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Seeing the Future Dimly

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

By David L. Brown

One of the news websites, Fox News (here), today featured excerpts from a number of predictions made 25 years ago by “science thinkers,” predicting conditions in our time of 2012. I recognize the names of most of these “science thinkers” and they are actually “science fiction writers,” but that’s okay because they’re in the business of imagining the future as much as anyone. I’ve always had a passing interest in futurism, the attempt to predict how things will be in future times. In general, these tend to be wildly inaccurate due to the many uncertainties and the phenomenon of straight line thinking. Too often futurists tend to look at what’s been happening recently and simply project a straight line into the future.

Even a cursory look at history will knock enough holes in this procedure to make Swiss cheeses look like solid objects. Imagine the application of straight line thinking to the U.S. economy in the summer of 1929, the likelihood of war in Europe in 1913, the future well-being of the little Roman village of Pompeii in 78 AD (Mount Vesuvius erupted the following year), and so many more examples of unexpected and unpredictable events that dramatically change the future.

One thing that struck me abut these predictions was that they were for the most part pessimistic, in contrast with the usual fol-de-rol about a Jetsons future with flying cars and an abundance of everything. Here are some excerpts with my comments:

Isaac Asimov: “Assuming we haven’t destroyed ourselves in a nuclear war, there will be 8-10 billion of us on this planet and widespread hunger.”

Isaac’s view was fairly accurate, even though he was a little on the low side on population (it’s actually just something over 7 billion). He was dead on about the looming hunger, hastened by this year’s worldwide drought.

Jack Williamson: “If we had a time-phone, now in 1987, we would beg you to forgive us. We have burdened you with impossible debts, wasted and polluted the planet that should have been your rich heritage, left you instead a dreadful legacy of ignorance, want, and war.”

Of all the predictions, I nominate this one as the most accurate. I have expressed similar thoughts myself, many times. Anyone who looks around the world today with open eyes can recognize Williamson’s vision of our time.
Sheldon Glashow: “The American economy will have experienced a gentle yet relentless decline. Our children will not live such comfortable lives as we do. The spread between the rich and the poor will have grown, and crime will have become so prevalent as to threaten the social fabric. The rich and the poor will form 2 armed camps.”
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Posted in Conflict and War, Energy Technology, Essays and Opinion, Extinction, Famine, Fossil Fuels, Medicine, Politics, Population Issues, Resource Depletion, Space Exploration, Technology | Comments Off

Technology—Promise or Curse?

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

By David L. Brown

Historian Niall Ferguson in an article published in The Daily Beast raises a question that’s long interested me. He asks, in effect, which vision of the future we should embrace: The idea that technology will make the world a better place, or the vision of a world in catastrophic economic decline?

Here”s a brief excerpt from the beginning of his essay, titled “Don’t Believe the Techno-Utopian Hype” (you can read the whole thing here):

Are you a technoptimist or a depressimist? This is the question I have been pondering after a weekend hanging with some of the superstars of Silicon Valley.

I had never previously appreciated the immense gap that now exists between technological optimism, on the one hand, and economic pessimism, on the other. Silicon Valley sees a bright and beautiful future ahead. Wall Street and Washington see only storm clouds. The geeks think we’re on the verge of The Singularity. The wonks retort that we’re in the middle of a Depression.

Let’s start with the technoptimists. Last Saturday I listened with fascination as a panel of tech titans debated the question: “Will science and technology produce more dramatic changes in solving the world’s major problems over the next 25 years than have been produced over the last 25 years?”

They all thought so. We heard a description of what Google’s Project Glass, the Internet-enabled spectacles, can already do. (For example, the spectacles can be used to check if another speaker is lying.) Next up: a search engine inside the brain itself. We heard that within the next 25 years, it will be possible to take 1,000-mile journeys by being fired through tubes. We also heard that biotechnology will deliver genetic “photocopies” of human organs that need replacing. And we were promised genetically engineered bugs, capable of excreting clean fuel. The only note of pessimism came from an eminent neuroscientist, who conceded that a major breakthrough in the prevention of brain degeneration was unlikely in the next quarter century.

