So the United States has announced it’s withdrawing from the Paris Accord, the international agreement with nonbinding measures to mitigate the effects of climate change. Now everyone’s up in arms, speaking in exasperated tones about the travesty of this decision.

“But… but… the science,” they say. Yeah, let’s talk about science.

科学真的是全部破解吗？

One of the most important facts about science is that you can never absolutely prove anything with it. Let’s take gravity as an example. Isaac Newton is famous for that whole apple-falling-out-of-the-tree thing and his “law of universal gravitation.” The apple falls. He writes an equation. And introductory physics students are punished for centuries.

But he could be wrong. What if a skydiver jumps out of a plane and never hits the ground? That’s the end of gravity. All it takes is one case of something not following the scientific idea — whether hypothesis, theory, or law — and that idea is dead. That’s how science works.

In fact, I just saw an article on Twitter the other day about a surprisingly large number of skydivers who have been reported as missing because they jumped out of a plane and were never seen again. I think Earth now has, in addition to the ozone layer, a skydiver layer. That’s my “theory.” (Or is it an alternative fact? I get those confused sometimes.)

Who gave scientists such an exalted position in the world anyway? We’re talking about people who could have been arrested for indecent exposure (Archimedes), are self-confessed trespassers and safe crackers (Richard Feynman), and who were illegal immigrants (all those Jewish scientists who escaped Nazi Germany). These are people so vain they’ve got at least five different varieties of “Luxuriant Hair Clubs。”

Climate change is just a theory

This conspiracy is so deep itgoes all the way back to 1827当法国科学家和数学家约瑟夫·福特尔（Joseph Fourier）构成了所谓的“温室效应”的想法。好吧，我认为他不是这样称呼的，但这就是他所做的。他当然试图通过使用精美的数学和计算应该独自一人的东西来使每个人混淆。

但是，嘿，傅立叶是法国人。当他做这项工作时，他可能会牢记巴黎协定，因为他知道美国将需要立即屈膝。

现在，我们有所有这些科学家致力于气候变化。我可以告诉你一个事实（直接而不是替代方案），并不是所有人都有资格The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientistsâ„¢ (LFHCfS)。Just take a look at the pate ofthat Michael Mann guy。如果他花更多的时间锯，而不是计数树环or playing hockey instead ofgraphing hockey sticks, he might have kept some of that hair he used to have. (He’d probably have fewer fingers and teeth, though.)

It’s just a mass piling-on of all the scientists out there now. They’re calculating and compiling and combobulating all the data they can find to corroborate their “theory of climate change.”

You know what happens when a lot of scientists work on one thing? Bad things happen! Think about it. Remember theManhattan Project? A lot of the world’s best scientists (including the trespassers, safe crackers, and illegal immigrants mentioned above, but no flashers as far as I know) got together and invented nuclear weapons. Now we’ve got a crazy guy with a bad haircut who could send them to kill millions of people any time he gets the urge.

The reality of science

OK, clearly what I wrote above is over the top. (Or is it so clear? It’s getting hard to tell these days.) Science has led to a lot of amazing accomplishments over the past couple of millennia, especially since the Industrial Revolution.

这是科学真的是如何工作的。当你把你t a crazy idea (e.g., “not all skydivers fall to the ground”), that’s a hypothesis. It’s not a theory. Not even close. For something to be called a theory, it’s got to have some significant experimental evidence behind it. And it has to be something that leads to new predictions that can be tested. As scientists continue to find supporting evidence and refine the theory, it eventually becomes a scientific law.

这就是科学的工作方式。在气候变化的情况下，我们有大量证据 - 从字面上看，就消失的北极海冰和倒塌的南极冰架而言。When the vast majority of scientists who work in this field agree that climate change is real, when they’ve calculated a 95% probability that we humans are the cause, and when the main opposition is political, I’ll put my money on science.

The U.S. is certainly free to leave the Paris Accord and abdicate its leadership role in this important realm. It won’t help us, though. And it certainly won’t help us do what needs to be done to battle the very real problem of climate change.

I’ll end by quoting Neil deGrasse Tyson: “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”

Allison Bailesof Decatur, Georgia, is a speaker, writer, building science consultant, and the author of the能源先锋博客。You can follow him on Twitter at@EnergyVanguard。