science. But, the new administration
cannot simply reject the current the-
ory based on nothing more than that
it may conflict with a constituency's
self-interest or one's shear lack of
understanding. On a more justified
level, Pruitt may criticize the science
because: 1) reasonably-based com-
peting views or data point in another
direction; 2) relevant empirical data
cannot be explained by the theory;
3) a model of the phenomenon criti-
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

cal to the theory doesn't account for
an apparent feature or complexity; 4)
samples may have been inappropri-
ately drawn in support of a necessary
hypothesis; 5) there exists a lack of
experimental replication; 6) there is a
lack of peer review; or (7) it's based
on a theory incompatible with the
requirement that it must be capable
of falsification through empirical
observation. Skeptics, such as Mr.
Pruitt, have many potential places
upon which they might stake a reason-
able case. It remains to be seen if by
any one of these theory-busters Mr.
Pruitt can plausibly dispute what has
caused an increase in global average
surface temperature of about 1°F over
the past century, or what accounts for
a rise in global average sea level,
the increase in ocean water tem-
peratures, or the increase in the
frequency of extreme precipitation
events in some regions of the world.
The union of scientists, world-
wide, looks to peer reviewers as
an established criterion for judging
the integrity of scientific claims.
Over 13 000 peer-reviewed articles
stand for and about 100 against
the proposition that humans cause
global warming. It's not evident that
Pruitt understands this, and without
a well-reasoned sense for how sci-
ence, technology, and policy can
avert this threat to the way we have
historically live on the planet, it's
doubtful that anytime soon we will
see a turn-about in U.S. policy, vis-à-
vis support for the Paris Agreement.

Author Information
Joe Carvalko is an adjunct professor
of Law, Science, and Technology at
Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT.
Email: carvalko@sbcglobal.net.

Reference
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/
us/politics/scott-pruitt-environmental-
protection-agency.html, Last retrieved Sep-
tember 13, 2017.

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DECEMBER 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/
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