Ferguson,  a professor at Harvard and also associated with Oxford University in England and The Hoover Institution at Stanford, takes the same point of view that has always struck me as the right path. In effect, he asks: What is the value of technology that merely puts people out of work and provides wonderful whiz-bang stuff that has no real benefits for anyone. He points out that fifty years ago we were promised flying cars, and instead we have Twitter.

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Posted in Conflict and War, Economics, Energy Technology, Politics, Resource Depletion, Technology | Comments Off

A Tragedy in the Making

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

By David L. Brown

As drought and heat continue to destroy a significant portion of the US crop, a large tranche of corn continues to be mandated for use in ethanol production. The purpose of this is to enrich farmers and channel money to corn producing states in order to secure votes. (It makes no kind of economic sense as a fuel source.) Now that the world faces more widespread famine (it’s already been a reality in many places for several years), it might make sense to shut down the ethanol plants for the time being, as this excerpt from an article today on WIRED (here) suggests (emphasis added):

“In the short run, USDA needs to figure out a way to remove the mandate on ethanol use from corn,” said Timmer [an agricultural economist]. “If we could free up 20 to 30 percent of the U.S. crop, reduced as it is, it would bring corn prices down very quickly.

New speculation limits are scheduled to be enacted by year’s end, but drought means that may be too late, said Bar-Yam [president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, a kind of scientific and technology think tank]. In the meantime, the USDA has rebuffed all requests to reduce corn biofuel allotments.

So it would make sense, but the USDA isn’t having any part of that. Well, duh because obviously farmers and ethanol barons are more important than 7 billion human beings and the reputation of the United States. Well, how is it going to fly when third world people are starving wholesale? They get to suffer and die horrible deaths while the U.S. in all the great wisdom of the USDA (headed by a rain-praying lawyer and professional politician) continues to turn huge amounts of corn into ethanol. Do we want to make America the Great Satan in fact as well as in name? If so, this will certainly do it. With hardly any effort at all we can make our country the most hated in the history of the world. When you open a future dictionary to the word “Evil” there will be a picture of Uncle Sam pointing at you. That’s what these idiots are doing.

Meanwhile, here’s a chart showing what happens when food prices rise. The numbers represent incidents of social unrest.

The Wired article suggests that “some think” food prices may have led to the so-called Arab Spring (it’s pretty plain that they did), and that therefore it was a “good thing.” Boy, if that’s good I’d hate to see what they consider bad. The idea that a bunch of raving lunatics taking over third world countries has something to do with “democracy” is totally nuts. It’s anarchy is what it is, followed by theocratic chaos, mayhem and murder. Somalia et al. are hardly models for Jeffersonian democracy. Incidentally, if you doubt the connection, note the number of incidents of food-related social unrest last year in the nations most affected by the Arab Spring: Tunisia 300+, Libya 10,000+, Egypt 800+, and now Syria 900+. Hmm, where there’s smoke and so forth.

One could assume that the 2008 and 2011 events (all centered on sharp rises in the UN’s FAO food index shown by the black dotted line) will be followed by similar events in spades when the presently developing food price spike gets its boots on (which is happening right now). Many of these represent small, insignificant countries (in Western eyes, at least although the indigenous peoples might beg to differ), but there are also some significant ones, including India with 1.5 billion mouths to feed. What happens if a major population subset such as India falls into out-and-out famine? India is presently suffering a reduced Monsoon so food shortages may be coming there soon, incidental to the crisis in world supplies which will severely limit or eliminate the possibility of filling production shortfalls with imports.

China doesn’t appear on the chart and I don’t understand why, because it also has been suffering something like 50,000 minor revolts and demonstrations each year, many of which must be food related. I guess it’s not on the list because the wise leaders of China say “nuh uh, it didn’t happen.” They must have legions of Winston Smiths busily rewriting history there in the Middle Kingdom. Northern China is also presently affected by drought. If India or China (or both) were to fall into widespread famine and anarchy It would be like Somalia X1000.

