If the Global Community limits its response to Climate Change to those solutions coming from Formal Science, it is doomed to exceed the 2°C increase in mean global temperature that scientists believe will take us into unchartered waters.
Science is not equipped to innovate rapidly in an emergency. Rapid innovation requires rule-breaking and risk-taking. Science cannot act this way because it would undermine the process by which a fact becomes “scientific”.
Scientific information is the “most reliable” knowledge available because its findings are ‘repeatable’, ie. they can be reproduced in other places by other people*. This claim locks Science into a “Scientific Method” which sets the ground rules for gathering and analysing data. This involves the entire scientific community in verifying the work in a process called ‘peer-review’. Unless a piece of research is accepted for publication in a scientific journal, after being assessed as acceptable by three or more ‘peers’ (or scientists in the field) it does not exist, officially.
The Science system acts as a sheet anchor on timely innovation.
Stage 1: The solution must compete for the attention of recognised scientists, against a large number of fashionable candidates. Eg. Biochar was championed by prominent scientists long before soil carbon was finally recognised.
Stage 2: The project must compete for funding – which means the scientist’s skills in ‘grantsmanship’ will see many worthy projects overlooked. Stages 1 and 2 can take up to 10 years.
Stage 3: The research itself. Soil carbon science requires 3-year trials, according to tradition. This is despite the prevailing opinion that no significant shift in soil carbon levels will happen in under 20-30 years.
Stage 4: Seeking a publication. This can consume 18 months on average. This point introduces the ‘peers’ who might recommend changes to the paper. Naturally a small coterie of scientists review each others’ papers, such is the structure of the community.
The “Peer-Review” Process can make a new candidate for ‘scientific factness’ wait 15 years before it can be acknowledged as scientific and acted upon by Government. Throughout this period Science will not abide discussion of the candidate fact as a potential solution. It presents the only peer-reviewed data as the sum total of Science’s knowledge, no matter how old or out of date the data. In fact, Science will actively discourage consideration of candidate facts, no matter how urgent the need for new solutions. This is especially so when the solution originates among non-scientists.
Agricultural Science has been dominated by chemical technology coming from multinational petrochemical and pharmaceutical corporations. This is known as ‘high input’ farming, whereby farmers pay high prices for artificial nutrients and biocides (herbicides, pesticides, fungicides). The soil is used as a medium for delivering water and synthetic nutrients to the roots.
Alternative practices developed by farmers and pastoralists – which replace reliance on industrial processes and products with soil management practices that restore the soil’s natural microbiological communities to health which, in turn, make nutrients and water available to plants while growing soil carbon stocks - are called ‘low input’ systems because farmers rely less on externally-provided products and processes, which reduces costs and makes it easier to make a profit. There have been many attempts to suppress these approaches, particularly the soil carbon opportunity, by such means as the following:
• No research funds are sought for them for many years.
• Desk research purporting to reveal the potential of Austrtalian soils to sequester carbon ignores the lack of data on alternative practices. A skewed conclusion becomes lore.
• If the practices become popular, research is conducted which, due to methodological failures, invariably finds that the practices are not effective.
• Spokespeople on the payroll of major Government-funded research agencies conduct a media campaign to discourage adoption of the grassroots innovation.
• “Scientific” papers using 50-year-old data claim to prove the practice is too hard, too expensive, or otherwise a bad decision.
• Articles based on this data are published in official research agency newsletters and magazines.
• Seminar series are conducted, to ‘debunk’ the candidate facts.
• Senior scientists describe the promoters of candidate facts as ‘snake oil salesmen’. Personal attacks on the integrity of scientists, agronomists and others engaged in promoting alternative methods appear in scientific papers and reports.
• The old ‘peer reviewed’ data is presented to government enquiries and used to populate computer models which are then used to estimate the effectiveness of these alternative practices.
• Senior scientists declare the scientists and agronomists working on the candidate facts as not qualified to make presentations to government on the issue.
• Government-funded institutional research bodies finance such ‘propaganda’ activities.
All these activities have been directed at farmers who would promote the Soil Carbon Solution.
*Judging Science: Scientific Knowledge and the Federal Courts- Kenneth R Foster, Peter William Huber - 1999
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