Politics & Power Quote by Paul R. Ehrlich

Ehrlich’s line weaponizes an absurdly high bar for certainty to expose how science gets caricatured in public life: as a vending machine for unanimity rather than a method for reducing doubt. The joke lands because it yokes the most dependable-looking prediction we have - sunrise - to the very institution people imagine as an oracle. Of course the sun will rise, but “unanimous decision” is the trap. Scientific bodies don’t typically operate by metaphysical guarantees; they deal in probabilities, margins of error, model assumptions, and the humility to revise. Even if every astronomer in the room expects sunrise, a conscientious committee can still find caveats: a stray asteroid, an unexpected solar event, a definitional quibble about “rise,” or the philosophical discomfort of proving future facts. The comedy isn’t anti-science; it’s pro-science, mocking the demand that knowledge must be absolute to be usable.

The subtext is aimed at a political and media culture that treats disagreement as disqualification. If experts don’t speak with one voice, the story becomes “scientists are divided,” which conveniently launders inaction. Coming from Ehrlich - a biologist who spent decades watching environmental warnings get reframed as “controversial” - the barb reads like frustration distilled into a single, sharp provocation: your requirement for unanimity is not a standard of rigor, it’s a veto. By choosing sunrise, he underlines the real point: uncertainty is not ignorance; it’s the normal operating condition of honest inquiry.