As neoconservatism ascended, its regard for science slipped to the brink of open contempt, for it owed much of its political traction to social conservatives apt to dismiss science as corrupt as literary theory, only more materialistic, and a born-again Base defensive of Biblical authority. Both seemed to worry little about what children needed to know about science as technological change transformed the world economy in the post-Reagan era.
It wasn’t just about stem cells and Darwin being Biblically Incorrect. To political operatives, downplaying science made focus-group sense, for no-brow votes count the same as middle or high, and in many congressional districts, parents fearful of begetting video-game addicts outnumber Wired subscribers. So to the horror of yuppies raised on a mixture of Doctor and Mister Spock, a counterculture of tabloid science providers and anti-science journalists arose on the right in the ‘90s, catering to a Base ten million families strong. The End Of Natural History wasn’t what Francis Fukuyama had in mind, but as long as televangelism competes with the internet for hearts and minds, some media niches serving the Base will prosper by anathematizing science.
The process peaked in 2005. When a collection of 18th-century sermons appeared on the President’s bedside table and his Panel on Bioethics began looking and sounding more like an ecumenical prayer breakfast, policy wonks started reading Scientific American with the curtains drawn. The liberal propensity of academic science, always less a canard than a cliché, had become an impediment to bipartisan discourse on the science itself.
This aversion washes over into environmental policy to this day. The atmosphere may be the Earth’s most complex dynamic system, but it is not hard to persuade the 20% of American voters who believe the Sun revolves around the Earth that climate change is just another postmodern ruse, a so-called “theory,” like evolution. Turnabout is indeed political fair play, and an intellectual cottage industry has arisen devoted to damning the scientific method as just another metaphysical cult, and compressing its kaleidoscopic reality into the mold of a single hidebound fundamentalism defending its own holy scripture.
Accepting that premise gave birth to a new cultural relativism on the neoconservative right. Redefining normative science as just one out of many scriptural belief systems opens the door to the often politically convenient truths on offer by cranks, mountebanks and publicists of all stripes. In the dim scientific twilight of the no-spin zone, anything goes. It’s not just stem cells—hot water is rejected as Hurricane Katrina’s proximate thermodynamic cause. FOX TV prefers to air [ http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170064,00.html ] a meteorologist from Pocatello who swears that Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, summoned the storm, using a Russian ray gun to twist the Northern Lights into focused revenge for Hiroshima.
The scientifically surreal blends seamlessly into the big picture painted by the talking heads O’Reilly favors. For years he echoed the contention that satellite-measured temperatures disproved the existence of global warming. But when the rocket scientists who launched the gadgets sheepishly confessed in peer-reviewed print that they had misread their instruments, FOX changed message, leaving tens of millions disinformed rather than troubling to set the climate record straight. FOX and Rush Radio have also focused on demands for equal time for ‘Intelligent Design’ in the classroom—witness Ben Stein’s reversion to Nixonian type in the new film “Expelled [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGCxbhGaVfE ].” Nor has Darwin been alone on the neo-right firing line. Einstein and Pasteur have joined him.
As Brad DeLong, professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, related [ http://archive.salon.com/people/feature/2000/07/06/einstein/index2.html ] to John Farrell in Salon: “The admission that measurements of time and space depend on the motion of the observer is in [conservatives’] minds somehow tied up with the erosion of traditional cultural ‘absolutes,’ and scientific truth should be sacrificed to cultural order whenever necessary.” He cites the writings of Bethell as an example.
The disconnect between neocon Weird Science and what the National Science Foundation does can’t be pinned on paleocons. Despite the neocon’s Faustian bargain with the Bible belt, the old intellectual Right has been enamored of F.A. Hayek’s idea of “spontaneous order” in markets and society. They are not surprised by “spontaneous emergence” in computer models of how things evolve and adapt without planning or external hierarchy, or that Intelligent Design notwithstanding, science should persist in finding natural selection at work in more, and less, than life.
Neocons may not much distinguish between Mach and Marx, or Hume and Hegel, but scientists with impeccable Cold War credentials are staggered to see the materialism of the Enlightenment equated with the unlamented sacramental of the dead god of dialectics. Because to them, the subjugation of science by ideology was among the greatest of totalitarian evils. A generation ago, half the world’s scientists shed the manacles that Marxists clapped onto materialism.
