When did skeptic become a dirty word?

January 3, 2004 9:18 PM

Did belief in extraterrestrials pave the way for today’s general belief in global warming? Is the blending of public policy with science creating junk science? Michael Crichton drew out an intriguing connection in this lecture at Caltech. Via Arts & Letters Daily.
posted by gd779 (42 comments total)

As Haim Harari, Former President of the Weizmann Institute of Science, once said: "Democratic votes, public opinion polls, majority views of scientists and scientific fads do not necessarily represent scientific truth. Only correct experimental results do."
posted by gd779 at 9:22 PM on January 3, 2004

This is a great read. Thank you. I'm glad he mentioned the shameful way in which Scientific American treated Lomborg near the end - that will go down as one of the lowpoints in the magazine's history.

Over-dramatizing the effects of nuclear war or the effects of deforestation or the dangers of second-hand smoke seem like beneficial lies. But as he rightly points out, once you start distorting the picture you are subverting science to political ends when it is in fact the science that should guide policy.
posted by vacapinta at 9:46 PM on January 3, 2004

Crichton takes aim at the concept of nuclear winter, but I didn't read him directly addressing the current science on global warming. They're two different things.
posted by donovan at 9:56 PM on January 3, 2004

Correcting myths from Bjørn Lomborg

On a more serious note, I wish I could conclude by saying that Lomborg's book has had some benefit to science, perhaps by way of emphasizing the need for robustness in modeling, or the need for critical evaluation of data. As it happens, those already are central tenets of scientific inquiry, as they have been throughout the history of environmental debate. All that Lomborg has accomplished is to try, without much success, to expose the soft underbelly of science. That underbelly is the uncertainty that invariably accompanies the initial investigations of natural and physical phenomena. That's why the study of problems like global warming is so easy to attack. There is now general consensus that global warming is a genuine phenomenon, but the uncertainty among studies as to its scope and speed provide more than enough ammunition for those determined to seek weaknesses in the arguments, and thus dither away while the problem intensifies.

Richard M. Fisher, "Skeptical About the Skeptical Environmentalist", Skeptical Inquirer, November/December 2002, 49-51
posted by y2karl at 9:59 PM on January 3, 2004

"In more densely populated areas, the most serious infectious diseases such as malaria and sleeping sickness become less of a problem the closer the buildings are together, because less space is left for the swampy areas where mosquitoes and flies can breed."

From a A collection of Lomborgisms
posted by y2karl at 10:05 PM on January 3, 2004

y2karl, see what Crichton said in the article about the notion of 'general consensus.'

Global warming may or may not be happening but that doesnt undermine Crichton's point which is that with so much uncertainty in the air these things become more about politics than science.

I could trot out another quote that refutes yours. Then you could trot out another that refutes that one. And so on. But what will that prove? The point is - this is no longer science.
posted by vacapinta at 10:07 PM on January 3, 2004

Atlantic Blog: The Lomborg story

Oh, and from there, here's Brad Delong:

I cannot be the only economist who was disappointed by Bjorn Lomborg's column in the New York Times on Monday, August 26. Lomborg makes a number of good points: it is definitely the case that we are pumping enough CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to warm the earth; that many of our environmental problems are the diseases of poverty, early industrialization, and the absence of democracy; that the Kyoto Protocol would be hideously expensive; that it would delay the warming trend for a decade at most; that projected temperature rises up to 2100 are bearable; and that it would almost surely be better to spend the resources that would be sucked up by the Kyoto Protocol on third-world public health and infrastructure instead.

But as I read I kept waiting for another shoe to drop, and it did not. It seemed to me that Bjorn Lomborg's argument was radically and dangerously incomplete. It seemed to me that there were three more critical points that Bjorn Lomborg desperately needed to make, but did not. And because he did not it seemed to me that the net effect of his piece was not to reveal wisdom, but to darkeneth counsel.

So let me make these three missing points:

First, climatologists' model-based central projections of the effects of global warming over the next century are just that: model-based central projections. There is enormous uncertainty about what will happen. It might be the case (although most scientists would bet heavily against it) that our pumping CO2 into the atmosphere will have little effect on climate--that the CO2 will be quickly absorbed into the oceans and terrestrial biosphere (making gardening much easier), and that any residual warming will be largely balanced out by the cooling effects of industrial soot. It is likely to be the case that the central projection of a 4 to 5 degree Fahrenheit warming over the next century will be roughly accurate. It might be the case that something horrible might happen--bubbles of methane trapped beneath the sea floor being liberated to greatly increase the greenhouse effect, global warming disrupting the Gulf Stream and causing a local cooling in Europe that would give Rome the climate of Oslo and produce 400 million Europeans anxious to move someplace else. The central projection of the effects of global warming over the next century looks bearable, but the extreme possibilities may well not be. Any approach to dealing with global warming that does not create the capability for massive and swift action should things be worse than currently expected is fatally flawed.

Second, those who will suffer from global warming are largely in the global south. If global warming does (say) increase the magnitude of major typhoons and does raise the sea level a bit, by the latter part of this century more than 100 million people in the Ganges delta will be at risk of drowning if a high tide accompanies the storm surge of a major typhoon in the Bay of Bengal. The managers and shareholders of companies like Halliburton that will gain from inaction on global warming are a different and distinct group from the tropical peasants who stand to lose their health and their lives. Any claim that "instead of Kyoto we should be doing X" has to be accompanied by a plan to actually do X. Otherwise, the claim that inaction on global warming enhances world welfare is likely to be very false indeed, as it is hard to believe that on the scale of human happiness higher incomes in the global north will outweigh nastier, more brutish, and shorter lives in the global south. It is one thing to say that the resources the Kyoto Protocol wants to use to fight global warming could be used to provide first-class public health and economic infrastructure to the global south. It is another to say that these resources, instead, will be used to get every American household a second DVD player and every tenth American household a power boat.

