Climate Crisis or Truth Crisis?

In case you missed it, there was an excellent summary at American Thinker of the recent climate-science-scandal revelations. The bad guy is United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The supposedly scientific IPCC report cites data drawn from environmental advocacy groups like World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace (list of such citations)—sources that are no only rather non-scientific, but also far from neutral. Even the leftist Boing-boing was on the defensive.

More recently, has come further revelation: the retraction of a Nature Geoscience paper predicting rising sea-levels. A New Scientist article examined some claims in the IPCC report and provides a balanced evaluation. It concludes that, while some of the details are wrong or rely on dubious sources, the report's findings are on-the-whole correct or at least credible (that is, backed by peer-reviewed research).

Now, Al Gore has weighted in with an op-ed on his favorite topic in last week's New York Times (h/t The Reference Frame). Here's a remarkable sentence: "From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption." Not sure what he means by "redemption"—surely there's a legitimate non-religious way to understand what he saying, right?

I am not a climate scientist, so I cannot speak directly on the science. My take on this subject is that, even assuming the climate-crisis pushers are correct, everyone needs to calm down and take a deep breath. Breathless invocations of crisis are no way to make a careful decision based on science. Even less are such considerations a basis for doing science worthy of its reputation as an objective arbiter of truth. Scientists find themselves in a difficult situation, which Stephen Schneider captured well in a Discover interview:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both. (Schneider letter¹)

Scientists are also (and first) human beings. And that means being susceptible to extra-scientific factors, like political correctness and other forms of peer pressure, as well as financial and other institutional pressures. Sometimes we can think we "know" some conclusion that our data doesn't support, and we might be tempted to stretch the results to make "the world a better place." But, as I've written before, such maneuvers are manipulations that have less to do with the discovery of objective truth than with the Baconian roots of the modern scientific project.

For too long scientists have been given a free pass (rather like clergy were in previous ages). Remember the line from Ghostbusters: "Back off, man, I'm a scientist." While being a scientist may be enough to excuse weirdness, it isn't enough to guarantee honesty.

At last month's APS meeting in DC, Princeton physicist William Happer observed that the cover-up and secrecy have deeply embarrassed science in general. In truth, this is not a bad thing. It makes plainly apparent the humanity of scientists and the fact that science, while being an amazing tool, is not an infallible institution.

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Notes

1. Schneider's quotation would have been less susceptible to misquotation had he not said, "So we have to offer up scary scenarios". One has to wonder why he formulated it that way, instead of saying something like "we feel the need to."

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William Happer, APS Talk on Secrecy (February 13, 2010, Washington, DC).

British Climate Memos: Baconian Science as Usual

With the UN's IPCC now doing damage control—er, staging an investigation, the "Climategate" controversy over the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) continues to heat up. The public is understandably shocked by the revelation that "science" is possibly being manipulated to further political ends.

The public might not be so surprised if it knew the seedy origins of "science."

"Open-source" Science

There has been much good commentary on emails as manifesting the problem of science being done behind closed doors. This Slashdot story has a lot of interesting commentary. John Tierny notes how these inept attempts at manipulation are backfiring:

In response to the furor over the climate e-mail messages, there will be more attention than ever paid to those British temperature records, and any inconsistencies or gaps will seem more suspicious simply because the researchers were so determined not to reveal them.

Andrew Revkin even quotes climate scientists who see this scandal as an opportunity for more openness:

Mike Hulme, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia and author of “Why We Disagree About Climate Change,” said the disclosures could offer a chance to finally bring the practices of climate researchers and the intergovernmental panel into the modern era, where transparency — enforced legally or illegally — is inevitable and appropriate.

“The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production,” he said in an e-mail message, “just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.”

The call for more transparency is nearly universal. We live, after all, in a democracy (as opposed to an aristocracy). "We the people" need to be rightly informed so that we can decide. Scientists lashing out from elitist frustrations with their fellow citizens' ignorance and thickheadedness won't win any converts. Perhaps scientists at a university could condescend to educate? (This would seem particularly apt given the public funding many of these scientists receive.) The secretive strategy is rather short-sighted.

