Right now my son is really into the Octonauts. If you don’t have children you might not be familiar with the show, but I’m comfortable in saying it might be one of the best cartoons ever made for kids. In the episode a team of animals in their underwater vessel help various sea creatures in the ocean and tell you interest facts about the featured creature for each episode.
I’ve always been fond of documentaries on ocean especially the deep sea ones with bio-luminescence. But it struck me as I watching an episode with my son last night that the ocean really is like an alien world. It’s not that we don’t have an impact on it, but for the most part other than the occasional visit, it’s simply a world in which we can’t exist in. It is a world that has those at the top of the food chain, and those at the bottom. It has death, pain, peace, flourishing, competition, love, etc. It is extremely diverse, and there is much intelligence to be found. It is every bit as vivacious as surface based life. As I watch and think about that world, I couldn’t help but think how there is nothing to judge. It is, and while things live and die, there is no question about about morality, deities, or oppression. It just is, and it’s beautiful. While I do not believe any single creature intends to live sustainably, the world in the oceans is as sustainable as it can be. Something we’ve yet to figure out. We as a species have flourished perhaps more than any other species, but at what cost?
When I think about how our actions have impacted this other world, how we’ve carelessly thrown trash into it and how climate change is influencing it, it seems more egregious than many of our other environmental crimes. In fact it seems that because we thought it was this other world with a massive amount of water we have reasoned that we could do anything we wanted to it, thinking that our activities could never have a great impact on anything so vast. This has of course turned out to be untrue. It is not our confession booth, a place to take all our sins away and absolve of us our hurt on the environment, but we have treated as such.
I’d like to believe the maker of the Octonauts just has such a passion for the ocean and just wanted to spread that appreciation to others. I think it does a great job of that. I get why people dedicate their lives to the study and preservation of these amazing ecosystems. We may never get off this planet and meet alien civilizations. The Ocean might be the best “alien” world we can visit. I hope we can keep it that way. It was here before us, and I hope that it will also be here long after us.
Recently I listened to a podcast interview with Andrew McAfee who has written a book called More from Less. The message of this book is meant to be positive along the line of Steven Pinker’s more recent books. Illustrating that things aren’t maybe as bad as they seem, or at the very least we have reason to hope. While I am reticent to make critiques of a thesis without having actually read the book, what I want to say is more about the foundational premises he builds his book on, and I think the 90 minute interview gives me a good basis for discussion here.
For those of you who don’t want to listen, I will give a brief summary here. I will say at the outset that he is very pro capitalism, but I’ll be honest, out of anybody in favor of capitalism that I’ve listened to, he makes the most compelling arguments. I should also point out that he is not anti-regulation, nor is he libertarian and thinks that capitalism can solve every human concern. Anyway, the basic thesis of his book is that we currently live in an age where human prosperity shows signs of decoupling from the nearly one to one correlation we had since the industrial revolution of natural resource use. With quite a lot of data he shows since the 1970s we’ve been continue to grow economically, while using resources at a continually slower rate. The reason he attributes to this transition is because of our improved technology along with the fundamental ways in which capitalism works. I’ll go into details in a moment. I want to preface the discussion also by saying that he is not anti-climate change or anti-EPA. He admits the dark past of capitalism, but feels that the coupling with technological advances has helped capitalism be a more positive force. Like many of us I guess, he sees the good parts, and doesn’t want to throw the baby out in the bathwater. I always resonate with this mentality, and for those who know me, know I am not completely anti-capitalism. I do also see some good parts, but there are also parts that are deeply troubling to me and so a mixed economy seems the most reasonable to me.
The technological save for mankind her argues is the computer. This is not a new idea, and in fact I wrote about this a little before on my blog when I talked about Douglas Adams’ ages of sand. After the lens for the telescope and the microscope opened up the macro and micro universe, the silicon chip came along and revealed to us the process. We could do enormous amounts of calculations so quickly that this allowed people to solve problems in a tiny fraction of the time it would have taken them before. McAfee gives several examples of how computers helped businesses and corporations reduce waste. Their motivation to reduce waste is of course motivated by profit, but as a result less resources were used. One example was the aluminum can. If you are my age or older you know how thick cans of soda used to be compared to now. Cans today still function perfectly but use less material. Being able to model pressurized liquids in cans and tweak thicknesses and model the impact of that thickness allowed for vast savings in resources used by beer and soda companies. Since companies need profit for growth they have no incentive to be wasteful when it comes to materials. Now I’m sure class action law suits also convinced companies to stop raping the Earth, but I take his point and I don’t deny that it’s true.
His pro-capitalism stance is largely based on the fact that so many private companies and innovative production methods and the advent of fossil fuels raised a large amount of people out of poverty. Life expectancy when up dramatically as infant mortality dropped significantly due to indoor plumbing and parts could be made more quickly and in massively higher amounts to give a large population of people access. Being able to unleash the energy stored in fossil fuels powered companies of all kinds to bring lifesaving and life altering technologies to more and more people. Populations exploded as a result of the increase in prosperity.
