For some time I remained staunchly agnostic on the science of climate change, fortified by the fact that nothing that Australia does will make a difference, either directly to the climate or in leading the world. In some ways we are leading the world, driven by a coalition of two parties who can be best described as the Trade Union Party and the New Communists.
A leading scientist in Australia has written a book that gives a good handle on the science, the history and the pressures acting on scientists that have led to what he calls The Climate Caper. That is the name of his book, which I have summarised on line.
It provides some more dots to add to the pattern sketched by a previous book that could have been called The Anti-Nuclear Power Caper.
This is a summary of the policies of the New Communist Party in Australia.
Rafe,
I apologize in advance, but as you raise the topic, I’m going to go on here at length.
You mention Grover’s book on nuclear power. Unfortunately that book was written in 1980 before Chernobyl and, of course, the current Fukushima triple meltdown.
I live in Japan about 400 km from Fukushima Daichi, so fortunately far enough away from any place that received significant fallout. But I would guess more and more the leftover cesium 137 will creep in very, very small proportions into the food supply. Also, as the common way of removing refuse in Japan is to burn it … this will also gradually cause contamination to spread.
The arguments about the effects of low level radiation seem to be *all* over the place. It’s very hard sorting through it all. There are some very serious people who actually argue it’s good for you. I would certainly like to believe that.
There are so many different issues involved here, it’s hard to straighten them all out, just to sketch out a few of the issues:
1. To what extent do nuclear operators require consent of people who might receive fallout? If I receive fallout and the risk to me is ambiguous, do I deserve some type of compensation? These sound like strange questions, but if you look at what some of the residents in Fukushima, I’ve seen many interviews where these people just break out in tears because they are so bewildered by the situation.They don’t know who to believe, and they are frightened. It seems some how unfair to put people through such uncertainty.
2. Is nuclear power really cheaper to use? Is it being used efficiently? Should it be subsidized by the government? In this case, the government of Japan has really used its influence and finances to create the industry. Without this aid, the industry might not have developed to anything near what it is now. If nuclear power is so good, why did it require such state involvement?
3. When evaluating risk and probabilities of getting cancer are researchers applying some type of subjective theory of probability or an objective one or some sort of mixed theory? How does one interpret these probabilities? Does it even make sense to talk about really small chances of getting cancer when we don’t have any clear model how someone *would* get cancer?
4. To what extent in recent years are environmentalists themselves now responsible for *aiding* the current nuclear revival because they *fear* global warming? People like James Lovelock, who is responsible for the Gaia theory — now argues nuclear energy is our salvation. So are governments pushing off nuclear energy *now* because of environmentalists? US President Obama is a big supporter of nuclear energy.
Having tried to sort through just a bit of this stuff, my own tendency is to think nuclear power isn’t as dangerous as I initially thought it was … but also to consider that probably the risk of low level radiation is at this point poorly understood. Here is one of the better articles I’ve found on this:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110405/full/news.2011.206.html
My own really limited encounter with people arguing over this topic is to find that ordinary everyday people are really uncomfortable with radiation, but that intellectuals rather scoff at this and insist we need it to stop global warming so the government should subsidize it and support it.
My own current view, which changes daily, is that low level radiation is probably much safer than people think, but if the private sector were developing nuclear energy, as opposed to it being aggressively pushed by the government, it would have been developed in a much safer fashion — especially if clear accountability for problems caused were given to the power company.
I suppose I should check out John Grover’s book, but also if you or anyone else has something more recent to recommend, I’d really appreciate it. I’m also really interested to hear opinions on this topic.
Thanks Matt, you don’t need to apologize for a big comment on a very big topic. I am on the road so I can’t say much right now, all your questions need to be addressed with up to date information. One of the problems is that the technological development stalled in the US due to the anti-nuclear program that Carter took on board, and possibly some later presidents. Someone nominated Clinton.
However the main interest of the Grover book was to document the international length and breadth of the anti-nuclear movement and the kind of interests that were driving it. And the way that the mass of the scientific and engineering professions were marginalized in the debate. And the performance of some of our media. Etc.
I would like to see comments on The Climate Caper as well!
Rafe,
Fair crack of the whip! Next time we will all be invited to a Tea Party. I am uncomfortable with critical rationalism being appropriated by hard right politics – as I would be also with hard left. The ideological divisions that are ripping America apart are raising their ugly heads in Australia also. Karl Popper and of late, David Deutsch, have more to offer than being appropriated by such political dogma. Hopefully clear heads will prevail in how humans manage the planet over the next decades.