Which Science Is Betrayed?

But even the perspicacious commentators on the problem of scientific secrecy have missed a critical point: public manipulation in the name of science is no betrayal of science—as long as one means by "science" modern science, whose primary goal is "useful" production, instead of the classical, more general conception of science as (not necessarily productive) knowledge.

As far as modern science is concerned, this scandal is not that much of an aberration. The popular perception is that science as we know it seeks truth. In reality it seeks "fruit" or results.

Much of modern science's blueprint was drawn up by Francis Bacon (1561–1626), who was not so much a scientist as a politician: before discovering anything about the world, science is a human endeavor and therefore a political project. The modern project is above all political. Bacon asserts that the “true ends of knowledge” are “the benefit and use of life.”¹ His aim is to “lay the foundation… of human utility and power”² and seek in knowledge “a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate.”³ Most pointedly Bacon criticizes the Greek philosophy then regnant as having “the characteristic property of boys: it can talk, but it cannot generate; for it is fruitful of controversies but barren of works.”⁴

To Bacon then, truth is not the highest value, but production: what 'works.'

Certainly, Bacon avowedly seeks the benefit of all mankind. Unfortunately, the goal very easily slides from "benefit mankind" to "benefit my scientific career" or "benefit a political program." The arguments go something like this:

• "But I'm a part of mankind, am I not? So what benefits me, benefits mankind, no?"⁵, and:
• "Our political movement is full of good people who, unlike our opponents, seek to make the world a better place. So regardless of the falsehood of this particular argument, its advance helps our movement, which helps mankind."

Indeed, in Bacon's New Atlantis, the members of Salomon's House (the scientific research institute of his utopian story) manipulate the people with illusions (e.g., light-shows to promote Christian religion) and keep secrets from even the state. Baconian scientists seek to manipulate not only nature, but also their fellow citizens and their country.

From its inception modern science has elitist, secretive tendencies.⁶ In the CRU scandal, these tendencies have merely been exposed to the light.

Science and Democracy: Uneasy Allies

Tocqueville has some insightful observations on the linkage between democracy and practicality in the sciences:

Men of science at such periods are consequently carried away towards theory; and it even happens that they frequently conceive an inconsiderate contempt for practice. "Archimedes," says Plutarch, "was of so lofty a spirit that he never condescended to write any treatise on the manner of constructing all these engines of war. And as he held this science of inventing and putting together engines, and all arts generally speaking which tended to any useful end in practice, to be vile, low, and mercenary, he spent his talents and his studious hours in writing only of those things whose beauty and subtlety had in them no admixture of necessity." Such is the aristocratic aim of science; it cannot be the same in democratic nations.⁷

Lust for practical results is common to both democracy and Baconian science. On the other hand, democracies, to function well, require open and honest debate, while as we've seen, Baconian science is intrinsically elitist and manipulative—that is, at odds with the basic requirements of democracy.

It seems then that democracies will love the products of Baconian science, but that such science will undermine democracy. The net action is that science is one instrument that democracies use to undermine themselves.⁸

Somehow the public hasn't gotten over what many in the postmodern academy might regard as an unsophisticated love of truth. "We the people" in our earthy naivete are drawn toward the real meaning of "science," but have mistaken modern science for the occupant of that office. Baconian science disguises itself under the regalia of classical science, that is, science in the sense of philosophy or systematic truth. Is it possible that modern science can cast away the baggage of its rough parentage and truly fill the throne it occupies by popular confusion? Can modern science be turned to seek truth more than products?

With our economy structured around scientifically motivated technical innovation, the odds are against such a reform in the near term. However there are many conceptual seeds to be sown now that will only fully sprout in the cultural desolation of a civilization turned entirely technical. Who knows?: Some of this new growth may take over before the old has entirely died away.

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Links

You can find a searchable database of the CRU emails online here (h/t What's Up with That?).

News summary, up-to-date as of Thursday, December 3: "Storm contiues to swirl around Climategate, as multiple investigations get under way "

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Notes

1. Francis Bacon, “The Great Instauration,” New Atlantis and the Great Instauration, ed. Jerry Weinberger (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1980), 16.