For McAfee the future, if we are going to have a better one, he argues that we must have more of the same. We must have continue to have capitalism working to develop technologies that will use less and less resources for creating growth, and this can be guided by smart government policy. He is in favor for instance of a revenue neutral carbon tax that gives money to people at the bottom end, and encourages corporations and businesses to work to cut fossil fuel usage. What he doesn’t advocate is that we are all going to return to some idyllic pre-industrial state and he argues, I think quite convincingly that we weren’t this idyllic sustainable group of people prior to the industrial revolution, and that now with the world population as it is, we need energy and only the development of better energy sources is going to help us deal with something like pollution and climate change.
So fundamentally I think my disagreements come from the fact that first even if we are using less resources, those resources are still finite, and if we aren’t concerned about the continuing growth of people we will simply run out of important resources we need. Is there always a technological solution out there waiting for us? Maybe, but we don’t know that for sure.
The second thing I question is whether or not it is good that the population exploded as it did in the last 100 or so years. Is this prosperity? Is this a good way to measure prosperity? The fact that we might have the ability to effectively support human beings, doesn’t mean that we necessarily should. It seems to me that the technological advances of the industrial revolution were so powerful that human population grew unrestrained, requiring the continuing need to use and extract more resources. Is it true that we might not have invented the computer if we grew human populations at a rate that lead to a more sustainable society? Are these technological advances only an answer to some threshold in the amount of suffering on the planet? Was the computer something that could not just as easily been invented with half the world population at the time or was there a drive to invent something that could solve innumerable problems that were occurring because the world population was as high as it was? It’s not obvious to me that this is the case. It’s not obvious to me that prosperity for a creature with such a high level of consciousness should simply be defined by our growth in population. If we continue to grow in population this just seems to put us in an endless cycle of trying to have to develop new technologies to alleviate the suffering of the increased population. And even if we are getting more out of less, eventually something will run out, and technology simply won’t save us.
Finally, I am left with the old moral philosophy question: Does the end justify the means? Let’s say capitalism was best equipped to increase human prosperity and not destroy the Earth at the same time. If we are using less and less resources because some CEO is trying to make more money does it matter that we are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons? Capitalism is not a moral philosophy it is just an economic system. And while I enjoy listening to this well-educated author, his optimism, and his well laid out arguments, he is in the minority it seems when it comes to those who celebrate capitalism. For many the mindset of growth trumps other human concerns, even if that mindset sometimes producing good ends, it often leads to many downstream problems. There has to be room for human rights, happiness, respect, empathy, etc. If it is possible to practice a brand of ethical capitalism it must look different than what we have had in the past and even what we have now. I see very few capitalists adopting McAfee’s views, and I find myself very concerned about a society that puts profit in front of all other values. If capitalism does have any intrinsic value in it, then it needs a better marketer than Wall Street, and banks, and mega-rich billionaire CEOs.
McAfee does admit that income inequality is an important issue, although in the interview offered very little solutions to that. I suspect he feels like there policy solutions that don’t involve a high redistribution of wealth, but he didn’t go into a lot of details. There are a myriad of other issues he didn’t address in the interview such as education, and health care which I think don’t lend themselves well to the capitalist economic model yet are important in a society.
He did also address the problem of growing economies in other parts of the world. He doesn’t worry as much that they will do things as “dirty” and irresponsible as we did, simply because new technologies are available to them at a cheaper price than what the U.S. had when our economy started growing rapidly. It’s a fair point. But even if we can use less of resource A to produce a 1 KW of energy, or 1 mile of fiber optic cable, with a lot more people wanting those resources it still seems like an issue. And if we are expecting technology to get us out of our biggest problems while also devaluing education, as seems to be the case in this country, I don’t see things as getting better quickly enough before we hit the wall.
Overall it was a thought provoking interview. I don’t know if I feel more optimistic, but I at least can acknowledge that the conversation about what we can do is broader than the conversation we are having now. On the topic of climate change I feel this is largely because our conservative, pro-capitalist party can’t even admit that we have a problem and this leads to a very narrow range of solutions.
The climate has been changing since the Earth began.
We have warm periods and cool periods. That climate.
Likely you have heard one of these arguments or some variation before. Look at any conversation about climate change and you will see at least some man-made climate change denier using it. It’s hard to even know exactly what they mean by the argument. I’m not even sure what argumentation fallacy to call it. Perhaps it’s just a non sequitur, but let’s try to break it down.
First, let’s start simply. If such people using the argument are trying to claim that what we are seeing is natural climate change, then they are misstating the argument. They should simply say. Yes the climate is changing, but there is insufficient evidence that man is the cause. I mean that’s not true, of course, but it would be an argument. Just one in which the person making the argument hasn’t adequately analyzed the evidence. The other implication here is that scientists in this field either don’t know that the climate changes naturally or that they don’t know what causes climate to change naturally, but just decided to come to a massive consensus across multiple scientific disciplines that it’s happening. This is also is ridiculous.
