SCIENCE BECOMING ENLIGHTENED ABOUT OUR ATMOSPHERE;

In the Science section of the Nov. 7, 2000 issue of the Seattle Times, there was a column article titled "Enlightening news on origin of Earth's air."  According to the article, it is now believed by scientists that life is probably only possible on earth because of the existence of the "greenhouse" effect.  If this is true, then we should be even more concerned about what we are doing to the greenhouse effect.

Yes scientists are now warning us about the same greenhouse effect and the potential dangers of climatic change from gases we are releasing into the atmosphere; yet we shouldn't forget that "science" gave us the technology to get into this problem to begin with.

We should all be concerned about what is happening to our environment.  The simple fact is, however, that science is now just beginning to understand the extremely complex systems like the earths atmosphere and biosphere.  Even those scientists warning about potential atmosphere problems are dependent on extremely simple (compared to the real world) mathematical/computerized models of the environment.

This problem with the inevitably hyper simplistic models is that they could actually give the wrong answers about what to do and lead societies decisions in the wrong direction causing exacerbation of  problems.    It is a fact of science and engineering that the models which man conceives of are almost all hyper simplistic compared to the real world.  This is especially true of almost all of the life sciences.

When scientists tell us that genetically engineered foods or even the new coolants in refrigerators and air conditioners are supposedly friendly to the environment, they may be seriously in error and have no way to know what trouble the new technology will cause in the future.  The new safer chemicals might actually make things worse in a way not discernable in their relatively simple computer models.

Unfortunately science is no where near as able to forecast the future as the public thinks.  Citizens need to better understand the limits of science and to make sure that such understanding plays a significant role in the making of laws and government regulations to limit the dangers of science as much as possible.

More public input means better science.