2. Ibid.

3. Advancement of Learning, Book I, v, 11

4. Bacon, “The Great Instauration,” 8.

5. A related dimension that's often lost in the climate change controversy (and so many stories about science) is the often self-serving nature of science's dramatic claims. As I commented in the last post (regarding DNA), from the time of Galileo, science has been about self-promotion; scientists need funding to carry on their research. (Galileo's claiming more for his theories than he could actually observationally support is a large reason he got in trouble with the Church—as Cardinal Bellarmine's statements make clear.)

6. Closely related to the transcendence of the Cartesian 'mind' over the physical world.

7. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol 2, ch. X.

8. Yet another more general way to look at this: democracies prefer short-term results (products) to long-term goods (such as truth); they get short-term success and long-term failure. Cf. Toqueville's "self-interest rightly understood"—only truth is a self-interest that transcends the self and whose discipleship sometimes requires complete abandonment of "self."

NYT: Global Warming Enthusiasts Need Not Lose Faith

It's long been noted by those skeptical of the "consensus" on global warming that over the last decade, the Earth's average surface temperature has been more or less flat. The New York Times's Andrew C. Revkin notes a forthcoming peer-reviewed paper that argues that flat temperatures—and indeed even cooling spells—are not incompatible with a larger warming trend.

I'm not sure how much this paper proves. Does it prove so much that its conclusions backfire? Lacking a subscription to the journal, I can't read the article. But it would seem to me that what's sauce for the goose also works for the gander: the converse should also be true: short warming spells should also be compatible with an overall cooling trend. The question then is: how scale-dependent are these relationships? Could a century-long warming spell be compatible with a much larger cooling trend? If they're stochastic in the usual sense, the answer would have to be yes.

In that case, the paper's conclusions are actually a much more powerful weapon in the hands of climate-change skeptics than global-warming believers. The paper's analysis would equally argue that the recent century of warming would provide no good evidence that we're not in the midst of a larger cool trend.

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Take note of the end of the Revkin piece about other efforts he's engaged in to defend the politically correct faith. Read: the failure of rising water levels to materialize shouldn't make you question the reality of an unnaturally warming planet. But somehow, an increasing number of people appear to be questioning the conventional "wisdom."

Linus: [to Sally as she walks away with everyone else] Hey, aren't you going to stay to greet the Great Pumpkin? Huh? It won't be long now. If the Great Pumpkin comes, I'll still put in a good word for you!

Linus: Good grief! I said "if"! I meant, "when" he comes!

Linus: I'm doomed. One little slip like that could cause the Great Pumpkin to pass you by. Oh, Great Pumpkin, where are you?

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Easterling, D. R., and M. F. Wehner (2009), "Is the climate warming or cooling?" Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2009GL037810.

Quotation from It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966).

Environmentalism and Religion

Freeman Dyson's recent book review concludes with some insightful thoughts:

All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

He's correct that environmentalism is a religion, as it binds people to set of beliefs, and these beliefs are not necessarily based on publicly available reason. I have recently been thinking about extreme environmentalists' condemnation of human life itself as "luxurious living". As Dostoevsky observed, if God is dead, everything is permissible; there are no limits to what man should do. Thus it makes sense that since not everything is permissible, in lieu of the old God, we need a new god, a new standard by which to condemn what is evidently disordered.

Dyson is also right that the debate should not be arbitrarily shut down, as he elsewhere in the article notes that the PC-faction has in Britain; there is still a lot of uncertainty in the science of "climate change." ("Global warming" is passé; it's an open secret that the globe's surface temperature hasn't warmed for a decade now.)

I just by chance ran across another discovery that should effect the "climate change" discussion. UMass Amherst scientists have established that bacteria can metabolize minerals containing carbon and reintroduce it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

According to Petsch, the bottom line is that the release of organic material from sedimentary rocks contributes approximately 2 percent of the carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere each year. While this may seem like a small amount, it is another piece of the puzzle that can be used when determining how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades.

