A Cultivated Ignorance

Ignorance cultivated in the interests of ideology has been practiced by liberals and conservatives alike; an unfortunate but enduring facet of human behavior, probably since Homo Habilis rose from slime mold to “handy man.” Since the New Millennium, however, Republicans seem to have incorporated and promoted the practice as central to their strategy. Why?

Why did Rick Santorum call President Obama a snob for promoting a college education? Why did Republicans in Oklahoma try to ban Advanced Placement History and other AP courses? Why did Rick Perry, in his infamous “Oops moment,” have no trouble remembering he’d cut the Department of Education, while forgetting whatever the third department was? Why are Republican-controlled state legislatures promoting private, tax-payer funded “Christ-centric” schools over public education?

Money. The big-monied interests supporting the Republican Party are not enthusiastic about a well-educated (or, as it happens, even a robust) electorate. It’s easier to convince people who are ignorant about basic physics, or chemistry, or geology, or statistics, or [oh-my-goodness!] paleoclimatology, that global warming is a hoax. Just bring a snowball to the floor of Congress.

I'm not a scientist

Climate scientists are certainly seen by most laypeople as boring, and sometimes even irrelevant, when they describe increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and other “greenhouse gases,” the decreasing pH of oceans, Milankovitch cycles, climate forcings, positive and negative feedbacks, etc., without saying why we should care.

 But when these same scientists put their findings in context relative to current and projected consequences of global warming, e.g.: melting ice sheets and rising sea levels, the bleaching of coral reefs and die off of the aquatic life they support, extended droughts, dwindling ice pack, water shortages, increased prevalence and extent of wildfires, extreme weather events, and the attendant human and economic impact of anthropogenic global warming, they are labeled, "alarmists."

If climate scientists venture to suggest government action to address climate change, politicians (primarily but not exclusively on the right) tell them to stick to the science and leave policy to the "experts," that is, politicians. These same politicians when pressed on why they refuse to address global warming invariably begin their reply, "I'm not a scientist..." My response to that sort of dissembling is, "Then shut the fuck up and listen to the scientists."

The Secret History of Lead (Pt-2)

by Jamie Lincoln Kitman | March 2, 2000
(This piece appeared originally in The Nation) 

Alfred Sloan, ca 1920

You can choose whether to smoke, but you can't pick the air you breathe, even if it is contaminated by lead particles from automobile exhaust. Seventy-five years ago, well-known industrialists like GM's Alfred Sloan and Charles Kettering (remembered today for having founded the prestigious Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) and the powerful brothers Pierre and Irénée du Pont added to their substantial fortunes and did the planet very dirty by disregarding the common-sense truth that no good can come from burning a long-known poison in internal-combustion engines.

The steady emergence of improved methodology and finer, more sensitive measuring equipment has allowed scientists to prove lead's tragic toll with increasing precision. The audacity of today's lead-additive makers' conduct mounts with each new study weighing in against them. Because lead particles in automobile exhaust travel in wind, rain and snow, which know no national boundaries, lead makers and refiners who peddle leaded gasoline knowingly injure not only the local populations using their product but men, mice and fish tens of thousands of miles distant.

GM and Standard Oil sold their leaded gasoline subsidiary, the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, to Albemarle Paper in 1962, while Du Pont only cleaned up its act recently, but all hope to leave their leaded gasoline paternity a hushed footnote to their inglorious pasts.

The principal maker of lead additive today the Associated Octel Company of Ellesmere Port, England) and its foremost salesmen (Octel and the Ethyl corporation of Richmond, Virginia) acknowledge what they see as a political reality: Their product will one day be run out of business. But they plan to keep on selling it in the Third World profitably until they can sell it no longer. They continue to deny lead's dangers while overrating its virtues, reprising the central tenets of the lead mythology chartered by GM, Du Pont and Standard lifetimes ago.

These mighty corporations should pay Ethyl and Octel for keeping their old lies alive. They'll need them, in their most up-to-the-minute and media-friendly fashion: Because of the harm caused by leaded gasoline they have been joined to a class-action suit brought in a circuit court in Maryland against the makers of that other product of lead's excruciating toxic reign: lead paint. Along with the makers of lead paint and the lead trade organizations with whom they both once worked in close concert, suppliers and champions of lead gasoline additives--Ethyl, Du Pont and PPG--have been named as defendants in the suit.

Though the number of cases of lead poisoning has been falling nationwide, the lead dust in exhaust spewed by automobiles in the past century will continue to haunt us in this one, coating our roads, buildings and soil, subtly but indefinitely contaminating our homes, belongings and food.

