I have taken a recent interest in Bill Nye, of "Science Guy" fame. The internet is full of free content featuring Nye, including, on iTunes, a video of his 2006 lecture at Eastern Connecticut University. He has interesting stories about science, sun dials, and ideas about the ways individuals can "change the world." While discussing climate change, he displayed an image of an enormous hurricane that hit the gulf region in 2005. The storm was not Katrina, though - it was Rita.
Occurring less than a month after Katrina, Rita was a more powerful storm, but was less costly in terms of lives lost and damage. People rarely remember Rita, and seem to only recall Katrina when talking about the ongoings in New Orleans. Rita, though more powerful than Katrina, was not the most powerful hurricane during the 2005 season. That storm was Wilma, the most powerful one ever recorded in the North Atlantic. These three storms are all in the top ten of most powerful hurricanes in the North Atlantic, and they all occurred in one season.
The storms of eight years ago may seem like a distant calamity, so let us consider a more recent example, cyclone Haiyan. As the death toll in the Philippines in the wake of cyclone Haiyan nears 4000, reports have judged it to be one of the most powerful cyclones in the history of weather measurements. The seeming escalation of these storms is only observation.
Observation of weather events is a past time of humans. While pre-historic peoples did not leave a written record of the climate, I imagine they discussed the weather. Perhaps chit-chat about the weather drove the development of language. One can only imagine the importance of sun, rain, and moderate temperatures for early people, and what they must have said and thought when nature failed to deliver the anticipated norms. This tradition continues today, and science has come to be able to predict and explain it. Scientists record the extremes and the normalcy. Through these observations and studies, an alarming trend has emerged.
Climate is changing.
Using the scientific method, making that observation is the first step. Most people, through personal observations, have, in one way or another, come to this conclusion. Colloquially, the statement, "so much for global warming," on a cold day damages the reputation of what these people know from their own observations; but at the core, no intelligent, thinking, reasonable person doubts global climate change. What people doubt is the role of human industry in that change.
The subsequent steps of the scientific method is to ask testable questions about those observations, and then test them. Following this proven method, a method that has provided the basis of scientific advancement from demonstrating a round Earth, to curing disease, the scientific community has come to a consensus - an overwhelming consensus - that humans are causing global climate change. Through this, "climate change," has become synonymous with "anthropogenic climate change," but I think that dropping the implicating term of "antrhopogenic" implies room for doubt, so in the following discussion, I will use anthropogenic climate change.
Anthropogenic climate change has its doubters. Most of these people use psuedo-science, economics, or self-interest to question the science. A great example is an NPR piece about Judith Curry's feeling of uncertainty about a 97% consensus among scientists concerning anthropogenic climate change. Dr. Curry defensively argues for self-created environmentalism. She turns out lights and drives a Prius. Her argument is that a 97% consensus is insufficient given her "unknown unknowns." These questions, though not necessarily Dr. Curry's, are often things like: "if humans weren't on the planet, would temperatures rise any way"? "Will curbing pollution curb a disaster, or will it come anyway"? These are not scientific questions, and shame on Dr. Curry for posing them (or similar ones) as such!
To be fair, most of her arguments against government mandated pollution controls stem from two ideas. First, the idea that Americans (who use more natural resources than any other nation) should not have to practice any form of restraint because China will continue to modernize, using the natural resources we could have used first. This is obviously the greedy rant of a spoiled child. Second, the idea that the economy is so very fragile it cannot support new technology as government mandates. I am certain that some of the Koch brothers' 36 billion dollars (each) would be lost to them if Americans kept their tires properly inflated, but that money would be available for the American consumer to spend elsewhere. If the government had continued the fuel efficiency trend from the 1980's, how many people in the STEM fields would have been employed improving the 1985 Chevette's fuel economy (36 mpg), rather than seeing it erode to the 34 mpg 2013 Spark? To doubt American ingenuity is not only unpatriotic - it turns out it is also bad for the advancement of human kind.
In model year 2000, Honda released the Insight. It had an EPA fuel economy rating of 53 miles per gallon. In 2013, the (larger) Honda Insight obtains an EPA rating of 42 mpg. In 13 years of research, development, and marketing, Honda managed to reduce the fuel economy of their car by 20%! The ever affected Prius environmentalist can claim an impressive 50 mpg, still lower than a car designed without the technological advances of more than a decade! It seems that the non-science of people like Dr. Curry has either led engineers to stop innovating, or for marketing departments to ignore those innovations. Either way, I question the economic ideology that argues for status quo over technological advance.