Just goes to show that the science of "climate change" is anything but settled and that discussion should continue.

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Freeman Dyson, "The Question of Global Warming," The New York Review of Books 55:10 (June 12, 2008). h/t Touchstone (July/August 2008)

Steven Petsch, "New Piece of Climate Change Puzzle Found In Ancient Sedimentary Rocks by UMass Amherst Researchers" Press Release, July 23, 2008.

Hurricans and Climate

I've failed to recently because I've been working on a longer post that requires a lot of thought and interpretation. In the meantime I thought I'd let you know about a Houston Chronicle story about a scientist moderating his opinion about the connection between climate change and hurricane strength (h/t NY Times).

The hurricane expert, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, unveiled a novel technique for predicting future hurricane activity this week. The new work suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries.

...

In the new paper, Emanuel and his co-authors project activity nearly two centuries hence, finding an overall drop in the number of hurricanes around the world, while the intensity of storms in some regions does rise.

For example, with Atlantic hurricanes, two of the seven model simulations Emanuel ran suggested that the overall intensity of storms would decline. Five models suggested a modest increase.

"The take-home message is that we've got a lot of work to do," Emanuel said. "There's still a lot of uncertainty in this problem. The bulk of the evidence is that hurricane power will go up, but in some places it will go down."

Honestly, the significance of Emmanuel's change of opinion and of his initial opinion seems mostly because his original paper trumpeting the connection happened to come out a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina. As a result all sorts of people including Al Gore jumped on it as evidence of the deleterious impact of human beings on our planet.

Anyway, computer simulations of climate change give no single result speaks to the their speculative nature. As we all already know about computers, they're no better than the human ignorance (or arrogance) you feed into them.

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Eric Berger, "Hurricane expert reconsiders global warming's impact," Houston Chronicle (April 12, 2008).

Kerry Emanuel, Ragoth Sundararajan, and John Williams, "Hurricanes and Global Warming: Results from Downscaling IPCC AR4 Simulations," Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 89:3 (March 2008), pp. 347–367. (abstract)

Another Word on Climate Change

It was a pleasant surprise to see Physics Today feature an article¹ questioning the consensus on global climate change. The piece is rather technical, but from what I can glean, it sounds like the authors are pointing to at least circumstantial evidence that the "majority" opinion is ignores some key information.

Earth's atmosphere, landmasses, and oceans absorb and redistribute the total solar irradiance (TSI) by means of coupled nonlinear hydrothermal, geochemical, and radiative dynamic processes that produce Earth's globally averaged temperature at a given time. Versions of those physical mechanisms are included in the GCMs [global climate models], but what is not addressed in the simulations are the statistics of the time series. Those series consist of the monthly values of temperature anomalies. The statistical variability in Earth's average temperature is interpreted as noise; the temperature fluctuations are thought to contain no useful information and are consequently smoothed to emphasize the presumably more important long-time changes in the average global temperature, typically on the order of years. According to the central limit theorem, the statistics of the fluctuations in such large-dimensional networks ought to be Gaussian. The fact that they are not remains unexplained.

In other words, the difference between global climate model predictions and the actual global temperatures (on short time scales) are supposed to be random in a normal sense ("Gaussian distribution"), but aren't. This fact implies that there is some sort of non-random dynamic at work. The models can't account for this dynamic. The authors however show that the statistics of the fluctuations are similar to the statistics for solar flares. While this isn't proof that the two are connected, it is at least circumstantial evidence. But it does clearly show that the majority consensus is insufficiently thorough and far from the certainty they tout.

The authors then go on to show the sensitivity of global temperature to the 11- and 22-year solar cycles. That global climate models reflect neither this long-time-scale sensitivity nor the short-term sensitivity shows that these models are underestimate the contribution of total solar irradiance (TSI) to Earth's temperature.