However, the way this argument is phrased it seems that the argument that is really being made here by those who use it, is that they think one of two things (or perhaps both):
Since climate changes naturally it can’t change because of human influence.
Since climate changes naturally there is nothing that can be done about it.
Let’s deal with the second argument first. And let’s even go so far as to say that the person is right. What we are seeing is just natural. Given the rate the temperature is warming this is cause for alarm, even if it is natural. It threatens many human populations, will increase drought frequency, extreme precipitation events, national security issues, species extinction, rapid sea level rise, etc. If this is happening naturally, then why shouldn’t we be trying to do something about it? If a naturally started forest fire threatens people’s homes, should we not put it out. Should we not build homes more securely to mitigate damage from hurricanes? We do so many things to try to mitigate and prevent damage and deaths from natural disasters, it seems ridiculous to me to make any such claim that natural climate change that threatens large populations of people and ecosystems worldwide isn’t something that we should be trying to do something about.
The first argument takes even less effort to counter. My favorite example is to use evolution, which of course happens naturally, but practically all farming, horse and dog breeding happens through man-made selection in order to increase food nutrition and create your favorite breeds of dogs and horses. Taken to the extreme we could simply say that death is a natural process, thus there is no such thing as murder. Or since death is a natural process there is no sense in trying to cure people of cancer.
Overall it is difficult to understand why this is such a common argument, and why this seems to be the final argument for so many to dismiss man-made climate change as a non-issue. Feel free to share this post with folks you know who have made this argument.
I am hoping, if you have the time, that you can help me out. I am teaching a course on global climate change this year, and I decided that to develop students communication skills and to be better activists in the public sector I would have them start blogs and have it themed on an area of climate. There are 7 students in the class and I don’t expect everyone to read each one of them, but if there is a topic that interests you, I’d love if you read it, give feedback, ask questions, provide helpful additional information on the topic, give suggestions on how they might improve their blog, and/or even argue (respectfully) if you like. And if you like the blog enough share it with your followers and other social media like Facebook or Twiitter. Thank you!
A blog on geoengineering. The first post isn’t ready yet, but I am sure it will be up in the next few days: https://zcwa.wordpress.com
Currently I am in Austin, TX attending the national American Meteorological Society meeting. The conference continues to grow in size as the field becomes more interdisciplinary and attracts professionals from both the private and government sectors. You meet researchers, educators, broadcasters. Of course one of the big topics here remains climate change. You won’t see many speakers spending time proving that it’s happening. There are a few, but a bulk of the people will be talking about how to we get more people on board to take action? How do we get government to listen? How do we communicate more effectively to the public? What are the kinds of policies we need to mollify people who are worried about jobs and livelihood as we switch to more and more renewable energy? But climate change itself isn’t what I wanted to talk about although it is part of the inspiration for this post. That and a podcast I listened to with Tom Nichols who wrote a book called The Death of Expertise.
As someone who writes a blog, uses social media, and is a professor, I am fairly outspoken about climate change and have had my expertise challenged many times. I consider myself an expert of sorts, but as I sit here surrounded by greats in our field and even lesser known ones, I also know that I am a light expert when it comes to climate change. And I know a lot. But there are people who know more. There are people who have a great depth of expertise. I spent 11 years in university becoming what I am. There are people who have spent the same amount of time and then on top of that spend year after year researching problems and testing hypotheses and collecting and analyzing data. Why do they do such things? We live in a time where much information is available instantly. Have people like myself and others here simply wasted all our time and just should have waited for the internet to be in its current state so that we could gain the same level of expertise through a few days (hours?) of googling?
I have tried different methods of engaging people on the subject of climate change publicly (some I’ll admit I knew weren’t helpful to anybody but myself), but nothing really seems to make much of a difference. In the end, someone who might be a line chef at a restaurant will adamantly disagree with you. And of course I have had far more educated people disagree with me as well, but they have not been educated in meteorology or a related field. And it shows. I’ll be honest if you want to be critical of climate change with me, I can tell the moment you start speaking, how much you actually know about the science. Now that’s not to say that you couldn’t have a lively debate should you talk about policy, law, or the pros and cons of renewable energy. These are all things I am not an expert at, and don’t pretend to be. So why do so many people pretend they can be an expert on the topic of climate change?
You might say that skepticism is healthy, and this is true. But that skepticism needs to also come from other experts. Within the scientific community disagreement and skepticism are everywhere, and scientists within a discipline are constantly challenging each other to do better. Yes there are times when science fails, but more often than not the expertise of people makes a positive difference. It seems that it’s our penchant for noticing the failures that perhaps skews our perceptions. But the amount of expertise it takes just for a plane to successfully take off and land is immense, and there are over 100,000 commercial flights per day. Many people of course falsely see planes as unsafe modes of travel, but most of us know there is no safer way to travel. Assuming people in aviation don’t know what they are doing because of the rare plane crash would be an obviously false perception. For people who deny the validity of climate science I often ask them why the scientific findings are inherently different than the science that was used to make the computer they are using to argue with me? One of the more intelligent people (non-expert however) I’ve argued with about climate change plainly stated that he trusted a prediction 2 years out of an asteroid collision with Earth, but still maintained that any climate model that tried to predict climate was no better than flipping a coin.