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Posted in Agriculture Issues, Climate Change, Economics, Ethical Issues, Famine, Global Security, Politics, Population Issues | Comments Off

The Tragedy of Climate Change Denial

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

By David L. Brown

Well, we all know that it has been really cold in many places this winter, and that that is proof positive that global warming is a hoax. Oh, didn’t you know that? It’s true, and all you need to do to convince yourself of that is to listen to raving ignorant pols and pundits who heed the malicious maunderings of climate change deniers.

Seriously, there is something strange about people who claim that because it’s cold in the winter that the planet is not warming. Did anyone ever predict that warm winters would result? Only the most ignorant and mentally challenged idiot would make such a claim … or so it would seem. In fact, we hear that kind of clueless statement rather frequently. Does that mean there are a lot of ignorant folks around, many of them in places of authority? Well, perhaps. It’s not enough to merely observe that they are ill-informed, because they have bought into a thesis that is  supported not by science, but by disinformation and lies.

The professional deniers, many of them driven by monetary support from special interests, have been spinning and twisting the facts of climate change like a cat’s cradle. They make up facts, distort others, make ridiculous claims, take minor point out of context and blow them up as big as Mount Everest and, well, they use every trick in the propaganda handbook. And tthey get away with it because a large percentage of human beings were never taught the art of analytic reasoning, the ability to sort out the truth from the deluge of lies and misinformation. Those who have been labeled as sheep and whose understanding of logic is minuscule or nonexistent.

There’s another factor at work here, I suspect, and that is the desire not to know that the world may be in trouble due to human activities. After all, what a far more comfortable thing it is to believe that things are just hunky and also dory and that everything will always be just wonderful? It’s human nature to suppress thoughts about bad things. An example that comes to mind is the way Americans almost unanimously denied the coming of World War Two, right up until December 7, 1941. That day something happened, and the world changed.

global-warming-250x326Here we see a hint of the principle of tipping points, in that instance the Pearl Harbor attack. The denial of climate change is likely to follow a similar pattern. Until there are obvious signs of the effect of global warming, little is likely to be done about it. Nevermind that there already are significant signs of exactly those effects, such as disappearing Arctic ice, warming oceans, melting tundra. Those actual pieces of evidence are ignored and countered with anecdotes about cold winter days, snow storms, and conspiracy theories alleging that thousands of scientists are engaged in an enormous hoax led by the evil Al Gore.

What is the reality? Well, here’s one: the year 2010, despite whatever you may have heard, was probably the warmest on record. Here’s another factoid: the ten warmest years since records began being kept occurred since 1998. Those are facts, as confirmed by three separate scientific organizations. Here’s the report as seen on the BBC website (yes, you have to go beyond the borders of America to get much news about such things as “facts.”)

2010 was the warmest year since global temperature records began in 1850 – although margins of uncertainty make it a statistical tie with 1998 and 2005.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) concludes 2010 was 0.53C warmer than the average for the period 1961-90 – a period commonly used as a baseline.

The 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1998, it notes.

The WMO analysis combines data from three leading research agencies, and is regarded as the most authoritative.

The three records are maintained by the US-based National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) and National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), and jointly in the UK by the Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

They use broadly the same data from weather stations, ocean buoys and satellites across the world; but each analyses that data in different ways, leading to slight differences in their conclusions.

But those are only scientific facts, and thus much less persuasive then anecdotes about cold days in winter (it’s winter, for crying out loud, what do they expect?) and unusual snowfalls. People see what they want to see, and if on some future day they see the results of catastrophic climate tipping points it will probably be far too late to do anything about it. That’s the tragedy of denial.

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Posted in Climate Change, Melting Planet, Politics | Comments Off

California Stays the Course on Green Energy

Friday, November 12th, 2010

By David L. Brown

Another example of the way in which energy moguls work to block development of sustainable, clean energy was the recent introduction of Prop. 23 in California. This proposition, which came to a vote on November 2, quite simply was aimed at dismantling the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act, passed in 2006. Also known as AB 32,  the GWSA calls for the state’s producers of greenhouse gas to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. Many initiatives are well under way to replace fossil fuels, create greater efficiency in existing technologies, and move the state toward a cleaner “green” future. Beginning to take effect in 2012, the act will require about a 15 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from present levels by the target date ten years from now.