In reality though, the difference between 50 mpg and 53 mpg is far less important than the difference between 10 mpg and 13 mpg (The New York Times "Wheels" blog has a good explanation of this). Which is to say, buying a Prius over a Spark (or a 1985 Chevette), is not as important as the SUV buyer purchasing an Explorer over an Expedition. By some arguments, based on the increased rare earth elements required for the Prius, the Spark may be a better choice. Why is it undesirable to have the government mandating clear labeling for the consumer to know the environmental difference between different types of cars (for example)? Will it really hurt the economy if SUV buyers save $700 on their gasoline bills and apply that to other sectors of the economy, say sectors within the US or local communities? Would it benefit the US in other ways if foreign oil was 20% less important to the country? It becomes evident that experts and politicians who make these claims are serving a different master than the pursuit of knowledge and the best interest of their constituents.
Who is that master? Without looking for sources, it seems to me that Americans in 1999 (the year of the Insight) were pretty convinced that their was a finite supply of oil, that the climate was changing anthropogenically, and that inoculating children against mortal or paralyzing illnesses was a good thing. In all of these sectors, it seems, there has been an erosion of scientific literacy over the past 14 years. I could be imagining this, but it seems like it was pretty uncommon for entire congregations to get measles, to have whooping cough outbreaks, and unthinkable to have 10% of Washington State's children go unvaccinated against horrific illnesses. It seems like the Honda Insight was ushered in with advertisements featuring wind turbines because our consumption rates had to change. Obviously, much of this shift in thinking was long in the making, but it seems like scientific literacy has declined in the past decade, much of it by the "choosing" of the populace.
The public chose this erosion in intellect by electing easily digested soundbites over earned knowledge. The public sees Jenny McCarthy telling them that her child is disabled because of vaccines, but finds it challenging to understand CDC studies. The public sees Fox News questioning science daily, but finds reading scientific abstracts time consuming. "Grassroots" Tea Party activists and ideas are bought and paid for by the Koch brothers, tested and tuned to mobilize and unite the far right. The issue is that people are being told what to think by the uninformed (Jenny McCarthy) and the wealthy (Tea Party), rather than using scientific advancement to think for themselves. In a word, the problem is laziness.
In the press, the Millennial generation often has negative coverage about its inability to think and its overprotective parents - basically, its laziness. The rag goes something along the lines that millennial children were raised with constant rewards and encouragement, but when they turn into adults, the world is actually a hard place with a shrinking middle class. This, supposedly, leaves them unprepared to actually work through the challenges they face. While the Millennial children have a challenging world to face when they grow into adults (which may make them unhappy), they did not make these decisions. The Tea Party is made up of old, conservative, religious, white men, and it is this demographic that decided to make cars less fuel efficient, and the world less scientific.
While the last ten years may have been revealing in the changing tide of the American opinion of science, it has been the last thirty years (or more) that has seen the silent work of the very wealthy to change this perception. Newt Gingrich taught politicians how to attach negative associations to people, groups, or ideas, rather than debate the issues in the nineties. Gingrich did not invent this method of politics, but he was essential in uniting a party (in his case the Republicans) to create the same negative associations. Today we see the effects of this when President Obama is associated with socialism. (A politician does not have to call Mr. Obama a socialist directly, s/he may say "Obama's socialist medicine plan," enough that Obama becomes linked to socialism. Conversely, "Romney's corporate agenda," repeated enough, and Romney himself becomes corporate. Not great examples, but the point remains.) This seems like a simple degradation of the American statesman. Unfortunately, it implies to the American conscience that it is not the issues that need to be debated, but the person, i.e. it is the scientist, not the science that matters.
Given a debate between Jenny McCarthy-sex icon turned mom- and some stuffy medical doctor or PhD from the CDC, the science becomes unimportant. What is actually being decided is a popularity contest between our "first crush," and the person who jabs needles into crying children. Young parents rush to abandon public health. Obviously, philanthropic, cancer-crusading David Koch would not support this. Yet, his libertarian views always place profits over public health. If the public will choose to not vaccinate their children, they may also accept the argument that pollution prevents skin cancer.
