I Found a Merchant of Doubt

I guess this is an example of what my last blog was about. In that blog I talked about Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway, an exposé on the efforts of industries such as tobacco and oil to obfuscate information on the dangers and consequences of their products: in the case of tobacco, cancer, in that of oil, global warming.

Nicolas Loris of the Heritage Foundation

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/11/New-EPA-Inspector-General-Report-One-More-Reason-to-Reject-Climate-Change-Regulation#_edn12

If you click the above link, you’ll find a piece by Nicolas Loris on the Heritage Foundation web site in which he tries to cast doubt on the work of the EPA and the science of global warming. Giving some context to this link, the Supreme Court, in their ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA found that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are pollutants and as such the authority and the responsibility to regulate such pollutants fell to the EPA under its mandate under the Clean Air Act.

            In response to the ruling, the EPA produced a Technical Support Document (TSD), a report on the science of increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere and the consequences that has for global warming, rising sea levels, and the acidification of the oceans.

            Loris’ critique of the TSD centers on a procedural review of the TSD from the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG). In doing the procedural review, the OIG reclassified the TSD from an Influential Scientific Assessment to a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment. These two kinds of assessments have differing processing procedures. The OIG found that the procedures for the TSD had not fully followed those of a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment under its reclassification.

            Please bear with me a while longer. I know this is complicated. It is meant to be. And that is part of the problem.

            The reason this process is so complicated is because big business and industry lobbyists back in the beginning of the George W. Bush administration were able to attach a rider on a spending bill that imposed burdensome regulations and red tape on the EPA and other government agencies that rely on science for their work. This rider, The Data Quality Act, is intended to generate reports upon reports, like the review by the OIG, and lead to analysis paralysis.

Loris says that the procedural review “should bring to light the problems with the EPA’s approach to greenhouse gas regulation: The EPA refuses to seriously consider broad dissenting science on the causes of climate change.” The procedural review found that certain procedures for a certain type of assessment were not fully followed. The procedural review did not find anything wrong with the science used in the TSD, nor did it find that the TSD lacked the requirements for rulemaking. By performing a mental bait and switch, changing the topic from procedures to science, Loris would have you believe otherwise.

            At another point he claims that the people at the EPA “bypass the legislative process” in regulating greenhouse gasses. In Massachusetts v. EPA the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had to regulate greenhouse gasses under the authority granted the agency under the Clean Air Act, a law passed by Congress. No legislative process bypassed here.

            Loris would lead you to believe that the EPA is remiss in its responsibilities by heading one section of his critique EPA: Ignoring Dissenting Science. Yet, reading the substance of the section you find that a couple of the “dissenters” don’t disagree with the scientific conclusion that CO2 is warming our planet. They merely disagree as to the extent of the warming that will take place. Most importantly, Loris offers no science that has been performed that shows that the plant is warming for other reasons besides the increased presence of CO2 in our atmosphere. That’s right. No dissenting science. Zero. Zip. Nada.

            I can see how this writing of Loris could, at first glance, sway some folks. But a good look at it, and understanding the context in which a procedural review was generated for an Environmental Protection Agency TSD, reveals it to be laughable.

Ref:

Technical Support Document for Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act  December 7, 2009: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/downloads/Endangerment%20TSD.pdf

Procedural Review of EPA’s Greenhouse Gases Endangerment Finding Data Quality Processes Report No: 11-P-0702 September 26, 2011: http://www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2011/20110926-11-P-0702.pdf

Merchants of Doubt: Why It's So Easy For the Science Deniers

I’m just finishing Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. Though I found the book to drag at times, getting bogged down in details, these two authors make a significant case against the climate change denying industry. Starting with the tobacco industry in the 1950s, they catalogue a history of industry hired scientists, and very often the same scientists again and again, obfuscating the truth about scientific findings that hurt the bottom line of their industry sponsors, whether that industry is selling cigarettes or oil.

            I’ve watched the global warming denying phenomenon for about as long as anyone. And what no one can deny is the amount of success that the science deniers have had in bringing doubt into many people’s minds over issues in which the science is greatly indicative or settled. The science deniers have a lot of things working in their favor and have helped them to forestall smoking restrictions or the development of a climate policy in this country.

            First of all, science is hard to understand. Most folks are unable to determine if a scientific study or experiment is rigorous or poorly designed or executed. People aren’t to be blamed for this, but it is very easy to exploit. The average guy or gal doesn’t have the time to double check the cherry picked figures cited by the Heritage Foundation. And using the catchphrase of almost every scientist “more research needs to be done,” gives the deniers an aura of knowingness as they help politicians and policymakers to coddle the industries that finance their campaigns and kick the environmental can down the road for a while.

            In the past 30 years or so there has also developed a suspicion of all expertise. People without credentials and experience are valued as more authentic than those who have paid their dues through schooling or work. These “authentic” individuals’ gut level reactions and thinking are thought to be uncluttered by theory, book learning, or university level high falutiness. In the eyes of many, Barack Obama’s education at Columbia University and Harvard Law School made him less authentic, and therefore less trustworthy, than Sarah Palin, who as a student hopscotched from college to college before earning a degree in journalism. (OK, George W. Bush is a Harvard Business School graduate. But he never acts like a man with a Harvard background, so he at least seems more authentic to a lot of folks.)

Perhaps it is a particularly American characteristic to favor the cracker barrel philosopher over the intellectual. After all, in the halls of the Capitol Congress chose to install a statue of Will Rogers and not one of Emerson. As scientists are men and women who almost uniformly have advanced degrees, they fit into this society of experts: intellectuals and elites who say they know better than you. Americans don’t like them.

            Going back to recent decades, Americans no longer had to worry about cholera, malaria, and typhoid thanks to science. And the researcher Jonas Salk conquered polio. But just as we could now rest assured that our drinking water was safe and our children would not be crippled by an insidious virus, the atom bomb scared the collective bejesus out of us. Though we are no longer gripped by the existential fear that The Bomb created, cloning, genetic engineering, and other scientific finagling leave many of us unsettled and suspicious of science.

            Oreskes and Conway devote a chapter to the current attacks on Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring. It may very well have been this suspicion of science—the invention and use of DDT and other synthetic pesticides, which were the main targets of Carson’s critique—that helped Silent Spring gain ground with the American Public and our political leaders when it did. Ironically, it is now the deniers to exploit this suspicion to attack Carson, her work, and the banning on DDT.

            With Merchants of Doubt Oreskes and Conway make a persuasive argument. Their book may help end this charade of creating public doubt over settled science. I was just hoping in this blog to add to the context in which this important book may help in our understanding of science and our efforts to curb global warming.