Third, global warming produced by a fossil fuel-burning civilization may be bearable and managable up to the end of the twenty-first century, but the warming trend is unlikely to stop there. Humanity will have to move to greenhouse gas-free industry at some point unless you want to see temperatures rising not by five but by ten or fifteen degrees. We need to start doing the research and industrial development now so that countries developing in 2050 can be offered an attractivge choice of greenhouse gas-free technologies as they industrialize. We don't want the climate in the twenty-second century to be shaped by an industrial China that in 2080 is still burning its brown coal, do we? So Lomborg's argument has to be a call not for inaction, but for rightly-directed action on global warming--which means a lot more money spent starting today on developing the technological alternatives we will need to have available for the end of the twenty-first century.

How do these three points change Lomborg's argument? He may well still be right that inaction on control of greenhouse gas emissions over the next twenty years is the best policy--but that claim needs a footnote warning that we need now to build the institutions necessary to take swift action if it turns out that things are worse than expected. He may well be right that the resources that Kyoto would suck up would do more for human welfare if spent creating a more human world by boosting public health and economic infrastructure--but that claim needs to be accompanied by a plan to make sure that these resources are devoted to their best alternative use in the global south. "Would" cuts no ice here. "Will" does.

And, most disappointing of all, is Lomborg's failure to even mention the importance of technological development. If it is the best policy to wait for a technological fix to the problem of global warming, then we need first to fix our technology so that it will be able to do what we ask of it when we need it.

It's not my field of expertise, but as a card-carrying economist I can't help but think that Lomborg is probably right when he condemns Kyoto as a worthless waste of the world's wealth--as something that will be ineffective at fighting global warming and so expensive as to foreclose options to do other things that would be more useful. Lomborg's flaw, however, is that he doesn't spell out what the "other things" we should be doing are. And that's what he needs to do if he wants to advance the ball.

Any approach to dealing with global warming that does not create the capability for massive and swift action should things be worse than currently expected is fatally flawed.

Agree or disagree>
posted by y2karl at 10:18 PM on January 3, 2004

? that is...
posted by y2karl at 10:19 PM on January 3, 2004

Personally, I believe that we should act as if global warming is true. What we are doing to the environment is shameful.

I havent seen enough convincing science either way such that I can say global warming is or is not true. And I doubt you have either. You just want it to be true so that finally people will act. And when you want something to be true, as I have said, you can always dig up convincing stuff especially on such a debatable issue.

But, I dont think we should have to have that "scare" tactic to make us act.

I am divorcing policy from science. Do you see?
posted by vacapinta at 10:26 PM on January 3, 2004

Did belief in extraterrestrials pave the way for today’s general belief in global warming?

it's the methane released during all those anal probes.
posted by quonsar at 10:31 PM on January 3, 2004

What donovan said. Crichton dismisses previous (far more weakly held and researched) concerns then makes a completely illogical leap of faith to cast global warming in the same light. You could write the same article from the opposite perspective just as easily: just name three or four predictions that came true, and then say "so global warming must be true too"! But it wouldn't be any more rational. The title of the article (which we may assume Crichton is responsible for, since it's his own site) shows that this is intentional: he picked a brush to tar research he didn't like with, without once actually even attempting to refute that research directly, but with the title he mislead the lazier of his readers into not noticing this.

Oh, and I love this bit: "The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was 'rife with careless mistakes'." Oh, I see! Is nine somehow the wrong number of factual errors to find? It depends very much what those errors are. They could all be trivial and noncontributory to his conclusions -- but on the other hand even one and only one could completely invalidate them. So which is it? Crichton isn't saying. And the fact that he isn't telling is... well, telling. And note the qualification: Nine "factual" errors. And how many procedural and logical errors? How many does it take?
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:00 AM on January 4, 2004

It seems that humanity may have been unknowingly engaged in climate engineering for thousands of years. I think "climate engineering" is the right idea, and we should act towards maintaining an optimal climate for humans to survive in.
posted by homunculus at 12:00 AM on January 4, 2004

Michael Crichton is not a scientist. He wrote "The Lost World".

Regarding Drake equation and Ds: they are only starting points for further research, breaking a large question into smaller questions. Lots of the small questions can be determined, and there can be a ranges of possible answers determined for the others. He is correct about Sagan putting publicity before peer review.

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.
Reproducible results create consensus. (Laymen should look at consensus of experts, experts look at the direct results. It is impossible for a layman to look at the results for every question so expert consensus is used instead.) His examples are exceptions and not the rule. Most of them are from medicine which was barely a science until the last century.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
Michael Crichton writes books for a living, and he also wrote this paragraph.

I say it is hugely relevant. Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will get some mobilization against nuclear war. But in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia.
I stopped reading at this point.
posted by donth at 12:10 AM on January 4, 2004

The point is not to castigate global warming research, but merely to point out that its "politicization" is making for bad science. The only refutation of science is to disprove it using data. The only valid scientific results are reproducable ones.

Crichton has a degree in anthropology and an M.D. from Harvard. He may be a fiction writer, but he's not an idiot, and he's certainly famaliar with scientific procedure.