This seems a moderate goal, perhaps even less than might be hoped. But nonetheless, it had drawn fire from the usual suspects, who organized Prop. 23 to demand that AB32 be suspended until the state’s employment rate dropped below 5.5 percent for a full 12 months. Because this is an unlikely event (that level has been reached only three times in the past 40 years), the proposition in reality was a move to permanently gut the GWSA.

And who was behind this end run to set California up to continue down the dead end path toward oblivion as resource depletion continues to undermine the old economic infrastructure while forward-looking nations such as China and Germany stake their futures on rapid development of alternative energy? Why, the usual suspects, of course. Although the California Republican and Libertarian Parties signed on to support the proposition, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger strongly opposed the proposition and was joined by GOP candidates Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman among others, proving that the party structure is increasingly at odds with its own candidates.

But politicians weren’s the real conspirators behind the proposition. The individuals and corporate entities that acted in support of the proposition wrapped themselves in a cloak of deception, claiming to be concerned with jobs. In fact, they called their effort the California Jobs Initiative. And yet, a look at the list of major donors to the movement tells a different story. Top contributor was a company called Valero Energy ($4.05 million), followed by (among others) Tesoro ($1.525 million), Flint Hills Resources, LP ($1 million; this is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, a major supporter of anti-global warming initiatives); Occidental Petroleum ($300K), National Petrochemical and Refiners Assn. ($100K), Tower Energy Group ($200K); World Oil Corp. ($100K); Southern Counties Oil ($50K); Frontier Oil ($50K);  Murray Energy ($30K); and Berry Petrochemical ($30K).

Hmm, do we see a pattern here? Are these leading supporters of a move to block California from improving its greenhouse gas footprint acting out of concern for the jobs of Californians—or from their own self-interested desire to continue to profit from fossil fuels and the destruction of the environment? It’s rather clear that the answer is the latter, the profit one, the evil one, rather than the charitable desire to protect jobs. for ordinary Californians. In fact, suspending the act would have put paid to at least 50,000 new jobs relating to clean energy initiatives.

To put this in further perspective, let’s take a closer look at some of those supporters of the proposal to block the green act. No. 1 contributor Valero operates two oil refineries in California. No. 2 donor Tesoro is the 24th largest producer of air pollution in the United States. And Koch Industries, the third largest contributor, is one of the top 10 corporate polluters in the nation.

What more can we say, except to applaud the wisdom of California voters who soundly defeated Prop. 23 by a 22 percent margin, approximately 61 percent to 39 percent. The Golden State may face deep and serious problems but at least its people have the courage to stand up against polluters and those that Ayn Rand called “looters,” the corporate highway robbers who want to continue their nasty ways at all costs.

California, and the world at large, needs to vastly expand support of alternative energy programs. It’s not the time to listen to those who advise us to inserting our heads into the sand in ostrich-like denial.

In an editorial written prior to the election, Science magazine editor Bruce Alberts had this to say:

The public and private investment in energy innovation now totals only about 0.3% of U.S. energy expenditures. California’s Proposition 23 needs to be soundly defeated, sending a clear signal to Washington that the people of the United States are ready and willing to mobilize its considerable resources in the vital drive to a sustainable energy future.

To which I add, bravo! And thanks to California voters the message has been sent.

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Posted in Age of Oil, Climate Change, Conservation Issues, Economics, Energy Technology, Fossil Fuels, Melting Planet, Politics, Pollution | Comments Off

Those Strange Climate Change Deniers

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

By David L. Brown

Global warming/climate change deniers are strange fellows indeed. Despite the overwhelming evidence that human-caused global warming is real and may seriously harm our planet, they continue to raise doubts. One of their arguments is that most scientists refuse to admit that global warming has been absolutely, positively proven once and for all. Well, if that’s the case, then obviously there’s a lot of room for doubt, right?