The problem with lead

 Lead is poison, a potent neurotoxin whose sickening and deadly effects have been known for nearly 3,000 years and written about by historical figures from the Greek poet and physician Nikander and the Roman architect Vitruvius to Benjamin Franklin. Odorless, colorless and tasteless, lead can be detected only through chemical analysis. Unlike such carcinogens and killers as pesticides, most chemicals, waste oils and even radioactive materials, lead does not break down over time. It does not vaporize, and it never disappears.

For this reason, most of the estimated 7 million tons of lead burned in gasoline in the United States in the twentieth century remains--in the soil, air and water and in the bodies of living organisms. Worldwide, it is estimated that modern man's lead exposure is 300 to 500 times greater than background or natural levels. Indeed, a 1983 report by Britain's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution concluded that lead was dispersed so widely by man in the twentieth century that "it is doubtful whether any part of the earth's surface or any form of life remains uncontaminated by anthropogenic [man-made] lead."

While lead from mining, paint, smelting and other sources is still a serious environmental problem, a recent report by the government's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry estimated that the burning of gasoline has accounted for 90 percent of lead placed in the atmosphere since the 1920s. (The magnitude of this fact is placed in relief when one considers the estimate of the US Public Health Service that the associated health costs from a parallel problem--the remaining lead paint in America's older housing--total in the multibillions.)

Classical acute lead poisoning occurs at high levels of exposure, and its symptoms--blindness, brain damage, kidney disease, convulsions and cancer--often leading, of course, to death, are not hard to identify. The effects of pervasive exposure to lower levels of lead are more easily miscredited; lead poisoning has been called an "aping disease" because its symptoms are so frequently those of other known ailments.

Children are the first and worst victims of leaded gas; because of their immaturity, they are most susceptible to systemic and neurological injury, including lowered IQs, reading and learning disabilities, impaired hearing, reduced attention span, hyperactivity, behavioral problems and interference with growth. Because they often go undetected for some time, such maladies are particularly insidious.

In adults, elevated blood-lead levels are related to hypertension and cardiovascular disease, particularly strokes, heart attacks and premature deaths. Lead exposure before or during pregnancy is especially serious, harming the mother's own body, affecting fetal development and frequently leading to miscarriage. In the eighties the EPA estimated that the health damages from airborne lead cost American society billions each year.

In Venezuela, where the state oil company sold only leaded gasoline until 1999, a recent report found 63 percent of newborn children with blood-lead levels in excess of the so-called safe levels promulgated by the US government.

Next, learn how a cheap, easily accessible additive to prevent 'knock' was abandoned by industry in favor of a more profitable, if deadly alternative.

From: The Secret History of Lead

 by Jamie Lincoln Kitman | March 2, 2000
(This piece appeared originally in The Nation)

When the EPA launched the first of several halfhearted attempts to begin removing lead from gasoline, lead's corporate affinity group fought back with a ferocity that bespoke major arrogance and even greater desperation. No sooner had the EPA announced a scheduled phaseout, setting a reduced lead content standard for gasoline in 1974, than it was sued by Ethyl and Du Pont, who claimed they had been deprived of property rights.

The next time you pull the family barge in for a fill-up, check it out: The gas pumps read "Unleaded." You might reasonably suppose this is because naturally occurring lead has been thoughtfully removed from the gasoline. But you would be wrong. There is no lead in gasoline unless somebody puts it there. And, a little more than seventy-five years ago, some of America's leading corporations--General Motors, Du Pont and Standard Oil of New Jersey (known nowadays as Exxon)--were that somebody. They got together and put lead, a known poison, into gasoline, for profit.

Lead was outlawed as an automotive gasoline additive in this country in 1986--more than sixty years after its introduction--to enable the use of emissions-reducing catalytic converters in cars (which are contaminated and rendered useless by lead) and to address the myriad health and safety concerns that have shadowed the toxic additive from its first, tentative appearance on US roads in the twenties, through a period of international ubiquity only recently ending. Since the virtual disappearance of leaded gas in the United States (it's still sold for use in propeller airplanes), the mean blood-lead level of the American population has declined more than 75 percent. A 1985 EPA study estimated that as many as 5,000 Americans died annually from lead-related heart disease prior to the country's lead phaseout. According to a 1988 report to Congress on childhood lead poisoning in America by the government's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, one can estimate that the blood-lead levels of up to 2 million children were reduced every year to below toxic levels between 1970 and 1987 as leaded gasoline use was reduced. From that report and elsewhere, one can conservatively estimate that a total of about 68 million young children had toxic exposures to lead from gasoline from 1927 to 1987.

