Anti-Science Bias Impacts Policy

Check out Kingdaddy's third part on how science divides Americans in foreign and domestic policy efforts.

Enough people in the Bush Administration have themselves been hostile to science, or have been politically aligned with the anti-science crowd, that it's fair to say that the anti-science faction has had a profound influence on American politics in the last few years--including foreign policy. The hostility extends to both the results of science as well as the scientific method.

While you might easily find lots of examples--appointing a politically orthodox but scientifically clueless PR person to censor NASA public announcements, removing birth control information from the Health and Human Services web site, the determination to never admit the possibility of global warming, etc.--nowhere can you find a better example than the beseiged intelligence community, especially the CIA. The whole work of intelligence resembles science so closely that it would have been amazing if the CIA had not run afoul of Bush, Cheney, Feith, Wolfowitz, et al.

Read it - now.

Comments

[Citizen Tom]

This has gotten to be so typical of some people. If you disagree with their political philosophy, you scientifically illiterate or you are a bigot. Either you are stupid or you are evil.

Why can't we just discuss the issues? Consider your examples.

Almost nobody debates the science of birth control; we debate the ethics. At what point does birth control become infanticide? What ethics should we teach our children about sex?

Some people think global warming is a crock; some think we cannot afford to take a chance. Those who point out the global warming scare is blown out proportion note two things. (1) If we cannot explain the periods of global warming and the ice ages that took place in the past, how do we know what to attribute any warming that is supposedly taking place now? (2) Carbon dioxide is absorbed by sea water and forms limestone.

[AndreaC]

It's one thing for the President to say he likes one policy over another for whatever inane reason this President comes up with. It's quite another to say the science relevant to the policy doesn;t exist. This is especially true when the science he's talking about was paid for by the American people. NIH spends $28 BILLION each year on science. NASA and EPA spend your money on science, too. The loyal Bushies edit it till it's meaningless, or refuse to publish it, and even remove what is already published from public sites. Examples include data on pregnancy, breast cancer, and global warming.

Of course, Tom Davis, was head of the Oversight Committee throughout these scandals of turning taxpayer science into mush, and Davis did nothing to earn his paycheck. He was too busy cavorting with Jack Abramoff and his money.

[Sock Puppet of the Great Satan]

"Those who point out the global warming scare is blown out proportion note two things. (1) If we cannot explain the periods of global warming and the ice ages that took place in the past, how do we know what to attribute any warming that is supposedly taking place now?"

By contrast, those who do believe that Global Warming is a problem have heard of Milankovich cycles.

"(2) Carbon dioxide is absorbed by sea water and forms limestone."

Err, not quite. a) Only the upper ocean, which is mixed by waves. The deeper ocean takes a much longer time to reach thermal and chemical equilibrium with the atmosphere. Chemists, ChemEs and Geoscientists call this a "Mass transfer limitation". b) Increasing CO2 concentrations will increase the equilibrium to hydrogencarbonate away from carbonate, so you get less preciptation out of calcium carbonate.

Yeah, eventually the CO2 will be taken out of the biosphere by its natural cycle, but not over a timescale that Bad Shit Won't Happen. The economy and human geography of the world is pretty finely adjusted to the climate of the past 1-2 centuries. Just ask the inhabitants of New South Wales how they're liking their drought.

Does anyone else get peeved having conservative anti-AGW activists "lecture" them on the science when its evident that they not haven't taken any science since the age of 16?

[AndreaC]

You've confused them with facts. "Stop it! Not listening! Not listening!"

All peer-reviewed journals have concluded that global warming is occuring and man is a contributor. That means it is not a "natural cycle." The junk science is financed by industry and the "think tanks" they fund. The truth is very fearful information. The problem with being uneducated, on science or history, is that those people go into denial. I guess it's understandable, and frankly educated people go into denial, too, although hopefully less often.

The great thing about science and history is it teaches us action now CAN make a difference. Remember in the 60s and 70s when people said man was incapable of improving the environment, the technology was too hard, and jobs would be lost? Environmental engineering jobs were created. Entrepeneurs came up with great ideas. We were coming out ahead - then the government denied warming existed. Instead of awarding grants and incentives to the fledgling industry, they delayed advances and tried to crush it, from CAFE standards to filtering technology.

Throughout our history, major scientific advancements like reducing global warming depend on the US government. Another example is penicillin. What a major advancement - except it's very hard to make and control the dose. Penicillin contaminates everything,and can kill anyone allergic to it. Industry wouldn't make it. During WWI the Dept of Agriculture developed a way to make it and shared it with industry.

The relationship between the US government and science was why scientists used to come from all over the world to research here. We had Einstein. We had stem cell and other biological researchers, but they are moving away.

