Speedkill

I’ve had my amusement for the day: I got polled about CO₂. I missed the name they gave at the beginning, then forgot to ask again, but it was pretty strange. It was essentially a bunch of questions about Carbon Dioxide. The main part was a list of “facts” about CO₂ and how they changed my opinion about it. Stuff like plant life increasing because of it, it being in soft drinks, etc. It was a long string of “No opinion” answers from me, given that it’s a ridiculous premise. I don’t have positive or negative opinions of molecules (curiously, the caller’s script referred to CO₂ as a element several times). There was one question that asked if CO₂ was green, which I just laughed at and say “no opinion.”

In any case, this definitely seemed like “market research” designed to attack the idea of climate change. I don’t know if their approach is clever or stupid (that CEI ad was roundly mocked, but maybe it was effective). Do people really hold the opinion that CO₂ is teh evil and must be eradicated? Is that a useful line of attack? CO₂ is necessary, but too much causes problems for us. Holding that (correct) opinion makes it nearly impossible to answer the survey, which I think limits its usefulness.

But what do I know? My mind’s made up.

Jeff Environment

So Paul Krugman wrote a column calling climate change-deniers treasonous:

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

…

Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?

Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable.

Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.

Krugman’s statement is stupid and hyperbolic (though he has good reason to be angry). John Cole has the correct reaction, so I don’t have much to say on that.

However, Jay over at LitW said this about Krugman’s column:

Of course, not quite understanding that Krugman was turning the right-wingers’ use of the word “treason” against them – pointing out the hypocrisy of an earlier, hyperbolic use of the term for a threat that wasn’t quite all that it was made out to be, by contrasting it with the same folks’ laconic attitude towards an all-too real and present catastrophic threat – naturally the usual people went completely bath*t.

You know, this is pure bullshit. Yes, maybe we can look at some who are in an uproar and go “Ha! You’re reaping what you’ve sown.” Fuck that. Krugman knows better. And liberals should know better than to defend him with sophistry. Treason should actually mean something and not be an empty political insult the way fascism is now.

People who aspire to be more than political hacks should be able to restrain themselves.

Jeff Environment, The Left

So, inflating your tires properly is about quadruple the savings that offshore drilling would net us. That means the core of McCain’s energy plan is so ridiculous that inflating your tires dwarfs its impact.

It’s ok though, McCain has a substantive ad featuring Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

In other news, offshore drilling has a ton of public support and Obama has warmed to the idea. I guess this isn’t surprising and it illustrates a big problem with environmentalism. People don’t care about the environment when their pocketbook is at stake, even if they agree in the abstract with what environmentalists are trying to do. The Sierra Club can attack “Big Oil” as much as they please, but it’s not going to make a difference for the environment until energy costs aren’t the burden they are right now.

Sort of related: the windfall profits tax. Almost as bad as a gas tax holiday.

Jeff 2008 elections, Environment

As I said a couple posts ago, I’m nothing if not current. I find it curious how often global warming deniers equate belief in human caused climate change with faith. This post from one of Montana’s newer conservative blogs (and so far, what appears to be one of our better ones) is a good example. Cody’s list of “truths” is a bit muddled.

The first point (which seems to conflict with point 8 ) claims man made global warming is a scientific theory. Well, sort of. The mechanisms causing it are the province of scientific theory, but whether the Earth is warming or not is a factual question (a difficult one, of course). This is similar to evolution, where we have the fact that evolution that has occurred and the theory detailing the mechanisms driving it. I’ll return to this in a moment.

Points 3 and 4 seem to address the claims of those who accept global warming who bring up the fact that science is based on consensus. Cody is right that science isn’t democratic. If you’re a scientist studying global warming and someone counters your research by claiming the consensus says otherwise, that person is an idiot. However, we aren’t scientists studying global warming, so this is largely irrelevant. We’re people who don’t have adequate expertise to fully judge these issues. We have to rely on and respect the consensus to some degree. We base public policy on scientific consensus. Scientists who explain the consensus are educators and those who advocate policy solutions are practicing politics. Seems pretty clear to me.

The next two points are the big ones, I think:

# Man-made catastrophic global warming is not a hypothesis, it cannot be tested or falsified via experiment. Similarly, it cannot be proved true. Only time will tell.

# The acceptance of things unproven by scientific method relies on faith; faith is not restricted to matters of religion. Nor is faith a bad thing – it allows us to function in a world about which we do not know everything.

