MaxedOutMama
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Bifurcated Truth
Two related scientific interests I have had ever since I was in elementary school are prehistory and geology. We now live in a golden age of internet publication, so I have been able to follow these interests a great deal more actively over the last four years. A great deal of man's early history now seems to have been mediated by climate.
Because of these interests, I have been aware for a long time of a bifurcated system of scientific dogma. The dogma among "climate scientists" over the last 6 years has been that global climate has not changed much over the last ten thousand years. The dogma among every other scientific field is quite different. If I hadn't been following these other fields so actively, I might have believed what climate scientists were putting forth as truth. Because I had been following them, when stuff like the hockey stick graph emerged I hunted for the actual data and realized it did not support the graph. Ever since I have been watching the religious wars on this question with growing fascination.
If you did believe the climate scientists, I don't blame you. Dean Esmay has a superb post up quoting the Wall Street Journal's discussion of what is emerging about the field. In short, there has been a semi-organized repression of any dissenting voices. What is really odd is that the dissenting voices have the data on their side. This, in part, is Dean's commentary:
So think about that. There is a scientific consensus that the Kyoto Protocol might accomplish the lowering of global temperatures by a tenth of a degree over a century, but that's all. There is a technological consensus that lowering GHG emissions by 60% below the base level chosen in the 90's would lower temperatures significantly, although not necessarily beyond the bounds of natural fluctuation, but that we would have to destroy our global society's economy to do it.
There is a widespread unwillingness in the environmentalist wing to allow the discussion of any measures that would help to lower GHG emissions more significantly (such as wave power, wind power and massive building of nuclear power plants), so all we have accomplished with Kyoto is to make ourselves feel good. To maintain that euphoria, we have to ignore scientific facts and ignore the real danger, so I'm not sharing in the joy. What we are doing with the Kyoto Protocol is diffusing people's anxiety to the extent that they can sustain their belief in this mass delusion. Handing out happy pills would be cheaper and more productive. Doing some research to really understand natural and anthropogenic variations in global climate would be a productive step, but would destroy the false euphoria our society has adopted. This has all the earmarks of a cult.
Because of these interests, I have been aware for a long time of a bifurcated system of scientific dogma. The dogma among "climate scientists" over the last 6 years has been that global climate has not changed much over the last ten thousand years. The dogma among every other scientific field is quite different. If I hadn't been following these other fields so actively, I might have believed what climate scientists were putting forth as truth. Because I had been following them, when stuff like the hockey stick graph emerged I hunted for the actual data and realized it did not support the graph. Ever since I have been watching the religious wars on this question with growing fascination.
If you did believe the climate scientists, I don't blame you. Dean Esmay has a superb post up quoting the Wall Street Journal's discussion of what is emerging about the field. In short, there has been a semi-organized repression of any dissenting voices. What is really odd is that the dissenting voices have the data on their side. This, in part, is Dean's commentary:
Some complain that science has been polluted by politics, but anything that receives government money is automatically political. The notion that we're not allowed to hold people who take government money accountable, that we aren't allowed to question their assumptions, simply because they are scientists would be pretty scary.Ah, but this silencing of dissent doesn't reall occur, you say? Hmm, how about this incident the WSJ article cites, which is what shut down debate on the Mann graph for years:
We tend to cloak researchers in an aura of mystique: that they are smarter than us, that their motives are noble and pure. But any time you have a class of people you treat like that (basically, as a priestly caste) you're asking for trouble.
All subjects in science are open to being challenged by dissenters, but the tendency for anyone whose career depends on the currently reigning theory will be to silence dissenters in any way they can. Yet, we probably can't get government out of funding science, nor could we stop corporations from funding research.
Yet there were doubts about Mr. Mann's methods and analysis from the start. In 1998, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics published a paper in the journal Climate Research, arguing that there really had been a Medieval warm period. The result: Messrs. Soon and Baliunas were treated as heretics and six editors at Climate Research were made to resign.So. If the editors were made to resign there, what do you think future panels of editors reviewing papers challenging the "conventional wisdom" in this area were going to do? That's right, they weren't willing to risk it. And that is why the M&M critique of Mann's work (which included irrefutable proof that Mann's underlying data didn't always, for some inexplicable reason, match the data as published by the primary researchers, and that the numerical method was flawed, etc) was not published in any journal, including Nature. This truth is now breaking through the apartheid system, but proponents of Kyoto are still using the flawed assumptions and are still using searches of the articles of the main journals such as Nature to support their contention that there is a scientific consensus when there is none.