Crichton sees what many of us see: Some scientists, including many at the forefront of global warming research like Paul Ehrlich, have used bad science to promote a political agenda. He sees that, while global warming may be occuring, the science behind it remains mighty flimsy right now. He makes no direct judgment on whether climate change is human-caused and reversable, but merely notes that if we're going to spend the trillions of dollars things like Kyoto require, we better be damn sure we're right. And beyond that, we better be damn sure we're not ruining science in pursuit of a short-term goal. Scientific reasoning is one of the only ways we have to truly ascertain what is and what is not. If the public can't trust science, one of the greatest tools in philosophical history will have been lost.

The Environmental Science movement *is* in great trouble. The fact is, they have been completely wrong on a great number of their policy suggestions and theories over the last four decades. These are not isolated examples, but are fundamental flaws in the scientific methods used by some in the enviro-science community. Even Silent Spring, grail of grails, greatly misrepresents (that's a nice way to say "lies") the effects of DDT on humans.

What Crichton suggests is a method like double-blind studies for enviro-science that will restore credibility in ES's predictions on things like global warming. I don't even see anything controversial about that.

(Interestingly enough, though, Crichton writes about quantum foam and other ideas from superstring theory in his new book "Timeline"; among others, my old professor Sheldon Glashow, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, thinks the fundamentals of superstring are as far away from good science as one can get, being that it makes untestable predictions and all that. But hey, you can't win em all.)
posted by Kevs at 12:52 AM on January 4, 2004

Great post, y2karl. Here's the page it's from (has the original lonborg op-ed, too)
posted by Tlogmer at 1:12 AM on January 4, 2004

well, there is certanly a large problem in the 'politicization' of science. And Kyoto is quite stupid.

That said, innaction on global warming is also stupid.

But then again. No one ever claimed that there was any kind of shortage of stupidity...
posted by delmoi at 2:32 AM on January 4, 2004

There's an issue, I think, when people confuse "politicization" with "the scientists produce results which happen to agree with the activists". I don't see what the anti-global warming obsessives hope to achieve, really. Do they want the research on climate change to stop? Or do they want it to continue until someone produces results they agree with. Thats equally poor science. The science is, at best, completely open to peer and public scruity - if you don't like the equations they base their predictions on, you're free to change them. Lomborg's book and Crichton's opinion are less transperant.
posted by Jimbob at 3:42 AM on January 4, 2004

>I don't see what the anti-global warming obsessives hope to achieve, really. Do they want the research on climate change to stop?

Actually, jb, we'd just like to see things settle down. First it's "The world's gonna be an Ice Cube before you die!", then it's "We'll all melt from greenhouse gases!", "We'll die from melting icecaps", and then there's the old "Better put on 2000 SPF sunblock in 10 years, the ozone hole is here to stay and it's just going to get bigger". Let's not forget "We're going to be out of gas by the turn of the millennium!" Now we're at "Well, there's something going on, but, well, for some it might be warm, for some it might be cold, and for most it won't matter for a century."

Let's imagine if we had acted on all the impulses there. First we'd all be turning on space heaters all day in a vain attempt to live. Then we'd be turning on air conditioners. Then we'd be covering everything from here to sunday with tarps. Now we know all those ideas are totally stupid and we can stop it all by preventing cow farts and coal power plants. And that's all happened in the past 30 years. What's around the bend for 2005?

Let's say that I'll be a lot more trusting in environmental science when it stops being such a moving target. I know science is an everchanging thing, but at some point people have to agree on things! Besides, never before can I think of a science that has undergone such a rapid shift of ideas in just a few decades. Well, apart from computer science. :-) Fortunately, we now have 100 years to worry about it rather than just 10 or 20 (heh... sounds like how sci-fi writers finally wised up that setting things in the near future is a dumb idea ;-) so let's all get together and come up with a decent answer.

Acting on impulse can often cause a lot more damage than not acting at all. Us scepticists are worried what the results of kneejerk reactions Kyoto, etc are really going to be. If history has anything to say about it, they'll be downright terrible and could kill more than they attempt to save.
posted by shepd at 5:57 AM on January 4, 2004

Chrichton's article lost it's last shred of credibility when it uncritically defended Lomborg. Comparing him to Galileo, even. If the confusion of scientific truth with political rhetoric were really his complaint, he'd hardly hold this guy up as the paragon of virtue.

For some reason, I just flashed back to a high-school lesson on rhetorical techniques of dishonest argument.
posted by sfenders at 7:20 AM on January 4, 2004

Variation on this, surely? While his point about depoliticizing science is important, if rather obvious, he certainly comes across as rather less-than-critical and even dopey in these rants. I'm not sure why.
posted by rushmc at 8:44 AM on January 4, 2004

Let's imagine if we had acted on all the impulses there. First we'd all be turning on space heaters all day in a vain attempt to live.

What? Are you saying there was a danger of overeacting to nuclear winter? Oh yeah, when we and the Russians nuked each other's cities to radioactive rubble, if we'd listened to the doomsayers we might have all been turning on space heaters in response to a nuclear winter that didn't really happen.

"Better put on 2000 SPF sunblock in 10 years, the ozone hole is here to stay and it's just going to get bigger"

So crazed people might have slapped on too much sunblock and done no end of harm? What's your point? And are you claiming that we're overreacting to ozone depletion, and that it's been debunked? When did that happen?

Acting on impulse can often cause a lot more damage than not acting at all. Us scepticists are worried what the results of kneejerk reactions Kyoto, etc are really going to be. If history has anything to say about it, they'll be downright terrible and could kill more than they attempt to save.

Cite a few examples? Oh, and "us scepticists"? Phew.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:11 AM on January 4, 2004

Meanwhile coal fires presently burning in China alone are annually dumping the same amount of carbon into the atmosphere as all US cars:

"Curbing coal fires could be a way of mitigating the effects of climate change by reducing CO2 emissions. Some estimates suggest the Chinese fires could be accounting for as much as 2-3% of the annual world emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels."

