Greening the sprouts

Charlotte and Steph have been telling us about the greenness of their school education. Now when I was at school, while I would bore my fellow students and any teachers who would listen, senseless, with the wisdom of EF Schumacher, I certainly never got any encouragement in return. My physics teachers were pro-nuclear of course, although one also signed me up to Amnesty International. 

It never occurred to me that we might learn about something quite so intensely political as the environment, at school. Rather, I took it as my mission to bring this wisdom to my peers, along with that of any other hard-left causes I came across as a member of a poor middle class minority in a working class area.

Clearly all that changed, more or less as soon as I left school. I was shocked to see my daughter's Y3 school play about the rainforest, complete with evil loggers, noble savages and talking animals. Not that it was entirely, or even largely, wrong. Simplistic, black and white, saccharine, yes, of course it was all of those, what do you expect. But it seems that environmental values - not just environmental science - is now on the syallabus.

What should we make of this? Despite the special claims of faith schools, all schools are beacons of values, they all teach good behaviour, reponsibility, self-respect and so forth. So it makes sense to add environmental consciousness to the list. Yet there are legitimate political debating points that are necessarily brushed aside by this clarity of moral purpose.

And the more specific we get, the more problematic it becomes. Environmentalism is replete with received wisdom of variable quality, largely defined by the mass media, and therefore not a few contradictions. We wouldn't teach physics from articles in the Sunday papers, so why environmentalism? Surely the question of whether expanding nuclear power is an appropriate response to the threat of global warming, shouldn't be taught. Investigated, yes, debated, yes, but taught?!

Environmentalism also bears some of the scars of its years in the wilderness: a focus on the personal above the political, even when the personal is utterly symbolic; a tendency to blame corporations or profit for everything; a normal human tendency to evaluate evidence on the basis of where it comes from, and whether it fits the answers you are already proposing.

Still, clearly a whole generation of people has decided to teach the next the importance of doing something it wouldn't do itself. The only axe-grinders I remember teaching me were an anarchist, a Conservative and a Christian. Yet unlike those three, we have something nearing a consensus that environmentalism is the way forward. And when did that happen? Somehow, without my noticing, my views went from cranky to mainstream, without changing much.

All we need now is to do something about it. So what could be better than teaching our kids how to save the planet? (Other that doing it ourselves of course) Well how about teaching them how to crtically evaluate evidence and arguments? Include in that examining values and evaluating ethical arguments. Yet how many schools study philosophy and ethics? We need to learn to ask the right questions, not just be given what others think are the right answers.

Denialism dot com

On cue, following my discussion of science and politics, which noted the similarity between global warming deniers, creationists, anti-vaccine and anti-animal testing movements and so on, I find the blog denialism.com, dealing, in some detail with much the same issues, with a couple of differences.

In particular denialism.com deals with the methods of denialists: conspiracy theories, selective use of evidence, fake experts, impossible expectations and faulty logic.

Denialism.com doesn't mention, as I did, alternative medicine, anti-GM food and perpetual motion. It is explained here that there isn't the same kind of organised denialism going on for alternative medicine. I guess largely this is correct, alternative medicine is interested in asserting its own efficacy, and not so much attacking the efficacy of conventional medicine. But it may be a close call.

GM food seems to be off the agenda now, and perpetual motion I suppose is just too silly to spend any time on.

Denialism.com's subjects that I didn't mention are these:

1. Anti-regulatory/Industry Apologists/Fake Consumer groups/Astroturf
2. HIV/AIDS Denialism
3. Stem Cell Denialism/Adult Stem Cell Hype/Fake Bioethicists/Cloning, Eugenics and Euthanasia Paranoids

It wouldn't have occurred to me to include group 1 in this sort of exercise. Arguments over regulation are intensely political on both sides and are rarely made with scientific rigour on either side. One or two commenters have pointed out that there are probably equivalent pro-regulatory deniers around. Still, if people are using the denialist tactics described in political debates then this should be exposed.

Group 2, good point.

Group 3, again surprising. I'm not sure how one might qualify as a fake ethicist - I tend to take the view that we're all ethicists, in the sense that we're all entitled to express our views on ethics, and that all these views matter - the idea of believing what is right or wrong on the authority of an ethicist seems bizarre. Glancing at the sites listed, I would agree that there are some terribly bad arguments being used out there to oppose stem cell research. But I do think - as I said here - it is reasonable for people to argue a position that they have only religious and not scientific reasons for believing. But on the face of it, this does seem to be denialism of a similar quality to the others, so perhaps I am being too generous. Please comment.


Anyway, while we are drifting into the denialisms of politics and ethics as well as those of science, what else could we add to the list? How about denialism of the benefits of free trade?