So think about that. There is a scientific consensus that the Kyoto Protocol might accomplish the lowering of global temperatures by a tenth of a degree over a century, but that's all. There is a technological consensus that lowering GHG emissions by 60% below the base level chosen in the 90's would lower temperatures significantly, although not necessarily beyond the bounds of natural fluctuation, but that we would have to destroy our global society's economy to do it.
There is a widespread unwillingness in the environmentalist wing to allow the discussion of any measures that would help to lower GHG emissions more significantly (such as wave power, wind power and massive building of nuclear power plants), so all we have accomplished with Kyoto is to make ourselves feel good. To maintain that euphoria, we have to ignore scientific facts and ignore the real danger, so I'm not sharing in the joy. What we are doing with the Kyoto Protocol is diffusing people's anxiety to the extent that they can sustain their belief in this mass delusion. Handing out happy pills would be cheaper and more productive. Doing some research to really understand natural and anthropogenic variations in global climate would be a productive step, but would destroy the false euphoria our society has adopted. This has all the earmarks of a cult.
Comments:
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Eh, thanks for the link. I read the article four times before getting the connection - yes, legislation is political. I have a connection in the Department of Justice who has been told to deliberately lose lawsuits to environmental groups. This stuff is very political, because there's a lot of money involved.
But science, basic science, shouldn't be. If we start suppressing or manipulating basic research data we have passed a rubicon. You know, everyone used to laugh about the Soviet Union's Lamarckian school of genetics, but the supposedly open West is not far from that now on some issues.
The public policy issues arising from basic science will be disputed and argued over. That's good. Basic physical findings and calculations derived from those findings should not be. That's bad.
You don't seem to understand - THEY FALSIFIED DATA. THEY FAKED THE NUMBERS. FOR OVER FIVE YEARS, ANY SCIENTIST WHO POINTED THAT OUT WAS SUPPRESSED.
Get it now?
But science, basic science, shouldn't be. If we start suppressing or manipulating basic research data we have passed a rubicon. You know, everyone used to laugh about the Soviet Union's Lamarckian school of genetics, but the supposedly open West is not far from that now on some issues.
The public policy issues arising from basic science will be disputed and argued over. That's good. Basic physical findings and calculations derived from those findings should not be. That's bad.
You don't seem to understand - THEY FALSIFIED DATA. THEY FAKED THE NUMBERS. FOR OVER FIVE YEARS, ANY SCIENTIST WHO POINTED THAT OUT WAS SUPPRESSED.
Get it now?
Because one was a political process and one is a question of demonstrable fact. What is being suppressed is fact, not dissent. It is as if the fact that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising rapidly was being suppressed.
Modern science forms a system as interlocked as our court system, for example. If you destroy the underpinnings of that system, it is as if defendents prosecuted by the government lost the right to take depositions from them and cross-examine witnesses against them. The basis of the advocacy system itself would be destroyed while the forms of the sysem continued on.
The "court" of science is peer review, publication and duplication. In this case, concerns over what was socially acceptable apparently overrode this process. In the end, M&M could be heard only by putting up their own web page with all of the information (self-publishing), and then were criticized for not having their work published in a scientific journal.
This isn't the first case of this type, although it is extreme. For a long while scientists doing work on sex differences in brain function weren't published, for example. If you establish social control over the basic mechanisms of science and suppress factual information, you will not like the long-term results.
Modern science forms a system as interlocked as our court system, for example. If you destroy the underpinnings of that system, it is as if defendents prosecuted by the government lost the right to take depositions from them and cross-examine witnesses against them. The basis of the advocacy system itself would be destroyed while the forms of the sysem continued on.
The "court" of science is peer review, publication and duplication. In this case, concerns over what was socially acceptable apparently overrode this process. In the end, M&M could be heard only by putting up their own web page with all of the information (self-publishing), and then were criticized for not having their work published in a scientific journal.