Let’s take the first one. It’s strikingly similar to what creationists say about evolution. Climate scientists create models based around our current understanding of the physical processes that contribute to our climate. These models make predictions about what we should see in certain situations, past or present. We then test the models by comparing their predictions to data from those past situations or on data that comes from those future scenarios as they move into the past. If they don’t match, the models are changed. Real Climate explains this quite well (and they’re actually climate scientists, so that helps).

Of course, Cody is right that these models can’t be proved true. That Cody thinks this is a relevant point reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of science. The scientific method doesn’t prove things. It provides evidence (it can disprove hypotheses, of course). There’s always uncertainty. We’ve done lots of experiments, but can you really prove you aren’t going to wake up tomorrow and the acceleration due to gravity is 4.3 m/s2 instead of 9.8 m/s2? Nope. However, we can use the inductive reasoning central to science to say that’s vanishingly unlikely. We use similar reasoning when we accept a climate model’s predictions of future temperature. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot more uncertainty here, but it’s the same basic principle. And the process is science. It’s just not 7th grade biology science.

The second point above (and those following) seems to fall away after that. Faith is a loaded term. It doesn’t mean belief in things that we don’t know for certain but which we have good evidence for, as we do with global warming. In means belief regardless of evidence. Now, some who accept global warming do describe their belief as faith; Mark T has done so. This is slightly different than Cody’s claim. Mark has chosen to rely on scientific consensus because he doesn’t have the competency to judge the science (which is much more honest and humble than a lot of us who like to talk about his issue are). It’s not blind trust, though. Science has a pretty decent track record and much of this seems superficially true anyway. Mark has chosen a position based on a line of reasoning that’s pretty valid. I don’t think that’s really faith, but it’s not necessarily rational inquiry, either.

Cody doesn’t seem to be a fan of environmentalists, either. Much of global warming denialism seems to be sustained by that same antipathy. I’m right there with them, for the most part. Lots of environmentalists are shallow and have only a superficial understanding of these issues. They’re stuck in a mindset that causing them again and again to prescribe the same policy solution. It’s more theological than rational. They deify nature and view any human intrusion as wrong, rather than something to be debated on a case by case basis. If we cross nature, if we try to control it, we’ll be destroyed. They’re so narrow-minded they refuse to look outside their belief that we just have to limit humanity’s impact; instead of trying to push society to a position where we can preserve nature without hurting people’s livelihoods, they play prophets of doom, warning us to repent. They’re suckered by any crisis that fits their theology.

That said, they’re not always wrong. We did burn a hole in the ozone layer (and we were able to fix because we had viable alternatives to CFCs). Pollution and mining have had negative impacts on our environment. It’s not enough to define yourself in opposition to them. Global warming is certainly the in style crisis right now. There’s over the top alarmism. But it is real and we do need to do something about it.

Another thing denialists seem to be afraid of is liberals pushing their politics as solutions to this issue. Yes, that’s going to happen. Guess who’s fault it is? It’s the people who have better ideas who cling to denial because we’re not absolutely sure and because the annoying environmentalists believe in it. As long as we liberals are committed to this problem, our solutions are going to become policy. Don’t like that? Stop debating what’s already been debated and start talking about policy. Start promoting solutions.

Jeff Environment, Science, The Right

Remember when I wrote a post a while back bemoaning the state of the popular debate about climate change? Yeah, this is what I mean.

If you’re curious about the debate, SciAm has a post about it here. Again, we have a debate about science, but instead of reasoned arguments, there are gotchas. We all know that debate is a skill of it’s own. I, for example, can hold my own in written debates over my opinions. In person? I’m inarticulate and slow to come up with responses. Part of that is preparation, most of it isn’t. Regardless of how knowledgeable I was about a subject or whether I was right or not, I’d get creamed by anyone with modest debating talent. Most people can recognize the problem here.

That isn’t to undersell the idea of debate, but to say that public oral debates are decided more on debating skill than the content of an argument, especially on a subject as complex as climate change. We’ve all seen creationists beat evolutionists in debates and they’re pretty obviously wrong. Pseudo-scientific movements are good at nothing if not coming up with simple and apparently solid arguments that work well in forums where concision and simplicity rule the day.

I’ll repeat my point from the previous post again: remember what you’re discussing. This is a complex scientific topic. If you think you have startling new evidence that proves the consensus wrong, question yourself. Climate scientists aren’t stupid and this isn’t a new subject. Your “new” evidence has probably already been discussed. Do a little research and have a lot of humility.

Jeff Environment

Shorter PETA: We are incensed by the fact that environmentalists are not making our completely unrealistic ideas the centerpiece of the campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Jeff Environment

I’ve argued here and other places for the reality of anthropogenic global warming. I don’t do it a lot, mainly because it doesn’t seem to do any good.