I don’t know if the Tea Party has a special concern about climate change.
On the issues that I have flagged, it is apparent from the policies of the Green Party in Australia that communism has not gone away because the kind of people who would have joined the CP are now the stalwarts of the Greens. The two chief points are (1) the groups and the tactics used by the opponents of nuclear power and (2) the abuse of climate models to produce worst case scenarios of climate change which are being used by the Greens in Australia to stand over their coalition partner and put in place drastic and disruptive plans to counter CO2 emissions. The abuse of reason and scientific method by the Greens should be of interest to critical rationalists.
Rafe,
Just to add a little to my thoughts, hopefully clarifying a little …
I’m not familiar with Australian politics, but in America I’m getting the sense now that environmentalists have now divided into two camps, and a lot of them now support nuclear power. They see it as a way to deal with global warming. I’m not satisfied with the approach some of these environmentalist take to *advocating* nuclear power, but that doesn’t necessarily mean nuclear power is bad. It might possibly be the flip side of the same problem you are discussing.
Nuclear power has been highly politicized since its inception, I think. Especially as it was connected with nuclear weapons and national self-defense. The government early on spent an incredible amount of money subsidizing it, and clearly was not up front about possible risks. This certainly is something that tarnished the image almost immediately. I’m at least suspicious there was a grain of utopianism here, as well.
Given the current world we live in, it’s a bit difficult to imagine, but I wonder how nuclear energy would have developed had not the government been so aggressively pushing it. While the promise of nuclear energy is much cheaper energy costs, I don’t think that has yet materialized. Would profit oriented power companies ever have built the kind of massive plants we have in the world today? I tend to think they’d have continued to use cheaper more conventional means to generate power, while building much smaller more experimental nuclear power plants. Surely, they’d have been *more* concerned than the government over potential accidents that could cost them astronomically. As it is now, at least in Japan, the power companies sort of pass the buck. They use their political influence to weaken national standards, then blame the government if something goes wrong. They say, we were complying with all national regulatory rules *after* having spent large sums of money to weaken those very standards. And, of course, the government limits their liability!
So had energy not been so politicized, subsidized, and regulated, perhaps nuclear energy would have developed at a slower, more conservative pace — it might not have even been such an irritant for environmentalists. It might have been a poorer target.
Or perhaps this is all just pie in the sky, because governments all seem heavily involved in energy policy these days.
In his first major speech as chief scientist, Professor Chubb said the climate debate in Australia ”borders on the appalling”.
”There are probably people now who think I am partisan because I’m saying the science is in on climate change. Well, I don’t think that’s partisan, I think that I can read English,” he said.
”I think the evidence is overwhelming. Now there are respectable people who have a different view and … their different view should factor into what we do, but when you get the overwhelming majority of people with real expertise heading in one direction, you have to take notice of that because if you wait for proof you will wait forever … The experimental sciences don’t do that. They gather evidence, critique it and do it again.”
To me Professor Chubb’s comment : “If you wait for proof you will wait forever … The experimental sciences don’t do that. They gather evidence, critique it and do it again” is in the spirit of critical rationalism.
He is a disgrace to the profession!
“In an address to the National Press Club in Canberra today, Professor Ian Chubb said climate science deniers should not be given an equal platform with mainstream scientists, and he criticised the media for giving sceptics the space to make their arguments.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/australias-chief-scientist-professor-ian-chubb-has-criticised-the-standards-of-the-climate-change-debate/story-fn59niix-1226079348423
What does he mean by climate science deniers? Is he talking about Garth Paltridtge?
Climate science is not his speciality.
This is a checklist of questions for scientists to how they stand on the debate.
1. Do you distance yourself from the claims by scientists who deliberately exaggerate the rate of warming and the dangers of climate change?
2. Are you prepared to support the efforts of people who want better investigation of dubious claims (which may be fraudulent), and the push to make raw data available for checking?
Clearly there is a great deal more fraud and bordeline practice than I realise, being a child of the relatively innocent sixties when many of us regarded science as a quasi-religous quest for the truth, regulated by the strictest standards. See this study http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/news/events/frey.pdf
• 17% of post-doctoral fellows said they would select or omit data to improve results; and
• 81% would select, omit or fabricate data to win research grants.
