CO2 causes climate change: fact or hypothesis?

Lawyers in Cebu, Philippines, who are into anti-climate change advocacy are publicly claiming that carbon dioxide (CO2) as a cause of climate change is already a scientific fact that is beyond dispute.

Atty. Benjamin Cabrido of the Global Lawyers Against Climate Change (GLACC) had been repeatedly saying this before members of the local media.

I am sure many have already accepted this view. But something in me says there is something wrong.

Way back in our elementary and high school days, my science teachers taught that science is not a collection of undisputed facts that we memorized from science books. It involves testing what we believe things are through observation and experiments. Scientific knowledge is arrived at by meeting and passing rigid tests.

Thus we first make a hypothesis that is subjected to experiments. If it passes the tests, we treat it as theories. Over time and upon consensus by scientists who subjected the theories with more experiments, it may become a law.

But even laws could be changed later as new scientific knowledge emerges. For instance, Newton’s laws on gravity were modified by Einstein’s Laws on Relativity.

“Even the most persuasive scientific findings are, therefore, held to be incomplete and tentative — always subject to further investigation, revision and dismissal in the light of new scientifically tested discoveries … And it is fanatic certainty that science replaces with a recognition that even the most entrenched scientific findings are at best partial or temporary truths and hence uncetain,” wrote Alvin and Heide Toffler in their book “Revolutionary Wealth.”

My point is: it is wrong to claim that the scientific finding on “CO2 as a cause of climate change” is beyond dispute. One only needs to Google or search Youtube for “climate change” to be able to get a glimpse of the other side.

I am saying this because the climate change theory is already being peddled as an absolute truth and beyond question, much like dogma of religious fanatics. Those who disagree become lynching targets.