I Was Just Thinking ...

By Harry Seitz

You Say ‘Heat Wave,’ I Say ‘Runaway Greenhouse Effect’

Bias in the media, and in people in general, can be a difficult thing to confront. Call someone on his or her bias, and he or she can turn right around and accuse you of being biased, too, and to a certain degree, this is true. We are all inherently biased. It is an integral part of how our minds operate. People evolved for the greater part of human history in forests and jungles, and our minds adapted in accordance with this primordial environment. Our environments have changed, and the technologies at our disposal have changed, but our minds have not.

Seeing an animal drink from a stream is no longer the only qualification available to us for drinking from that stream ourselves, but a human today would interpret this scene much in the same way as our distant ancestors, and assume that if an animal can drink this water, so can he, if necessary. Regardless of whether or not this turns out to be true, it does nothing to quantify the nature of this water in particular, other than in the broadest possible terms of immediately lethal versus immediately non-lethal.

If scientists were to announce that trace amounts of an element in that water, while harmless to humans at present, could potentially have a negative effect on the environment, a typical person would probably accept that, yes, anything is potentially possible, but also largely discount the risk, rationalizing that if an animal can drink it, and I can drink it, how bad could it be?

Responsible scientific statements are never explicit. For example, smoking may cause lung cancer, or may cause birth defects. Scientific statements don’t usually offer a clear course of action or a direct causation, because in science, as in life, almost nothing is 100 percent certain, and all responsible science acknowledges this uncertainty, to however miniscule a degree. Herein lies the integrity of science. It isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t attempt to present itself as perfect, but it is the best tool by far that human beings have for quantifying reality. Sacrificing any pretension of absolute certainty is in line with the reality of the world, and it is the cost of eliminating bias.

So how is a person who isn’t a scientist ever supposed to objectively analyze information, and separate fact from opinion? For the answer to this, we have to go all the way back to the third grade. If you were lucky enough to have a decent teacher at around this age, you might remember a student, or maybe even yourself, starting an argument with the phrase “I think,” and being immediately cut off. At this point, the teacher says, as diplomatically as possible, that what you think and believe just doesn’t matter. Who are you, anyway? No one cares what you think. All that matters are the facts and the data. You can formulate an opinion based on these facts and data, and that opinion, right or wrong, will at least be based on some semblance of reality. But you can not simply pull an opinion out of thin air based on what you think, and then attempt to articulate reality around it, because this is misleading and irresponsible, both to yourself and anyone else foolish enough to take you seriously.

So we’re all biased and flawed, but most of us can still distinguish facts from opinions, even if it does require a small degree of mental discipline. When encountering new information for the first time, we have to make a conscious effort to put aside our beliefs and opinions for a moment, and focus solely on the content of the information. We have to decide what can be considered a fact, and what can be considered an opinion. This isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Take a recent article published on a conservative website that argues, among other things, that global warming is little more than an invention of the liberal agenda, which seeks to increase government restrictions on industry, business, and in general. There are several obvious flaws in this article, such as the opening statement implying that scientists now agree that global warming was never really a problem. Scientists, and people in general, don’t tend to debate the past. The issue has always been what the potential effects might be in the future.

Putting much of the article’s agenda and rhetoric aside (as we’d be here forever otherwise), its three main points were as follows: A: There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate; B: The heat of the earth couldn’t rise anyway because of the conservation of energy; and C: Some scientists actually think that heat causes CO2.

Let’s start with statement A: There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. This statement attempts to present itself as a fact, and it is, in fact, a misleading fabrication. Independent research data from nonpartisan scientific organizations has confirmed to a 95 percent degree of certainty that there is a correlation between human-produced CO2 and greenhouse emissions and atmospheric temperature increases. When a hypothesis is confirmed by independent research to this degree of certainty, it is generally considered to be a fact. This is not to say that there will be catastrophic heating, and the earth will flood, or that it won’t, but that the effect is there. So unless you personally believe that there is no correlation, and this personal belief carries more weight with you than the general consensus of modern science, we can dismiss this first statement as categorically false. No responsible scientific statement in regard to causal events with any degree of separation would ever state with absolute certainty that catastrophic events are inevitable, and all of the data in this case supports a positive correlation between human-produced greenhouse emissions and atmospheric temperature increase.

