I’ve seen a sad number of people of people (including Neil DeGrasse Tyson who is supposedly a scientist) compare predictions about when eclipses occur to predictions about climate change and its effects. Oh come on. If the eclipse doesn’t occur today based on predictions, how devastating would that be that science? Can you think of any similar prediction about climate change that if it ended up false would cause any ruckus at all?

This is so elementary it feels dumb I have to explain it, but the eclipse is a verifiable prediction based on a handful of steady factors — rotation of the earth, revolution of the earth around the sun, revolution of the moon. There’s a few other things that affect it in minor ways (the moon is slowly moving away from the earth) but using just those factors can give you a pretty accurate prediction.

Now what factors are needed in predicting climate change? Unknown. They’re still trying to figure it out, but they are numerous. The climate is already something constantly in flux (unlike the revolution of the earth) and there is certainly no record of making accurate climate predictions like predictions of eclipses. Because that’s so complex as to be impossible.

Again, this is really simple science concepts, and it’s sad people don’t understand them. Even if you think the science about climate change is pretty good, to put it anywhere in the vicinity of the science used in predicting eclipse makes you very very dumb. We always hear about the problem with people not understanding science who doubt it, but we never hear about the problem of people not understanding science who unquestionably believe whatever they think scientists said. Not believing something you don’t understand is natural. Trusting blindly in what you don’t understand is religion, and science is a really silly, capricious thing to form a religion around.

I really think science would do better if most people just ignored it beyond getting the occasional notification of when to watch an eclipse.