Now some erstwhile saviors of Western Civilization want to attach their own metaphysical baggage. This should trouble those of neoconservatism’s founders whose own ascent from ideology made them eyewitnesses to the evolution of the philosophy of science. Since Irving Kristol says, “Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a neo-something: a neo-Marxist, a neo-Trotskyist, a neo-liberal, and a neo-conservative, “ he seems qualified as well to testify his Positivist contemporaries never elided morality and matter—to say otherwise would be to indulge in the cultural relativism he so justly deplores.
So how did American scientists and conservatives end up at sword’s point in an internecine culture war, even as the Evil Empire was going infarct and technology was turning America into a hyperpower? Why has neoconservatism, though it hit the ground running alongside the computer revolution, produced few scientifically literate leaders? Unlike many 20th-century worldviews, neoconservatism lacks a scientific agenda. The New Criterion has been publishing for nearly a quarter century, but The New Atlantis appeared only in 2003. Somehow, when the founding neo-fathers lost the custody battle for science in their divorce from the old left a generation ago, they also let go of a primary defense against being mugged by reality: dimensional analysis—the intellectual Swiss Army Knife that enables scientists from all disciplines to keep tabs on each other and on economists and statisticians as well.
Exorcising quantitative absurdity from the corridors of power is not all that hard—entry-level science overlaps with quantitative commonsense. Politicians do not have to be calculus whizzes to watch as scientists on both sides of an issue sort out the components of complex problems and do enough explicit envelope-back math to produce an order of magnitude estimate. It is vital that they do so, because policy makers who trust blindly in a single source of science advice are prey to forgetting that many scientific questions have more than one wrong answer.
Climatology, like anthropology, has much to be modest about, but it is simply daft for neoconservatives to nod agreement when political hacks call global warming a hoax. The uncertainty that dominated the debate a generation ago has given way to rapid advances in geophysical data gathering and the computational power needed to keep pace with it , yet some think tanks seem too caught up in revivalism and hard wired to the Oil Patch to realize that an unreasonable aversion to the unreasonable power of mathematics can render them as scientifically challenged as the late Politburo. Crying ‘hoax’ is a singularly ineffectual way to deal with the orchestration of climate hype by Greens who use state of the art science as a polemic launch pad .
Those who applaud White House party discipline on stem cells and science education forget the Soviet’s anti-Darwinist zeal. Fishing a crackpot party hack named Trofim Lysenko [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko ] out of dialectical materialism’s maelstrom of a spin zone, Joseph Stalin made him Biology Czar. Beyond knocking Russian biology back into the 19th century, Lysenko’s politically correct agricultural policy inflicted a famine of genocidal dimensions on Siberia and the Ukraine. Little wonder Islamists who demonize science still pray fervently that the hyperpower on their trail will forget whence its cutting edge surveillance technology comes. Heaven help us if we oblige them. We owe Churchill’s surviving the battle of Omduran to write [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_River_War ] “Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science” to his side’s having got the proverbial Maxim gun, while the Khalifa’s horde did not.
A century later, science is expanding at a rate that not even Churchill’s copious imagination of disaster could apprehend, and the information explosion has welded the three great monotheistic religions in a nuclear trinity. Some would think this news strategic, but who is to report it to the Right? What would special correspondent Winston Churchill make of The Weekly Standard, the Washington Times, and the Wall Street Journal charging into the 21st Century without a single science editor in the saddle?
F6! .. WOW!! .. LOL .. i've been moving through your labyrinth to find a best place to put one and what better place than as a link to what has to be close to your very best climate, global warming library .. it's an Australian look at, Martin Durkin's, The Great Global Warming Swindle.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle
ps: hmmm, just realized that library is a bit aged, you probably have an update .. LOLOL ..
An objective consideration of who distorts, misrepresents and lies .. most of the bold is mine ..