It’s clear that climate science is much more about politics than the science, but since the truth of the results lies outside of the purview of political leanings, the science gets attacked, weakly but loudly. What other choice is there for such people? With instant access to information, the perception that one can be knowledgeable enough over a number of hours to speak authoritatively on issues gives them the confidence to do so. This simply isn’t true. This post might seem boastful to some or elitist. In some ways I suppose the latter is true. I do feel that I represent a very small portion of the population that understands the atmosphere well. But as I’ve said I’m also smart enough to know how much more there is to know. And while I am generally smart enough to slog my way through scholarly articles in most field, never would I assume that this makes me an expert. Put me in the presence of an expert and you’ll find me asking more questions than being argumentative. And there is expertise to be found in many walks of life. I don’t go in telling mechanics what their job is about, or spend a lot of time second guessing how accountants do their job, or tell a carpenter he’s hammering a nail all wrong. I feel I am humble enough about the things for which I know little, but appropriately confident about the things in which I have expertise. Too often that expertise is challenged by people with none and too often I feel like I should almost apologize for knowing a lot about something. Personally, I am glad there are experts out there. I am glad there are people who devote their lives to the understanding something well, to perform tasks everyday knowledgeably and skillfully. And I am also glad that there are enough experts to challenge other people with similar expertise, who are there to spot mistakes and make improvements over each other’s works.
It seems that we have drifted in this country away from the appreciation of expertise. And I don’t think one side of the political spectrum is immune to it. As I watch the numerous cheers for Oprah Winfrey to be our next president, I get deeply concern that the value we place on expertise has waned to dangerous levels. It is a great age, because there are so many places where we need people with expertise. Everybody has the ability to be an expert in something. But this takes time, study, and experience, and this fact should never be forgotten. Take some time to think about how your day is made better by the experts in your world.
In a surprise reversal of position, numerous climate scientists now say they could be all wrong about climate change, thanks to a plucky group of public skeptics who have spent numerous hours on the internet reading articles by people not associated with the climate research in any way. For years climate researchers have failed to listen to these pleas for reason and understanding. Much to the chagrin of the climate community, a major misstep has been brought to light, climate researchers have forgotten to take into account the sun in the now shaky theory about human-induced climate change.
The moment of truth came Dec. 9th when an article that was reporting 2016 was shaping up to be the hottest year on record when a commenter who goes by the name “drillbaby” said the warming we are seeing is caused by the sun. We were able to track down this commenter as internet climate expert and full-time real estate agent, Derek Laskin, to ask him how this revelation came to him. “It really was the stuff of stories the way I was inspired,” exclaimed an excited and proud Laskin, “it was a cool morning, but the sun was out, and I noticed that throughout the day things started to get warmer. That’s when I came upon this article about climate change and global warming, where the scientists are blaming on carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, but based on my experience on how the sun seemed to be working, I decided to comment on this article to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t be looking at carbon dioxide, and that the sun is responsible for the warming.”
This comment may have been missed by the climate science community if not for a bit a random luck. Climate researcher, Dr. Mike Hulme, received a text message from his sister who happened in the article that simply read “Holy shit, some guy commented on an article and mentioned the sun! I’ve never heard you talk about the sun before in telling me about your work. WTF!?” The word spread at the speed of light in the scientific community, and while some resistance remains to this new development, the change has been visible and scientists are now contemplating a spectrum of new ideas in regards to the warming we are seeing. We had a chance to go to King’s College in London to talk to Hulme. “Needless to say I am shocked.,” said a shaken Hulme, ” All those years in school studying weather and climate, and nobody ever brought up this glowing orb in the sky called the sun. I’ll admit it made the physics of climate somewhat implausible, but you know we tend to respect our teachers and believe what they tell us without every going through that process of discovery on our own. I am just glad that we have internet commenters like drillbaby to clue us in to important things we have missed.”
When asked why some researchers are still resistant to this very pervasive idea of the sun causing warming, Hulme replied “Well I have no idea why they would prefer to remain in the dark as it were, but I guess most scientists care more about money, and it’s a tragedy really. But I have no other explanation. I will say that there really is a lot of confusion right now and so some scientists are reticent about changing their views yet until all the information comes out. Currently we are still mining internet comments and finding out all sorts of things we previously did not know. As it turns out there are many people who haven’t spent years studying atmospheric physics and research climate data who are writing some pretty in depth articles about how we got it all wrong.” We then asked Hulme if there was anything else these internet comments were shedding important light on. “Absolutely,” responded Hulme, “Quite a lot really, but one thing stands out. As it turns out there are many people saying that the climate has actually changed naturally over the course of Earth’s history and there really is no need to worry. Apparently if things change naturally any suggestion that changes may be enhanced or made more severe unnaturally is a pointless argument. I’ve even changed my views about gun control. People die naturally, thus homicide is irrelevant. I’m just going to retire early and hang out with my Scottish Terrier”
Silence ensued for a few minutes as the exasperated Hulme simply shook his head in quiet contemplation. I then asked him about the field of paleoclimatology that looks at how climate has changed in the past. Hulme looked up at me wild-eyed and said, “Don’t you understand, it’s all been a lie? We missed the part about the sun and so you can’t trust any of our understanding about past climate either! Honestly how can you trust us or anything we say ever again?!”
