Debunking Global Warming, Part 2: More on Crichton, his Critics and the Tedium of Factual Debate

More on Crichton, his critics, and The First Church of Climate Change. And don't forget that Hockey Stick.

Previously, I asserted that when discussing issues of hard data, or even issues that make points via logic and rhetoric, that if there is a tendency to address those making arguments of data and rhetoric by discrediting them, attacking their character, or attacking their motivations, or using other strategies that completely ignore the actual data, and the actual rhetoric, it’s a red flag. It’s a red flag that suggests there is something wrong with the opposing argument, in that they either cannot or will not address the issue of the data, or the logic of their opponent’s assertions. Then I note this is common approach to the arguments of Global Warming skeptics. One notable case would be Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote The Skeptical Environmentalist.

My second red flag, which will be discussed in greater detail in my next post, is when one side of the argument consistently attempt to silence and punish critics and skeptics, rather than addressing and refuting their arguments in honest and open debate. And there were several attempts to prevent the original publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist, the English language version, and to keep Bjorn Lomborg from speaking in a variety of venues. In one, where he was speaking, he got a cream pie (from a caring environmentalist) in the face. But Lomborg was also attacked based on accusations of incompetence, of insufficient training in many of the fields of study he was researching (what is known as a fresh, outside-the-box perspective when leftists agree with the conclusions), and attempts were made to discredit him based on the fact that conservative publications and pundits frequently cited his book!

Another notable case would be Michael Crichton, who makes a number of specific points regarding environmental science that are glossed over, or completely ignored—see the Michael Crowley post, previously.

In Fear, Complexity, and Environmental Management in the 21st Century Crichton makes a number of salient points. He notes that Chernobyl, which was supposed to have been a global disaster, and certainly a local environmental disaster, was nothing of the sort—despite the doom and gloom prediction of the pundit class. Reports, he notes, have anywhere from 15,000 to 30,000 people dying, now or in the future, but the actual number turned out to be 56. Now, is that number wrong? Might be. But the critics seem to focus on how Michael Crichton, desperate for fame and attention and importance he really doesn’t deserve, puts sex scenes in his sci-fi novels and got an award from a petroleum association.

Crichton writes:

But, of course, you think, we’re talking about radiation: what about long-term consequences? Unfortunately here the media reports are even less accurate.

The chart shows estimates as high as 3.5 million, or 500,000 deaths, when the actual number of delayed deaths is less than 4,000. That’s the number of Americans who die of adverse drug reactions every six weeks. Again, a huge error.

For the moment, let’s presume these statistics are irrefutable, or at least independently confirmable, because, thus far, Crichton’s harshest critics—as far as I can find—have not disputed them, although they’ve have very mean or disparaging things to say about Crichton the man. His larger point is one that is deductive, and rhetorical—it’s a logical conclusion, rather than specifically a recitation of facts, and thus even more open to debate or a good, solid logical refutation:

But most troubling of all, according to the UN report in 2005, is that "the largest public health problem created by the accident" is the "damaging psychological impact [due] to a lack of accurate information…[manifesting] as negative self-assessments of health, belief in a shortened life expectancy, lack of initiative, and dependency on assistance from the state."

In other words, the greatest damage to the people of Chernobyl was caused by bad information. These people weren’t blighted by radiation so much as by terrifying but false information. We ought to ponder, for a minute, exactly what that implies. We demand strict controls on radiation because it is such a health hazard. But Chernobyl suggests that false information can be a health hazard as damaging as radiation. I am not saying radiation is not a threat. I am not saying Chernobyl was not a genuinely serious event.

But thousands of Ukrainians who didn’t die were made invalids out of fear. They were told to be afraid. They were told they were going to die when they weren’t. They were told their children would be deformed when they weren’t. They were told they couldn’t have children when they could. They were authoritatively promised a future of cancer, deformities, pain and decay. It’s no wonder they responded as they did.

In fact, we need to recognize that this kind of human response is well-documented. Authoritatively telling people they are going to die can in itself be fatal.

These are logical, or rhetorical arguments, specifically addressing the danger of alarmism regarding subjects like environmental “disasters”, or global warming. If the facts are difficult to successfully challenge without straining credibility, certainly the logic can be attacked. So why are critics so quick to instead try to dismiss Crichton as a hack, a dilettante, and an anti-intellectual rabble-rouser?