The nonequilibrium thermodynamic models we used suggest that the Sun is influencing climate significantly more than the IPCC report claims. If climate is as sensitive to solar changes as the above phenomenological findings suggest, the current anthropogenic contribution to global warming is significantly overestimated. We estimate that the Sun could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth's average temperature, depending on the TSI reconstruction used. Furthermore, if the Sun does cool off, as some solar forecasts predict will happen over the next few decades, that cooling could stabilize Earth's climate and avoid the catastrophic consequences predicted in the IPCC report.

It's a hopeful sign that Physics Today would publish this article. Still, I expect to read outraged responses in the letters section in coming months. People refuse to listen to an alternative point of view once their mind is made up. Kinda like refusing a prisoner a hearing to determine if he's a terrorist because you're already convinced he's a terrorist.

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Notes

1. Featured as "opinion" probably because they fear the PC backlash.

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Unfortunately all of these articles require subscription for access:

Nicola Scafetta and Bruce J. West, "Is climate sensitive to solar variability?," Physics Today 61:3 (March 2008), pp. 50-51.

N. Scafetta, B. J. West, "Solar Flare Intermittency and the Earth’s Temperature Anomalies," Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 248701 (2003).

N. Scafetta, B. J. West, "Phenomenological reconstructions of the solar signature in the Northern Hemisphere surface temperature records since 1600," J. Geophys. Res. 112, D24S03 (2007).

The Pill Wrecks Environment, Non-Human and Human

For your consideration, a story with a politically incorrect detail that you won't see highlighted in your evening news. It seems that waste estrogen making it's way into Canadian waters is harming the fish populations:

Male fish exposed to estrogen become feminized, producing egg protein normally synthesized by females. In female fish, estrogen often retards normal sexual maturation, including egg production....

During that period [of the experiment that released estrogen into a small lake], they observed that chronic exposure to estrogen led to the near extinction of the lake’s fathead minnow population as well significant declines in larger fish, such as pearl dace and lake trout.

A little detail let slip: the source of this estrogen.

The research, led by Dr. Karen Kidd, an NSERC-funded biology professor at the University of New Brunswick (Saint John) and the Canadian Rivers Institute, confirms that synthetic estrogen used in birth control pills can wreak havoc on the sex lives of fish. Small amounts of estrogen are excreted naturally by women whether or not they are taking birth control pills. (emphasis added)

The difference being that the synthetic estrogen in the pill has to be more robust in order to survive the woman's digestive tract and make it into her blood stream, a hurdle natural human estrogen doesn't have to overcome. That's what Dr. Joel Brind told me over dinner at last year's Institute for the Study of Nature Summer Conference. He also added that all the estrogen in the water from birth control pills is the biggest issue in water treatment (in the U.S.).

Certainly it is an outrage that the fish populations are being harmed by estrogen in the water. But you have to wonder where all the outrage is over the harm women are doing to themselves by introducing synthetic hormones into their bodies.

Hormones are powerful chemicals. It makes sense that introducing more of them into, for example, an athlete's body harms him, so why doesn't it make sense that extra hormones in a woman's body does her harm?¹ Basically the Pill stops ovulation by tricking a woman's body into "thinking" her pregnant. How healthy can it be for women's bodies to think they're pregnant all the time? We rightfully get all worked up about athletes introducing hormones into their bodies, and all the damage it eventually inflicts, why don't we get upset at women (and girls) introducing artificial hormones into their bodies?

And let's not forget the social structures that result from easy sexual availability of women. For example, without the worry of children that might issue from a sexual liaison, men much more easily view women exclusively as a source of male gratification. Humans are inherently relational creatures, and women even more so. Making and breaking intimate relationships is traumatic to women's psyches.

Certainly it's not politically correct to believe women emotionally vulnerable, but as evidence take this paragraph (not quite suitable for a family audience) by the redoubtable Caitlin Flanagan:

Proof that the sex lives of college women remain an object of intense cultural fascination can be found in a book like Laura Sessions Stepp’s Unhooked, which documents the semi-anonymous “hooking up” that is now the norm. Stepp’s intention was to study this phenomenon open-mindedly, “hoping to understand rather than intending to censure.” But journalistic objectivity was soon replaced by alarm and even horror. She found girls who were “exhausted physically, emotionally and spiritually” by the practice. The girls’ behavior is starkly contemporary, but the adult’s characterization of it—and of the specific ways that sexuality can deplete a woman—could have been lifted from a 19th-century tract. In placing the blame for these developments on three forces (“the ethic of female empowerment; parental expectations for academic and professional achievement; and reluctance on the part of authorities on campus to intervene in students’ social lives”), Stepp occupies the squishy middle ground where many progressive women unhappily find themselves: Yes, yes, yes to female freedom and empowerment, but Jesus Christ, why are these girls giving b*** j**s to guys they hardly know?