Remember this is about methods. 1. Conspiracy theories: Anti-traders assert that free trade is just a consipiracy by the rich and powerful to drive down wages and environmental standards. 2. Selectivity: The huge gains in prosperity in Asia-Pacific are ignored. 3. Fake Experts: The New Economics Foundation? 4. Impossible Expectations: Economists all disagree anyway, Economics doesn't work. 5. Bad logic: What ever it is, we're smart enough to make it here. (Being able to make anything doesn't mean we are able to make everything we currently consume, when giving up economies of scale.)

So far, so good, I suppose. But might this work for denying theories that should be denied because they are bunk? Like Marxism:

1. Conspiracy Theories: Anti-marxists assert that Marxists are trying to take over the world. 2. Selectivity: Er, the soviet economic boom from agrarian backwater to superpower in 50 years? 3. Fake Experts: Tories 4. Unrealistic Expectations: Worldwide revolution hasn't happened yet, so Marxism is bunk. 5. Bad logic: Trying to make the world better will only make it worse. (This is an argument you occasionally hear from some on the right who can't be arsed trying to make the world any better. Panglossian rubbish.)


So, while I very much like what denialism.com is doing, I am also a little underwhelmed. The point to keep aware of is that dealing with the poor arguments in favour of a proposition does not deal with the proposition. Denialism.com is all about identifying and disposing with common poor and deceptive arguments for certain propositions. It is the fact that most perpetrators of these poor arguments don't have any good arguments that deals with their propositions. Why make the weak argument if you have a strong one?

But the arguments that are found in politics, economics and ethics generally are weaker than those found in science, and this makes the denialism.com approach rather less biting in these fields.

Science and Politics

What do the following have in common:

• The belief that global warming is a myth
• The belief that we are not descended from the same ancestors as chimpanzees and gorillas, but were, as a species, created by God, more or less as we are
• The belief that vaccines are dangerous and do more harm than good
• The belief that animal experiments are inimical to good science, producing more misleading results than good results
• The belief that genetically modified food is inherently dangerous (i.e. dangerous by virtue of being GM)
• Belief in the clinical efficacy of a whole range of alternative and complementary therapies - that they frequently work as well as or better than scientific medicine, but somehow need to be judged by different standards (i.e. randomised controlled trials do not apply here)
• Belief in the possibility of perpetual motion
• Belief that a gyroscope correctly inclined will generate lift and hence be able to power effectively free flight
  
• ...
  

The common factor is that they all dispute mainstream science, they all require belief in a conspiracy of scientists, or at the very least blinkered groupthink among scientists. And in every case, the debate is taken to the public sphere, scientists are denounced, and appeals are made to trust some other authority.

Now while I would dismiss all the beliefs that I have listed, there is a problem here. What are you supposed to do if you do honestly disagree with the scientific consensus, and you think that consensus is leading to bad policy decisions? I will criticise the likes of Durkin, (yes I am linking to Monbiot, although he probably believes half the anti-science above) and the creationists, for bypassing the difficult science and making shallow arguments to the public. But I recognise that they don't have a lot of choice. Our laypersons understanding of the scientific position is also fairly shallow. Of course I am not equating shallow truths with shallow lies, but the fact remains that many believers are sincere, and we can hardly damn them for lying.

Few of these anti-science lobbies have the resources to do any research of their own - global warming deniers are perhaps an exception - and even if they did, they may publish a few papers, which would go as unnoticed as almost all scientific papers are.

But it is entirely possible that science will get things wrong from time to time, and that there will be brave souls battling the groupthink. It is possible, say, that the second event theory, is true. It predicts higher cancer risks than normally recognised from particular radio-isotopes, and hence a greater risk from nuclear industry emissions compared with background radiation. It looks unlikely, but it is good that it has its advocates plugging away.

The question is how we conduct the public debate. How do we make informed democratic decisions, given that most of us would struggle to understand all the science, and that those of us who could understand it probably don't have the time. This is not really a new problem - we are also mostly not economists, not clinicians, not teachers, not police, not manufacturers, not retailers, not politicians. Yet in a democracy we have to make judgements about the work of professionals in all these fields - at least those in the public sector.

How do we do it? I guess we muddle through. We judge success and failure rather than effort, and, hopefully thereby incentivise effort. We punish dishonesty when we see it. What I would like to suggest is that the evidential standards of science are our friends in this attempt to muddle through. We would be wrong to let doctrine trump evidence. We would be right to change our minds when the evidence demands it. We would be right to be suspicious of anyone, Mr Blair, who seems to regard their personal sense of conviction as a kind of evidence. We would do well to recognise that our desires and values colour our evaluation of evidence, and that this can progressively suck an intelligent person into fringe crackpot theories, religious cults and so on.

And so how should we evaluate the work of scientists - and the work of those who accuse scientists of groupthink? By the same standards. Are they being honest? Are they doing the hard work or are they playing to the gallery? Are they paying attention to the evidence? Are they making claims that are falsifiable?

