Another exchange on climate change

Although I enjoyed most of Steve Sherwood’s article on science controversy, I was a bit surprised to read a jab at geologists that sounded more like what I’d expect to hear from physicist caricature Sheldon Cooper of CBS’s The Big Bang Theory than from an article in a serious publication. Sherwood suggests that traditional geologists “emphasize empiricism and classification” and “consider ab initio theoretical approaches to be hopeless.” (A more derogatory phrasing I’ve heard from other physicists is that “geology is just stamp collecting.”) Especially since the advent of plate tectonic theory, academic geology has in fact emphasized testing hypotheses about Earth processes and not simple classification.

Sherwood’s claim that geologists are as skeptical about global warming as the general public is also misleading. The article he cites ¹ does note that only 47% of 103 surveyed economic geologists—those who study mining, oil and gas, and so forth—agree that “human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures,” but the same survey showed that among 1749 publishing geoscientists surveyed, 89% agree. ² The resistance of some geologists to accept anthropogenic warming may be related to their financial reliance on the fossil-energy industry, but aspersions on geologists’ use of the scientific method are not warranted.