My decision to study physics was based on the conviction that we live in an enlightened society, where the power of science to make quantitative predictions was generally accepted. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Our society does not value science. It values the results of science, if these can be used to make people rich. Physicists were popular because of the laser, the atomic bomb, and the transistor. When they started talking about limits to growth and climate change, their message was less appreciated.
But, as Galileo Galilei pointed out in 1615: “It is not within the power for practitioners of demonstrative sciences to change opinion at will, choosing now this and now that one; there is a great difference between giving orders to a mathematician or a philosopher and giving them to a merchant or a lawyer; and demonstrated conclusions about natural and celestial phenomena cannot be changed with the same ease as opinions about what is or is not legitimate in a contract, in rental, or in commerce.”
Or as Richard Feynman put it: “Nature cannot be fooled”.
“Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.” These are the words of eminent climate scientist and the scientific advisor to the Pope, Angela Merkel, and the European Union Prof. Dr. Joachim Schellnhuber. Perhaps we should start listening.