Part of the problem is, no doubt, a factor the anti-Global Warming, and generally conservative, side of the argument has going for it: doomsayers, end-of-the-worlders, and doom-and-gloomers have a long history, and the main thing they share in common is being uniformly wrong. While this is not in and of itself mean that Global Warming is wrong, it does suggest that the latest prophesies of doom from environmental soothsayers should be taken for a grain of salt. And Crichton points out the poor predictive record of environmental alarmist quite often:

Once I looked at Chernobyl, I began to recall other fears in my life that had never come true. The population bomb, for one. Paul Ehrlich predicted mass starvation in the 1960s. Sixty million Americans starving to death. Didn’t happen. Other scientists warned of mass species extinctions by the year 2000. Ehrlich himself predicted that half of all species would become extinct by 2000. Didn’t happen. The Club of Rome told us we would run out of raw materials ranging from oil to copper by the 1990s. That didn’t happen, either.

It’s no surprise that predictions frequently don’t come true. But such big ones! And so many! All my life I worried about the decay of the environment, the tragic loss of species, the collapse of ecosystems. I feared poisoning by pesticides, alar on apples, falling sperm counts from endocrine disrupters, cancer from power lines, cancer from saccharine, cancer from cell phones, cancer from computer screens, cancer from food coloring, hair spray, electric razors, electric blankets, coffee, chlorinated water…it never seemed to end.

Crichton goes on to quote Lowell Ponte demanding action to prevent the imminent, perhaps unstoppable, man-made ice age in The Cooling, and environmental treatise warning of global cooling published in 1978. He quotes Paul Ehrlich, and 1972 study called The Limits of Growth regarding predictions of imminent disaster in the 1970s and 1980s that didn’t happen—that didn’t even come close to happening. Then, closer to our own time, he recounts the numerous prediction of doom, even a complete meltdown of civilization, from the UN Working Group on Informatics, The Y2K Personal Survival Guide, and The Y2K Survival Guide and Cookbook, predicting the end civilization, widespread unemployment, rioting, food shortages, a complete telecommunications breakdown, starvation, no police force . . . all because of some bugs in some software revolving around Y2K.

I don’t know about you, but when I read that I recalled hearing predictions that some power plants might blow up, that some missiles might automatically launch, and that the Air Traffic Control system might fail and that airplanes might start dropping from the sky—with the warning that we had to make sure no aircraft were flying over cities on the midnight of Y2K. Yet, what happened? Nothing. It’s a good example of how alarmism operates, of the dire predictions it makes, and the fact that it’s consistently, invariably mistaken. As Crichton writes:

What actually happened on January 1, 2000? Essentially, nothing.

But once again, notice the urgent language. The situation is desperate, unprecedented action is necessary, ordinary values must be pushed aside, anyone who disagrees is dangerous and reactionary. Terror, fear, and the end of civilization.

Perhaps Crichton is mistaken when he relates these past events of alarmism to Global Warming, perhaps he is not. But what is sure, he makes a compelling and, for those not already true believers in the Church of Environmentalism, a persuasive argument. But, surely, such a rhetorical and associative argument could be at least challenge with counter-examples, or additional information about Y2K or Paul Ehrlich Crichton does not present, rather than attacks on Crichton’s credentials and character. If someone has made such arguments, I can’t find them. Please point me to them, and I will amend this post, with credit.

Amendment: Searching hard, I found one, which links to another one: Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion at RealClimate.org.

Although, I must note, the critique, in many ways, could be said to be "praising with faint damns".

Back to the speech: Crichton then addresses the hubris of people attempting to “manage” the environment, regarding our hundred years and change of trying to manage nature at Yellowstone National Park. This is a long passage, but well worth reading, and should give any casual supporter of modern-day environmental management, which, like Kyoto, would spread the sort of disastrous hubris exhibited regarding the environmental management of Yellowstone into the world economy. The repeating fallacy of thinking we see a problem, coming up a fix, ham-handedly applying the fix, and causing more problems than the original problem, is hard to miss. And should certainly resonate with many environmentalists.

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The First Church of Global Warming

This is also a story that gets full treatment in Crichton’s novel, State of Fear. So this might be a good place to look at how all the scientific data and logical, rhetorical arguments made in State of Fear are refuted. For example, David Roberts reviews State of Fear in Grist is an excellent example of how critics respond to Crichton’s logical (and I mean logical as a description of the form of argument, rather than as an assessment of quality; logical arguments can also be specious and entirely incorrect, or predicated on bad data) and presentation and analysis of data.