The Sun, featured here in the upper right. The missing piece of the global warming puzzle, previously missed by scientists.
We left the sobbing Hulme, but there still seemed to be some questions. Previously computers models had demonstrated the warming could only be explained with the additional CO2 going into the atmosphere, and not by natural causes alone. What then were those computer models even showing? We sat down with a distraught Dr. Michael Mann at his office at Penn State University to ask him. “We’ve all been taken aback by this sun thing, and it’s really made us look more carefully at the qualifications of the people involved in this research. Models are really complex and most of us don’t really understand it. As it turns out those who make these models don’t have years of experience studying computational fluid dynamics, but are rather out of work video game designers. Apparently it’s quite common to randomize things in a video game, and this is apparently what the designers were doing – just randomly throwing in some false warming into the models. Overall it’s pretty disappointing that we missed the sun in our models. Right now I’m in the processing of going through my old syllabi that I have from my many years in college to make sure that there was no section called “the sun”. If not, I think I have grounds to ask for a refund on my tuition.”
Finally, we asked Mann when the climate research community would have an official statement to make to the public they lied to all these years. Mann, like Hulme, said there are many more internet comments to troll through, but he did say this “Right now I’d just like to say thank you to all those who persevered through perhaps 6 or 7 articles from right wing media outlets and were still able to find time to post their well-defended comments underneath articles with our nonsensical babbling which represents, to be honest, some of the shoddiest science mankind has ever seen.”
On Friday, at my university, we were fortunate enough to have a very well know climate science researcher speak, Michael Mann. IF the name sounds familiar it’s because he was the one that produced the famous “Hockey Stick” graph that appeared in the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters journal in 1999 (I wonder how many graphs have their own Wikipedia page!). The graph of course was much maligned by climate change deniers funded by various lobbying groups, but has since that time proven to be quite accurate and verified by other researchers. His was also among the e-mails leaked in the scandal called “climategate” which, despite the spin of deniers from out of context e-mail excerpts, has been debunked by the scientific community. It was a great opportunity to hear from someone who has been at the heart of promoting scientific research on climate change, while also dealing with a great deal of political controversy and pseudo-science promoters who try to claim human-induced climate change is a hoax. Like many climate scientists he has reached a point where he no longer finds it very useful to reach out to the public with facts and figures. Numerous research articles have concluded that now, views on climate change are governed by political ideology rather than directly arguing with the science behind human-induced climate change. I found the talk quite illuminating since I too have reached the same conclusion that scientific evidence seems to carry little weight when having discussions with people about the issue. I also found it illuminating to learn more about the political state of affairs in the U.S. right now, so I wanted to share some good news and bad news takeaways for those of you concerned about our Earth.
The Good News
One thing that I thought was a good take away is that if you are a person debating or discussing this topic with a friend, relative, stranger whatever, that talking about the scientific consensus is probably the most helpful thing you can do. Obviously there are always going to be contrary people, but for many there is still a misconception that this is a split issue, and research demonstrates that a lot of minds are changed by pointing out how much consensus there really is. For more conservatively minded people reminding them that there are more economic benefits to doing something to not doing something, and that climate change also represents a national security issue is also important. Fortunately there is already a faction of the military addressing climate change from this perspective.
The other bit of good news is that there is a great deal of plans in place by scientists and engineers to start dealing with climate change. Basically the scientific community is prepared, and are simply waiting for the political will to be able to spring into action.
Michael Mann also said there are a lot of Republican members of congress who are closeted climate change supporters. They accept the scientific evidence and feel that it is important to do something about it. Why are they in the closet, well they have learned the lesson of Bob Inglis. He was a SC congressman who served from 2005-2011 and came out for doing something about climate change from an evangelical Christian perspective. He said the scientists were right and as Christians we should be caring for God’s creation. If you are a Christian this is a valid position to take and is supported by scripture. Bob Inglis ended up losing by a landslide in the Republican primary as his opponent was support by the Koch brothers. Michael Mann and Bob Inglis are good friends and so I believe this political inside information to be plausible and valid. In some ways by releasing him like that, conservative America has opened up a can of worms and Mr. Inglis now promotes doing something about climate change from both a Republican and Christian viewpoint.
The Bad News
Well the bad news is also related to the good news. It makes me concerned, not only that the massive money of the Koch Brothers and energy companies lobbying against solid science is preventing us from taking action that will help this planet, but also that we have so many Republican people in congress without the political courage to stand up to the money. It seems if they all banded together I am not sure what the likes of the Koch Brothers could do, if all of a sudden all of those people in congress lost their next elections suddenly. It would sort of “show their hand”. I guess it upsets me that the people we elect can be so intellectually dishonest and live with themselves.