Well, not really, because you see nothing in science is absolute. A scientist can absolutely believe that any theory is correct, but the very nature of science is to question. That’s why centuries after Galileo and Newton the theory of gravity is still being examined, studied, tested and refined. It doesn’t mean that scientists deny the force of gravity, but that they constantly seek to advance knowledge about it.

Science, unlike so many other things, is not based on assumptions and “faith,” but only upon that which can be demonstrated over and over again. Just as Einstein moved our understanding beyond that of Newton, the enormous Large Hadron Collider now being ramped up at CERN has as one of its most important challenges to find something called the Higgs Boson, a proposed exotic particle that may hold the secret of gravity. Gravity is not absolutely, positively proven and as a scientific theory it never will be because that is the very nature of science.

So no responsible scientist will state that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is absolutely, positively, 100 percent proven. It’s just not the way science works. Asking a scientist to state otherwise is like asking a husband if he has stopped beating his wife yet. There is no proper answer, because it is an inappropriate question that’s being asked.

So we can conclude that all responsible scientists believe there is a small chance that AGW is wrong. A very small minority of serious scientists think there are real problems with the theory, of greenhouse warming and that’s fine because they are acting in the true tradition of science. However, the vast majority are virtually certain it is a valid theory, and that’s where the deniers get their chance to confuse the issue. “Virtually certain” and “absolutely certain” are not the same thing. If the uncertainty is extremely small, chances are that it will be assumed to be true, and that’s where we stand with most climate scientists today. But if you pinned down an astronomer to state with absolute certainty that the Sun will rise in the East tomorrow, he or she must of necessity hedge the answer., no matter how slightly. We don’t know how, why, or whether it’s possible that event might not occur, but the uncertainty exists, even if it’s one chance in a centillion (that’s 10 to the 303rd power, or 1 with 303 zeros after it).

This reminds me of the paradoxes of the ancient Greek Zeno of Elea who jerked his fellow philosophers around by arguing that Achilles, no matter how fast he ran, could never catch a tortoise in a race. He explained that each time Achilles reached the point where the tortoise was, the tortoise would have already advanced further, leaving Achilles behind.

This kind of reasoning fits the logic often used by climate change deniers. They say that since the theory has not yet been proven, then it must be false. Their tortoise moves ahead of every argument, and since the experts are held to the rigor of the scientific process it appears to the uninitiated that the deniers have a point.

They love to remind the general public that AGW is “only a theory,” without explaining that the definitions of “theory” in science and in everyday life are quite different. A scientific theory is a model that has been rigidly tested and challenged and continues to be refined, like the theory of gravity. An everyday theory such as you might hear in a corner bar or from the mouth of a denier is just about anything you can imagine, no matter how unlikely or counter intuitive. There are those who believe the Earth is flat, and they stand by their opinion to the bitter end.

Finally, here’s some eye candy to add to the argument that deniers come from a strange place, an editorial cartoon from USA Today:

photo-thumb-500x376-57911

What indeed if we create a better world, and all for nothing. What a tragedy that would be.

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Posted in Astronomy, Climate Change, Essays and Opinion, Melting Planet, Politics, Psychology | Comments Off

My New Book

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

By David L. Brown

depcovercropI am pleased to announce the publication of my new book DEAD END PATH: How Industrial Agriculture Has Stolen Our Future. This work, in the form of an extended essay, is the result of a lifetime of experience and study. It is written in an easy-to-read style and thoroughly documented with more than 250 footnotes and a bibliography of nearly 150 volumes included in its nearly 300 pages.

DEAD END PATH is unusual in that it is part essay, part memoir, part speculative journalism and part research-based analysis. It examines the serious challenges that face the human race, including the unhappy facts that as human population continues to grow the resources on which our technological civilization depends are being depleted through runaway “progress” and “development,” code words for the destruction of the environment in the interests of profit for the few.

Many of the ideas in this book have been discussed in this weblog, including population issues, resource peaks, and economic considerations. The main argument of DEAD END PATH is that while most of the structural problems of our civilization can be traced to over-population, that core fact itself rests on the short-sighted use of industrial methods to produce more food in the short term than the Earth can sustain. As resources peak and begin to decline, a food crisis looms ahead of us at the terminus of the path we have taken.

