As the Good Book advises in 1 Kings 19, listen to the "still small voice" (rather than the shrill pompous vent).  This advice can certainly be applied to science in general and environmental science in particular.  After all, science aims to achieve objectivity, leaving emotions as more of a response rather than a guide.

Last year, a town meeting was held in a community in southwest Pennsylvania where many citizens were understandably concerned about bad odors that frequently permeated their neighborhood.  Two of the complainants were students representing a local high school club called “Do Something” (apparently part of a national social organization perhaps designed to groom future professional activists).  Their passionate plea to the local air-quality agency officials in attendance was to stop studying the problem and just act to, in this case, end the “obvious” source of the malodors, a nearby large industrial operation.

Without getting into the complexity of the pollution situation, suffice it to say that the singling out of a particular source that is among numerous other potential malodor contributors is a big challenge that requires careful analysis.  That analysis is currently underway by the air agency, but that is not good enough for many who let their emotions control their thinking.  Lacking solid, measured, defendable evidence, appropriate and legal actions to alleviate the malodors cannot be achieved.  (I know this from decades of work in the field, including involvement with court cases.)

Similarly, going back some years to 1990, when the hysteria about the “greenhouse effect” was just ramping up, I attended an environmental conference in Pittsburgh hosted by Teresa Heinz (wife of the late Senator John Heinz and current wife of Secretary of State John Kerry).

One particular speaker (whose background was in the biological, not atmospheric, sciences) gave an impassioned, but strongly biased, presentation about the dangers of increased carbon dioxide on raising global temperatures.

Afterward, while leaving to get back to my job in the real world of atmospheric science, I overheard two female attendees anguishing over the presentation.  Upon agreeing that although they didn’t really understand what the speaker was saying, they concluded in essence that something needed to be done immediately to curb global warming.

As is evident by the global temperature some years after 1990, warming of the atmosphere has practically stagnated for more than 15 years now.  It turns out that the real world does not give deference to political or academic theory on climate change.  And, as always, the shrill and schmaltzy must submit to the "still and small" when it comes to the behavior of natural reality.

(P.S.  To my fellow Christians:  The sound judgment of the "still small voice" of Scripture still sounds large as a reliable guide on all things environmental.)

Anthony J. Sadar, a supporter of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist and author of In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic’s Guide to Climate Science (Telescope Books, 2012).