How did lead get into gasoline in the first place? And why is leaded gas still being sold in the Third World, Eastern Europe and elsewhere? Recently uncovered documents from the archives of the aforementioned industrial behemoths and the US government, a new skein of academic research and a careful reading of that long-ago period's historical record, as well as dozens of interviews conducted by The Nation, tell the true story of leaded gasoline, a sad and sordid commercial venture that would tiptoe its way quietly into the black hole of history if the captains of industry were to have their way. But the story must be recounted now. The leaded gas adventurers have profitably polluted the world on a grand scale and, in the process, have provided a model for the asbestos, tobacco, pesticide and nuclear power industries, and other twentieth-century corporate bad actors, for evading clear evidence that their products are harmful by hiding behind the mantle of scientific uncertainty.

This is not just a textbook example of unnecessary environmental degradation, however. Nor is this history important solely as a cautionary retort to those who would doubt the need for aggressive regulation of industry, when commercial interests ask us to sanction genetically modified food on the basis of their own scientific assurances, just as the merchants of lead once did. The leaded gasoline story must also be read as a call to action, for the lead menace lives.

Consider:

§ the severe health hazards of leaded gasoline were known to its makers and clearly identified by the US public health community more than seventy-five years ago, but were steadfastly denied by the makers, because they couldn't be immediately quantified;

§ other, safer antiknock additives--used to increase gasoline octane and counter engine "knock"--were known and available to oil companies and the makers of lead antiknocks before the lead additive was discovered, but they were covered up and denied, then fought, suppressed and unfairly maligned for decades to follow;

§ the US government was fully apprised of leaded gasoline's potentially hazardous effects and was aware of available alternatives, yet was complicit in the cover-up and even actively assisted the profiteers in spreading the use of leaded gasoline to foreign countries;
 
§ the benefits of lead antiknock additives were wildly and knowingly overstated in the beginning, and continue to be. Lead is not only bad for the planet and all its life forms, it is actually bad for cars and always was;
 
§ for more than four decades, all scientific research regarding the health implications of leaded gasoline was underwritten and controlled by the original lead cabal--Du Pont, GM and Standard Oil; such research invariably favored the industry's pro-lead views, but was from the outset fatally flawed; independent scientists who would finally catch up with the earlier work's infirmities and debunk them were--and continue to be--threatened and defamed by the lead interests and their hired hands;
 
§ confronted in recent years with declining sales in their biggest Western markets, owing to lead phaseouts imposed in the United States and, more recently, Europe, the current sellers of lead additives have successfully stepped up efforts to market their wares in the less-developed world, efforts that persist and have resulted in some countries today placing more lead in their gasoline, per gallon, than was typically used in the West, extra lead that serves no purpose other than profit;
 
§ faced with lead's demise and their inevitable days of reckoning, these firms have used the extraordinary financial returns that lead additive sales afford to hurriedly fund diversification into less risky, more conventional businesses, while taking a page from the tobacco companies' playbook and simultaneously moving to reorganize their corporate structures to shield ownership and management from liability for blanketing the earth with a deadly heavy metal.

To read how some of the most prestigious companies in America duped the American public and its government into believing that leaded gasoline was a great innovation and harmless to boot, go to the complete article in The Nation. What happened then, has been repeated on other fronts, the latest being fossil fuel and global warming.
 

Point Counter Point

The first essay, by Mischa Fisher (The Atlantic, November 11, 2013), argues that the Republican Party isn't really the anti-science party. The second essay is a rebuttal, written by Sean McElwee, at the Daily Kos, November 13, 2013.

The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party, Mischa Fisher

In his first State of the Union Address in 1790, George Washington told Congress, “There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature.” He went on to call science “essential” to our nation. Two hundred and twenty years later, in his first inaugural address, Barack Obama vowed to “restore science to its rightful place.”

The president’s insinuation plays into the common perception in the media, electorate, and research community that Republicans are “anti-science.” I encountered that sentiment routinely in nearly a decade working for Republicans on Capitol Hill, and it has become more commonplace in the broader political discussion. Frequent offenders include Slate's Phil Plait,Mother Jones' Chris Mooney, HBO's Bill Maher, a host of contributors at The Huffington Post, and MSNBC's Chris Matthews.

I'm the first to admit that there are elected Republicans with a terrible understanding of science—Representative Paul Broun of Georgia, an M.D. who claims evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell” is one rather obvious example—and many more with substantial room for improvement. But Republicans, conservatives, and the religious are no more uniquely “anti-science” than any other demographic or political group. It’s just that “anti-science” has been defined using a limited set of issues that make the right wing and religious look relatively worse. (As a politically centrist atheist, this claim is not meant to be self-serving.)

Republicans, and members of the traditionally Republican coalition like conservatives and the religious, are criticized for rejecting two main areas of science: evolution and global warming. But even those critiques are overblown. Believing in God is not the same as rejecting science, contrary to an all-too-frequent caricature propagated by the secular community. Members of all faiths have contributed to our collective scientific understanding, and Christians from Gregor Mendel to Francis Collins have been intellectual leaders in their fields. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian, wrote a New York Times bestseller reconciling his faith with his understanding of evolution and genetics.