I asked Michael Mann what the political tipping point would be to make all these Republican congress people come out the proverbial closet. He said that it would take the Republican party to crash and burn in this next election. Only by losing the executive branch and the senate (and possibly the house) would make them turn around and start to support more environmental concerns. The problem is that this election is looking a lot closer than it should be. A small margin of victory by Clinton isn’t going to cut it.
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What is clear is that whatever your political stance, climate change is in your best interest and it behooves you to vote for politicians who do have the courage to fight for this planet. Given Gary Johnson, and Trump’s stance on climate, these are really not viable options. And most importantly make sure you vote for people in the senate and the house who accept the scientific consensus on climate change as well.
Finally I also want to help promote Michael Mann’s new book. It gives a much more in depth discussion than my little summary here. He also teamed up with a satirical cartoonist from the Washington Post who provides some good humor throughout the book. The book address things like ethics, politics, the money and ideologies behind climate science deniers, logical fallacies, and of course some basics about the science. I highly recommend it.
The book discusses tipping point in the climate system which are points which there is no quick return from and can lead to rapid disaster.
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts called The Hidden Brain on NPR and they were talking about the climate change situation in a great episode called Losing Alaska. Basically they were saying that scientific arguments have little merit anymore in talking about climate change. I would have to say that I agree. As someone who holds a Ph.D. in the Atmospheric Sciences I can most certainly say that few people that I have debated with on the subject truly understand the problem scientifically and I don’t claim to be the smartest person in the world, this is simply the truth. My field is applied math and physics. Not only that, the climate system is complex.it Involves interdisciplinary knowledge as well in chemistry, oceanography and geology. To change someone’s mind from a scientific point of view, it would take a lot of study and learning. Now you may be saying, wait I accept man-made climate change, and it it’s pretty obvious. Well I would argue that you don’t really understand it, but it’s easier for you to accept because it already fits in with your ideology. And I don’t say that to be demeaning, especially I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad ideology to have. Specifically the one in which we recognize that something is very complex and we don’t have years to study it on our own so maybe I should listen to what experts are saying. Much like we tend to believe our doctor when they tell us we have cancer as opposed to learning the requisite knowledge we need in order to test ourselves.
Instead of a Heavenly Father, maybe a Mother Earth isn’t a bad person to start worshiping.
But more to the point it really does come down to our personal ideology whether we accept the science, because let’s face it the science is telling us some pretty harsh things. Not only is the Earth in a lot of trouble, but we actually might be responsible for it all. And in order to combat the problem we are causing we are going to have to give up a great deal. Transitioning away from a fuel source we heavily depend on will require large shifts in business and industry affecting the jobs of many. And of course such a transition cannot be made overnight, but even at a moderate pace will require a cultural change at a rate faster than many of us would have a hard time adjusting too. That of course does not make it any less compulsory. Interestingly this podcast made the argument that we all are capable of great sacrifices at times of war or crises, and that dealing with man-made climate change requires an approach that is used by religion rather than one that is used by science. I find myself having a hard time disagreeing. While I would love to live in a society where science had a much more powerful influence on changing minds ultimately it does seem that we need to change minds at an emotional level over an intellectual one (which is to me what the podcast suggested by saying a “religious approach”).
In that vein, I wanted to address some of the main arguments I see used by climate change deniers, which tend to be more ideologically based instead of arguments that attack the scientific data on the subject. They are more dangerous to me, because they seem reasonable. They seem irrefutable. This is not the case.
Science had been wrong before, why should we trust scientists?
The Geocentric Universe
This is quite true. Scientists have been wrong before. In fact progress is actually built on that very premise. But notice the word “progress”. It always strikes me as strange that people overlook this aspect of science. Much like we learn from our own mistakes and grow and get better as people, this is how science works as well. So we do get things wrong, but we also get a lot of things right. Your daily lives in this modern world are a living result of that. From the car you drive to the device in which you are punching out your arguments. Now you could be right that someday we will discover that we were all wrong about this, but if we do, it will not because we were willfully trying to mislead people, but rather a new discovery has allowed us to view the world in a different way thus disproving our theory. So unless you’ve got that said discovery I can guarantee you that our assessment about the state of the climate system is based on the best available knowledge we have about how it works. And personally I see no shame in acting in the best interest of all on this planet based on what we know of it.
Finally, just because you don’t trust science or want to focus on the things it got wrong makes it your problem, and not science’s problem. To refute climate change science on those grounds is to commit the genetic fallacy. Directly address the assertions being made by those advocating the position in terms of their conclusions analysis of their data. That is really your only option. To explain it more simply “Al Gore is a democrat, and I hate democrats. Al Gore gives evidence for why man-made climate change is happening, but since he is a democrat, he must be wrong.” That’s not how it works. Sorry.