Indeed. Why are we so fixated on PC garbage like sexual liberation and "empowerment" that we are unable to fix the messes we're in? Forget that: why are we barely even able to admit we have problems?

The answer is that in today's intellectual climate there is no notion of nature as having any value in herself. If nature is just a chance product, a happenstance and not an intentional creation, then it can make no difference that we are violating her integrity: she has no integrity to violate.

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1. Not to mention the harm done to human society by the dearth of children that results in part from the Pill. The latter is a particular blind spot to liberals, as Don Feder recently documents is evidenced in the March 3rd issue of The Nation.

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Caitlin Flanagan, "The Age of Innocence," Atlantic Monthly (April 2007).

Laura Sessions Stepp, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both (Riverhead Books, 2007).

Climate Models Found Wanting

Science Blog posted a report this morning, "New study increases concerns about climate model reliability"¹:

A new study comparing the composite output of 22 leading global climate models with actual climate data finds that the models do an unsatisfactory job of mimicking climate change in key portions of the atmosphere.

Here is a provocative paragraph from the article's body:

The 22 climate models used in this study are the same models used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which recently shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.

The news is rather timely, as Gore just gave his Nobel lecture yesterday.

Of course, this is just another example of the a Nobel Committee rewarding ideas that have yet to show their worth. The Prizes have to be awarded to the living and I think this colors the culture of the Committees to favor the hear-and-now even when none of the nominees are all that old or near death. So, the fact that the committee would honor stylish results over truth is built into its constitution.² But then, Alfred Nobel himself was—like all of us—the product of a here-and-now culture that values results over truth.

Doubtless someone will point out the concluding line of the original journal article's abstract: "These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data." But that's exactly my point: the whole field of climate modeling is so riven by uncertainty that no one can really say what to believe. Liberals may well have a point that industry should be regulated, but to use "climate change" as justification at this point is tendentious.³

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Notes

1. This link includes the contact information for the story (the journal is published by Wiley Interscience). It's on a site run by the AAAS, of all organizations. Maybe this signals an openness to free discussion of climate change on their part?

2. I take consolation from the fact that awardees tend to come from the left side: receiving a prize as big and prestigious as the Nobel would tend to have a stultifying effect on one's future productivity.

3. Today's liberals could well make the point based on a just ordering of the goods of society. Unfortunately, in order to eliminate scruples about some of their favorite "rights" (e.g., to unrestricted sexual license) they've had to jettison not only the notion of the good, but also the notion of the human person for whom and by whom society exists.

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David H. Douglass, et al., "A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions," International Journal of Climatology (Online: 5 Dec 2007).

Astronomy, Global Warmth, and Trees

While technically we're reaching the end (tomorrow) of the dog days, I've always considered August as a whole to be the warmest month of the year. The "dog days" originate in the ancients' idea that Sirius, in the constellation of Canus Major, the large dog, since it is the brightest star in the sky after the Sun, also heats the earth. In late summer the rising and setting of Sirius and the Sun together was thought to produce extra-hot weather.

Speaking of weather (and climate), there was an excellent article in First Things about global warming: "The Politics of Global Warming" by Thomas Sieger Derr. The entire article is excellent, but I can't reprint the whole here, so I'm at pains to excerpt the best part. The overarching problem is censorship, of which Derr cites several outrageous examples. A couple of the tamer remarks: "[Dissenters'] articles are denied publication in Science and Nature, those two so-called flagship science journals of high reputation despite some embarrassing lapses.... Newspapers who seek balance in their reporting are told that they are doing a disservice to the public, to truth, and to the survival of the human race." It's ironic that censorious environmentalists cite non-scientific motivations ("being in the pay of the oil companies") to explain away the opposition, but it is really they who have extra-scientific motivations: how else would they have formed their prejudiced conclusion that global warming must be anthropogenic? It's a matter of faith for these people.