Numerically speaking, according to Gallup, only a marginally higher percentage of Republicans reject evolution completely than do Democrats. Yes, an embarrassing half of Republicans believe the earth is only 10,000 years old—but so do more than a third of Democrats. And a slightly higher percentage of Democrats believe God was the guiding factor in evolution than Republicans.

On global warming, conservative policy positions often seem to be conflated or confused with rejection of the consensus that the planet has been warming due to human carbon emissions. The climate trend over the last several hundred years is not one anybody credible disputes—despite the impression you might get from GOP presidential primary debates. Of the many Republican members of Congress I know personally, the vast majority do not reject the underlying science of global warming (though, embarrassingly, some still do). Even Senator Jim Inhofe, perhaps the green community’s greatest antagonist in Congress, explicitly endorses environmental regulation.

The catch: Conservatives believe many of the policies put forward to address the problem will lead to unacceptable levels of economic hardship. It's not inherently anti-scientific to oppose cap and trade or carbon taxes. What most Republicans object to are policies that unilaterally make it more expensive in the United States to produce energy, grow food, and transport people and goods but are unlikely to make much long-term difference in the world’s climate, given that other major world economies emit more carbon than the United States or have much faster growth rates of carbon emissions (China, India, Russia, and Brazil all come to mind).

The more important question on climate change is not “how do we eliminate carbon immediately?” but “how best do we secure a cleaner environment and more prosperous world for future generations?”
It is on this subject that many on the political left deeply hold some serious anti-scientific beliefs. Set aside the fact that twice as many Democrats as Republicans believe in astrology, a pseudoscientific medieval farce. Left-wing ideologues also frequently espouse an irrational fear of nuclear power, genetic modification, and industrial and agricultural chemistry—even though all of these scientific breakthroughs have enriched lives, lengthened lifespans, and produced substantial economic growth over the last century.

Examining greenhouse-gas emissions in exact terms, three of our biggest sources of emissions are electricity generation, transportation, and agriculture. With widespread adoption of nuclear technology, we could conceivably cut out more than 70 percent of our total emissions by eliminating the pollution from burning petroleum for transportation and coal for electricity generation (Nobel Prize-winning physicist Burton Richter explains this in his slightly technical but readable Beyond Smoke and Mirrors).

Nuclear power is the only energy source that can actually meet base-load power requirements for a cost competitive KW/h price with almost zero carbon emissions. One of the largest hurdles to nuclear energy is storage of byproduct waste, something Obama dealt a huge blow when he halted the development of Yucca Mountain for what the Government Accountability Office calledstrictly political reasons. Republicans in Congress have repeatedly supported moving forward with Yucca Mountain.
As for agricultural emissions, the purpose of GMOs is to use less area, less energy, less pesticide, and less maintenance than conventional crops. They also mean we can grow food in new areas around the globe. With the tools to feed the world with viable crops closer to the poles, we can preserve the more biodiverse regions close to the equatorial zones.

Stewart Brand, the 1960s environmental activist, has bemoaned opposition to genetically modified organisms as “irrational, anti-scientific, and very harmful.” The anti-GMO movement, largely a product of the political left, has reached levels of delusion, paranoia and anti-intellectualism worthy of MicheleBachmann and young-earth creationists.

Matters are more nuanced—or just plain favorable to Republicans—when it comes to the business of actually governing. Comparing the two parties' proposed funding levels for the major scientific research agencies doesn't lend itself well to narratives about who's “pro” or “anti” science. For every cheap shot a Republican member of Congress like Senator Tom Coburn has taken at National Science Foundation grants (see the unfairly maligned robo-squirrel), there are areas where Obama has undercut American leadership in basic science by favoring loan guarantees and industrial subsidies to the alternative-energy industry at the expense of science elsewhere.

We've seen this in his proposed cuts to high-energy physics, nuclear physics, planetary science, and other areas of research. Even in the much-maligned “Tea Party-dominated” House of Representatives, the GOP budget proposals provided more funding for the NSF than those of the Senate Democrats for the current 2013 fiscal year.

My point is not to help Republicans shed the “anti-science” label and simply apply it to the Democrats. It's more important that we collectively recognize that reason and critical thought, the joy and excitement of discovery, the connection between research and economic growth, and the beauty and awe of science are accessible to people of all religious and political stripes—just as people of all stripes are capable of rejecting them.

That's critically important for two reasons. First, one result of caricaturing Republicans as the “bad guys” on science is that the science-advocacy community gives Obama and the Democratic Party a free pass on bad decisions that undermine long-term basic research.