To give you the general flavor of this work, here is the official description from the publisher’s website:

DEAD END PATH is an important book because it describes in simple, jargon-free words the critical dangers facing humanity, including many facts that the media seldom report. It’s an extended essay on how industrial agriculture has led us down an unsustainable path that threatens our very civilization. The danger is real and looming before us in the here-and-now. Our petroleum-based technology is reaching its limits and the coming collapse will likely trigger a domino-like food crisis that will change the world forever.

Readers will learn how machine technology has transformed food production and pitted the human race against Nature herself. Topics include over-population, resource depletion, climate change, economic realities and the long-term outlook for human survival. Part journalism, part history, part memoir, part essay — this book aims to entertain and inform curious readers in non-technical language. The subjects of this book are possibly the most important issues of the 21st Century, a stark reality that is little reported by the media and largely ignored by world leaders. Every thinking person should be aware of this looming threat to civilization, the real-life story that unfolds in the pages of DEAD END PATH.

To help bring the message of DEAD END PATH to a wider audience, I have begun to create a new website at www.agdeadend.com. It is only partially constructed, but you may find it interesting to visit it now to read the text of the Author’s Note from the book in which I explain my personal life’s journey and how it resulted in the writing of this book. Please bookmark and return to it as it takes form. It will contain news and commentary relating to the subject of the book.

Posted in Agriculture Issues, Book Reviews, Desertification and Soil Loss, Economics, Essays and Opinion, Famine, Fossil Fuels, Politics, Resource Depletion, Technology | Comments Off

Don’t Confuse Me With the Facts!

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

By David L. Brown

factsThat headline may sound like a joke, but it often seems to be exactly the reaction many people have when faced with facts that may threaten their preconceived notions about how things work. A recent article in The Boston Globe (link here) sheds light on this mysterious effect.

Titled “How facts backfire,” the article is focused on voter opinions about political questions. It makes the unsettling conclusion that most people are unlikely to change their opinions when provided with contrary facts, and may actually tend to cling even more strongly to mistaken ideas. Here’s a take-away from the article:

Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

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“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”

This concept helps shed some light on the subject of climate change denial, in which scientists are frustrated by the apparent effect that as they reveal more and more information about the dangers of global warming, large numbers among the public actually seem to become more skeptical. This is not least seen among politicians, broadcast and print commentators and other opinion leaders. It’s not uncommon today to hear or read statements such as “global warming is a hoax,” or “climate change has been disproved.” This is completely contrary to the mass of evidence.

The article points out that people today are deluged with “endless rumors, misinformation, and questionable variations on the truth,” making it easier than ever to be wrong.  It also makes people feel more certain that they are right.

And even more vexing is the fact that the most informed people are the most resistant to changing their mistaken ideas when provided with new information. The article describes a 2006 study by Charles Taber and Milton Lodge at Stony Brook University which “showed that politically sophisticated thinkers were even less open to new information than less sophisticated types. These people may be factually right about 90 percent of things, but their confidence makes it nearly impossible to correct the 10 percent on which they’re totally wrong.”

Hmm, that may explain a lot about some of the stuff you hear coming out of the mouths of supposedly well-informed people on “Meet the Press” and other venues. They appear to be completely confident in their statements, even though to others they sometimes seem more like delusional paranoid ravings than sound opinion.

Thanks to Google I found the original paper by Taber and Lodge, “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs” (PDF here), and it adds some interesting perspective to the subject. It seems that even scientists are subject to the backfire effect, as described in their paper:

Physicists do it. Psychologists do it. Even political scientists do it (cites withheld to protect the guilty among us). Research findings confirming a hypothesis are accepted more or less at face value, but when confronted with contrary evidence, we become “motivated skeptics,” mulling over possible reasons for the “failure,” picking apart possible flaws in the study, recoding variables, and only when all the counterarguing fails do we rethink our beliefs. Whether this systematic bias in how scientists deal with evidence is rational or not is debatable, though one negative consequence is that bad theories and weak hypotheses, like prejudices, persist longer then they should.