There are plausible alternative explanations to the planet's warming climate that aren't allowed to be heard. Here is one:

So what’s going on? There is a significant body of scientific opinion that finds the sun to be the principal climate driver. The sun’s output is variable and complex, more and less intense at different periods. A German team has shown an almost perfect correlation between air temperatures and solar cycles for the past 150 years. A Danish team likewise has constructed a multi-era match of solar activity (measured by sunspots) to global temperatures. Nigel Weiss of Cambridge University, a mathematical astrophysicist and past president of the Royal Astronomical Society, also correlates sunspot activity with changes in the earth’s climate. Because solar activity is cyclical, he expects that a downturn is coming and will usher in a cooling climate for earth in, maybe, three decades. Actually, global average temperature seems to have plateaued since 2000, though it is probably too soon to expect the downturn to have begun. Still, Richard Lindzen, a distinguished atmospheric physicist at MIT and a leading doubter that human activity is driving warming, thinks the odds are about 50 percent that the earth will be cooler in twenty years—due to natural cycles.

It may or may not be significant, but it is suggestive, that NASA’s instruments calculate that Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, and the Titan moon of Neptune are warming, suggesting a solar-system-wide phenomenon. To be sure, this is not hard evidence; other factors (axis tilt and wobble on Mars, for instance) may be a cause. Still, it may be a clue to what is happening here on our planet.

We think so much of ourselves and our technological accomplishments that we forget that nature has her own dynamics that we must respect, which means not only that we must refrain from meddling unnecessarily but also we must avoid underestimating her power. For all the braggadocio about science (Copernicus) having put man in his puny place in the universe¹, it seems that we are more self-centered than ever.

But regardless of what we think of nature, we still need to foster open consideration of all scientific possibilities.

Some caveats are in order. Human activity may add something to the natural cycle, though how much is hard to tell. I have seen a paper that estimates the human contribution at 3 percent and another that gives it at 0.28 percent, for an almost undetectable effect on climate. The principal greenhouse gas, some 97 percent of the total, is water vapor, which leaves little for CO₂ and other trace gasses. Scott McIntosh, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, says that warming caused by CO₂ compared to the effect of solar magnetic fields is like a flea’s contribution to the weight of an elephant.

We do know, however, that atmospheric emissions can affect climate—for example, the serious consequences of the ash cloud thrown up by volcanic eruptions; so perhaps there is something to the greenhouse-gas theory. People can also argue about the historical record and try to modify the data that shows natural climate cycles. There may be problems with the sun theory; climate is also affected by ocean currents, meteor impact, the tilt of the earth’s axis, cosmic rays, precipitation systems, and other factors. And so on. Those of us who are doubters will not complain when we in turn are doubted. Debate is healthy and must not be choked off.

Indeed, free discussion of the issue is essential. We must eschew the "faith-based" approach that censorious environmentalists insist on.

The Miracle of Trees

In a matter tangentially related, let me suggest that one long-term solution for summer heat is planting more trees where you live and work. (No, I'm not touting this as the solution to global warming, just the solution to local warming.)

Let's forget about the aesthetic value of trees, they're simply a practical solution to the overwhelming summer heat of cities and other inhabited areas. Think about it: when the sunlight hits a city there aren't many places it can go. No matter how much you reflect back into space, a good fraction of the solar energy will be absorbed, usually by asphalt, and released as heat into the air (most noticably at night). Trees do more than just block the solar energy and produce shade, that is, they don't simply shift the energy elsewhere. Rather trees capture the solar energy. Instead of re-radiating heat, trees turn the sun's energy into plant structure (and along the way give off oxygen, which is always nice to have). The sunlight is not simply converted to heat or stored, but converted into something entirely different. And the great thing about deciduous trees is that they shed their leaves in fall, allowing the scarce winter sunlight to reach the ground. All this happens almost automatically—naturally! What elegance!