[Citizen Tom]

Milankovich cycles? That such a thing as the earth's orbital behavior might have an effect stands to reason. However, I still wonder about the correlation. Given we have to use proxy temperature data, we can only guess at the significance of other factors and erroneous assumptions.

Computer modeling, which is basically what the Global Warming theory rests upon, has to have good data. Have you noticed how a long weather prediction is good for? We are still trying to figure out how to model the earth's current weather. We are still trying to figure out what the variables are, how important these variables are, and how to model these variables. What makes you think we know fast the fast the oceans absorb carbon dioxide?

If you are familiar with Milankovich cycles, then you know this model assumes a constant solar output. Is even that basic assumption true?

You think Global Warming is a big problem. Instead of griping how stupid and nasty Bush is, advocate we start taxing pollutants, particularly carbon dioxide. I won't care; we have to tax something. Why not tax pollutant, even "pollutants" people only think might be dangerous? I am conservative; I prefer consumption taxes.

What really bothers me is two things: (1) the tendency that some people have to personally attack others and (2) the strange excuses people will use for social engineering.

If you believe carbon dioxide is a threat, then stop using it as a club to beat up on people. Instead, advocate a tax on fossil fuels. This will encourage "green" energy sources, kill a lot of birds with windmills, and discourage the importation of foreign oil.

Pity the birds.

[CBH]

I'll be upfront that I don't know the science behind either side of the global warming debate, but I act on the belief that it's really being caused by our actions, or is a natural cycle being abnormally altered by our actions (which seems likely to be the case). To think that we can't possibly effect the soil, air and water we are surrounded must rest on other assumptions, because anyone who has been to any sizable city can see contrary evidence. If smog can build up over L.A. in a day or two, why wouldn't a whole planet peppered with burning petroleum and coal be able to make a subtle change over the course of a century?

Tom, I don't know if you fit either of these, but I've personally met two camps of anti-global warming folks here locally, though I'd assume there are more. The first camp suffers from a http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2007/06/both_ways.html>a reluctance to questions the way we live, and the second from a belief that puny little man couldn't possibly effect God's creation - I guess they've never read the book Hiroshima.

For the predominantly Republican Right Wing Christians (I'm a Ron Paul man myself) who oppose any discussion of Global Warming; I've read (and believe) my Bible, and I've never read, "And God told Man to go ahead and do whatever he felt like, because this Earth is going to stay nice no matter what you do". First thing God commanded Adam to do was tend the garden! Having some sense of stewardship towards our resources isn't anti-Christian, and doesn't have to be tied to ethically wrong or questionable practices, even though the secular atheist crowd sure makes it look that way.

Similarly, why is it so unbelievable that weapons made to intentionally damage living organisms may be unintentionally damaging living organisms? I not a Kommie bastard hippie peacenik, yet I somehow believe that the uranium (and plutonium!) stockpile down the street could make me sick, and that using less power would be an even better solution to our "energy crisis" than just switching to another way to use up and trash the country.

I don't see how more technology is going to fix the problems caused by more technology. Our Consumer Culture is a crock and is messing everything up, plain and simple.

(this message brought to you from my plastic and steel box using power from the coal-fired plant a few miles away. I'll now drive my gas burning car home to work in my garden - we've got to start somewhere, eh? :)

[CBH]

Citizen Tom -
After shooting from the hip last night in my 6/18/07 7:58pm post, I browsed your blog this morning (very nice). Looks like we do agree on the stewardship view of environmentalism. If you haven't read anything by the author Wendell Berry, I think you'd enjoy his stuff.

Have a good one!

[Sock Puppet of the Great Satan]

"You think Global Warming is a big problem. Instead of griping how stupid and nasty Bush is, advocate we start taxing pollutants, particularly carbon dioxide."

What makes you think I don't advocate such a thing? (Actually, I'm OK with auctioning emissions permits instead of carbon taxes, but carbon tax, although less economically efficient, is less easy to game.)

Do you have to attribute to me positions I don't hold to feel you've won the argument?

"Have you noticed how a long weather prediction is good for? "

Have you noticed the difference between weather and climate?

"What really bothers me is two things: (1) the tendency that some people have to personally attack others"

Like you did at the start of this thread? cf. "This has gotten to be so typical of some people. If you disagree with their political philosophy, you scientifically illiterate or you are a bigot."

"and (2) the strange excuses people will use for social engineering. "

A carbon tax is social engineering, friend: it's intended to alter behavior.

[Sock Puppet of the Great Satan]

"What makes you think we know fast the fast the oceans absorb carbon dioxide?"

Measurement of carbon isotope ratios.

BTW, it was reported in New Scientist recently (can't remember the date, but was within the last 6 weeks) that the surface layers of the Southern Ocean were near saturation. Frankly, I felt my bowels loosen when I read that.