Redstate

By Next93 Posted in Policy — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

“Fool me once, shame on you,
Fool me twice, shame on me”

Yet another redstate post on the media’s treatment of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) (http://redstate.com/blogs/joliphant/2008/apr/23/antarctic_getting_colder...) gets turned into a debate on the “science” of global warming. One excellent question that came up was, “who is to blame for such skepticism?”

Another way to put this is: “Is this much skepticism warranted when such scientific luminaries assure us that the sky is indeed falling”?

The answer is a resounding and recent “yes”.

Yes, I’ve seen the articles from thirty years ago predicting Global Cooling, but it’s also been pointed out (by no less luminary than our own Pliny) that Global Cooling was never much more than a few articles in news magazine (Newsweek and such), quoting a few fringe scientists as interpreted by scientifically ignorant reporters trying to fill column space. This wasn’t something that was embraced or promoted by the larger scientific community. In any case, that was a simple case of being wrong. As conservatives have consistently pointed out over the past six years, being wrong isn’t the same thing as lying. In order for the current alarm over AGW to be a complete hoax, many members of the scientific community would have to be lending credibility to an outright lie.

So that still leaves us asking the question: is there any reason to believe that a large swath of the scientific community would either commit or abet a politically-motivated scientific fraud?

Before the current global warming scare, there was the specter of Nuclear Winter. Although it is no longer a household word (phrase?), at one time the certainty of Nuclear Winter was common knowledge. We all knew that the aftermath of a large-scale nuclear exchange would go far beyond the immediate carnage and even the millions of slow deaths by radiation poisoning and cancer. Indeed, the sun would literally set on the human race, as the world would be enveloped in sun-blocking smoke and dust for years, possibly decades. Eventually, all plant life on earth would die, all of the animal dependent on it would starve.

The problem with common knowledge is that it’s never questioned. And why should it be, when it’s the Revealed Truth of a much-beloved figure.

To many Americans, Carl Sagan is remembered as the wise, witty, and erudite host of the PBS television series “Cosmos”. To a large swath of the public, he was the very epitome of “a scientist”, the spiritual descendent of Albert Einstein. And so it was that when Sagan introduced them to the threat of Nuclear Winter, the idea was simply not questioned. People accepted the science of this scenario implicitly, even though they didn’t understand it. After all, it was coming from bona-fide scientists. Not only that, but it was backed up by computer models, and in 1983 everyone knew that computers are smarter than people.

The problem is, Nuclear Winter was essentially made from whole cloth. As the following article points out, the idea was the invention of “anti-nuclear strategists who felt political need to hype their cause” (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-4580928.html). The paper that supported the concept was known as TTAPS, after the initials of the authors (the "S" is, of course, "Sagan"), and it was released in conjunction with a publicity campaign funded by an anti-nuclear foundation. The computer model that was used to “prove” the phenomenon was spectacularly flawed:

According to Seitz, this model was a fraud. To say the very least, it was based on some extraordinary assumptions. "Instead of a planet with continents and oceans, the TTAPS model postulated a featureless bone-dry billiard ball. Instead of nights and days, it postulated 24-hour sunlight at one-third strength. Instead of realistic smoke emissions, it simply dumped a ten-mile-thick soot cloud into the atmosphere instantly. The model dealt with such complications as east, west, winds, sunrise, sunset, and patchy clouds in a stunningly elegant manner--they were ignored. When later computer models incorporated these real-world elements, the flat black sky of TTAPS fell apart into a pale broken shadow that traveled less far and dissipated more quickly. One factor alone--the moderating effect of the oceans--turned out to be the source of a 200 per cent error.'

Now, to say that everyone in the world was fooled would be a lie. A lot of scientists understood just how invalid this model was, but few would go on record against it:

As usual in matters of this sort, many kept their skepticism to themselves. The Nobel-laureate physicist Freeman Dyson kept his views off the record, but they got out through a congressional aide. TTAPS, said Dyson, is "an absolutely atrocious piece of science, but I quite despair of setting the public record straight. I think I'm going to chicken out on this one: Who wants to be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?'

According to Seitz, "Most of the intellectual tools and computational power necessary to demolish TTAPS's bleak vision were already around in 1983; the will, and perhaps the courage, to utilize them was lacking. From leading scientists one heard something of a refrain: "You know, I really don't think these guys know what they're talking about' (Nobel-laureate physicist Richard Feynman, Cal. Tech.); "They stacked the deck' (Professor Michael McElroy, Harvard); and, after a journalist's caution against fourletter words, ""Humbug' is six' (Professor Jonathan Katz, George Washington University).' Professor George Rathjens of MIT judged that "nuclear winter is the worst example of the misrepresentation of science to the public in my memory.'

With the aid of a compliant media, a professional public relations campaign, and a cowed scientific establishment, the notion of Nuclear Winter became an article of faith among a gullible public. Within a few years, there were calls for the US to unilaterally disarm*. Had these activists gotten their wish, the Soviets would have most certainly won the Cold war. If not for the political will of one American President, the persistence of one Polish Pope, and a lucky break that the world had no right to expect, the whole planet today would be under the domination of the Hammer and Sickle.**

We have, within recent memory, an example of bad science and computer models being used to advance a political agenda that was, at its heart, anti-American and anti-capitalist/pro-communist. Without a shred of proof and nothing more than a fatally flawed computer model as evidence, it managed to reach status of “consensus”. All of this while the media enthusiastically beat the drum and members of the scientific community either actively contributed to this fraud to support a political agenda, or passively abetted it out of fear for professional retribution.

The similarities between Nuclear Winter and AGW are simply too stunning to ignore. The two movements even share the same cast of characters; Chairman Carl (as he was not-too-affectionately known in some circles) was also an early and enthusiastic adapter of the AGW theory, and many of the same people lobbying so hard today for cap-and-trade systems were lobbying yesteryear for unilateral disarmament. At the end of the day, it’s hard to tell where one movement ends and the other begins. The only difference is that this time, they want the US to commit economic suicide instead of military suicide.

My people have a saying: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on ME.” I'm not accusing AGW supporters of commiting scientific fraud (not outright, anyway), but the fact remains that it's a possibility, and has happened very recently. If the Nuclear Winter scam taught us anything, it’s that scientific skepticism is *always* appropriate, especially when the politicians try so hard to tell us that the debate is over.

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*Apparently, Soviet nuclear weapons had a feature that made them Nuclear-Winter-proof, just as Chinese CO2 emissions somehow don’t contribute to Global Warming. You have to admire the engineering skills of communist governments.

** I think the assumption was that the Soviet’s notorious disregard for environmental issues would have immediately changed, had this happened. After all, anything’s better than the rapacious industrialists.