The "coolest" use of trees I've seen is in Malaga, Spain. The wide avenues are completely covered by a canopy of enormous shade trees. That's a way to cool a city that requires very little human intervention (only people to maintain the trees) and is powered by the very energy that needs to be dissipated. Contrast this elegance with the ubiquitous ham-fisted technological solution: the air conditioner. A/C simply moves the heat from one place to another (typical superficial solution: just shifting the problem somewhere else)... and requires energy input to do so.

What are the obstacles to more trees? The problem is that for individuals plunking down the money for an air conditioner at the nearest Walmart is much easier than controlling the number of trees in their workplace or apartment-dwelling. Planting trees is a more radical solution and requires more societal coordination. Private individuals are free to do so on their own properties. Everyone in a city or town shares the same air, but everyone must individually bear the burden of caring for his own trees. The tragedy of the commons is all too real here. To have an effect on local temperature, we need a large number of people unafraid of bearing this burden for their locales and looking to the elegant, natural solution to keeping cool in summer: plant trees and stay cool.

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Note

1. Actually in the Ptolemaic universe, man wasn't so much at the center as at the bottom: the earth was a cosmic sump, and the truly excellent things were exalted in the aethereal trans-lunar heavens. (This is why Dante put the devil at the center of the earth—because it's the lowest, most dishonorable place.)

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Thomas Sieger Derr, "The Politics of Global Warming," First Things (August/September 2007), 17-19. Subscription required.

Global Warming and "Scientific" Consensus

Michael Griffin, Administrator of NASA, is taking a load of flak for questioning in an NPR interview the "fact" that climate change is a bad thing. Here's a selection from the interview:

I have no doubt that … a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings.¹ I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.

Of course NPR paraded through a number of scientists to give the "correct" word and of course all of the scientists interviewed for the story disagreed with Griffin's evaluation. The firestorm that these remarks have stirred up signal a radical misunderstanding of science. Science only tells us about the world; it doesn't decide what's good and what's bad. Ethics and political philosophy tell us what's good and bad in human action, and the arts (in the broad sense) tell us what's good in production. The proper understanding of science as purely speculative (descriptional) is reflected in NASA's charter, as Griffin describes it:

Nowhere in NASA's authorization, which of course governs what we do, is there anything at all telling us that we should take actions to affect climate change in either one way or another. We study global climate change, that is in our authorization, we think we do it rather well. I'm proud of that, but NASA is not an agency chartered to, quote, battle climate change.

NASA's authorization is to do science, that is, only to tell us the actual fact of the matter, and not evaluate what's good or the bad. Scientists too easily forget that while as human beings (all of whom are implicitly philosophers) they can speak about the good and bad, when they do so, it is outside their expertise, and not as scientists. To claim special expertise in the good and the bad is like a lawyer claiming expertise in medicine.

Michael Crichton has been a consistent and articulate opponent of the global warming fad. His 2003 speech "Aliens Cause Global Warming" upholds his tradition. I recommend reading the full speech for his insightful words on climate change, but the remarks on "consensus science" are of particular interest to this forum, as they have much broader applicability:

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

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.

In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.

In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.

There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.

Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therapy…the list of consensus errors goes on and on.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc². Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

But back to our main subject.

In other words, a lack of scientific evidence hides behind the plea of "consensus." "Consensus" tells us to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, but (to mix media quotations) there is a truth out there and honesty demands we find it.

Notes

1. Of course one might wonder whether or not it's arrogant for people to decide virtually—as a by-product of their actions—what the climate will be, assuming the climate scare is apt.

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"NASA Chief Questions Urgency of Global Warming," Morning Edition (May 31, 2007).

Michael Crichton, "Aliens Cause Global Warming" (Caltech, Pasadena, CA, January 17, 2003). (I emailed Crichton's rights department some time ago and never heard back. Silence implies consent, so I assume it's okay to reproduce part of his speech here.)