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Global Warming and Science in Our Lives Amid the ongoing global warming debate, it is probably worthwhile to take a good look at how our society uses science and the decisions we make based on scientific findings. Clearly, global warming is a very divisive issue, and a very emotional one for many, but in light of past experience, it would be wise to step back and take a look at the big picture. While there is a growing consensus that human activity plays a role in global warming, many of the findings are far from certain, there are still a great many variables of which we know little, and we are in the dark as to which factors may be the key ones to address. Perhaps more troubling, we have no clear idea of what the solution(s) might be nor a coherent plan for addressing the problem. Regardless of this, many would have us plunge head-first into a whole series of actions, changes, laws, regulations and restrictions, the effects of which are very far from certain environmentally, and potentially catastrophic economically and socially. It occurred to me that we have seen this scenario in the past, and we would be wise to heed our previous experience before coming to conclusions the consequences of which are unknown and uncertain. I am old enough to remember the many dire warnings the scientific community spewed out starting in the early 70?s: global cooling, the imminent extinction of numerous species, the imminent destruction of our water supplies to pollution, beach erosion, unbreathable air, and of course, one of the more famous ones, the imminent threat to our food supply due to overpopulation. As we look back at this, it is clear that many if not most of these warnings proved to be less dire and imminent than predicted, and perhaps more importantly, that the conclusions reached at the time by the scientific community failed to take elements into consideration which ultimately changed the ?inevitable outcome? that had been originally predicted. In some cases events simply did not unfold as we were assured they would, in other cases technology averted disaster, and in others, variables which were not part of the original equation played a significant role in changing the outcome. There is an exceptional example of this process and of some of the unforeseen consequences in looking at how our scientists, doctors, and society have handled heart attacks. Over the years, the scientific community has amassed an enormous amount of knowledge about heart attacks; what conditions tend to cause them, what environmental and hereditary factors affect them, how to treat them, and perhaps more importantly, they have made a large percentage of our population aware of these factors and conscious of them, causing may to change their lifestyles, eating habits, etc. While this is indeed a wonderful thing, in the process, this vast amount of knowledge has had unforeseen an unintended consequences which the medical community and society at large have had to live with, perhaps unnecessarily. For example; did you know that of all the people checking into ERs around the country complaining of chest pain and fearing a heart attack only about 10% are actually having or are in danger of having one? What does this mean in terms of manpower and cost? It means hospitals and doctors have had to treat 90 people out of every 100 without reason. By extension, it also means that many who were actually having a heart attack may not have been taken care of as fast or as well as they might have. While the overall results (fewer heart attack deaths) are commendable, at what cost have they come? How many more doctors and hospital beds have we had to dedicate to identify the 90% who are not having a heart attack? How much does this cost? (an ICU bed costs over $2,000 per day) And how could we have better used those resources and that money for other medical needs? How did this happen? It happened because we have bombarded our society with so much information about heart attacks and all of the hundreds of possible factors which affect them that people think they are having heart attacks when they are not. At the slightest symptom resembling a heart attack, we run to the ER and scream ?heart attack!?, and we expect to be treated for it. And hospitals have to treat us, if not out of a sense of duty, then at least out of fear of lawsuits. But it has cost so much and has taxed their resources to such an extent that hospitals are reeling from it. Over time, the medical community recognized their slow descent into this quagmire of false heart attacks and began to change the way they evaluate patients in order to determine with greater certainty who is actually having a heart attack and who isn?t. And how did they do it? Not by the expected method of gathering yet more information, but by discarding the vast majority of heart attack signals and symptoms, and concentrating on the 4 or 5 key indicators of an imminent heart attack. Over time and against the conventional wisdom that more information is always better, they discovered the key signals which indicate a heart attack and for the most part now concentrate only on those. Statistics show that when all the factors were taken into account, hospitals and staff were only able to predict heart attack victims accurately about 30% of the time, which means that 7 our of every 10 beds with their corresponding staff and equipment were dedicated to people who did not need them. When they discarded the vast majority of the indicators and symptoms from their calculations and concentrated on the key four or five, they were able to predict heart attack victims accurately 90% of the time. Amazing, isn?t it? But how can that be right? The more information we have the better decisions we can make! Not so. The more correct and relevant information we have the better decisions we can make. But how do we know what the correct and relevant information is? We don?t, and that?s exactly the point. As a society, we assumed that the more information we collected and disseminated to our citizens about heart attacks, the better the care we would be able provide. But we did almost exactly the opposite; we made them panic and run to the ER nine times for every one time it was warranted. We overburdened our hospitals and we created a huge and very costly way to save lives that were not in danger. And we then had to correct that mistake after years and perhaps after many lives which could have been saved were lost, had the hospital staff not been so busy treating non-existing heart attacks. Global warming is like heart attacks. There are thousands of elements which potentially could contribute to global warming, there are thousands of environmental and climactic events which could be affected or worsened by global warming, but we?re not at all sure which ones and what their relative importance is; we?re not even sure we?ve looked at all the potential factors and variables. And we?re telling our society they are all important, they are all certain, and that we must run to the ER when we see any of them. Are we willing to repeat the heart attack experiment on a global scale? On a scale that makes the time, money and resources spent on heart attacks seem like pennies? Are we willing to risk the economic and societal well-being of our world before we really know which the key factors really are? You tell me. Henry Kadoch, Houston, August 2007
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