An awful lot of hot air. Not much light.

Half listening to Start The Week earlier today I heard someone ranting on about how silly people are to 'believe in' Global Warming. I assumed it must be Nigel Lawson but when I checked the website it turned out it was Peter Hitchens. I then went and had a look at what Hitchens has been saying on the blog he writes for the Mail on Sunday and found that - Lord above,  I agree with him. He's raging against the 'cult' of Global Warming and he's irate at being shouted down by 'fanatics' and being called a 'climate change denier' as he should be (irate that is). He lambasts the purveyors of sensationalist stories of polar bears on melting ice flows. He makes a big deal of his 'doubts' about climate change and being a sceptic, faced with so called scientific 'truths'. All of which is fair enough. Fanatical adherence to any belief system, especially if it means shouting down and insulting people who disagree with you is never an acceptable way to conduct a debate. Journalists shouldn't use misleading or distorted material just to sell papers. And he's right - any scientist who claims to have no doubts about 'The Truth', not just on this subject but on any area of research is an idiot. Of course there is doubt. There is always uncertainty. There is always disagreement. There is always more evidence and new ways to analyse it. That's why science, properly carried out, is not a cult, or even I would argue, a belief system.
I expect you can tell where this is going. To me, his disbelief in Global Warming seems to constitute something of a fanaticism in its own right, and if anyone is shouting anyone down here it's Hitchens, albeit in print. It's hard to imagine him treating any kind of uncertainty on anyone else's part as anything other than a contemptible capitulation. And as for complaining that journalists use misleading and overly-emotive pictures and stories to further a cause - he works for The Mail for Christ's sake!
Let's lay my cards on the table - I think he's wrong. There are a few 'facts' he quotes that I think are just plain wrong. For example, if I understand it correctly, the world was not warmer during medieval times than it is now. Europe was warmer, but not the whole world, and it's the global average that matters of course, not the regional variations, which is why our current spell of cold winters don't necessarily mean anything. Still - I claim no particular authority on the subject. I raise this canard simply to get the climate change believers and unbelievers going:
"But what about this study?"
"That study was flawed..."
"But Smith & Jones 1996 said..."
"Their sample size wasn't big enough."
"That was allowed for in a later model"
"which failed to incorporate the Kwrptzki effect"
"the Kwrptzki effect was minimal in the 1990s"
and so on and so forth.
But the fact is - I'm not sure I do understand it correctly. I'm not an expert and I am not in a position to assess the evidence, and without some years of single-minded study I am not ever likely to be. But neither is Hitchens. Neither are most of us. Most of us perhaps have at best a science A level or perhaps a BSc but that doesn't count for much. It's not the sort of thing you can work out from personal experience or 'common sense' or by applying your A level physics . It's a lot more complicated than that. So how are we supposed to form an opinion? Ultimately we have to take someone's word for it - someone who does know what they're talking about, assuming of course that it's possible to identify such people. With that in mind I'd like to take the unlikely step of putting in a word for Climate Scientists.

The thing that probably got me most about Hitchens this morning was his derision of us silly climate change 'believers'. How stupid are we to think that perhaps all these climate scientists might be onto something. Ok, there's not total agreement among them - it's science, as I said above. There's always doubt - as there should be. There are uncertainties, mistakes and even downright lies, but another thing that Hitchens is wrong about is that there is any serious disagreement among the majority of climate scientists about whether the earth will warm as a result of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions (and other pollutants). There are disagreements about all sorts of parts of this idea (not to mention the ramifications) but the basic idea seems pretty much accepted. Truth though is not a matter of democracy. The truth is true even if no one knows it. Its perfectly possible that the majority of scientists is wrong. It is, I suppose, just about conceivable that a few renegade climatologists are being silenced by the scientific establishment. Indeed a conspiracy theorist friend of mine pretty much takes it as read that a scientist being ignored by the majority makes him all the more worth listening to. The idea that he might be being ignored because he's incompetent or nuts is inadmissible (Another unfalsifiable for my list.) The fact is, I hope they are wrong, because the way things are going we're unlikely to get it together to limit carbon emissions in any meaningful way so let's hope they're wrong. But I doubt it.

One thing I can speak about with some authority here is scientists. I may not be a climate scientist but I know scientists. I was one for a bit as a Phd student. I lived in the belly of the beast (and did not fare well) and one thing I do know is that it is not possible for all these hundreds of scientists around the world to be corralled into claiming that something is true when they know it's not. It's even less possible for someone to have fooled them all into believing that something is true when it's not. Science doesn't work that way, or at least, non commercial science doesn't. Labs in private industry are a different matter. Who knows what goes on there? And of course, in order to get funding university labs and other independent research institutions are not immune to corruption, but they all have to publish. That's the important thing here - publication.