That's just China-massive coal fires are burning in India, Indonesia, Pennsylvania etc. We have the technology to extinguish them at a fraction of the Kyoto costs and no one is opposed to putting out the fires.

yet search for "coal fires" on google you get 8,000 hits; "global warming" gets 1.8 million. meanwhile the fires keep burning. What's wrong with this picture?
posted by quercus at 10:18 AM on January 4, 2004

I have a rather hard time believing that Critchton is so dumb as this lecture of his suggests, so I have to conclude that he is either being intentionally deceptive or is bizarrely uniformed - even about the some simple scientific facts about the mechanisms of Global Warming.

The basics of Global Warming are quite simple, and I have a hard time imagining that Critchton is so completely ignorant of these. Perhaps his ignorance is willful? But why?

_______________________________________________

Here it is in a nutshell. Global Warming made simple : the Earth is always absorbing heat - in the form of sunlight - and also radiating that heat back out into space. Earth's atmosphere has the net effect of keeping the Earth, on average, about 60-70 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it would otherwise be.

The Greenhouse Effect is what makes the Earth habitable for human life - and the most severe extinction events known of in the Earth's past have resulted, in fact, from a runaway feedback loop by which increased snow and ice cover reflects more heat back into space - and that, in turn, leads (up tp a point) in increased snow and ice cover. This is the now famous (among climatologists) "Snowball Earth" scenario.

So it is a very good thing, this Greenhouse Effect!.....up to a point.

Now what really is at issue is the "enhanced Greenhouse Effect" which is resulting from the human release of carbon, into the atmosphere, to boost atmospheric carbon to levels not seen in several hundred thousands of years (at least).

[ About volcanoes - Volcanoes spew carbon when they erupt, of course. But vulcanism is sporadic, while the human "volcano" erupts day in, day out, year after year. And in the short term, volcanoes also have a cooling influence for the soot and sulfur dioxide they launch into the atmosphere - which both blocks sunlight from getting to the Earth's surface (the soot) and reflects sunlight back into space (the sulfuric acid which results from the breakdown of sulfur dioxide). This sulfuric acid and soot precipitates out of the atmosphere fairly quickly - in several years. ]

But let's be clear on this - the Greenhouse effect of carbon (and other Greenhouse gasses such as methane) has been known for at least a hundred years.

Molecules of "Greenhouse" gasses trap escaping heat momentarily before they re-emit that heat energy. So these gasses have an insulating effect.

The physics of this have never been in question - they are extremely basic.

So the ONLY way that these Greenhouse gasses would NOT have the net effect of raising the earth's temperature would be if they triggered atmospheric mechanisms which counteracted that warming effect.

Increased cloud cover is the mechanism most often cited, but few specific mechanisms for this possible counteracting effect - you could call it the "Global Warming Self-quenching Effect" - have been proposed. One such theory has, however, been advanced by Jerry Lindzen, of MIT (a respected researcher in the field of climatology - meaning that he publishes peer-reviewed research in the field). But there is one major objection to the "Self-Quenching" hypothesis :

It is known, from reconstruction of the Earth's past temperatures, that the earth has been both warmer - at times, and cooler - at other times than the current average temperature of today. Sometimes, in fact, temperature shifts are rather rapid. So this throws the "self-quenching" mechanisms into doubt, to some extent.

So that's about it. Computer generated predictions of how much the Earth will warm in the next century are speculative, of course. Climatic interactions - between clouds, land and sea, snow and ice, animals and plants, and so on - are fantastically complex. Climate modelling is at an early stage, yes. So the current climate model predictions are provisional, of course. But - barring potential nonlinear mechanisms which Global Warming could trigger, and which most likely would be bad to catastrophic for industrial civilization - there is little doubt about the direction the Earth's climate is currently headed in. Warming.

_______________________________________________

OK now - having said all that - Critchton's basic assertion, that the science behind Global Warming is insufficiently supported, is never actually substantiated in his lecture. It is a straw man argument - as two on this thread have already noted.

Critchton makes some objections to computer climate models (known as "GCM's" ) which are quite embarrassing, in that they seem to betray a basic confusion over the distinction between Weather (the short term, day to day changes we call "weather") and Climate (the long range average). If climate were as variable and unpredictable as the weather - well, we'd been in serious trouble. In fact, it is very unlikely that the emergence of current human civilization, during the unusually stable period of the last 10,000 years - known as the Holocene - was by chance. We live in a period which is unusually balmy and stable. For now.

Critchton enters a different realm when he asserts that the Science of Global warming has become perverted by self interest, through the persecution of critics. He enters the realm of the propagandist. Left me quote this paragraph in it's entirety : "And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established. Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate ends, even though prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are being done.

When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require quotation marks around it? "

For a contrast to this picture Critchton paints, it is instructive to return to the "Global Warming Wars" of the 1990's (still ongoing, in fact). I posted a number of links to material about the campaign - by the petrochemical, coal, and auto industries to raise doubts about Global Warming science, to smear scientists prominent in the field, and to sow confusion and skepticism - in the public mind - about the issue - here (scroll down for links) and here (scroll down for links).

This PR Watch article on the issue is superbly informative. "Global Climate Coalition - The GCC has been the most outspoken and confrontational industry group in the United States battling reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Prior to its disbanding in early 2002, it collaborated extensively with a network that included industry trade associations, "property rights" groups affiliated with the anti-environmental Wise Use movement, and fringe groups such as Sovereignty International, which believes that global warming is a plot to enslave the world under a United Nations-led "world government.