3. Are you prepared to publicly rebuke the non-scientists like Al Gore and Tim Flannery who exaggerate the dangers of climate change?
4. Do you acknowledge the positive effects of mild warming?
5. Do you think there will be more than one or two degrees of warming over the next 100 years?
6. If you accept the high range of warming, say four degrees over the century, (one degree of warming in 25 years) can you explain why we have to take drastic action now instead of waiting to check the actual rise over 20 or 3o years?
7. Can you explain in layman’s language the difficulties and complications of using models to forecast temperature, rainfall, etc?
8. After you have got on top of 7 can you explain why the Garnaut report used a worst case scenario as the basis for his recommendations?
9. Do you acknowledge that criticism and skepticism are the lifeblood of science?
10. Given 9, can you explain to a lay audience why critics and skeptics who operate on a base of evidence and reasonable arguments should be heard (politely)?
10. Do you acknowledge that the reputation of science depends on the integrity of scientists in their willingness to control fraudulent practices, and upon the effective functioning of the institutions of science like conferences and the peer review process?
11. Do you accept that the integrity of scientists and the institutions of science have been challenged by the rise of Big Science (and uncritical “normal” scientists) and by the government funding of Big Science?
12. Are you prepared to resist that challenge, if you can do so without prejudice to your career?
13. Are you prepared to resist that challenge, even if it does prejudice your career (or if retired, your standing in the field)?
Matt,
Historically, thorium reactors were under-budgeted and nuclear reactors subsidized. After all, where else was the government to find such plentiful amounts of nuclear waste? I’ve been disappointed with such little research into thorium reactors. It indicates what the priorities of most nations have been for the past fifty years. To my knowledge, there’s only one in existence, even though thorium produces comparatively little-to-no waste, has a short half-life, and cannot go critical.
The Tea Party do have a special concern re climate change. Science is about always being open to challenge i.e. healthy scepticism, but dogmatic cynicism is deadly.
URL: :http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/opinion/republicans-against-science.html?_r=4&src=ismr_ap_lo_mst_fb
Republicans Against Science
By PAUL KRUGMAN
……………………………consider recent statements by the two men who actually are serious contenders for the G.O.P. nomination: Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.
Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got peoples’ attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”
That’s a remarkable statement — or maybe the right adjective is “vile.”
The second part of Mr. Perry’s statement is, as it happens, just false: the scientific consensus about man-made global warming — which includes 97 percent to 98 percent of researchers in the field, according to the National Academy of Sciences — is getting stronger, not weaker, as the evidence for climate change just keeps mounting.
In fact, if you follow climate science at all you know that the main development over the past few years has been growing concern that projections of future climate are underestimating the likely amount of warming. Warnings that we may face civilization-threatening temperature change by the end of the century, once considered outlandish, are now coming out of mainstream research groups.
But never mind that, Mr. Perry suggests; those scientists are just in it for the money, “manipulating data” to create a fake threat. In his book “Fed Up,” he dismissed climate science as a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart.”
I could point out that Mr. Perry is buying into a truly crazy conspiracy theory, which asserts that thousands of scientists all around the world are on the take, with not one willing to break the code of silence. I could also point out that multiple investigations into charges of intellectual malpractice on the part of climate scientists have ended up exonerating the accused researchers of all accusations. But never mind: Mr. Perry and those who think like him know what they want to believe, and their response to anyone who contradicts them is to start a witch hunt.
So how has Mr. Romney, the other leading contender for the G.O.P. nomination, responded to Mr. Perry’s challenge? In trademark fashion: By running away. In the past, Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, has strongly endorsed the notion that man-made climate change is a real concern. But, last week, he softened that to a statement that he thinks the world is getting hotter, but “I don’t know that” and “I don’t know if it’s mostly caused by humans.” Moral courage!
Of course, we know what’s motivating Mr. Romney’s sudden lack of conviction. According to Public Policy Polling, only 21 percent of Republican voters in Iowa believe in global warming (and only 35 percent believe in evolution). Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates, one that Mr. Romney is determined to pass at all costs.
So it’s now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party’s base wants him to believe.
And the deepening anti-intellectualism of the political right, both within and beyond the G.O.P., extends far beyond the issue of climate change.