This is the thing I think a lot of non-scientists don't get. In most industries, publishing an article in a professional journal is something you do alongside your job, if you have time and have something interesting to say, or want the publicity, or whatever. In science, publishing is your job. Every piece of research you undertake as a scientist is about getting an article published in a learned journal. This is not about getting media attention or raising your profile or getting funding (although it's that too) - it's about getting your work out there into the hands of other scientists. Commercial research (into the latest cancer drug, or motor technology or shampoo) has maybe lead us to imagine that it's all about secrecy - intellectual property rights and commercial espionage, but real science is the opposite. Scientists might not want to publish until they are sure they know what they're talking about but then everything has to be published, or everything relevant. Everything that was done as a part of the study has to be laid out in full. Any other information that the study depends upon has to be cited from other equally learned articles in other journals. Anything that is not fully accounted for is not allowable in a scientific article. In other words, you can't just say what you like, or what you'd like to believe. Every claim you make has to be either demonstrated in your study or you have to be able to say where you got it from.
How is this enforced? Lay-people speak laughingly of 'peer review'. It sounds like the old boy network nodding stuff through on a wink and a brown envelope, but it's not. Peer review in any case is just the preliminary checking - to make sure you haven't said anything you can't back up, or made some other stupid mistake. Then there's proof reading and further checking by the publisher of course. Obviously this is a fallible process but those involved take it extremely seriously because of the next part of the process, where the article goes out and is read by every other scientist in the world who has any interest whatsoever in the subject, and they are not your friends. In fact they're up against you. If they can discredit or call into question anything you've said you can be sure they will, and if it's bad enough your career is more or less crippled, and likewise that of the publishers and peer-reviewers, your supervisors and co-workers, and last but not least, your funding.
I'm not saying it's perfect but as systems go it's about as hard to fiddle as is humanly possible. (You can perhaps see now why I'm so sceptical about commercial research*) The idea that all those hundreds of climate scientists, not mention the thousands of associated mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, computer technicians, oceanographers, ecologists, palaeontologists, and all the rest are somehow either being kept quiet or in the dark is just... I have no words. It would take a conspiracy so vast, so powerful...

All I'm saying then, Peter Hitchens (and Nigel Lawson), in an entirely sceptical, non-fanatical way, is that, yes, you might be right. I sincerely hope you are, for all our sakes. I'm not a climate scientist and they might have got something wrong and everything will turn out ok, but it seems unlikely. In the mean time, just in case, wouldn't it make sense to try and be a bit careful? Modify our behaviour? Rein ourselves in a bit? Oh I see - that's the bit you don't like. You just don't like being told what to do, do you. Well none of us do, but sometimes you just have to stop shouting and put up with it.

*But wait - all these climate scientists are in effect doing commercial research for the vastly powerful multi billion dollar renewable energy corporations aren't they? Not like those poor impoverished researchers into fossil fuels, always struggling for funding, always having to bang on about sustainability and sacrifice, being ignored by the US government...
Oh no, hang on...

The Free Market Fundamentalist

There was Nigel Lawson on Start The Week on Monday - telling us essentially not to worry about climate change because it'll all blow over probably. The important thing is to keep making money. After all,he said, it's making money that causes climate change and er... Where was I?

Nigel I suppose is one of them there Free Market Fundamentalists. I don't know all the details of what his own personal views are and frankly  I don't care, but I've got a fair idea what he thinks - heck, I grew up with these people. He's a type. He'll do for my purposes.
They were debating Protectionism (the restricting of free trade between nations to protect local jobs and/or prices.) Dambisa Moyo was arguing that some protectionism might be necessary if certain developing nations are ever to get their local economies off the ground. Nigel was against, basically because it's not Free Trade, and anything other than totally Free trade is anathema. No restrictions, no regulations, just Free. Anything less would be the start of 'The Slippery Slope'.
Slippery Slope arguments are almost always bogus. In almost every area of life we have to accept that there are shades of grey and we have to make judgement calls, but not for Nigel. People like Nigel like things to be all or nothing, black or white. Simple yes/no answers. Are you with us or are you against us? The ability to make quick uncompromising decisions and stick to them no matter what is taken as a sign of strong leadership and sound judgement. (Look at his old boss for example.)
No doubt Nigel likes to think he's being Realistic - that it's just Human Nature - 'Common Sense'. People like Nigel like to tell the rest of us what we're like (and not just some or part of us, but all of us, deep down, even if we can't admit it) - that we're ruthless, competitive and obsessed with power and material wealth. We might coo over our own children but otherwise it's dog-eat-dog out there. It's the Law of the Jungle - survival of the fittest. And therefore it's Natural. And what is Natural is right isn't it? We all know what is Natural - the Sociobiologists and Evolutionary Psychologists have looked at our closest relatives - the apes and monkeys (and any other species that seem instructive) and confirmed what we always knew about ourselves - ruthless self interest, xenophobia, racism, sexism, internecine warfare...
The Conservatives see themselves as the Natural Party of Government. The reason Thatcher achieved so much is because she took away the restrictions on what would happen 'naturally'. People again mistook this for sound political sense and strong leadership, when what she actually did was squash the resistance, who never had that much power in the first place (unless you count not collecting the rubbish and letting the lights go out, which I agree is a nuisance) and let the powerful become even more so.
The idea that what is natural is good is a very popular philosophy among everyone from hedonistic New Age Hippies ('If it feels good do it') to libertarian Social Darwinists ('Sod you Jack, I'm alright'), but Ethics 1.0.1. when I was at university (Ok, Brighton Poly) told us that 'Is' does not imply 'Ought.' In other words you cannot logically derive what ought to be the case from what is the case. Even if human nature is ruthless, competitive, and obsessed with power and material wealth (and that's a big 'if'), that does not make it right. There is this other thing - ethics, or morality, that tells us how things should be.