This isn't the first case of this type, although it is extreme. For a long while scientists doing work on sex differences in brain function weren't published, for example. If you establish social control over the basic mechanisms of science and suppress factual information, you will not like the long-term results.
MOM, could you clarify what you mean about having a DOJ connection who was "told to deliberately lose lawsuits to environmental groups"? Was this person a career person or a political appointee? Which secion? DOJ does both affirmative (EES) and defensive (EDS) litigation. "Told" by whom? And lose lawsuits to which environmental groups? Pretty serious charge you are making.
# posted by 
: 7:55 AM
: 7:55 AM
A career person but I can't give much in the way of details. Obviously this was information given in confidence.
It was not in this administration. The person did not comply with the request so nothing illegal occurred. The environmentalists didn't win anything because of this incident. The information has only political/ background significance which is the only reason I felt free to mention it.
If you read the Diplomad, you'll get the general drift from his tone - politics occurs at all levels in government. Obviously those employees who feel what they regard as political pressure do resent it, but then I would bet that the individual(s?) from whom these particular instructions came also believed that it was the "right" thing to do. In the end the cases were fought and decided on the law, not based on politics, so this story has a happy ending.
Because of civil service protections, government employees do have the ability to dissent in such circumstances. Sometimes tenure and civil service protections operate to keep incompetents or the disinterested in their jobs, but they also allow individuals who have great integrity to resist such pressures. That to me is the significance of the story - the system worked.
I doubt, for instance, that M&M would have felt the freedom they did to pursue their exposure of the Mann graph's distortions if they had not been tenured. Ward Churchill may not be much of a poster boy for the merits of professorial tenure, but the tenure system is important. I would bet for every Ward Churchill four or five people who have irked interest groups are protected.
I also hate the idea of judges not having lifetime terms. If they had defined terms, they would be far more subject to political pressures than they are now, because sooner or later they'd come up for reappointment. I think the people who are arguing for defined terms WANT them to be more subject to political pressures, but that's the last thing we need. We need to have people insulated from the currents of the day.
As for why I know the story, I really can't explain. People will tell me the most incredible things. For instance, once on a train trip from the south to the northeast, a man I had never met before confessed to me that he was preparing to kidnap his own children because he thought his ex wasn't taking care of them! Over the course of a few hours in the dining car we managed to reach the conclusion that it wasn't a good idea and that he would be failing them as a father if he did it, but it sure was an odd train trip.
It was not in this administration. The person did not comply with the request so nothing illegal occurred. The environmentalists didn't win anything because of this incident. The information has only political/ background significance which is the only reason I felt free to mention it.
If you read the Diplomad, you'll get the general drift from his tone - politics occurs at all levels in government. Obviously those employees who feel what they regard as political pressure do resent it, but then I would bet that the individual(s?) from whom these particular instructions came also believed that it was the "right" thing to do. In the end the cases were fought and decided on the law, not based on politics, so this story has a happy ending.
Because of civil service protections, government employees do have the ability to dissent in such circumstances. Sometimes tenure and civil service protections operate to keep incompetents or the disinterested in their jobs, but they also allow individuals who have great integrity to resist such pressures. That to me is the significance of the story - the system worked.
I doubt, for instance, that M&M would have felt the freedom they did to pursue their exposure of the Mann graph's distortions if they had not been tenured. Ward Churchill may not be much of a poster boy for the merits of professorial tenure, but the tenure system is important. I would bet for every Ward Churchill four or five people who have irked interest groups are protected.
I also hate the idea of judges not having lifetime terms. If they had defined terms, they would be far more subject to political pressures than they are now, because sooner or later they'd come up for reappointment. I think the people who are arguing for defined terms WANT them to be more subject to political pressures, but that's the last thing we need. We need to have people insulated from the currents of the day.
As for why I know the story, I really can't explain. People will tell me the most incredible things. For instance, once on a train trip from the south to the northeast, a man I had never met before confessed to me that he was preparing to kidnap his own children because he thought his ex wasn't taking care of them! Over the course of a few hours in the dining car we managed to reach the conclusion that it wasn't a good idea and that he would be failing them as a father if he did it, but it sure was an odd train trip.
I love what you say about judge terms, and I love the mention of nuclear power - an old saw for me. Further, I think that it's especially bad when science gets subverted, because without correct data, how can we make any good decisions or carry on useful discussion? This is all right on.