For PR and lobbying, the GCC has employed "Junkman" Steven Milloy's former employer, the EOP Group, as well as the E. Bruce Harrison Company, a subsidiary of the giant Ruder Finn PR firm. Within the public relations industry, Harrison is an almost legendary figure who is ironically considered "the founder of green PR" because of his work for the pesticide industry in the 1960s, when he helped lead the attack on author Rachel Carson and her environmental classic Silent Spring.

GCC activities have included publication of glossy reports, aggressive lobbying at international climate negotiation meetings, and raising concern about unemployment that it claims would result from emissions regulations. It distributed a video to hundreds of journalists claiming that increased levels of carbon dioxide will increase crop production and help feed the hungry people of the world. In the lead up to the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the GCC and other industry interests successfully lobbied the US government to avoid mandatory emissions controls.

In 1997, the GCC responded to international global warming treaty negotiations in Kyoto, Japan by launching an advertising campaign in the US against any agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions internationally. This was run through an organization called the Global Climate Information Project (GCIP), which was sponsored by the GCC and the American Association of Automobile Manufacturers, among others. The GCIP was represented by Richard Pollock, a former director of Ralph Nader's group, Critical Mass, who switched sides to become a senior vice president for Shandwick Public Affairs, the second-largest PR firm in the United States. (Recent Shandwick clients include Browning-Ferris Industries, Central Maine Power, Georgia-Pacific Corp., Monsanto Chemical Co., New York State Electric and Gas Co., Ciba-Geigy, Ford Motor Company, Hydro-Quebec, Pfizer, and Procter & Gamble.)

GCIP's ads were produced by Goddard*Claussen/First Tuesday, a California-based PR firm whose clients include the Chlorine Chemistry Council, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, DuPont Merck Pharmaceuticals, and the Vinyl Siding Institute. Goddard*Claussen is notorious for its "Harry and Louise" advertisement that helped derail President Clinton's 1993 health reform proposal. Its anti-Kyoto advertisements falsely claimed, "It's Not Global and It Won't Work." They also claimed that "Americans will pay the price. . . 50 cents more for every gallon of gasoline." Ironically, there was no treaty at that point, and no government proposals, then or now, have suggested a "50 cent" gallon gas tax.

By 1997, however, the growing scientific and public consensus regarding global warming forced a number of GCC supporters to reconsider the negative PR implications of their involvement in a group that was increasingly recognized as a self-serving anti-environmental front group. BP/Amoco withdrew from GCC after BP's chairman admitted that "the time to consider the policy dimensions of climate change is not when the link between greenhouse gases and climate change is conclusively proven, but when the possibility cannot be discounted and is taken seriously by the society of which we are part. We in BP have reached that point." Other prominent companies that have publicly abandoned GCC include American Electric Power, Dow, Dupont, Royal Dutch Shell, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, Southern Company, Texaco and General Motors." "

In light of this recent history - bear in mind that the "Global Climate Coalition" was only one part of this industry campaign, which also included (and still does) a profusion of disinformation on the internet and a welter of "Astroturfed" fake citizen's groups managed by PR firms.

Is Crichton so utterly unaware of all of this?

I wonder how it was that he was chosen for this lecture. I'm sure he can speak authoritatively on some subjects, but he has embarassed himself here.

Critchton perfectly inverts this reality - It is, in fact, the belief in extra-terrestrials which is of a piece with disbelief in Global Warming. Public confusion about how science works contributes to this disbelief - and Critchton betrays his own confusion about the process, in his depiction of the field of Global Warming research as driven by some sort of mass-hysteria.

As I have noted, the basic process of Global Warming is what makes the earth habitable. Too much warming can be a problem of course, and that is what is at issue. But in casting belief in Global Warming as some sort of crazed cult faith akin to a belief in aliens, Critchton is unwittingly stating that he rejects much of the foundation on which the last century of modern science is based.

That's unfortunate, coming from a science fiction writer.
posted by troutfishing at 11:39 AM on January 4, 2004

Here's where Chrichton lost me:

I remind you that in the lifetime of most scientists now living, we have already had an example of dire predictions set aside by new technology. I refer to the green revolution. In 1960, Paul Ehrlich said, "The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergoe famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ten years later, he predicted four billion people would die during the 1980s, including 65 million Americans. The mass starvation that was predicted never occurred, and it now seems it isn't ever going to happen. Nor is the population explosion going to reach the numbers predicted even ten years ago. In 1990, climate modelers anticipated a world population of 11 billion by 2100. Today, some people think the correct number will be 7 billion and falling. But nobody knows for sure.

Okay, so let's start with the starvation....Chrichton is clearly an idiot here. He says "the mass starvation that was predicted never occurred" when he means to say it never happened in the industrialized world. According to the NY Times 40 million Africans are currently starving....it probably mentions the megadeath that's already occurred, but I didn't check the rest of the article. It's not on the scale of billions, but I don't feel better saying "Oh, it's only hundreds of millions".

Now, as for population growth...over the past few THOUSAND years, the population has doubled every 40 years, on average. It's a logical fallacy to say that just because something has happened in the past, then it's definitely going to happen in the future....but it's imbecilic not to say that a trend that's lasted thousands of years won't continue to happen. Of course the black death put this on hold during the 1300s, but baring another massive plague or other catastrophe, we can look forward to the world population being above 20 billion in the year 2100.

This is NOT what consensus believes (oh, the irony), because current MODELS (again, with the irony) believe that we're close to stabilization....but let's think, the population in the year 1900 was 1.6 billion, and currently it's 6.3 billion. Seriously, there's no reason to believe in stabilization...the only thing that might happen to slow growth is mass starvation and disease.