Take the NASA portfolio, for example, where the president unceremoniously cancelled the Constellation plan over the objections of both parties and both chambers of Congress. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, hardly partisan bomb throwers, highlighted this in testimony before the House Science Committee on multiple occasions, pleading, “now is the time to overrule this Administration's pledge to mediocrity.”

Over at the Department of Energy, the president's FY13 budget request made basic research the second-lowest priority of all the department's science spending. The Office of Science, which focuses on long-term basic research, saw a meager 2.4 percent increase, while technology development and deployment—both very much not basic research—received nearly 30 percent proposed single-year increases.

In 2011, Obama denied a request to extend the operating life of the Tevatron—the nation’s most powerful particle accelerator and preeminent tool for high-energy physicists—a field of research that eventually led to revolutionary advances like MRI machines. The administration said there wasn't enough money to go around. Yet at the sametime, billions of stimulus dollars were being lost on failed investments in the alternative-energy sector. Just the failed loans to Solyndra and Abound Solar would have kept the Tevatron operating for a decade. Nonetheless, Obama has avoided mainstream criticism by hiding behind the commonly held dogma that it's Republicans who are “anti-science.”

This point briefly snuck into the 2012 presidential debates. During the foreign-policy debate, Obama offered a false choice between himself as the pro-science candidate and Mitt Romney as the anti-science candidate, claiming his opponent wouldn't invest in basic research. Romney replied, correctly, that a loan guarantee to a corporation “isn't basic research. I want to invest in research. Research is great. Providing funding to universities and think tanks is great. But investing in companies? Absolutely not.”

My own experience on Capitol Hill suggests that when anyone mentions GOP advocacy for science spending, the reply is that Republicans are hypocrites about government spending—that they only support science when it’s pork for their own district. But leaders can be consistent as advocates for basic scientific research but also deficit hawks. Federal science funding as a fraction of GDP has declined nearly 60 percent from 1967 to 2007. The growth in entitlements and mandatory spending, wasteful discretionary programs, and the unnecessary invasion of Iraq have been the leading contributors to deficit spending.

There is a second, larger reason why it's important to keep science bipartisan—and why cheap shots about Republicans and science are dangerous. The politics of the immediate will always trump the politics of the long term. So actions like the sequester, which left entitlements untouched but caused furloughs at NASA and the Office of Science, stalled research at the National Institutes of Health, and reduced grants from the NSF and other federally supported research agencies—will happen again and again absent tax and spending reform. If the sequester taught us anything, it's that science will always lose to Social Security, Medicare, and defense when budgets are being cut.

Science's political constituency is too small and the coalition supporting it is not powerful enough to protect research budgets against other priorities. Supporters of federal science funding, a group of which I am a card-carrying member, can ill afford to lose Republican support for science. But if it is perceived as a partisan litmus test, it will not continue to exist in its current state as the government's other financial obligations continue to grow. This may be stupid or petty and perhaps it ought not to matter whether or not it's perceived as a partisan issue, but I've been on the Hill and this is how politics works.

If we do not expand the pro-science coalition, instead of shrinking it, it will be the death knell for American leadership in science. Every American will be worse off as a result. Science funding will not just shrink as a percentage—it will shrink in absolute terms, as it did under the sequester.

So if you count yourself a supporter of NASA, a supporter of the National Science Foundation, a supporter of the NIH, or a supporter of the Department of Energy's science facilities and particle accelerators, don’t be goaded into a false dichotomy between those who support science and who oppose it. As Thomas Huxley said, “Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.”

Yes Virginia, the GOP is Anti-Science, Sean McElwee

The Atlantic published an article on Tuesday by Mischa Fisher arguing that, Republicans have been unfairly characterized as “anti-science.” The piece begins with the lofty assertion that, “Republicans, conservatives, and the religious are no more uniquely “anti-science” than any other demographic or political group. It’s just that “anti-science” has been defined using a limited set of issues that make the right wing and religious look relatively worse.”

It’s another faux-moderate piece where “everyone is to blame,” for underfunding and misunderstanding science. Fisher calls himself a “centrist” which is hard to square with his bio: “Mischa Fisher is a former Republican science-policy staffer and legislative director in the House of Representatives.”

But let’s look at the case. Fisher starts with global warming, arguing that “the vast majority” of Republicans accept anthropomorphic climate change, the problem is, “Conservatives believe many of the policies put forward to address the problem will lead to unacceptable levels of economic hardship. It’s not inherently anti-scientific to oppose cap and trade or carbon taxes.” This statement is dubious on three grounds.