That said, I find the charges and countercharges of the highly politicized field of climatology bewildering and depressing. Clearly something is wrong, but without a *lot* more research, I couldn't possibly decide what that is. Related: Ever read Lomborg's "
The Skeptical Environmentalist"?
That said, I find the charges and countercharges of the highly politicized field of climatology bewildering and depressing. Clearly something is wrong, but without a *lot* more research, I couldn't possibly decide what that is. Related: Ever read Lomborg's "
The Skeptical Environmentalist"?
A DOJ ENRD career person under the previous (Clinton) Administration was asked to throw a case? Hmm, now I have to figure out who among my colleagues was put in that position. Glad it had a happy ending.
# posted by : 2:42 PM
: 2:42 PM
Nato,
I'm glad you're back!
One of the features of the current controversy over environmentalist issues is that it seems to have wandered widely from the arena of common sense. Is that deliberate?
We know CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we know it is increasing. While there may be some questions as to the magnititude of the effect, it's obvious that sooner or later it is going to have an effect. The average person on the street would probably decide the safest thing is to reduce emissions. It's somewhat bizarre to me that we have managed to ignore the implications of that which is known while focusing on hysterical rhetoric, all the while avoiding any responsible and possible steps.
In Germany right now there is a rising controversy over nuclear power. They had 19 plants. As a result of the rise of the Greens, all of them were supposed to be shut down. Well now people are pointing out that such a strategy makes no sense in view of Kyoto.
I've read some of Lomborg's writing, although not the book itself. He is the man behind the Copenhagen Consensus, isn't he? Have you followed the Danish Committee On Scientific Dishonesty brouhaha? It's amazing how active and focused the pressures have been on those who dared to challenge the environmentalist agenda, even when that agenda itself makes no sense taken as a whole.
Patrick Moore published Lomborg's defense on his website after Scientific American threatened to sue Lomborg if he didn't take it down. The whole thing reminds me of the Scientologists suing anyone who dares to publish some of their documents. I think 50 years from now people will be looking at this era in "climate science" with the same critical eye now cast upon the eugenics movement. Clearly much of it isn't about science.
I'm glad you're back!
One of the features of the current controversy over environmentalist issues is that it seems to have wandered widely from the arena of common sense. Is that deliberate?
We know CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we know it is increasing. While there may be some questions as to the magnititude of the effect, it's obvious that sooner or later it is going to have an effect. The average person on the street would probably decide the safest thing is to reduce emissions. It's somewhat bizarre to me that we have managed to ignore the implications of that which is known while focusing on hysterical rhetoric, all the while avoiding any responsible and possible steps.
In Germany right now there is a rising controversy over nuclear power. They had 19 plants. As a result of the rise of the Greens, all of them were supposed to be shut down. Well now people are pointing out that such a strategy makes no sense in view of Kyoto.
I've read some of Lomborg's writing, although not the book itself. He is the man behind the Copenhagen Consensus, isn't he? Have you followed the Danish Committee On Scientific Dishonesty brouhaha? It's amazing how active and focused the pressures have been on those who dared to challenge the environmentalist agenda, even when that agenda itself makes no sense taken as a whole.
Patrick Moore published Lomborg's defense on his website after Scientific American threatened to sue Lomborg if he didn't take it down. The whole thing reminds me of the Scientologists suing anyone who dares to publish some of their documents. I think 50 years from now people will be looking at this era in "climate science" with the same critical eye now cast upon the eugenics movement. Clearly much of it isn't about science.
Anon,
It's not like I have any personal knowledge of widespread malfeasance (and the acronyms you're using escape me), but I think a short consideration of human nature, American history and the reasons why the civil service protections were originally legislated all suggest that some sort of political influence on the workings of government departments is probably relatively common and unavoidable, although probably much much less so at departments like Justice than some others.
Anyway, why is this all that controversial? Don't different administrations sometimes decide to drop or pursue cases differently based on a political agenda or legal philosophy? Isn't that partially what people vote for?
I recall reading speculation shortly after the 2000 election that the Microsoft antitrust case would be settled a bit differently because of Bush's election than if Gore had been elected. I have no idea if that is how things worked out and I don't remember the exact details, but it was a question of how something was going to be pursued in court.