B) The heat of the earth couldn’t rise anyway because of the conservation of energy. Here it gets a little trickier. The conservation of energy is a scientific fact after all, isn’t it? This statement is an example of a fact disguised as an opinion in order to obfuscate itself with an intent to mislead. Yes, the conservation of energy is an accepted scientific fact, but conservation of energy does not mean constant temperature. If you burn coal, the energy is conserved and transferred into heat, and the temperature goes up. If you were to detonate every nuclear weapon on earth simultaneously, the total amount of all the energy on earth would be conserved and remain the same, but some of it would be in a vastly different form. In short, this is a diversionary tactic. The conservation of energy has almost nothing to do with the nature of CO2 and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere with regard to the issue of global warming, and one could even argue that the conservation of energy in the universe is being affected by the heat trapped inside the atmosphere (and that we’re destroying the universe!).

C) Some scientists actually think that heat causes CO2. This is another fact disguised as an opinion. Scientists actually know that heat can and does cause CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Add heat to water and it boils, and the resulting water vapor acts as a greenhouse gas. Ignite gasoline and CO2 is one of the end products. When the outside temperature rises, people start using air conditioners and consuming more electricity, which in turn raises CO2 emissions down the line. Add enough heat to anything and short of obliterating it, you’ll reduce it to its component parts, whether it’s CO2 trapped in the soil or H2O trapped in a rock. And if heat causes CO2, this still qualifies as a correlation, so this article has contradicted itself. And on a side note, this article also failed to include these or any other clear examples of heat causing CO2, as these examples would illustrate that the point, while true, is moot.

This last statement C is, among other things, a trap. By this point in the article, most people who accept global warming are so appalled by the treachery they detect that they dismiss the fact that heat causes CO2 as a fallacy out of hand, which puts them in the wrong and opens them up to attack. In a different context, with a moment to think about it, most people who’ve gotten past the 6th grade will realize that yes, heat can and does cause CO2. This is a tautological statement, a truth so general and wrapped around itself that on its own, it basically amounts to saying nothing. It’s like saying that the sky is blue and the earth is round. It has nothing to do with the proposition that human-produced CO2 and greenhouse gases correlate with increased atmospheric temperature, which, again, has been confirmed by independent research to a 95 percent degree of certainty.

So the animal is drinking from the stream, and you’re drinking from the stream, and all is well (except for global warming). The element in the stream is present at, say, one part per billion. At higher levels, it could be harmful to humans, but at this level, at this time and place, it is harmless as far as drinking it goes, even by the most stringent scientific standards. The water from this stream eventually flows out into the ocean, and the element is inadvertently consumed and absorbed by plankton, wherein it accumulates. The plankton is eaten and absorbed by small fish, which are then consumed by larger fish, and so on and so forth. The percentage of the element present rises at a rate of 10 to the power of each step in the food chain, as the digestible parts of the eaten animals are consumed and expelled, while the element remains trapped in the flesh of each subsequent animal, and is, in effect, refined into a higher and higher concentration. By the time we get to an animal like a swordfish, on the 6th link of the food chain, the presence of the element has increased exponentially to the point that every pound of this juicy delicacy has as much of the clinically cancer-inducing substance present in it as 100,000 pounds of plankton, or one million pounds of water from the stream.

So should people be banned from drinking from the stream, or should the element be removed, or both? And how do you bring attention to this issue without being alarmist, and maybe even inadvertently deceiving people into fearing the water, or fearing fish in general? Does this agenda justify these means in this case (as opposed to the article dismissing global warming)? And why didn’t science just tell us in the first place that this would lead to deadly fish, instead of just implying that it potentially could?

When you’re on the other side of the argument, the motives behind pandering to subjectivity, aiming at the lowest common denominator, and conscientiously intending to mislead become a little bit more clear, but no less wrong. People will be never be intelligent enough to understand what they don’t want to, but you have to at least give them the option. Eventually, people will have to become more concerned about the reality of a situation, and less concerned about simply validating their opinion, regardless of the motive. Sadly, most of the time, it’s just easier to drink out of the toilet bowl with the dog.