It’s pretty obvious that the debate has become a political debate. This isn’t something recent and I don’t mean that in the trivial sense that the idea is involved in political discussions; I mean that the debate itself, which is a scientific debate, is debated as a politics instead. You’ll notice that other scientific issues that have public policy consequences, notably evolution, haven’t aren’t debated in this way. AGW seems to be the main one at the moment. Discourse inevitably suffers when this happens, as illustrated by a few recent postings around the MT blogosphere.

The primary consequence is a combination of arrogance and misdirection that never leads us to enlightenment. Let’s take this recent post over at MTPolitics, where GMan posted a link to the British TV program “The Great Global Warming Swindle.” GMan proclaims most of the country duped by global warming and proclaims it a scare tactic being used by neo-Marxists. These are, of course, political terms that are misplaced when discussing the reality of AGW (though, to be clear, not when being used to criticize political policies proposed to alleviate the danger of AGW). The documentary has been out for a while and has generated some comments by scientists in the field who provide commentary to the public, which has generally been negative. In addition to the misdirected venom, there’s also some arrogance here. Let’s take the idea that the sun is causing global warming. There’s a nice graph in the documentary, showing solar activity and temperature. They correlate quite strongly, it appears. But let’s think about this. Even if you dispute the idea of a consensus about AGW, you have to admit that lots of climate scientists (i.e. the IPCC) support the hypothesis. They are also not stupid. They are very bright people who, while obviously susceptible to personal biases, are trained in a field that rigorous testing and checking to root out errors. Now, that graph is pretty convincing, on the face of it. Are all those people just ignoring it? Covering it up? Of course not. As it turns out, there are arithmetic errors in the data for that graph. There are also many other studies concluding the opposite, such as this recent one published by the Royal Society.

That’s maybe the biggest problem with where the debate is currently. Becoming a political debate has brought with it a tendency towards “gotcha” argument. On another thread at MTPolitics a comment proclaims “Latest scientific analysis suggests that temperature increases PRECEDE CO2 increases!” Again, these are complicated issues that have very smart people working on them. Do we really think there’s no commentary on this claim? Calling it “latest” is misleading, as this evidence has been around a while and while it complicates the picture, it doesn’t invalidate AGW. However, it’s used without context to score a point, not to discover truth.

Arrogance has led to some other arguments, less “gotcha,” but still wrong. GeeGuy has attacked the use of “consensus” in arguments about AGW. Scientific consensus is a valuable piece of evidence for the public. We are obviously not all scientists trained in the disciplines necessary to critique and discuss the claims about any scientific issues. We can be scientifically literate and laymen can achieve an impressive understanding of an issue, but we have to be careful. Most of us simply do not have the necessary knowledge and must ultimately defer to expertise. However, expertise can be slippery and one expert may disagree with another. This is where consensus is useful. If we have solid agreement about what’s happening and how sure we are about it, that’s the expertise to which we must ultimately defer. Now, it is obviously frustrating to someone who is trying to understand the issues (or thinks he understands and is engaging in debate) to be presented with an argument relying on scientific consensus. Rather than thinking of this as a bludgeon, I would propose it be thought of this way: there’s an enormous group of people trained in the relevant disciplines who are contradicting your claim. Individually, some of them may be dishonest or biased, but, due to the scientific method, when they are put together many of those errors and biases are corrected. This would imply that whatever claim you make, it’s likely that they’ve seen it. It’s also likely that they’ve responded to it. Which means you should do some more research. That’s the answer to some of claims made above that I critiqued. It’s also a good rule of thumb when dealing with subjects you are not an expert in: you’re probably not original and what you’ve come up with has probably already been discussed.

In a sense, people like Andy are correct that the consensus argument is used to shut down debate. But this is not something nefarious, nor does it imply AGW believers aren’t confident in their beliefs. Endless debate is paralyzing. Debate eventually has to stop and policy decisions made. Resorting to consensus is a message to those who disagree to go back to the discussion that’s already been had. It suggests the confidence to move the debate forward, not insecurity. It could be over-confidence or arrogance, but it’s confidence nonetheless. Let’s remember: doubt and skepticism are certainly good things, but it can become unreasonable. To understand the frustration here, think about your reaction if every time you tried to bring up the issue of bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics (something with profound consequences for our health), someone starts an argument about evolution. You would be annoyed, even if the person was well-meaning.