First, it’s not true. As ThinkProgress notes, “almost 58 percent — of congressional Republicans refuse to accept it [global warming].” Second, global warming entails vast and unequal economic consequences, meaning that if we have to sacrifice some economic growth today for more in the future, that is a reasonable decision. And third, Republicans have opposed every Democratic-lead initiative to fight climate change, from Waxman-Markey, to carbon taxes to regulation through the EPA (that were based on the estimated cost per ton of carbon dioxide). If Fisher really wants to argue that Republicans understand the science of global warming, he needs to prove they’ve done something other than oppose every effort to stop global warming on the dubious grounds that it will harm economic growth.

The next argument is classic. Fisher argues that for every right-wing denial of science, there’s a hippie lefty denial:

Left-wing ideologues also frequently espouse an irrational fear of nuclear power, genetic modification, and industrial and agricultural chemistry—even though all of these scientific breakthroughs have enriched lives, lengthened lifespans, and produced substantial economic growth over the last century.

This argument rests on a false equivalence. The science of global warming is accepted by 97 percent of climatologists.  In contrast, nuclear energy is still a very alive debate withinthe scientific community. I would happily debate Fisher on the merits of nuclear power (I’m still undecided) but it’s misleading to compare the two. Fisher also neglects the fact that many Democratic politicians are behind nuclear power (including Obama…), so the point is moot, anyhow. As for GMOs, I’m unaware of any bills ever introduced by Congressional Democrats to ban their use (the bill Fisher cites is about labelling – and it was bipartisan), and it certainly isn’t in the Democratic platform — while the 2012 Republican platform explicitly dismisses climate science and any attempts to curtail global warming.There certainly is an anti-scientific left, but it hasn’t gained control of the Democratic party. The practicality of organic farming, like the nuclear power issue, remains a live debate in scientific circles (again, certainly not at the threshold of universal acceptance that global warming has reached).

For good measure, Fisher throws in a Solyndra reference:

Yet at the same time, billions of stimulus dollars were being lost on failed investments in the alternative-energy sector. Just the failed loans to Solyndra and Abound Solar would have kept the Tevatron operating for a decade.

First off, this is a question of politics and economics, not science. Alternative energy is an important part of Obama’s all-of-the-above strategy (which, remember, includes the nuclear power Fisher is so excited about) and stimulus spending was justified because of the recession. Scientific research is an important part of what the Congress does, but its not stimulative. So it would be absurd for the stimulus package to include money to keep the Tevatron open. Instead the stimulus package invested in energy efficiency ($29 b), renewable energy ($21 b), high speed railway ($18 b), research into carbon capture ($3 b) among other investments.

Solyndra was one of many investments, and it’s expected that some of the companies that received a loan guarantee would fail, but the number of bankrupt firms has actually been rather low. As it happens, often research projects fail to produce results, but we don’t stop performing research. Fisher’s argument here appears to be that Obama should look into the future and determine which investments and research projects will reap rewards.

Fisher argues that it is not Republicans, but rather Obama (!) who is underfunding the basic sciences (with another Solyndra reference!):

For every cheap shot a Republican member of Congress like Senator Tom Coburn has taken at National Science Foundation grants (see the unfairly maligned robo-squirrel), there are areas where Obama has undercut American leadership in basic science by favoring loan guarantees and industrial subsidies to the alternative-energy industry at the expense of science elsewhere.

We’ve seen this in his proposed cuts to high-energy physics, nuclear physics, planetary science, and other areas of research. Even in the much-maligned “Tea Party-dominated” House of Representatives, the GOP budget proposals provided more funding for the NSF than those of the Senate Democrats for the current 2013 fiscal year.”

Again we have the (entirely unfounded) assertion that the stimulus package investments in green jobs came at the expense of “science elsewhere.” This is a policy/economics question, not a science denial question. Many scientists support a move towards a greener economy, and alternative energy is a necessary investment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and move away from fossil fuels. But, if we are talking politics, Obama has fought to get rid of the sequestration cuts that are decimating research. His budgetsregularly include far more money for science research than the Republican budgets do. In contrast, Republicans are working to cut science spending. Reuters reports that, “The Republican [2014] proposals also would cut NASA’s budget by $928 million compared to last year, cut another $198 million from the Department of Commerce and $259 million from the National Science Foundation, which funds an array of scientific research projects.”

Here’s how Science magazine reported on the sequestration:

The science committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has a long history of expressing bipartisan support for research. But science lobbyists have grumbled that the panel has become highly partisan in recent years, stacked with conservative Republicans who don’t necessarily believe that research spending is a high priority.

It’s ironic that Fisher is bringing up the NSF (National Science Foundation) now, since six days before his article was published, Nature reported that, “calling for the National Science Foundation (NSF) to justify every grant it awards as being in the ‘national interest’… scientists raised concerns that ‘national interest’ was defined much too narrowly.”

