Environmentalism's shaky science
By G.N. Sirkin
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It was closed for 18 hours, creating a monumental traffic jam. The media debated whether the school children involved should not go home to die peacefully in their mothers' arms. Someone had the wit to call a member of the EPA whom they trusted and asked "What shall we do?" And the person on the other end of the line said "Kick the bag into the Bay."
"But that would contaminate the Bay."
"The Bay is already contaminated by serpentine rock, of which the coast of the Bay is composed to a considerable extent. You can't add any more to it of any significance."
"The San Francisco area is loaded with scientists in universities and other institutions who must have known that a bag of asbestos waste is harmless," said Dr. Seitz. "Why didn't any of them speak up?"
Scientists find it better for their careers and incomes to keep quiet when environmental frenzy is running full blast.
Dr. Seitz traced the path of the environmental movement from the sensible and highly successful call for the clean-up of pollution of the air and water, to the extremism - one might even say the lunacy - of terror at the sight of some asbestos waste.
Underlying the lunacy is bad science and the propaganda of those who gain from frightening the public with bad science.
The list of environmental panics and costly regulations inspired by them grows longer. The U.S. years ago stopped the development of nuclear power without any environmental reasons. Ignoramuses block genetic engineering in agriculture. Larger and more nourishing crops that poor societies could have through genetic science, are stopped.
The campaign against pesticides and fertilizers has no supporting scientific evidence. Over 99 percent of the pesticides we eat are natural. That is how plants protect themselves from predators. The world could not feed its population without fertilizers and pesticides.
DDT, which had virtually eradicated malaria, was banned by EPA's William Ruckelshaus, and malaria has now returned. DDT has been called the greatest chemical ever discovered. Twenty-five years of experience showed that it is harmless to humans and wildlife.
Like the other alarms, our latest environmental alarm, global warming, has a shaky scientific foundation. On February 2, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gathered in Paris to issue a "Summary for Policy Makers" of the "Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007." It is a summary of a Report on the physical science basis of climate change. This is the document apocalyptics believe will prove scientifically that the world is doomed unless we give up fossil fuels, which emit carbon dioxide.
Every fact, every conclusion, must be reached by consensus, says Rule 10 of IPCC procedure. Consensus among the principals of 150 governments requires endless compromises of scientific facts. If science is subjected to compromises, is it still science? Philip Stott in the February 3-4 weekend Wall Street Journal says the science has become 'political science.'
The Report upon which the Summary is based will not be published for another three months, to permit the experts and governments to make changes. As the IPCC so charmingly explains: "it's to permit adjustments to the scientific report”to make it consistent with the Summary, a document severely edited by some 150 government delegations that met in Paris last week," according to a Washington Times editorial.
First the Summary, then backwards to the Report.
The IPCC does no original research. Its evidence is from selected secondary sources. With all those compromises and changes, what happens to the science? The Summary maintains that "very likely, by a 90% probability, the climate change is man-made, not nature-made." But the Summary presents no evidence.
However, the evidence against greenhouse gases as a major cause of warming is strong. Global temperature fell, or was stable, in much of the past century during a period when CO2 emissions were rising. Indeed, recent increases in CO2 have tended to follow, rather than lead, increases in global temperature. Therefore, it cannot be said that CO2 causes an increase in temperature.
The IPCC attempts to prove its case with models that are inaccurate. They take no account of clouds or of water vapor, the largest contributor to the greenhouse effect. The models disagree with each other. They predict, by 2100, a wide range of increases in temperature, from 1.4 to 11.5 degrees Centigrade. The totality of their errors produces a result that does not accord with what happened.
The predicted rise in sea levels is from 11 to 17 inches, more moderate than expected. Indeed, this 4th Assessment Summary is a severe disappointment to the eager environmentalists who were anticipating catastrophes in sea level and temperature.
The IPCC attempts to prove its case by alleging that a consensus supports it. Nothing in science can be proved by consensus (and among scientists the consensus is against: over 19,000 scientists signed - in its first two years - the anti-Global Warming Petition Project of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.
It is widely recognized that the Kyoto Protocol is ineffective. At most, a reduction of only 0.07 degree Centigrade can be achieved by 2050. We shall see whether the U.S. can be stampeded into an economically destructive and totally ineffective program of hysteria-driven energy-restriction.
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