With all those other endangered species going extinct it's nice to know there's still a handful of global warming skeptics kicking around. ABC Science Online's Bernie Hobbs .. http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/bio/hobbs_b.htm .. looks at the facts behind the vitriol in the film that's got everyone looking up the word 'polemic'.
Bernie Hobbs is an award-winning science writer and broadcaster with ABC Science.
There's nothing like an accurate, well researched documentary to help make sense of a complex issue like global warming. It's a shame that The Great Global Warming Swindle isn't one.
The Swindle is a one-sided anti-global warming argument put together by a film maker with a name for skewing the facts, and featuring greenhouse skeptics with media profiles that far exceed their scientific publishing records.
But worst of all, writer/director Martin Durkin does a great job of making what sounds like a very convincing argument.
If you didn't have access to the net, or a higher degree in climatology, it'd be all too easy to swallow the straight-forward graphs and expert evidence that The Great Global Warming Swindle bases its case on, ie that:
* global temperatures have been higher in the past, so the warming now is part of a natural cycle * increased carbon dioxide doesn't cause global warming, it's the other way around * the warming we've seen this century has nothing to do with carbon dioxide or any other human activity - it's due to solar activity * climate models don't match actual measurements,
and my personal favourite
* the whole greenhouse gas/climate change/IPCC shebang is a self-propelling international plot started by Thatcher.
There's just one problem with The Swindle's argument - it's based on out of date, discredited or misrepresented data.
I'm not saying that everything in the film is wrong - it's just that the bits they hang their arguments on are.
Actually Martin, the temperature now is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years.
That 'medieval warm period' and 'little ice age' graphic (below) is pretty convincing all right - anyone can tell that the medieval hump is higher than the temperature marked 'now'.
Forget about statistics – look what you can do with graphs! "Now" in this graph seems to fall somewhere around the late 80s. Funny, because the 10 hottest years on record have all happened since then.
The only problem is that the "Now" that's shown on the graph isn't now as in 2007, it seems to be pointing at somewhere around the late 80s. Worse still, a thick black line is obscuring whatever happened temperature-wise between then and the mid 70s.
If the last 30 years' data were included in the graph, you'd see that thick blue line shoot abruptly skywards - like it does in the IPCC graph below - because northern hemisphere temperatures in the last two decades were way above those during Europe's Medieval Warm Period. In fact, they're way above anything in the last 650,000 years.
Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction. Graph: IPCC 2007
(You can't really blame Durkin for wanting a simpler graphic than this IPCC one - it looks like something from the Richter Office Christmas party. But when you've got data that shows such variability, choosing the bit that fits your argument and omitting everything else is just plain wrong.)
... and increased carbon dioxide does cause global warming.
Durkin's experts argue that man-made CO2 can't be causing global warming because if it did, we should have seen an increase in temperature throughout the 20th century, but global temperature actually dropped after World War 2. And they've got a graph to prove it.
This is a fair assumption - it's a question that was asked by scientists years ago. And answered by them too.
The reason that temperatures dropped in the northern hemisphere when our post-war uber-industrial era kicked in was because all the pollution we were churning out (sulphates in particular) did a great job of reflecting sunlight back out to space - the 'global dimming' phenomenon. That offset the warming you would have expected if CO2 levels alone caused climate.
When acid rain - caused by sulphur pollution - became an issue in the 70s-80s, and emissions-reducing policies led to cuts in the pollutants that had been masking the warming, the temperature start to climb.
The Swindle’s graph of Arctic Temperature last century (above) shows a steep linear decline from the late 30s to the mid 60s. Which is interesting if you’re a polar bear. But in terms of global temperature, the situation during the 'post war economic boom’ is nowhere near as steep or as linear according to NASA’s Goddard Institute (below).
Solar Activity is real, but it's got next to no impact on global temperature
There have been studies claiming a strong link between solar radiation changes and global warming, but they haven't been published in what you'd call reputable climate journals. Articles pointing out methodological flaws in these solar activity studies, however, have been.
The 'Temp & Solar Activity' graphs in The Swindle certainly look like they show a clear connection between the Sun's activity and the Earth's temperature, but they're not without their problems.
Temperature & Solar Activity, purportedly from an article by Friis- Christensen & Svensmark. Presumably temperature is in blue, and sunspot cycle length in red.