My point is simple: turning AGW into a political debate is bad. Those so virulently attacking the hypothesis would do well to take a step back and re-examine the evidence they have on their side. Stay away from articles in the media and look to people with expertise on the issue. Dig into the claims made and realize that this isn’t an evidence-less conspiracy against your current position. Attempting to understand the issues is always good, but understand your limits. Humility is good for anyone (and environmentalists in particular), but I would suggest it to those on the side skeptical of AGW here. To those who believe in AGW: consensus is nice, but show some interest in the issues. Much of it isn’t that complicated and you will be better equipped to deal with claims for and against AGW.

Postscript: What’s the media’s role in all this? We all know they’re constantly hoodwinked by false science and they distort good science to make it sell. The post by Andy I linked above has a good example: global cooling. A book and a couple papers proposed that idea in the 70s and Newsweek latched onto it. It was never scientific consensus, though Newsweek presented it as though it was. As that illustrates, the media deserve critique, but let’s make sure we separate the issues. When we’re talking about the reality of AGW, newspaper articles and op-eds are dangerous. Science magazines and blogs are much better, though there is obviously danger there as well.

Jeff Environment, Science, The Right

Ok, so I don’t actually know anything about farming. Dave points us to an interesting TCS article about organic farming. Now, I realize trusting TCS is about as intelligent an idea as whacking yourself in the face with a hammer, but it’s worth a read. It’s not the only example of “organic farming” having adverse consequences with regard to the environment.

Scientists have been able to genetically modify pigs to digest phosphorus in their diet better and reduce it by up to 75% in their manure. Organic farmers have decided that they won’t use GM organisms, so if they raise pigs they end up putting more phosphorus into the environment than necessary. Mother Jones has an old article about the conflict here.

Organic farming began with pseudo-scientific essentialism: that naturally produced substances are better than ones synthesized or modified by humans, even if the two in question are chemically identical. It started with BioDynamics, but organic farmers don’t seem to subscribe to that nonsense at present. Now it’s more just a preference for natural substances, which is still dubious. Anytime you hear someone mention “all-natural” as a positive trait, just remember that cyanide is all-natural, too.

And just so I can take another shot at the anti-GM crowd, who can forget anti-GM activists convincing African nations facing food emergencies to reject GM food aid? GM food that they have no evidence is in any way harmful. Brilliant.

This isn’t to say that there are no benefits to organic farming (it does appear to produce healthier food in some instances), just that “organic” methods are not a good guide to what’s better for us and the environment. Evaluating individual substances and practices on their actual merits is far more useful. It’s such a novel idea, too.

That’s my organic farming rant, anyway. If I claimed to be an environmentalist, I think they’d be revoking my membership card about now.

Jeff Environment, Science

Live Earth was this past weekend. I watched some it whatever HD channel it was on, catching RHCP, Keane (never heard of them), Metallica, and Alicia Keys. Alright, so technically I had to change the channel after a minute of whatever horrific piece of music Keys started off with, but those are the bands I saw. I must say that Metallica is looking quite old at this point. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising.

I don’t understand the point of this event, though. I suppose raising awareness is a little difficult to measure, but I’m unconvinced a giant worldwide concert is that useful. Plus, “private jets for climate change” is a pretty accurate description of the whole thing. I’m sure much of it was paid for with carbon offsets, but let’s face it, those things aren’t going to solve anything.

Also, there were short films in between concert highlights when I was watching. One of them had Chris Rock talking about eating more vegetables so that the meat we didn’t eat could be used to feed the hungry. That seemed bizarre and irrelevant.

Jeff Environment, Music

I must say, Craig is quite correct in this post of his, where he takes aim at this post over at 4&20.

Talking about climate change by using daily highs or even yearly data is a bad idea. It’s simply not the correct way to look at things, as Craig points out, but it’s also confusing. Next summer we could have a cooler summer, a later fire season, etc. Does that mean global warming isn’t happening? Of course not. Once you start using anecdotes, however, you open yourself to those looking to sow doubt about the phenomenon. When someone hears you point at a record daily high and then that winter sees someone point out that a month had a record low temperature, your argument has been negated. You’ve let someone conclude that it’s a wash and now they’ll continue ignoring claims that we need to act. It’s not just that it isn’t “proof” (which should never be used in this context in the first place), it’s that you’ve made a claim that can and will be effectively countered.

Of course, the effects of climate change will manifest itself in our weather. We should be careful how we interpret that, however. We won’t be able to pin a specific hurricane, hot day, or warm winter on climate change. The best we can do is take those events and project into the future. With global warming, we will probably see more days like the last few around here in the near future. That trend is global warming, not a random hot day.

Jeff Environment