Koch began his unraveling of a thinking America more than a decade before Gingrich. Koch ran (as the vice-presidential candidate) in a campaign against Reagan. Contrary to popularly held sentiments, Reagan was not an ultra-conservative. One reason he did so well in the polls was that he appealed to the middle of the political spectrum. The Libertarian ticket was rejected without memory, persuading the Kochs that with enough money, the thinking ability of Americans could be purchased. Thirty years later, the oil embargo long forgotten, cars are less fuel efficient, and the Kochs are vastly more wealthy.
Up against the millions of dollars that the Kochs pump into American politics and the Smithsonian Institute (and other purveyors of science), are celebrity scientists. "Real" scientists are often members of the lower (middle) classes. Yes, they have led lives of privilege or luck that allowed them to pursue advanced degrees, but like most of us, they are not fit to be thrust into the public eye. A volcanologist may be interviewed during an eruption, but they will report the science of the situation, which fails to grab the attention of a Michael Bay-inspired idea of natural disasters (full of excitement, where the beautiful survive). The next day, the scientist will be forgotten, but Glenn Beck (who may never have said this) will be shouting through his microphone that volcanic eruptions are caused by socialists; leaving the celebrity scientists to fight these battles.
Name a celebrity scientist who is alive (this means Carl Sagan is out). The Wikipedia page about scientific celebrities has a useful list (of living and dead scientists) if you can't think of any. The two that come to my mind are Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye. The Harvard and Columbia educated Dr. Tyson is a scientist, and makes appearances on talk shows. Through this, he may reach people. Nye, a Cornell educated mechanical engineer is more a personality than a scientist. All the same, he is doing what he can to educate adults who have chosen to be ignorant, a valiant effort for the advancement of science. Mr. Nye mostly reaches out to children through a 15 year old television show. This, sadly, is the American media attention given to science.
I respect, and maybe even envy, both Nye and Tyson. I appreciate the hard work they are doing. But when they are up against the forces of ignorance that are fronted by Jenny McCarthy and Janine Turner (Maggie O'Connel in Northern Exposure), and backed by two of the richest men in the world, how will a couple of bow-tied nerds convince people that science matters? That inoculations save lives? That fuel economy matters in the economy, the environment, and foreign policy? That thinking scientifically is American and Patriotic?
I am not sure they can. Not until people choose to remember that climate is changing anthropogenically. That in 2005 there were three big hurricanes, not just one. That the future is when dreams happen, not when the wealthy prosper at the expense of the rest of us. In short, not until people decide that their thoughts are not for sale, and their children should dream of tax-payer created national heroes flying through space, just like the Tea Party did when they were kids.
Occurring less than a month after Katrina, Rita was a more powerful storm, but was less costly in terms of lives lost and damage. People rarely remember Rita, and seem to only recall Katrina when talking about the ongoings in New Orleans. Rita, though more powerful than Katrina, was not the most powerful hurricane during the 2005 season. That storm was Wilma, the most powerful one ever recorded in the North Atlantic. These three storms are all in the top ten of most powerful hurricanes in the North Atlantic, and they all occurred in one season.
The storms of eight years ago may seem like a distant calamity, so let us consider a more recent example, cyclone Haiyan. As the death toll in the Philippines in the wake of cyclone Haiyan nears 4000, reports have judged it to be one of the most powerful cyclones in the history of weather measurements. The seeming escalation of these storms is only observation.
Observation of weather events is a past time of humans. While pre-historic peoples did not leave a written record of the climate, I imagine they discussed the weather. Perhaps chit-chat about the weather drove the development of language. One can only imagine the importance of sun, rain, and moderate temperatures for early people, and what they must have said and thought when nature failed to deliver the anticipated norms. This tradition continues today, and science has come to be able to predict and explain it. Scientists record the extremes and the normalcy. Through these observations and studies, an alarming trend has emerged.
Climate is changing.
Using the scientific method, making that observation is the first step. Most people, through personal observations, have, in one way or another, come to this conclusion. Colloquially, the statement, "so much for global warming," on a cold day damages the reputation of what these people know from their own observations; but at the core, no intelligent, thinking, reasonable person doubts global climate change. What people doubt is the role of human industry in that change.
The subsequent steps of the scientific method is to ask testable questions about those observations, and then test them. Following this proven method, a method that has provided the basis of scientific advancement from demonstrating a round Earth, to curing disease, the scientific community has come to a consensus - an overwhelming consensus - that humans are causing global climate change. Through this, "climate change," has become synonymous with "anthropogenic climate change," but I think that dropping the implicating term of "antrhopogenic" implies room for doubt, so in the following discussion, I will use anthropogenic climate change.