So that's why Chrichton, even though he made plenty of valid points, remains merely a pundit in my eyes.
posted by taumeson at 11:48 AM on January 4, 2004

But as others have said, I don't think that the point of the article is really to impugn global warming or population growth as scientific ideas anyway:

In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct.

The issue here is not with the science per se, but with the comportment of scientists and politicians who take inconclusive data and use it as a rhetorical platform, effectively using scientific language to back up their prejudicial beliefs. The best example in the lecture is second-hand smoke, where scientists are more than willing to work with politicians to substantiate pre-ordained ideas without acknowledging the inconclusive nature of the research.

I imagine that, for Crichton, it would be fine for politicians to argue that the science is not 100% certain, but we should err on the side of caution. He's not rejecting "the foundation" on which science is based: he's asserting that scientific discussions need to have a skeptical slant at all times, otherwise they open themselves up to games of rhetoric and power. On a smaller scale what he's saying seems to be true about nutrition, inasmuch as every month some new foods are bad and/or good for you. When these results are reported in the news as "new findings" or "new results" there is a complete lack of skepticism -- scientific language is wrongly taken as a guarantee of scientific validity. This makes for a) misleading policy and b) eroding credibility.

Crichton is worried that we are demanding less and less rigor and more and more rhetoric from science, and this seems true. On the other side of the coin, look at Intelligent Design Theory -- scientific language used to create the impression of scientific fact. The truth is that as scientific language becomes more meaningless, it makes it easier to not care what the results say, on both sides of an issue like global warming or stem cell research. That is the point of the lecture.
posted by josh at 12:09 PM on January 4, 2004

>What? Are you saying there was a danger of overeacting to nuclear winter?

No. In fact, I'm not talking about "nuclear winter". I'm talking about the old notion of "global cooling", global warming's predecessor, reported on less than 30 years ago.

>So crazed people might have slapped on too much sunblock and done no end of harm?

I'm pointing out, through absurdity, the type of information reported to others. For an example of such absurdity, look at the predictions made in the movie Robocop about our future with the ozone hole.

>are you claiming that we're overreacting to ozone depletion, and that it's been debunked? When did that happen?

Yup. A couple of years ago, actually. Since then it's even been closed for a time. Sorry you weren't let in on the exciting party!

>Cite a few examples?

Well, let's see, the war against terrorism and WMDs would be a good place to start with modern day kneejerk reactions and their effects. I'm surprised you haven't considered what the effects of kneejerk reactions usually are. Imagine we had paid close attention to the opinions of Environmental Scientists in 1975. Imagine a Kyoto being implemented then. It would have been bad. Look at the suggestions:

They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve.

Think about that. How's that for proof that a kneejerk reaction is a really bad idea. And yet they called for immediate, kneejerk, action anyways:

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.
But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

It's that sort of thing that scares the shit out of me. Will Kyoto be another "Melt the Ice Caps" idea?

Only time will tell.
posted by shepd at 12:24 PM on January 4, 2004

shepd: you cite information that the ozone layer is recovering as an example of overreaction? Sounds like the precise opposite:

We are now at a point where the atmosphere can actually remove CFCs faster than they are being released into the atmosphere.

-- Paul Fraser, CSIRO, lead author of a 2002 UN report

The fact that the protocols appear to be working hardly constitutes a debunking that the problem existed in the first place, and certainly doesn't support a case for "the perils of overreacting".
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:15 PM on January 4, 2004

/applaud troutfishing!
posted by rushmc at 1:25 PM on January 4, 2004

troutfishing:So the ONLY way that these Greenhouse gasses would NOT have the net effect of raising the earth's temperature would be if they triggered atmospheric mechanisms which counteracted that warming effect.

Yes the physics may be very simple but is that net effect significant compared to:

troutfishing: It is known, from reconstruction of the Earth's past temperatures, that the earth has been both warmer - at times, and cooler - at other times than the current average temperature of today. Sometimes, in fact, temperature shifts are rather rapid.

That is the question: Are our activities significant against the background of natural global climate change? And the physics of that are far from obvious.

The answer is widely open to all sorts of estimates. The point of Crichton's article, as josh says above, is that the global warming debate follows the template of earlier debates where science subsumes policy.

I agree the GCC are bad guys but that doesnt really mean much. Just because your opposition uses disinformation is no proof that you do not also use it yourself. In fact that may even be the only defensible strategy.

I refuse to believe one side of this debate is completely in the right and the other one is engaged in evil disinformation tactics. Call it an instinct about human nature. This is a political war not a scientific war and that, to me, is the point Crichton is trying to make.
posted by vacapinta at 2:29 PM on January 4, 2004

It seems to me that Crichton is talking about a far more general point. He is saying that confirmed experimental results represent the truth of its subject. Anything else is politics. Well, as any working scientist knows this premise is only partly true. In real life only research that gets funded has a chance of achieving any truth status. No funding equals no research. In medical science especially but in other fields also, no proof equals refutation. This is hardly the science of Popper's conjecture and refutation. Again, in real life science progresses through this process but the experiments that can refute come late in the game long after the initial hypotheses have been talked about, written about and debated. I am afraid that as in every other area of our lives there are fashions and science cannot not be excluded. Of course I can't prove this because there are no double blind experiments to back me up.
posted by donfactor at 3:50 PM on January 4, 2004

taumeson: the population in the year 1900 was 1.6 billion, and currently it's 6.3 billion. Seriously, there's no reason to believe in stabilization

Seriously, why not? Doubling every 40 years, the population should have been 6.4B in 1980. Either we are slowing down population growth, or someone's figures are way off...