Lately, for example, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has gone beyond its long-term preference for the economic ideas of “charlatans and cranks” — as one of former President George W. Bush’s chief economic advisers famously put it — to a general denigration of hard thinking about matters economic. Pay no attention to “fancy theories” that conflict with “common sense,” the Journal tells us. Because why should anyone imagine that you need more than gut feelings to analyze things like financial crises and recessions?
Now, we don’t know who will win next year’s presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect
Dogmatism & lack of trust in science that results thereof drives people like the Conservatives in America (in general). Why these people are so wary of admitting that there’s a real problem? The reason is greed of the big businesses, industry giants who will be on the losing side should Climate change becomes a matter of real concern to all public, they will face more regulations, they have to implement new technologies that will cost them considerable sum of money, that why the business executives and politicians (who rely on businesses to fund them) are scratching each others back to save there skin from different non-climatic hazards (financial, for the businesses & ideological, for the politicians) resulting from the phenomena known to us as Climate Change.
Hey, Rafe, do you think scientists all around the world who support the current model of global warming & climate change are all sold out to the disguised Communists?
There are many models, as many as a dozen that are used by the IPCC. There is no “current model”.
In case you think it is silly to talk about the influence of communists these days, we have at least one undisguised communist in the small party that holds the balance of power in Australia.
Sorry, apparently I’ve made a mistake in word selection. I wasn’t talking about models that describe the phenomenon of climate change, I was actually referring to the common theme of all the scientific works that are united in accepting the phenomenon as something real & dangerous. I should not have used the term “Model” to describe my intended referent.
As far as ‘Communists” are concerned, one undisguised communist can’t & don’t defined the political commitment of all the members of the party that person belongs to; among the Bolsheviks who were united in the CPSU of Soviet Russia, there were many factions e.g Trotskites., Zinovievites etc., just because N. Bukharin’s supported a form of limited capitalism doesn’t necessarily mean all communists are supportive of the NEP of Lenin.
“Foreword by Christopher Monckton”
So now we know what kind of company we’re keeping. The self-styled “Lord” Monckton, who’s not actually a lord at all, but who evidently likes the prestige of the term. Gotta love it.
He’s widely regarded as a right-wing nutter with no qualifications whatsoever to claim any authority on climate change science. At the risk of committing ad-hominem, I must reserve judgement about The Climate Caper (not having read it). But the author really is scraping the bottom of the barrel if Lord Monckton is the best he can get to endorse it.
Regarding the claim, “the fact that nothing that Australia does will make a difference”, I must entirely disagree. Our carbon tax may have a small impact on climate change, but by far the greatest impact will be to demonstrate a working model for pricing emissions. Nobody was willing to commit to an unproven scheme, and nobody ever would have if they had used the logic, “but nobody else is doing it”, or “who knows what effect it would have on the economy!” Except for us. Australia is doing some extremely important policy trailblazing, and it makes sense that we’re the ones to do it: a small nation with a relatively stable economy. Our experience with the carbon tax will provide invaluable data for other countries when considering similar schemes for putting a price on emissions.
Why would anyone want to put tax on the the emission of plant food while the jury is still out on (1) whether increased atmospheric CO2 is a cause or an effect of warming (2) whether we are still in a warming cycle (3) whether we can have any detectable influence on atmospheric CO2, (f it matters) given that humans only account for 4% of atmospheric CO2, and on top of all that – (4) while other countries are running for cover from previous talk about taking action?
The jury is no longer out on 1-3. Unless you are including in your jury every unqualified Joe with an opinion. I suppose a jury made up of climate scientists who publish peer-reviewed work would skew things away from the result you’re after? 97-97% consensus among climate scientists is not a hung jury.
As for point (4), that’s precisely the logic that maintains a perpetual state of inaction. If other countries really are “running for cover” from climate action, that’s reason to be a leader, not a follower.
Rafe,
I still don’t understand why this dialogue was opened up in the Critical Rationalism Blog. I would have thought that Karl Popper’s legacy would have been better served by staying away from lay analysis of such a politically contentious topic at the technical level.
It seems to me anyway that recent research corroborates warming, to the surprise of climate change cynics e.g. the Berkeley Earth project
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/climate-skeptics-perform-independent-analysis-finally-convinced-earth-is-getting-warmer.ars
In this case the hypothesis that warming has not been significant was falsified.
The contribution of human agency was not directly addressed in this study but it seems to me that you are on a hiding to nothing if you are predicting that further studies will discount human agency. If human agency is significant then I for one support intervention from Australia even at a symbolic level.
Bruce