The backfire effect poses a serious problem for scientists, not only because their profession is fact-based but also due to their human tendency to hold onto their notions. The statement of Arthur Schopenhauer comes to mind: “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident.” The concept of backfire also resonates with the maxim of Ben Franklin, who said “So convenient a thing is it to be a rational creature, since it enables us to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to.”

When scientists find it difficult to understand why their increasingly solid data and conclusions don’t seem to change opinions among the general public, the effect described in the Globe article could be the reason. If that’s the case, what can be done about it? Since the problem appears to lie in human psychology rather than the rational processes of logic and reason, the answer can’t be found in the stubborn ranks of the misinformed. And, simply piling more and more facts onto the table doesn’t work and may even have a negative effect. It’s a conundrum indeed.

The author of the Globe article, Joe Keohane, suggests that those who spread falsehoods might be subjected to shame, which could cause them to change their behavior. However, he concludes that the “shame-based solution” runs into the fact that “fast-talking political pundits have ascended to the realm of highly lucrative popular entertainment, while professional fact-checking operations languish in the dungeons of wonkery.”

I’m reminded of how the many magical feats of Moses (plagues of frogs, locusts, serpents, etc.) failed to convince Pharaoh to release the Hebrews and that each feat only “hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” Climate scientists probably face a similar impossible task in trying to convince the public about the importance of their work. In the end, Moses had to simply gather up his people and leave Egypt, thus:

mosesandtheredseabiblestory

Unfortunately, parting the Red Sea and leaving Egypt is not an option for climate scientists  today. I  guess we’ll have to wait for the jury to come out on global warming and climate change. That’s when the facts will become so manifest that they can no longer be denied.  Unfortunately, that will also be when it’s too late to do anything about it.

Posted in Energy Technology, Politics, Psychology | Comments Off

A New ‘Champion’ for Anti-Climate Change

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

By David L. Brown

We’ve railed for several years about the support of anti-global warming activists by self-interested corporations. Now, according to an article on Scientific American’s web site, here, there’s a new champion handing out money to shills for the energy companies that want to keep the Earth on the greenhouse gas merry-go-round.

The new villain in this tragedy is Koch Industries of Wichita, KS, which has surpassed even the mighty ExxonMobil as a source of funding for climate change deniers. The source of the news story is a report produced by the environmental organization Greenpeace. According to SciAm:

Koch subsidiaries own refineries, oil pipelines, fertilizer facilities, coal and cement transportation systems, and other industrial operations. The company also has several foundations through which it gave $24.9 million to conservative groups between 2005 and 2008, the report says.

“The combination of foundation-funded front-groups, big lobbying budgets, [political action committee] donations, and direct campaign contributions makes Koch Industries and the Koch brothers among the most formidable obstacles to advancing clean energy and climate policy in the U.S.,” Greenpeace says.

The energy conglomerate, which is 84 percent owned by brothers Charles and David Koch, helps support activities by individual purveyors of “junk science” and such conservative think tanks as the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute.

Anti-climate change is an insidious endeavor that attempts to spread misinformation by picking at small details, many of them of no consequence or even non-existent, as illustrated here:

gwcriticsClimate scientists are ill-prepared to defend their work against this kind of attack. They work through a system of peer review, which means their ideas and data are evaluated by experts in their field, rather than by public opinion. Unfortunately, the press and the general public are pretty much unaware of how science works, and it seems perfectly natural to the average Joe Sixpack that any talking head on TV or even just some guy in a bar can have a say in the evaluation of scientific work. In fact, as I pointed out in my  essay “Science, Propaganda and Climate Change,” here, the anti-climate change activities are classic examples of the kind of deliberate misleading of the public that was practiced by the regimes of Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong.

The parallel with anti-evolutionary activity such as so-called “intelligent design” is apparent, but in that case the efforts to discredit science are based on the mistaken religious belief that evolution somehow invalidates their perception of a supernatural power. (Doesn’t it ever occur to them that if there were an all-powerful deity, evolution would logically be the method through which that deity works?)