Are they using ad-hoc hypotheses to defend a bad position? Of course one man's ad hoc hypothesis is another's refinement of a good theory, and there is no substitute for good judgement. Suppose you want to argue that solar wind causes clouds causes global cooling, and that this effect has not been recognised leading to errors in climate modelling. There has to be something going for this theory other than that it allows you to claim the climate models are wrong. If that's all there is, you are clearly just pursuing an agenda, but if the theory explains other evidence as well then it may be a useful refinement. But it is always going to be possible to come up with theories like that, that can be used to attack a rival position, but which don't add any value. As philosophers occasionally like to point out, we can't prove that the whole world wasn't made 10 minutes ago complete with our memories and evidence of the past. But the defendant who tried to argue along these lines "no I didn't rob the bank last week, the universe was only created 10 minutes ago", would not be very successful, and rightly so.

Science will still make mistakes of varying degrees. This is unaviodable. But anybody who argues that because scientists can make mistakes we should instead believe that they are right and the scientists are wrong is not making a credible argument. What distinguishes the sciences is that they have all these tools for finding and correcting errors. What distinguishes crackpots is that they have thrown all these tools away.

Global Warming: Panic, Panic Over, Panic Again...

The Great Global Warming Swindle

The thing is I didn't see the programme. I saw essentially the same programme by the same maker from 1997. They had to apologise after that one, and I wonder if that will happen again.

The thesis is summarised here and unpicked here. Bad science also gives it a mention despite, wisely, avoiding green stuff in his column as a rule.

For a rather more mature contrarian polemic I would recommend Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist. This book attracted a lot of criticism - much of it justified - for challenging environmental agendas. But it illustrates what can be done if you select your evidence in order to prosecute a particular case, rather than taking on board all the evidence and trying to find out what is actually going on. Even Lomborg, however does not deny global warming. He suggests we shouldn't worry about it too much, arguing that there are more pressing problems.

It is in the nature of science that you can always ask why, you always take some piece of evidence and take it apart and ask whether the assumptions behind it are correct, whether the methodology was sound, and so on and so forth. Karl Popper famously said that science is not built on rock - rock is not available - it is built on mud, but we can drive the piles as deeply into the mud as we like - that is to say we can keep questioning and examining and nitpicking as long as we like. Science never stops the questions by saying that something is off limits.

What this means when it comes to the use of science in political discourse, unfortunately, is that we are all inclined to accept at face value the evidence that we like, and nit pick the evidence we don't. The Monbiots of the world are perhaps as guilty of this as the Lomborgs and the global warming deniers.

Lomborg's narrative is that things are pretty good and getting better, and in many respects he is right. The evidence he backs this up with show some particular things getting better, and I daresay some of that is sound. Polemically that works, but scientifically there is no case made: "things are getting better" is just to vague to substantiate or refute. Lomborg picks some nits with the IPCC work, but all in one direction, all to argue for a lower global warming impact. This is a good sign of a work being polemical rather than truth-seeking. Of course this sort of work does no harm to the science - criticism can only improve science, if some assumption is poor or some methodology is unsound, this can be addressed. Scientifically we should be glad that there are nitpickers on both sides. Politically, Lomborg caused some justifiable outrage.

The Great Global Warming Swindle goes beyond nitpicking with misdirection and suggestions of conspiracies. This is of course not helpful - some people have completely lost interest in the evidence because they have concluded that their opponents are acting out of evil, and there is some vast mainstream conspiracy to destroy the environment/economy (delete according to preference).

The creationism/intelligent design movement holds a very similar view towards the science of biology. They make much of the fact that scientific theories may turn out to be mistaken. Of course none of their reasons for thinking that evolution is mistaken stand up to scrutiny - although they don't seem to have noticed that. And even though you could say Einstein showed Newton was mistaken, you could say he showed Newton was 99.99% right.

If you take evidence about sunspots or natural sources of carbon dioxide, all well known to climatologists, and included in the models, and present that to the public as if it were something new: "See! this is the real cause!", you will mislead, and deliberately so. Sober science takes all the factors affecting global temperature trends and tries to understand and quantify them. Polemic takes this one or that one and trumpets it.

Believe the latest polemic, and either the world will end tomorrow and the IPCC or the Stern report are blasé, and happy for global warming to happen as long as it can be taxed, or something; or its all a communist-green-nazi conspiracy, blah blah blah. Neither position is conducive to taking the level-headed proportionate measures that are necessary, such as the Green Tax Switch and investing in renewable energy and related technologies.

There is a background level of panic over global warming, and I daresay it is worth attacking, although I don't see it having much influence on policy. The influences that concern for global warming is having on policy are of the level-headed variety. Lomborg, for all his rhetoric, is arguing for the status quo.

Perhaps I am naive, but I think that excessive panic over global warming can be defeated with reason and evidence and truthfulness, and much the same goes for the anti-panic (and anti-reasonable) panic of The Great Global Warming Swindle.

Not panic, nor indifference, but determination is what we need.