Anthropogenic climate change has its doubters. Most of these people use psuedo-science, economics, or self-interest to question the science. A great example is an NPR piece about Judith Curry's feeling of uncertainty about a 97% consensus among scientists concerning anthropogenic climate change. Dr. Curry defensively argues for self-created environmentalism. She turns out lights and drives a Prius. Her argument is that a 97% consensus is insufficient given her "unknown unknowns." These questions, though not necessarily Dr. Curry's, are often things like: "if humans weren't on the planet, would temperatures rise any way"? "Will curbing pollution curb a disaster, or will it come anyway"? These are not scientific questions, and shame on Dr. Curry for posing them (or similar ones) as such!
To be fair, most of her arguments against government mandated pollution controls stem from two ideas. First, the idea that Americans (who use more natural resources than any other nation) should not have to practice any form of restraint because China will continue to modernize, using the natural resources we could have used first. This is obviously the greedy rant of a spoiled child. Second, the idea that the economy is so very fragile it cannot support new technology as government mandates. I am certain that some of the Koch brothers' 36 billion dollars (each) would be lost to them if Americans kept their tires properly inflated, but that money would be available for the American consumer to spend elsewhere. If the government had continued the fuel efficiency trend from the 1980's, how many people in the STEM fields would have been employed improving the 1985 Chevette's fuel economy (36 mpg), rather than seeing it erode to the 34 mpg 2013 Spark? To doubt American ingenuity is not only unpatriotic - it turns out it is also bad for the advancement of human kind.
In model year 2000, Honda released the Insight. It had an EPA fuel economy rating of 53 miles per gallon. In 2013, the (larger) Honda Insight obtains an EPA rating of 42 mpg. In 13 years of research, development, and marketing, Honda managed to reduce the fuel economy of their car by 20%! The ever affected Prius environmentalist can claim an impressive 50 mpg, still lower than a car designed without the technological advances of more than a decade! It seems that the non-science of people like Dr. Curry has either led engineers to stop innovating, or for marketing departments to ignore those innovations. Either way, I question the economic ideology that argues for status quo over technological advance.
In reality though, the difference between 50 mpg and 53 mpg is far less important than the difference between 10 mpg and 13 mpg (The New York Times "Wheels" blog has a good explanation of this). Which is to say, buying a Prius over a Spark (or a 1985 Chevette), is not as important as the SUV buyer purchasing an Explorer over an Expedition. By some arguments, based on the increased rare earth elements required for the Prius, the Spark may be a better choice. Why is it undesirable to have the government mandating clear labeling for the consumer to know the environmental difference between different types of cars (for example)? Will it really hurt the economy if SUV buyers save $700 on their gasoline bills and apply that to other sectors of the economy, say sectors within the US or local communities? Would it benefit the US in other ways if foreign oil was 20% less important to the country? It becomes evident that experts and politicians who make these claims are serving a different master than the pursuit of knowledge and the best interest of their constituents.
Who is that master? Without looking for sources, it seems to me that Americans in 1999 (the year of the Insight) were pretty convinced that their was a finite supply of oil, that the climate was changing anthropogenically, and that inoculating children against mortal or paralyzing illnesses was a good thing. In all of these sectors, it seems, there has been an erosion of scientific literacy over the past 14 years. I could be imagining this, but it seems like it was pretty uncommon for entire congregations to get measles, to have whooping cough outbreaks, and unthinkable to have 10% of Washington State's children go unvaccinated against horrific illnesses. It seems like the Honda Insight was ushered in with advertisements featuring wind turbines because our consumption rates had to change. Obviously, much of this shift in thinking was long in the making, but it seems like scientific literacy has declined in the past decade, much of it by the "choosing" of the populace.
The public chose this erosion in intellect by electing easily digested soundbites over earned knowledge. The public sees Jenny McCarthy telling them that her child is disabled because of vaccines, but finds it challenging to understand CDC studies. The public sees Fox News questioning science daily, but finds reading scientific abstracts time consuming. "Grassroots" Tea Party activists and ideas are bought and paid for by the Koch brothers, tested and tuned to mobilize and unite the far right. The issue is that people are being told what to think by the uninformed (Jenny McCarthy) and the wealthy (Tea Party), rather than using scientific advancement to think for themselves. In a word, the problem is laziness.