Of course, our Nigel would tell us that what he advocates is how things should be as well - because the Free Market is the only guarantor of improved living standards for all, which has got to be good, right? Climate change, mass migration and the odd genocide in Africa is just a temporary glitch.
And he's sort of right in a way. I will argue elsewhere that life for unprecedented numbers of us is safer, healthier and longer than it's ever been at any other time in human history, and a lot of that is due to medical, technological and social advances made possible by capitalism. (Ok, I don't entirely buy that but give them the benefit of the doubt.)
But even if that has been true in the past, is it possible or even likely that it will continue to be true in the future?
Again the 'strong leadership'/'uncompromising decision making' school of political thinking would counsel us not to be pessimistic. Doubt is a sign of weakness.

But doubt is reasonable. Already we're coming to the end of the resources and space we have available to an exponentially increasing human population. Already, we talk about places like China and India - home to vast fractions of that population aspiring to Western standards of living and we already know that for everybody to live to US standards would require, I don't remember the exact figure (probably it's not an exact figure) but it's something like five or six Earths' worth of space and resources. And if climate change takes hold in even the more modest ways predicted there will be less space, not more, to house and feed the world's population, never mind all the other species we share the place with. (That the problems are not certain is no excuse to assume that there will be no problems, as Nigel appears to.)
And yet Nigel simply believes that there won't be a problem because growth in the economy and advances in technology will make everything fine.

As a burgeoning Leftie back in my teens I was routinely accused of being naive and unrealistic. Left wingers also tend to be the ones accused of living by dogma and ideology instead of in 'The Real World'. And yet our Nigel looks at the future described above and says 'Growth and Technology will solve everything.'
Technology is going to have to make us the equivalent of five or six earth's worth of energy and resources in the next  fifty years. And the only way to make this happen apparently is to free up the economy. As his old boss would have said 'There is no alternative'.
Now who's the naive dreamer? Now who's living by dogma?

But what's the alternative? Anything less than unrestrained (wild) Western style growth and development is holding back progress, and the pursuit of happiness. Aspirational is the key word here, and who can deny it? Who does not want to aspire to greatness? It's the one thing the previous government and this agree on - the right to aspire - to want more than the previous generation - to do more - to have more. Who can argue with that?
Well I can. Most of us in The West are already pretty comfortably off materially (People in Ulster telling us their problems with the water supply recently made it 'like living in the Third World' not withstanding.) The fact that we don't seem to be any happier is another thing I'll come back to in another post.
But why are we framing our ideas of Aspiration only in material terms? Surely there's more to life. We've been sold the idea that any pass-time that doesn't involve buying the latest this or the most advanced that is just a bit 'Sad', but is spending so much time at work doing something you don't really care about for someone you don't respect, just to earn the money to pay someone else to do things for you that you could do for yourself if only you had more time, really all that liberating (or aspirational)? And can we really afford to have half as many people again as there are now expecting to live that way?
GMOs are a good example. Normally they are, at least partly, promoted as solving the problem of malnourishment in the developing world. And yet there is already enough food in the world to feed everybody (and well - not just on gruel). The reasons we don't feed everyone are economic and political. GMOs won't change that. Like most new technology, GMOs will mostly be used to provide more choice (aspirations) for those who already have more than they know what to do with.
There is an alternative to growth then, and it's the 'R' word - redistribution. But who wants that? How anti-aspirational is that?

Well Nigel doesn't want it, that's for sure, because the truth is that all this stuff about Capitalism improving life for everyone is Bullshit. (Technically, the difference between Bullshit and Lies is that the bullshitter doesn't care whether what he says is true or not, as long as it serves his purposes.) There is no moral agenda in the Free Market. Nigel Lawson advocates the expansion and deregulation of the Free Market because he wants to make money. Deep down he may even know that there's very little chance of Growth and Technology bringing the benefits to the world he predicts, but he doesn't care. He simply calculates that he will be on the right side of the razor wire when the day comes.