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LETTER: Science does not progress by popular vote

I have been following the published debate between Andy Neimers and Chris deRosenroll in the Sooke News Mirror.
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I have been following the published debate between Andy Neimers and Chris deRosenroll in the Sooke News Mirror.

I was astonished by the latest letter from Mr. Neimers (Nov. 11). The fact that books denying the incontrovertible evidence of severe anthropogenic climate change are popular is meaningless. Science does not progress by popular vote.

Galileo was an “alarmist” when he proved the Earth was not the centre of the universe. The church and society were alarmed that their worldview might not be accurate and tried to suppress that knowledge by imprisoning Galileo.

Darwin was an “alarmist.” Conventional society was very alarmed to hear that humans evolved over immense periods of time like the rest of the natural world and were not magically called into existence. With the result his findings were denigrated, denied and pilloried by popular writers at the time.

Mr. Neimers does not understand that science follows data, evidence and reason wherever it leads, however uncomfortable it might be for self-appointed popular critics.

So I will take the thousands and thousands of scientific papers and millions of person-hours of scientific research, evidence, and data gathered over the past three decades, summarised by the latest IPCC report released this August, over some misleading charts in popular books any time.

The fact that the heat dome event we all experienced in B.C. this June is precisely in line with what the science has said will happen since the 1990s should be proof even for someone who does not understand how science works like Mr. Neimers.

I am very much for properly informed debate. But I don’t tolerate uninformed factual science denialism simply because the debater does not like the conclusions.

Roland Alcock

Sooke

READ: COP26 to accelerate climate action already underway in Canada, experts say



editor@sookenewsmirror.com

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