Throughout the article Fisher throws in snipes like: “Set aside the fact that twice as many Democrats as Republicans believe in astrology, a pseudoscientific medieval farce.” Great, but the argument is about policy and policymakers, and when a Democrat goes on Meet The Press to advocate for teaching astrology in the schools, I’ll happily concede the point. But right now, it’s Republicans spinning crazy anti-scientific theories about birth control,stem-cell research, abortion and creationism and trying to enshrine them as policy.

Towards the end of the essay, Fisher makes a surprising concession:

Supporters of federal science funding, a group of which I am a card-carrying member, can ill afford to lose Republican support for science. But if it is perceived as a partisan litmus test, it will not continue to exist in its current state as the government’s other financial obligations continue to grow. This may be stupid or petty and perhaps it ought not to matter whether or not it’s perceived as a partisan issue, but I’ve been on the Hill and this is how politics works.

Translation: if we don’t all close our eyes and pretend the Republicans are playing fair, we’ll lose it all. This is essentially the same argument Very Serious People are making on tax reform, immigration reform, gun control and deficits – pretend the Republicans are moderates, or else you don’t get anything.

The last paragraph is positively bonkers,

So if you count yourself a supporter of NASA, a supporter of the National Science Foundation, a supporter of the NIH, or a supporter of the Department of Energy’s science facilities and particle accelerators, don’t be goaded into a false dichotomy between those who support science and who oppose it. As Thomas Huxley said, “Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.”

What is the false dichotomy between those who support science and those who oppose it? Scientists should actively war with any administration or politicians who opposes science. The Bush administration, for instance, happily filled up federal bureaucracies with partisans, and 60 scientists (including 20 Nobel Laureates) wrote a letter criticizing him for “distorting and suppressing findings that contradict administration policies, stacking panels with like-minded and underqualified scientists with ties to industry, and eliminating some advisory committees altogether.” In contrast, the Obama administration has poured money into mapping the brain and political capital into fighting climate change (perhaps one reason 68 Nobel-Prize winning scientists signed a letter endorsing Obama).

There is a real dichotomy between those who support science and those who don’t — and those who don’t are generally on the Republican side. 131 members of the Republican caucus deny the science behind climate change. A disturbing 17 of those Republican members are on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. As to the Huxley quote, scientists need to treat themselves like any other lobby, and support candidates and policies that promote their profession and research. That means supporting Democrats, as most of them do (only 6 percent of scientists identify as Republicans). 

The false equivalence that blames both parties for the cuts to science funding, the lack of research and our inadequate response to global warming will only make it harder to shame the party responsible for its intransigence.  The idea that Republicans are anti-science isn’t it a caricature. It’s a sad fact.

Blowing Smoke About Clouds

by Pericles

Originally posted to Pericles on Tue Sep 06, 2011 at 07:51 AM PDT.

Also republished by Science Matters, SciTech, and Community Spotlight. 

Cloud formation over Amon Basin, Kennewick, Washington

Last week an International Business Times headline brought me up short: "Alarmists Got it Wrong, Humans Not Responsible for Climate Change: CERN".

"Wow," I thought. "CERN. Not some Exxon-funded stooge. CERN, where the real scientists are. There's the CERN logo right in the article. I'd better read this and rethink my opinion on climate change."

I read the article and I learned a lot. But not about science, about propaganda. Hijacking the well-deserved prestige of a scientific organization like CERN is easier than I thought.

Occasionally you need to know some science to spot the BS in a newspaper science article, but most of the time you just need some common sense. Start with: Does the content of the article justify the headline?

Not this time. The article discusses new research about cloud formation that CERN scientists recently published in Nature (another one of the biggest names in science). But nobody at CERN is quoted saying, "Humans aren't responsible for climate change."

In fact, the article doesn't quote anybody from CERN (or Nature). Who, then? Lawrence Solomon, David Whitehouse, and Nigel Calder. If you're just skimming, you might assume at least one of them represents CERN, but they don't.

Who are they? In the Age of Google, that's an easy question.

• Solomon is the author of The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud; And those who are too fearful to do so.
• Whitehouse is from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, described by SourceWatch as "a United Kingdom group opposing action to mitigate climate change". Funded by ... they won't say.
• Calder (according to Wikipedia) is "a long-standing skeptic of global warming" who "participated in the polemic film The Great Global Warming Swindle."

So a more accurate headline would be: "Global-Warming Skeptics Claim New CERN Research Vindicates Them".

Well, of course they claim that. But then any real journalist would have to ask: Does it?

Journalism -- even journalism about rocket science -- is not rocket science: Punch "CERN cloud experiment results" into Google, and in seconds you'll be looking at the CERN press release and its supporting press briefing. Spend a few minutes chasing links, and you'll see the lead author of the Nature article (Jasper Kirkby) quoted in Scientific Computing, Live Science, and -- oh, look at this! -- Nature News, which is put out by the same people who publish Nature.