Here, in 2004, the population should be over 9B, right? But, it isn't.....
posted by dwivian at 5:06 PM on January 4, 2004

Crichton is becoming more and more bizarre with each passing lecture.
Complaining about the "politicalization" of science while managing to not once refer to industry PR and greenwashing (as if Greenpeace has greater influence on politicians and money to spend on influencing public perception of science than, say, GM or BP) can only be described as dishonest.
A special mention should be reserved for his diatribe against "consensus" in science: it is either evidence of monumental stupidity or a rather shameless attempt to confuse the public about science (see donth's post above). Ditto for his "warnings" about computer modelling and for purposefully confusing meteorological modelling with climatological modelling.

It's reassuring to know that some of the money I'm spending on gas goes to support wealthy science fiction writers.

Oh and about the ozone... here are some latest reports.
posted by talos at 5:42 PM on January 4, 2004

"In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results." (Crichton)

"Reproducible results create consensus. (Laymen should look at consensus of experts, experts look at the direct results. It is impossible for a layman to look at the results for every question so expert consensus is used instead.) His examples are exceptions and not the rule." (donth)

Crichton's use of the tradition of dissent in science to cast doubt on Global Warming is quite cunning. Many of the greatest scientific advances have been advanced first as positions which dissented radically from orthodox scientific doctrine. Fine. But Crichton neglects to mention that the proposition that human activity could have a measurable impact on the Earth's climate was also a dissenting position once......until the scrupulous measurements of Dr, Charles Keeling put the issue to rest ; human activity was increasing atmospheric CO2. Without a doubt. When Keeling's findings had been widely accepted by the scientific community, the next question was - would this CO2 exert a measurable warming effect? This question has produced a vast body of research, the bulk of which - in the US - was initiated during the Presidency of George Bush Sr., whose administration reached a compromise with congress - in the face of widespread public concern following the terrible heat during the summers of '88 and '89 - to federally fund research into the potential problem of Global Warming rather than take any concrete action.

A decade and a half later, this research has gradually convinced many - if not most - scientists that humans are probably having a measurable influence on the Earth's climate. But this was far from a mainstream belief 20 years ago!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is an explanation of how the Earth's atmosphere keeps the Earth's surface, at sea level, an average of 60 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it would otherwise be. Here is a google search on the subject. The science of this effect is not in question, nor has it probably been for 100 years. This is "natural" Global Warming.

Now, it is almost beyond belief - but bizarrely true - an address by a science fiction writer, at a famous technical and scientific university, which denies a basic geophysical phenomenon which has been widely accepted by scientists for the better part of a century!

This writer, further, embarrasses the institution by likening belief in this geophysical phenomenon to that of cultish, cranky untestable beliefs such as faith in extraterrestrials, and also assert a conspiracy to invent the alleged problem which involves wholesale persecution of dissenters : "Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free......Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases."

This is doubly embarrassing, for the likelihood that the writer is not even aware that the phenomenon he disparages in this rather severe fashion - Global Warming - is actually responsible for making the Earth habitable for human life and also for the fact that he seems to be unaware of the distinction between this rather basic geophysical phenomenon and the scientific hypothesis - which has gained widespread currency among climate researchers - that humans are exerting an influence on the Earth's climate, in what would most accurately be called an "Enhanced Greenhouse Effect" (to distinguish it from the natural Greenhouse Effect.)

The author during this lecture, also seems to demonstrate a basic lack of understanding of the distinction between weather and climate, in that long term weather prediction seems to be impossible, but long relatively long term (3 to 6 month) climate predictions are now already routinely made, to a fair degree of precision.

So what is Crichton up to? Is he really this clueless?
posted by troutfishing at 9:29 PM on January 4, 2004

Vacapinta - Here's an online publication on Global Warming , from the US National Academy of Science press. I take this to be the mainstream scientific view on the subject.

"That is the question: Are our activities significant against the background of natural global climate change?" - Well, the scientific consensus (and I reject Crichton's condemnation of this word, for the reasons cited by donst) for a discernable human influence on climate has grown stronger year by year. I doubt the trend will reverse itself for the fact that the warming signal seems to be also strengthening year by year.

"The point of Crichton's article, as josh says above, is that the global warming debate follows the template of earlier debates where science subsumes policy.......
I refuse to believe one side of this debate is completely in the right and the other one is engaged in evil disinformation tactics. Call it an instinct about human nature. This is a political war not a scientific war and that, to me, is the point Crichton is trying to make."

I'd say that Crichton is a committed partisan of that political war, and science be damned. How else can I understand his apparent huge gaps in scientific knowledge on display in his Caltech address?

This paragraph of Crichton's is to me the most striking :

"And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established. Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases"

This is the language of unsubstantiated conspiracy theory. Crichton accuses climate scientists of fostering an enormous fraud and of visiting some sort of inquisitorial terror on dissenting colleagues but - despite the seriousness of these accusations - refuses to provide a shred of evidence. So Crichton's use of language is deft, but it is the language of demagoguery, or of propaganda - for neither are inclined to provide evidence for their sweeping assertions but seek, rather, to sway minds through means other than logic and reason.
posted by troutfishing at 10:12 PM on January 4, 2004

I'd say that Crichton is a committed partisan of that political war, and science be damned...

Crichton accuses climate scientists of fostering an enormous fraud and of visiting some sort of inquisitorial terror on dissenting colleagues but - despite the seriousness of these accusations - refuses to provide a shred of evidence.

Thats fair. You're right.