In the press, the Millennial generation often has negative coverage about its inability to think and its overprotective parents - basically, its laziness. The rag goes something along the lines that millennial children were raised with constant rewards and encouragement, but when they turn into adults, the world is actually a hard place with a shrinking middle class. This, supposedly, leaves them unprepared to actually work through the challenges they face. While the Millennial children have a challenging world to face when they grow into adults (which may make them unhappy), they did not make these decisions. The Tea Party is made up of old, conservative, religious, white men, and it is this demographic that decided to make cars less fuel efficient, and the world less scientific.
While the last ten years may have been revealing in the changing tide of the American opinion of science, it has been the last thirty years (or more) that has seen the silent work of the very wealthy to change this perception. Newt Gingrich taught politicians how to attach negative associations to people, groups, or ideas, rather than debate the issues in the nineties. Gingrich did not invent this method of politics, but he was essential in uniting a party (in his case the Republicans) to create the same negative associations. Today we see the effects of this when President Obama is associated with socialism. (A politician does not have to call Mr. Obama a socialist directly, s/he may say "Obama's socialist medicine plan," enough that Obama becomes linked to socialism. Conversely, "Romney's corporate agenda," repeated enough, and Romney himself becomes corporate. Not great examples, but the point remains.) This seems like a simple degradation of the American statesman. Unfortunately, it implies to the American conscience that it is not the issues that need to be debated, but the person, i.e. it is the scientist, not the science that matters.
Given a debate between Jenny McCarthy-sex icon turned mom- and some stuffy medical doctor or PhD from the CDC, the science becomes unimportant. What is actually being decided is a popularity contest between our "first crush," and the person who jabs needles into crying children. Young parents rush to abandon public health. Obviously, philanthropic, cancer-crusading David Koch would not support this. Yet, his libertarian views always place profits over public health. If the public will choose to not vaccinate their children, they may also accept the argument that pollution prevents skin cancer.
Koch began his unraveling of a thinking America more than a decade before Gingrich. Koch ran (as the vice-presidential candidate) in a campaign against Reagan. Contrary to popularly held sentiments, Reagan was not an ultra-conservative. One reason he did so well in the polls was that he appealed to the middle of the political spectrum. The Libertarian ticket was rejected without memory, persuading the Kochs that with enough money, the thinking ability of Americans could be purchased. Thirty years later, the oil embargo long forgotten, cars are less fuel efficient, and the Kochs are vastly more wealthy.
Up against the millions of dollars that the Kochs pump into American politics and the Smithsonian Institute (and other purveyors of science), are celebrity scientists. "Real" scientists are often members of the lower (middle) classes. Yes, they have led lives of privilege or luck that allowed them to pursue advanced degrees, but like most of us, they are not fit to be thrust into the public eye. A volcanologist may be interviewed during an eruption, but they will report the science of the situation, which fails to grab the attention of a Michael Bay-inspired idea of natural disasters (full of excitement, where the beautiful survive). The next day, the scientist will be forgotten, but Glenn Beck (who may never have said this) will be shouting through his microphone that volcanic eruptions are caused by socialists; leaving the celebrity scientists to fight these battles.
Name a celebrity scientist who is alive (this means Carl Sagan is out). The Wikipedia page about scientific celebrities has a useful list (of living and dead scientists) if you can't think of any. The two that come to my mind are Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye. The Harvard and Columbia educated Dr. Tyson is a scientist, and makes appearances on talk shows. Through this, he may reach people. Nye, a Cornell educated mechanical engineer is more a personality than a scientist. All the same, he is doing what he can to educate adults who have chosen to be ignorant, a valiant effort for the advancement of science. Mr. Nye mostly reaches out to children through a 15 year old television show. This, sadly, is the American media attention given to science.
I respect, and maybe even envy, both Nye and Tyson. I appreciate the hard work they are doing. But when they are up against the forces of ignorance that are fronted by Jenny McCarthy and Janine Turner (Maggie O'Connel in Northern Exposure), and backed by two of the richest men in the world, how will a couple of bow-tied nerds convince people that science matters? That inoculations save lives? That fuel economy matters in the economy, the environment, and foreign policy? That thinking scientifically is American and Patriotic?
I am not sure they can. Not until people choose to remember that climate is changing anthropogenically. That in 2005 there were three big hurricanes, not just one. That the future is when dreams happen, not when the wealthy prosper at the expense of the rest of us. In short, not until people decide that their thoughts are not for sale, and their children should dream of tax-payer created national heroes flying through space, just like the Tea Party did when they were kids.