It's not like I have any personal knowledge of widespread malfeasance (and the acronyms you're using escape me), but I think a short consideration of human nature, American history and the reasons why the civil service protections were originally legislated all suggest that some sort of political influence on the workings of government departments is probably relatively common and unavoidable, although probably much much less so at departments like Justice than some others.
Anyway, why is this all that controversial? Don't different administrations sometimes decide to drop or pursue cases differently based on a political agenda or legal philosophy? Isn't that partially what people vote for?
I recall reading speculation shortly after the 2000 election that the Microsoft antitrust case would be settled a bit differently because of Bush's election than if Gore had been elected. I have no idea if that is how things worked out and I don't remember the exact details, but it was a question of how something was going to be pursued in court.
ENRD = Environment and Natural Resources Division. If all of this is not so controversial, why did you change your original post to delete the reference to the DOJ attorney who was pressured to throw an environmental case? Intrigued, but remaining anonymous for obvious reasons.
# posted by : 3:41 PM
: 3:41 PM
Anon,
You had me confused there for a bit. I had to reread the comments to figure it out. I didn't change the post - the reference was and is in the second comment, when I was trying to explain to Marty why I see a sharp difference between the field of politics and basic scientific research. Politics is about consequential actions and scientific research, review and replicability are about fact.
Maybe I don't think it is all that controversial because I work in the field of banking compliance, and that can be very political. To give one small example from a recent situation, when the regulations were being written for the required Customer Identification procedures as part of the US Patriot Act's modifications of BSA, a wild political controversy erupted over whether the matricula consular was an acceptable identity document. The furor was aided by various advocacy groups and stirred up even further by Tancredo. Tancredo wanted the agencies to rule that it was not acceptable.
In the end the political pressure even made the banking agencies and FinCen go back to the table, not that it changed anything, although it did leave the banks hanging without any cover. Regulations are interpretations and implementation of the law, and there is absolutely no question that political factors sometimes affect the regulators.
I admire the regulators greatly, btw. Not only do they do careful analysis in a difficult system, but I think they do a stunningly good job of making a very complex system work.
I don't think too much political pressure can be placed on these pools of professionals within the government without messing up the system though, and I don't think most people understand why civil servants need the protections they have. Those protections foster professional integrity within the government where we need it most.
You had me confused there for a bit. I had to reread the comments to figure it out. I didn't change the post - the reference was and is in the second comment, when I was trying to explain to Marty why I see a sharp difference between the field of politics and basic scientific research. Politics is about consequential actions and scientific research, review and replicability are about fact.
Maybe I don't think it is all that controversial because I work in the field of banking compliance, and that can be very political. To give one small example from a recent situation, when the regulations were being written for the required Customer Identification procedures as part of the US Patriot Act's modifications of BSA, a wild political controversy erupted over whether the matricula consular was an acceptable identity document. The furor was aided by various advocacy groups and stirred up even further by Tancredo. Tancredo wanted the agencies to rule that it was not acceptable.
In the end the political pressure even made the banking agencies and FinCen go back to the table, not that it changed anything, although it did leave the banks hanging without any cover. Regulations are interpretations and implementation of the law, and there is absolutely no question that political factors sometimes affect the regulators.
I admire the regulators greatly, btw. Not only do they do careful analysis in a difficult system, but I think they do a stunningly good job of making a very complex system work.
I don't think too much political pressure can be placed on these pools of professionals within the government without messing up the system though, and I don't think most people understand why civil servants need the protections they have. Those protections foster professional integrity within the government where we need it most.
MOM,
I stand corrected. You correctly point out where the initial assertion was made. Here is what I want to say: Career DOJ lawyers are not under political pressure to throw cases. Cases that the politicos don't want to bring never make it to a career DOJ lawyer's desk. My apologies for the earlier misstatement.
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I stand corrected. You correctly point out where the initial assertion was made. Here is what I want to say: Career DOJ lawyers are not under political pressure to throw cases. Cases that the politicos don't want to bring never make it to a career DOJ lawyer's desk. My apologies for the earlier misstatement.
# posted by : 10:41 AM
: 10:41 AM << Home