Forgetting for a moment that the unit of solar activity used (sunspot cycle length) isn't directly related to the Sun's temperature-causing effect, and that the temperature figures used are 30 years out of date, there's the fact that the graph - and the film - completely ignores the period from 1975 onwards.
And while a lot of what went on in the 80s & 90s doesn't bear remembering, this is the period when the best data on solar activity & changes is available. It's also the period where other studies have shown little or no relationship between solar radiation and global temperature.
In fact, just one day before Durkin's film aired in Australia another report from UK and Swiss researchers says solar variability could not explain recent warming. Nail for a coffin, anyone?
Oh yeah, and climate models do accurately reflect the observed data
The Swindle says climate models' predictions don't match the observed temperatures in the upper atmosphere. Clearly no number of internationally published, peer-reviewed articles contradicting this statement were going to change the minds of the film's experts. Which is funny, because at least one of these studies was written by one of them.
John Christy (the guy with the weather balloons and determined jogging style) was one of the lead authors on the 2006 US Climate Change Science Programme's review of temperature trends in the lower atmosphere - which states that there is no conflict between observed changes and the results of the climate models. He may have mentioned this when being interviewed for the film but, not surprisingly, it didn't make the final cut.
About that Thatcher plot ...
The claim from a number of Durkin's guests that funding dollars have poured into studies on global warming ever since Margaret Thatcher wanted to cut the UK's reliance on coal and the Middle-East is interesting. Their assertion that the funding has affected the outcome of the studies is very serious - but if anyone knows about the impact of funding on the results of studies, it's these guys. A number of the film's experts are well known for being on the receiving end of funds from anti-global warming think tanks and the energy sector.
Out of five I'd give it ...
Balanced? No. Accurate? No. On the right track? Not even close. What this film's really got going for it is an alarming number of variants on the scientist as balding white guy theme, and the fact that it'll make a great teaching tool in documentary-making classes.
But don't take my word for it - watch the film and then, more importantly, watch the panel discussion airing immediately after it. Only then will you be in a position to do what the film's spruikers say - make up your own mind.
Study Clears Sun of Global Warming: .. http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1975695.htm .. The sun's changing energy levels are not to blame for recent global warming and, if anything, solar variations over the past 20 years should have had a cooling effect, scientists say.
Curbing Climate Change: .. http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/globalwarmingswindle/science/features/predictingclimatechange/ .. On May 4, 2007 the UN released a report recommending cuts of 50-85% in global greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century to avoid catastrophic climate change. Heather Catchpole looks at what that means for Australia and seeks a silver lining to the coming climate storm. (Published 10/05/2007)
Tipping Point: .. http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1647466.htm .. When climate change scientists talk about a tipping point, it means a point of no return, a level of global warming that irreversibly changes the living conditions on earth. Seemingly tiny increases in temperature are already tipping the balance of survival for Australian wildlife. Frogs in the rainforest, seabirds on the reef, and possums in the snow are the new 'canaries in the coalmine'. (Published 25/05/2007)
The Road to 2050: .. http://www.abc.net.au/science/explore/climatechange/ .. ABC Science Online's series of features on what the science says we should be doing, what the policy makers and industry leaders are doing, and what we ourselves can do to cut greenhouse emissions. (Published 02-03/2007)
What the Bleep are they On About?: .. http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/bleep/ .. In the movie What the Bleep Do We Know?, physicists, biologists and the occasional chiropractor tell us how quantum physics and neuroscience support their views on consciousness. But is reality really in the eye of the quantum observer? Bernie Hobbs checks out the science behind the film's claims. (Published 30/06/2005)
References
The Great Global Warming Swindle: Misrepresentations of scientific evidence and researchers' interpretations, Bob Ward, 30/3/2007 http://www.climateofdenial.net/?q=node/3
“Don’t feed the trolls” is sound advice, but I’ve ignored it on occasion – including on The Conversation and Twitter – and I’ve been rewarded. Not that I’ve changed the minds of any trolls, nor have I expected to.