Scientists are just doing it for the money. IPCC is corrupt. Liberal media…
This argument is the same as the genetic fallacy because it is again an attempt to discredit to the reliability of the source to simply argue away what the source has to say. I’ll admit that in such instances I will use the same fallacious argument back, because, quite honestly two can play that game, and I can play it better. Let’s say all of us scientists are ego driven money-grubbing bastards. My options are renewable energy companies and liberal governments, or oil companies. Hmmm…I wonder who has more money. Not only that with all the other scientists clearly in the wrong camp, all that sweet oil money could be mine (as it was for Wei-Hock Soon) as there are even less people to share it with.
In terms of fame, the fallacious argument made by deniers fall even shorter. If I had definitive proof that all the other scientists were wrong. I would be the one who was famous. I’d be on all the news programs, giving talks around the world on a sweet oil company payroll, and even the liberal media would have me on their shows even to abuse me while I valiantly stuck to my guns with the full conviction that I was doing my science right. I would be the hero of deniers everywhere.
Sometimes even fallacious arguments are hardly worth the effort.
The climate has changed before when humans weren’t around. It’s natural.
This is the first part of an argument constantly used. It’s also known in logic as a type of naturalistic fallacy. Just because something can happen naturally, doesn’t mean it can’t happen unnaturally. Do floods happen naturally? Sure. Can floods also happen because of human activities? Absolutely. Natural selection happens in evolution. But you know what also happens? “Unnatural selection”. The fruits and vegetables we eat, the dogs and cats we have as pets, and the horses we ride are all examples of this. The same thing can happen with or without intention.
We cannot have an impact on something as big as the Earth.
The ecosystem formerly known as rain forest.
This argument is made without any substantiation at all. It is often also used by people who are trying not to be religious but would rather take the James Inhofe argument that God controls the climate! Of course examples of how we have changed climate locally can be found all over through the building of structures like dams on rivers, cutting down forests and poor farming practices. In terms of the climate change issue specifically this person does a pretty nice break down of looking at how the amount of carbon we produce can quite easily explain the increase in carbon since pre-industrial levels. There is no reason to believe that we couldn’t have such a global impact. In fact that argument always seems to me a way of insulting or discrediting scientists again because it’s a pretty important question to answer before we would even start putting out evidence about climate change. I mean if the amount of carbon we produce paled in comparison to the amount of increase we’ve seen then I am not sure how the scientific consensus could be developed in the first place. It’s like when people say, the warming is being caused by the sun, and I think to myself “Oh my…we scientists all forgot to take into account the sun. I better make a few calls. Can’t believe we missed that one!”.
The Earth will survive. We’ve had major disasters before and life persists. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen.
This is the most insidious arguments, because it’s not fallacious at all in a logical sense. However it is apathetic and immoral. A lot of times people will say things like…”we’re just another species. Whatever we do is natural, and whatever happens will happens.”
Let’s say you are an emergency manager who works at a national park in a mountainous area. The weather is starting to warm and there has been heavy rains in the mountains and typically when such rains occur, especially in combination with some ice jams in the water flash flooding occurs. It’s not a guarantee, but likely. A town at the foot of the mountain in which the river runs through is going to get flooded, people could easily die if they are not warned. This is a natural event, it was going to happen whether humans are around are not do you warn them?
I think most people would answer that they would. To me arguing that doing nothing is the only option we have because the Earth is just going to do is thing is tantamount to doing nothing in this example, and simply letting people die. Many people who accept the fact that the climate is changing but don’t think man is responsible still must accept the consequences to this warming. Some of the one’s we are more sure of are:
Rising sea levels drowning coastal populations and increased damages and deaths from coastal hazards such as tropical storms and tsunamis
Increased heat waves and droughts
Increases in extreme weather events as climate patterns shift
Increased severity of extreme weather events.
What’s more is that these types of things will adversely impact the most vulnerable of the worlds population. People who are in poverty. People who depend on subsistence farming. When local hazards happen communities do make sacrifices, and do look for solutions, through re-zoning laws, construction improvements, and other engineering solutions to try and make the world safer and have less loss of life. So even if man has nothing do with the problem it doesn’t mean that we don’t have a responsibility to act to come up with a solution.
One can be logically sound but be ethically and morally irresponsible. Ignoring what experts are saying, making sweeping and unsubstantiated statements that there is nothing we can do, that it’s just nature, and the Earth will be fine is really the same as having the power to do something to save lives and not doing it. And this is why I agree that the conversation about climate change has to shift away from science and facts and be more about compassion, about love for our fellow human beings, valuing equality so that we all have the same chance to adapt and survive the changing climate, and about taking responsibility for the home that sustains us all. These are important values regardless of what is causing the climate to change and these are things we can address and even already have some solutions for. Of course I know that is even overly idealistic to think that such a solution of addressing people on an emotional level might work. Hell it’s difficult to find a religion that unanimously agrees poverty is something we should do something about. I feel pretty bleak in general about us actually doing something about climate change. It requires people to move beyond nationalism, beyond their own religious beliefs and worldview, which tend to not be very worldly at all. Maybe we can’t win against the forces of nature, but it sure would nice if we could overcome the forces that divide us as a species. We can try. Maybe in the end it really is easier to move mountains.