While Kenner reels off statistics and cites scientific journals, his interlocutor's job is to say things like, "But of course Antarctica is melting! Trust me." Kenner references a paper, and a dippy enviro makes the opposing argument in the most naive, flat-footed, dim-witted way possible -- with no recourse to scientific citation. Rinse. Repeat.

A relevant criticism, and an excellent point for a more substantial argument, citing papers and data—even selectively—that would argue against Crichton’s statistics and citations. But, no. And why not? Because they don’t exist? Of course they do. There are a lot of scientific papers and data analysis that, at least on the surface, support the idea of man-made Global Warming quite nicely. Their conclusions may be arguable, but that material is certainly out there. So why don’t folks like Crowley and Roberts address Crichton’s obsessive use of reports and statistical data with equal-but-opposite reports and analyses?

It could be because believers in Global Warming are True Believers; it is a matter of faith, and to argue about the specifics of geological evidence for a flood or evidence of the exodus from Egypt is entirely beside the point. I believe in God, and Christian apologetics hold no charm for me—arguing about physical evidence of Noah’s ark or the Ark of the Covenant is entirely besides the point, for me, and for many people in regards to their religious beliefs. For many in the First Church of Climate Change, arguing data and statistics is besides the point.

It could also be because they don’t want to argue on the data anymore. Arguments on statistics often end up problematical. Things change. Temperature trends or ice flows or hurricane frequency can be cited as evidence for Global Warming, and then, when the trends move in a different direction, what once was used to prove man-made climate change is now used to disprove it. The fact is, when trying to make specific causal conclusions and predictions regarding huge organic systems with hundreds of thousands (or perhaps millions, or billions) of inputs, outputs, interactions, and randomizing factors, it very hard to be accurate in terms of causation or prediction. The same reason the meteorologists can be, and often are, radically wrong about the weather three days from now is the same reason specific predictions and statistical data are not the friends of the Global Warming faithful. The presumption that a certain set of data indicates man-made global warming is a leap of faith; there is simply no way to be sure that that data will remain consistent over time, that it will remain correlative with other factors, or that an expanded analysis of the data won’t indicate the exact reverse of what Global Warming advocates believe it actually proves. As such, even the most dramatic and impressive data—the fabled Hockey Stick Graph, for example—could easily end up working against Global Warming advocates, even if man-made Global Warming turns out to be the hard fact so many seem to think it is. So it’s better to avoid the specifics.

I tend to suspect it is some of both. Accompanied by the fact that human nature would make defending the obviously true seem a pointless task. If Global Warming is such an obvious thing, what’s the point of doing all the work and statistical analysis and complicated scientific refutations just to prove that the sky is blue? But I think it is primarily because modern day environmentalism is largely religious in nature, the motivations and rewards almost entirely emotional and even spiritual, and thus data analysis and logical arguments are irrelevant compared to emotional rewards, peer pressure, social proof, environmental fellowship, and “consensus”.

Which is why that is the most common defense of Global Warming mounted. As David Roberts writes in his Grist review of

A broad and robust scientific consensus exists on the subject of anthropogenic climate change, embodied by thousands of scientists and peer-reviewed studies. How is it that Crichton thinks so many scientists are so wrong, so willing to go along with the baseless hysteria?

I don’t recall if Crichton addresses that in the novel, but in the speech referenced above, he gives several reasons why people—and scientists are, at the end of the day, fallible human beings like the rest of us—go along with the hysteria. Additionally, Crichton never suggests that the Global Warming alarmism is baseless, or unprecedented—just wrong, and potentially more negative in its consequences than Global Warming, if real, would be.

Naomi Oreskes reviewed State of Fear in the San Francisco Chronicle, with a typical title: “Fear-Mongering Crichton Wrong on Science”.

Yet, there’s lots of hyperbole, confident assurances he’s wrong and mistaken, and a return to the touchstone of the Global Warming religion, consensus. But no specific refutation. Indeed, she sets up a straw man, saying that Crichton has, in public speeches, said that because scientists were wrong about eugenics, then they must be wrong about global warming. Which is not Crichton’s argument: rather, it’s that history indicates science can be flawed, and that policy based on flawed science can be destructive force, and that social policy predicated on fad science is usually bad. His point is also that history can teach us much about the current First Church of Climate Change, as eugenics was also embraced by scientists, academics, politicians, celebrities, and businessmen with the same sort of vigor and inevitable correctness that man-made climate change enjoys now.