No, the program of anti-climate change agitation is clearly based not on faith but on personal or corporate greed. In the case of those who work and spend millions to confuse the issue of greenhouse gas warming, the only apparent motivation is to allow themselves to continue to profit from the “development” and use of fossil fuels. Take away the profit, and there would be no incentive to make up stories and spread lies to muddle the issue.

The Koch Brothers obviously have every profit incentive to prevent the world from reducing emissions of greenhouse gas, and they are putting their money where their interests lie. According to the SciAm report, Koch Industries has supported misinformation campaigns purporting to prove that polar bears are not threatened; encouraged suspicions that climate scientists cherry-pick data and suppress findings that don’t suggest global warming is taking place; and financed studies that “misinform the public on renewable energy benefits.”

I find it ironic that the deniers, whose motivation is to make money from continued fossil fuel use, criticize those who push for alternative sources such as wind and solar power as greedy profiteers. This is a classic tactic well-known to Nicolai Machiavelli, Joseph Goebbels, and Saul Alinsky. There is an old saying about pots and kettles, but in this case perhaps the kettle isn’t even black, only the pot.

Will the confusion about global warming ever come to an end? Yes, it will, for nothing can go on forever. Unfortunately, this mess will probably come to a conclusion either when there is no more money to be made from exploiting fossil fuels, or when the Earth can no longer  support industrial civilization. These two conditions are not mutually exclusive, and the final scenario could include both factors.

As to the odds in favor of dramatic action by governments around the world to turn the tide against global warming, I can only suggest that the power of greed is mighty and the love of money and power is a sickness more terrible than any mere disease.

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How the Earth Was Lost

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

By David L. Brown

I have been silent in recent weeks on the subject of climate change. My reason: I am gobsmacked by the success of the anti-global warming activities that have taken place. Science and reason are in full retreat in the face of the most astounding set of charges, accusations, and declarations I have ever seen.

vesuvius_in_eruptionWhat can you say when faced with the unimaginable? Think of it as like standing in the middle of a Roman village named Pompeii in 79 A.D., gaping at the sight of Mount Vesuvius blowing itself to pieces. “Oh my goodness!” just would not quite suffice, and more expressive reactions would only be pointless profanity. You would be  facing the unimaginable. You would be staring at the end of the world as you know it.

What has happened on the issues of global warming and climate change in the past few months is truly bizarre and frankly unexpected. First thousands of e-mails were hacked and several statements cherry picked out of context, twisted, and made to look like scientists were in disagreement and fighting among themselves on questions pertaining to global warming.

Well, duh, that’s what scientists do! It’s their job to pick at the edges, to squabble among themselves, to try to knock down ideas, to, well, disagree. If they did not do these things, there would be no science, no progress, no real knowledge, just superstition and the recognition of the obvious.

The most amazing thing about that phase of the operation was that among all those thousands of e-mails over a dozen years that the deniers couldn’t find anything any more damning than the extremely thin gruel they did.

Do not scientists have a right to be ironic, as in making a comment during a blizzard that questions global warming? Did that scientist in Colorado who did so believe there is no global warming because it was cold in Colorado in the winter? No, certainly not, and yet that ironic, human, personal statement was seized upon with an Aha! that could be heard all the way to Antarctica, where just today a chunk of ice described as the size of a small country fell into the ocean.

Fact check: An ironic personal comment is not scientific data. It is nothing, in fact. And there is a big part of the problem with this attack: Most of the “flaws” that have been found are on the nature of minor typographic errors, statements of opinion, guesses about the future, and other things that are not scientific data at all.

Such it was with the supposedly egregious “error” concerning the rate of melting of “the Himalayan glaciers.” This appeared on page four hundred and some of the second volume of the latest IPCC report, a work comprising nearly 3000 pages. It was one sentence, and it contained a typo apparently. It was not presented as data, not used as the basis for even a general observation much less the entire bulwark of global warming evidence. It was merely part of a huge compendium of evidence provided by several thousand scientists and cooperatively vetted by representatives of more than a hundred nations of the world. It was nothing.

(more…)

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