Of course if you are in the U.S. you know that life is all a buzz because the Pope is here. Democrats are happy, Republicans are mad, life can’t get better for us liberals right?
Now don’t get me wrong…I think this pope is miles ahead of popes in the past and I really love his positive messages about doing something about climate change, helping refugees, and taking care of the poor. But….
On the topic of climate change, there this group, let’s call them a hell of a lot of scientists across numerous scientific disciplines who have been saying we need to do something about climate change. But if the Pope says, then we better start listening.
There are a large group of people who feel great compassion for the poor and already believe we should be helping them. The Pope says we should help them and so now we better start listening.
There are a lot of people who think we need to deal with the humanitarian crisis in Syria better. The Pope has made it clear we must help, so now we better start listening.
And look, I get it to a certain point, because there is a large portion of this country who only start to take things seriously when it is said by religious authority, but that doesn’t mean we should really be happy about it.
Secular humanists and those that value the scientific method as the best way to try and understand how the universe works are years ahead of the church on these kinds of issues and yet nothing can be done about it until the Pope says to do something about it?
But here is the thing, the Pope is right, but there is nothing about his religion beliefs that are germane to the issues he speaks of. Helping the poor is a matter of acting out of our natural capacity to feel empathy, it speaks to equality, and human rights. There is nothing divine about it. Doing something about climate change has nothing to do with the story of Jesus Christ. Once again it is being proactive about reducing suffering and listening to what 1000’s of scientists are saying who have spent years and years researching changes to our environment. If there was no Pope and no God this would all still be the right thing to do, because why let people suffer?
So I’m happy that the Pope is saying all these things, but there are many among you have been saying these things all along. Intelligent and compassionate people. They aren’t called the Pope but maybe they are worth listening to as well. To me it’s a bit sad that we have to look to a man who says many things other have said all along, but just because he is the Pope it becomes relevant.
It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people… Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid … the future belongs to science and those who make friends with science. – Jawaharlal Nehru – 1961
I read a couple of troubling articles today about some forensic techniques that were used by the FBI that were used as evidence in criminal cases and were sold by the FBI as reliable techniques, but as it turns out were not the case. Those articles can be found here, and here.
In a horrible fit of madness I looked at some of the comments, and of course there are plenty of conspiracy people there, but what was more interesting is how many people thought that this was confirmation that scientific consensus doesn’t mean anything, or how science is unreliable, and many of these people were clearly conservatives who are climate change deniers. It annoys me to see science and logic so misunderstood, so I thought I just write down a few thoughts.
First of all it’s important to remember that one case of science being misused is not evidence that all science can’t be trusted.
Second, this is not a case of science being misused. The science was correct the entire time, it’s the FBI that lied about the science. Whether it was the forensics people themselves who misrepresented the science or lead investigator in charge of the case is unclear, but it was actually objective scientific investigation that showed the corruption of the FBI. There were actually peer-reviewed publications that demonstrated the lack of reliability of these techniques, just as there are 1000’s and 1000’s of peer-reviewed journal articles that establish the truth of human-induced climate change and this is much different than someone having the truth in a journal article, but then lying about it in terms of how that knowledge is applied.
Third, you could call what the FBI is doing bad science, but you can also see how easily that bad science was uncovered by the recent investigation. However when it comes to climate change, even their own scientists agree about the evidence for human-induced climate change. The party just refuses to listen.
More careful investigation of this exposure of the FBI’s techniques is not an indictment of science, but rather something that reveals it’s value at uncovering bias.
The technological save for mankind her argues is the computer. This is not a new idea, and in fact I wrote about this a little 
was much maligned by climate change deniers funded by various lobbying groups, but has since that time proven to be quite accurate and verified by other researchers. His was also among the e-mails leaked in the scandal called “climategate” which, despite the spin of deniers from out of context e-mail excerpts, has been 
Well the bad news is also related to the good news. It makes me concerned, not only that the massive money of the Koch Brothers and energy companies lobbying against solid science is preventing us from taking action that will help this planet, but also that we have so many Republican people in congress without the political courage to stand up to the money. It seems if they all banded together I am not sure what the likes of the Koch Brothers could do, if all of a sudden all of those people in congress lost their next elections suddenly. It would sort of “show their hand”. I guess it upsets me that the people we elect can be so intellectually dishonest and live with themselves.
Finally I also want to help promote 
In a horrible fit of madness I looked at some of the comments, and of course there are plenty of conspiracy people there, but what was more interesting is how many people thought that this was confirmation that scientific consensus doesn’t mean anything, or how science is unreliable, and many of these people were clearly conservatives who are climate change deniers. It annoys me to see science and logic so misunderstood, so I thought I just write down a few thoughts.
Cloak Unfurled 