So it isn't hard to find sources closer to the action than Solomon, Whitehouse, and Calder. Do any of them say "Humans are not responsible for climate change"? No. So what is this experiment and what does it really show?

CERN made a cloud chamber that simulates Earth's atmosphere, and tried to figure out where atmospheric aerosols -- tiny particles that cloud droplets form around -- come from. They discovered that previous theories only accounted for a small fraction of the aerosols observed in the atmosphere. They could account for more when they added cosmic rays to their simulation, but they still couldn't form a complete theory.

The CERN press release quotes Kirkby:

“It was a big surprise to find that aerosol formation in the lower atmosphere isn’t due to sulphuric acid, water and ammonia alone. Now it’s vitally important to discover which additional vapors are involved, whether they are largely natural or of human origin, and how they influence clouds.”

The press briefing concludes:

“This result leaves open the possibility that cosmic rays could also influence climate. However,  it is premature to conclude that cosmic rays have a significant influence on climate until the additional nucleating vapours have been identified, their ion enhancement measured, and the ultimate effects on clouds have been confirmed.”

Nothing in the press release quantifies this possibility. Kirkby told Nature News: "At the moment, [our research] actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it's a very important first step."

Live Science also talked to Kirkby:

“The research doesn't call into question the basic science of greenhouse gas warming, Kirkby emphasized, but rather refines one facet of the research. ... "It's part of the jigsaw puzzle, and you could say it adds to the understanding of the big picture," he said. "But it in no way disproves the other pieces."

None of that stops Solomon from claiming (in the Financial Post -- again published with no comment from the actual researchers) that, “The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.”

Discover's Bad Astronomy blog responds:

“There’s only one problem: that’s completely wrong. In reality the study shows nothing of the sort.”

BA goes on to explain why you shouldn't expect any future research to support Solomon either:

“The problem here is two fold: there doesn’t appear to be a large variation in Earth’s temperatures with solar activity, and also that temperatures are rising extremely rapidly in the past 100 years, when solar activity has been relatively normal.”

So, who do you think the conservative media outlets go with: science publications that have done the legwork and talked to the CERN researchers, or a long-time global-warming denier who makes unsupported claims in an opinion piece in a financial newspaper?

Do you have to ask?

Fox Business Channel's Tobin Smith:

“We can report tonight the science of climate change is now all but settled. Yes friends and neighbors, and the global warming alarmists have been dealt a wee bit of a blow, right? CERN, C-E-R-N, one of the world's largest and most prestigious centers for scientific research, has concluded that it's the sun's rays, not human activity, which controls the earth's climate. Now, that, of course, is horrible news for the greenies who've used, you know, for years questionable science to justify more and more regulations against fossil fuels like coal and oil, all the while arguing for more and more for the renewable energy sources they just love so dearly. So are the greens prepared to back down now that the science has proved them wrong?”

Media Matters collects similar statements from CBN, the Washington Times, and Investor's Business Daily -- all clearly repeating Solomon's interpretation rather than CERN's.

So this is what you need to hijack the well-deserved prestige of a research organization like CERN and a journal like Nature:

• three zero-credibility cranks to "interpret" the research by making stuff up,
• two newspapers willing to ignore anybody connected to the research, and instead source their articles to the cranks,
• an echo chamber of news outlets willing to accept the first two papers as reliable sources, do no independent checking, and instead let false claims grow in the telling,
• opinion leaders in the echo chamber who shift the onus away from the cranks onto their opponents: What's wrong with those greenies, that they still hold out now that they've been proven wrong?

Result? Rank-and-file conservatives hear the same message from multiple directions. When they confidently tell their friends and  co-workers that CERN has proved Al Gore wrong, people who get their news from the New York Times know nothing about it -- because an accurate assessment of these tentative results was not deemed sufficiently newsworthy. And the conservative nods knowingly: It's that liberal media, constantly suppressing anything that doesn't fit its biased worldview.

Promoting scientific ignorance in the guise of learning

Science as a way of knowing has been extremely successful, although people may not like all the changes science and its handmaiden, technology, have wrought. But people who oppose evolution, and seek to have creationism or intelligent design included in science curricula, seek to dismiss and change the most successful way of knowing ever discovered. They wish to substitute opinion and belief for evidence and testing. The proponents of creationism/intelligent design promote scientific ignorance in the guise of learning. As professional scientists and educators, we strongly assert that such efforts are both misguided and flawed, presenting an incorrect view of science, its understandings, and its processes.

From the Botanical Society of America's statement on evolution

July 27, 2003