But I have received an education in the tactics many trolls use. These tactics are common not just to trolls but to bloggers, journalists and politicians who attack science, from climate to cancer research.
Internet trolls know who their experts are. There are thousands of professors scattered across academia, so it isn’t surprising that a few contrarians can be found. In online discussions I’ve been told of the contrarian views of “respected” professors from Harvard, MIT and Princeton.
IMAGE: Professors with contrarian views can even be found at Ivy League universities such as Princeton.
Back in The Conversation’s early days I even copped abuse for not being at Princeton by someone who was clearly unfamiliar with both science and my employment history .. https://theconversation.com/profiles/michael-j-i-brown-113. It was a useful lesson that vitriol is often disconnected from knowledge and expertise.
At times expert opinion is totally misrepresented, often with remarkable confidence.
--- between 0.06 and 0.1 degrees Celsius, a very small fraction of the warming we’re due to experience as a result of human activity. ---
Newman’s claims were debunked, by his expert, before he even wrote his article.
Sometimes experts are quoted correctly, but they happen to disagree with the vast majority of their equally qualified (or more qualified) colleagues. How do the scientifically illiterate select this minority of experts?
I’ve asked trolls this question a few times and, funnily enough, they cannot provide good answers. To be blunt, they are choosing experts based on agreeable conclusions rather than scientific rigour, and this problem extends well beyond online debates.
While Abetz distanced himself from these claims, his media statement .. http://www.webcitation.org/6RgV5sDoO .. doesn’t dispute them and talks up the expertise of Dr Angela Lanfranchi, who does link abortions with breast cancer.
If Abetz cannot evaluate the medical research data and methods, is his choice largely based on Dr Lanfranchi’s conclusions? Why won’t he accept the views of most medical professionals, who can evaluate the relevant evidence?
Abetz may be doctor shopping, not for a desired diagnosis or drug, but for an desired expert opinion. And just as doctor shopping can result in the wrong diagnosis, doctor shopping for opinions gives you misleading conclusions.
Broken logic
Often attacks on science employ logic so flawed that it would be laughable in everyday life. If I said my car was blue, and thus no cars are red, you would be unimpressed. And yet when non-experts discuss science, such flawed logic is often employed.
Carbon dioxide emissions are leading to rapid climate change now, and gradual natural climate change has also taken place over aeons. There’s no reason for natural and anthropogenic climate change to be mutually exclusive, and yet climate change deniers frequently use natural climate change in an attempt to disprove .. http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm .. anthropogenic global warming.
IMAGE: Global temperatures (measured by Marcott et al. in dark blue, and HadCRUT4 in red) have changed as a result of both natural and anthropogenic climate change. There has been a dramatic rise in global temperatures over the past century.
--- Australia has had fires and floods since the beginning of time. We’ve had much bigger floods and fires than the ones we’ve recently experienced. You can hardly say they were the result of anthropic [sic] global warming. ---
Why the Prime Minister would employ such flawed logic, and contradict scientific research, is puzzling.
Galileo
The Italian scientist and astronomer Galileo Galilei was infamously persecuted .. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/02/11/moon-man .. by the politically powerful Catholic Church because of his promotion of the sun-centred solar system.
IMAGE: Galileo Galilei understood the power of observations.
The Galileo Gambit .. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Galileo_gambit .. is a debating technique that perverts this history to defend nonsense. Criticisms by the vast majority of scientists are equated with the opinions of 17th century clergy, while a minority promoting pseudoscience are equated with Galileo.
Ironically, the Galileo Gambit is often employed by those who have no scientific expertise and strong ideological reasons for attacking science. And its use isn’t restricted to online debates.
Bizarrely, even the politically powerful .. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/08/is-rick-perry-21st-century-galileo .. and well connected are partial to the Galileo Gambit. Maurice Newman (once again) rejects the consensus view of climate scientists and, when questioned on his rejection of the science, his (perhaps predictable) response was:
Well, Galileo was virtually on his own.
Newman’s use of a tactic of trolls and cranks is worthy of criticism. The triumph of Galileo’s views were a result of his capacity to develop scientific ideas and test them via observation. Newman, and many of those who attack science, notably lack this ability.
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