I guess I come from an angle where I do know most of the science and saw Crichton's piece as less of an attack than an admonishment e.g. "Don't over-do it like the nuclear winter guys did!" and "Nobody is immune to criticism!". To me those are still fair points but I can see how he overdid it and stretched his analogies beyond the breaking point.
posted by vacapinta at 10:42 PM on January 4, 2004

vacapinta - Crichton showed up here, too, on this recent Metafilter thread, about a speech he gave last September.

He seems to be on some sort of campaign. I wonder why?

His Nuclear Winter point is apt, I'd say, as well, as the SETI digs and the medical examples......but what set him off about Global Warming? The subject seems to destroy his ability to think straight. I bet there's a personal angle here, some friendship which is clouding his perspective on the matter.

I looked up this speech on the net, and it's a really popular thing to post on blogs, it seems. And everyone seems to love it except for a few people here on Metafilter.

I felt that I had to really roast him on the factual points because he's a good writer, and many people listen to him - He seems to be on an irrational rampage, of sorts.
posted by troutfishing at 12:16 AM on January 5, 2004

Then George Spiggot, we're left at an impasse. There's a pile of evidence on the internet from many worthwhile sources (such as rocket scientists) that clearly shows the Ozone Hole is healing itself (albeit slowly).

Here's a pile of links that might help you.

In fact, I do believe you are citing incorrect information (or at least outdated information). Here's a juicy quote:

Although the ozone layer has not yet begun to repair itself, the hole would probably start closing within five years, said Paul Fraser, of the Australian government-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or CSIRO.

>The fact that the protocols appear to be working hardly constitutes a debunking that the problem existed in the first place, and certainly doesn't support a case for "the perils of overreacting".

??? This phenomenon started well before Kyoto was in place. Unless the Kyoto protocol includes a time machine (COOL!), it's simply not possible that it is responsible for this.
posted by shepd at 3:33 AM on January 5, 2004

shepd - your "time machine" paradox observation would be right on the money except for the fact that there are two different protocols in question here : the Kyoto Protocol - which concern the greenhouse gasses that cause Global Warming, and the Montreal Protocol - which was put in force in 1987 to protect the Ozone Layer from destruction by CFC's. The process which led to this protocol began in 1985 at the Vienna Convention For the Protection of the Ozone Layer

The Montreal Protocol was adopted with unprecedented speed (for such an international agreement) due to widespread alarm at the accidental discovery of the Ozone Hole and the groundbreaking work of the atmospheric chemists Crutzen, Rowland, and Molina, who shared a 1995 Nobel Prize for their work in detailing the formation and decomposition of Ozone - and the role that CFC's, once thought to be completely harmless, in destroying Ozone*. "In 1974, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland established that chlorofluorocarbon gases (CFC's/freons) were detrimental to the ozone layer. CFC's present in substances such as aerosols, foams, and refrigerants, could travel up to the ozone layer. When UV radiation hits the molecules it splits them into their individual components yielding chlorine atoms which act as catalysts for the conversion of ozone to oxygen. The chlorine atoms are the main cause of ozone depletion. The work of Crutzen, Molina, and Rowland has increased the understanding of the chemistry of the ozone layer."

Here is a fine collection of educational resources on the subject. The Ozone Hole Tour is an especially good one. From this site :

"The Ozone Hole often gets confused in the popular press and by the general public with the problem of global warming. Whilst there is a connection because ozone contributes to the greenhouse effect, the Ozone Hole is a separate issue. However it is another stark reminder of the effect of man's activities on the environment. "

* Ironically, the inventor of CFC's (for use as refrigerants) was none other than Thomas Midgley, also the inventor of Tetraethyl Lead which had the unanticipated effect of depositing a fine lead dust from automobile exhaust, raising overall urban lead levels quite dramatically. Urban ambient lead levels have declined by about 50% since the phasing out of Leaded gasoline (used to reduce engine pre-ignition, or "knock") but lead dust blowing about in urban environments still constitutes a health threat. Lead was a problem for Midgley too - "Midgley secretly suffered from lead poisoning because of his invention, a fact he kept hidden from the public.....Thomas Midgley discoveries ranged from a way of getting salt into popcorn before it was popped, to a method for treating the contents of a swimming pool so that people could swim farther underwater." - and, in fact, Midgley's paralysis is likely related to his lead poisoning. After the onset of his crippling paralysis, which left his legs useless, Midgley died of his genius for (apparently) benign invention, accidentally strangled in an elaborate harness system he devised to enable himself to get out of bed.
posted by troutfishing at 7:16 AM on January 5, 2004

But I have no doubt that Midgely was a nice man, in person, and that he meant well. He would have been sad, I'm sure, to know that his inventions lowered the IQ's of generations of children and almost caused destruction of earthly life, on a vast scale : very sad, indeed.

This, in turn, brings up the Precautionary Principle
posted by troutfishing at 7:46 AM on January 5, 2004

Shepd, see trout's link. The word "protocols" doesn't generally refer to Kyoto and wasn't meant to here. If you'd the slightest familiarity with the word or any other aspect of this subject you'd know that.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:29 AM on January 5, 2004

Of course Crichton has an agenda, he makes a living selling fear of science. Most of his books are about the unexpected, and usually near-disastrous, side effects of technology.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 1:35 PM on January 5, 2004

inpHilltr8r - Hey, that's brilliant! You just told me why Crichton has such hatred of environmentalists - they are his competition!

Crichton sells irrational fear, but environmentalists provide real reasons to be afraid. How infuriating to this seasoned sci-fi veteran.
posted by troutfishing at 9:15 PM on January 5, 2004