And she proceeds to argue that Crichton was arguing against genes or genetic research, all the time not quoting a single thing Crichton has said on the issue, in State of Fear or elsewhere.

Oreskes writes: “Crichton has got his science, his history and his politics wrong.” But offers no specific refutations, instead saying:

Climate scientists have been in agreement for some time that global climate change is real and happening now. We know that humans have changed the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere, most measurably through the addition of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossils fuels. We also know that these changes are having a detectable effect on Earth's climate. These are not speculations, guesses or predictions, but observations over which there is no significant scientific argument.

Like so much in regards in the Church of Climate Change, this is not entirely true. We do know that global Climate Change is real. It always has been, and always will be. We know that humans do effect the environment, at least on the micro level, and it is reasonable to assume, but impossible to prove conclusively, that we also effect the earth on the macro level—though the idea that we might affect the earth more than, say, the temperature and activity of the sun does seem, to some, ill-considered. We know that we have been adding to the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere via the burning of fossil fuels, in such a matter that it may not all be processed in the same manner as it has been historically, and this may or may not effect climate to some degree. But to say that it is all hard science is to stretch the truth. There are some indications that even the scientific consensus on global warming is neither scientific, nor a consensus—but more on that later.

Oreskes continues to argue thusly:

Moreover, given that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and the theory of greenhouse gases is well established, it is nearly certain that a continued rise in carbon dioxide will lead to more changes: increased average temperatures, melting of polar ice (and a subsequent rise in sea levels), and, perhaps, an increase in floods, droughts and hurricanes. Finally, we know that the predicted changes could occur rapidly, giving both humans and nonhumans little time to adapt. Anyone who denies this has simply got the science wrong.

Note the language—like consensus, you will hear certain things again and again from the Global Warming faithful. “No significant scientific argument against it”,”climate change is real and happening now”,”it is well established”,”it is nearly certain”,”Anyone who denies this has simply got the science wrong.”

That is a powerful argument. Anyone who denies this has simply got the science wrong. So satellite data, emissions data, long term temperature trends, scientific and political history, environmental management failures of the past, statistical data from past and present-day environmental disasters, and so on—all easily ignored, because, we are assured, anyone who denies that disaster is imminent, thanks to the free market, capitalism, and the ownership of the SUV, has “simply got the science wrong”.

Oh, and Oserkes ends with a common refrain in regards to Global Warming skeptics. That is, if you don’t agree with me, then shut up.

Crichton is a novelist, and he knows how to write fiction. But he should leave the scientific facts to scientists, the historical facts to historians and the politics to all of us to debate.

Presumably, Crichton is supposed to debate the politics of it, with everybody, without bring up history or science!

Reiterating my addena far above: In my research, I have found someone actually addressing Crichton on the data, and he does a good job, and comes to the conclusion that Crichton's data is actually pretty good, but incomplete, and tends to be selective, often ignoring the fact that the papers he cites comes up with entirely different conclusions than he does. It's Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion. Gavin, the poster, does a evenhanded job of addressing potential issues of Crichton’s science, and offers—ala Crichton himself—copious links and footnotes. Like much of Crichton’s skepticism, I have to say, I think this is the level at which the debate should be happening. Personal attacks, discrediting contrarians because of their personal associations, careers, friends, or childhoods is not only insubstantial, but actually a contraindication when it comes to accepting the assertions of Global Warming supporters. I would certainly be more swayed by Gavin, the poster of this article, than any of the people who, ostensibly supporting and praising him, comment on the article—and, again, attacking “the deniers”.

Ah, well. There’s just not enough time in the day. More in a few days. In the interim, make sure you check out The Hockey Stick Graph. And review the article on The Temperature Record for the past 1000 Years on Wikipedia. If you drink the Kool-Aid and think, because it’s science, this stuff is more than a good guess based on widely variable data, perhaps even established, incontrovertible fact, go right ahead. I remain skeptical. And will resist Chicken-Little political policy based on the sky-is-falling alarmism of The First Church of Climate Change.

Next Time . . . More Crichton, Critics, Red Flags, and Alarmism