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Born Against
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Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost.
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This is very true. However, Crichton himself appears to be projecting here, since his novel "State of Fear" is one of the worst offenders in the arena of politicization of science. He either does not understand the science, or he does understand it and deliberately distorts it. Either way, he himself seems to be one of the best examples of what he is criticizing in that speech before the Commonwealth Club.
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HEADLINE: Temperatures rising: Scientists fire back at Michael Crichton
BYLINE: Citizen News Services
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In recent days we noted the publication of Michael Crichton's latest book, State of Fear, a novel that challenges commonly held views on climate change. We then noted an interview in which Crichton dismissed his critics. "The attacks are predictable," he said. "Ad hominem attack is the only way to go when you don't have the facts on your side."
Here, then, some facts plus just some of what scientists have to say about the studies cited by Crichton in State of Fear.
CLIMATE CHANGE
State of Fear: Crichton's heroine notes that from 1940 to 1970 carbon dioxide emissions increased as world temperatures decreased. "If rising carbon dioxide is the cause of rising temperatures, why didn't it cause temperatures to rise from 1940 to 1970?" she asks.
Scientistic reason: New York University physics professor Martin Hoffert says the answer is simple. "Climate change is caused by several factors: changes in solar radiation, aerosols that scatter sunlight and the buildup of human-emitted greenhouse gases. By the early 1970s, the growing CO2 in the atmosphere (and the human greenhouse gases) overwhelmed the other effects and will continue to do so in this century.
CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?
State of Fear: Crichton's heroine says much of the warming can be attributed to increased heat in growing cities because of reflection by buildings and asphalt. "At least one study suggests half of the observed temperature change comes from land use alone. If that's true, then global warming in the past century is less than three-tenths of a degree. Not exactly a crisis."
Scientific reason: Oceans and rural areas are also warming, said Jeff Severinghaus, a geosciences professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. "The ocean data says it all. Ground temperatures confirm this."
SATELLITE DATA
State of Fear: Crichton's heroine cites satellite data showing that the atmosphere eight kilometres above the ground isn't warming, although global warming says it should be. "Trust me," says the heroine. "The satellite data have been re-analysed dozens of time. They're probably the most intensely scrutinized data in the world. But the data from the weather balloons agree with the satellites. They show much less warming than expected by the theory."
Scientific reason: At least three groups of scientists have looked at the satellite data Crichton refers to and concluded that it understated temperatures. Longer-term weather balloon data also confirm warming trends, climate researchers say.
SHORT TERM vs. LONG TERM
State of Fear: Crichton cites numerous locales where warming is not occurring. His protagonist says: "As you can see, many places in the United States do not seem to have become warmer since 1930."
Scientific reason: Scientists say the global picture over a longer time period is more important. What Crichton does, says Stanford University climatologist Stephen Schneider, "would be like trying to figure out the lifetime batting average of Barry Bonds by seeing what he did for three weeks in the year 2000."
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The San Diego Union-Tribune
February 17, 2005 Thursday
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A-1
LENGTH: 1077 words
HEADLINE: More scientists motivated to speak out;
Many fight what they view as politicization
BYLINE: Bruce Lieberman, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
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WASHINGTON -- In 1967, Jeremy Jackson wrote his master's thesis on the ecology of Chesapeake Bay, a vast treasure that provides the nation's capital with an outlet to the Atlantic Ocean.
The bay's decline became a motivation for "Shifting Baselines," a Hollywood-supported national campaign that he started in 2003 to raise awareness about global environmental degradation.
"Society has ignored the problems of the environment for a long time, and scientists have ignored the problems of the environment for a long time. But we're waking up," said Jackson, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.
"It becomes a moral and ethical issue to speak out on what one knows."
Jackson's campaign is one example of how more scientists in San Diego County and elsewhere are reaching out to the public, often risking criticism from their colleagues and interest groups.
Yesterday in Washington, D.C., researchers, lawmakers and federal bureaucrats discussed the bumpy relationship linking science, politics and legislative policies. They met on the eve of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the nation's largest gatherings of scientists.
More than 10,000 scientists, policy analysts and educators from 60 nations are expected at the meeting, which runs through Monday. At least seven sessions will touch on the relationship between science and public policy.
A scientist's motivations for speaking out are many.
Some, like Jackson, said they are driven by a desire to educate the public on environmental changes that garner little attention. Others said an explosion of information, chiefly through the Internet but also on television and in films, has compelled them to clear up misconceptions and oversimplifications of science. Many researchers say they are speaking up to fight what they view as the politicization of science -- efforts by industry, legislators and others to distort science to advance their agendas.
One discussion yesterday began with a look at the Bush administration, which some people have criticized for disregarding or manipulating science to serve its views on global warming, stem cell research, abortion and consumer safety.
"We are witnessing an assault on the basic principle that science should inform policy, not echo a political agenda," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles.
Waxman cited several instances in which the White House has tried to shape scientific discussions to favor its viewpoints:
o Last year's dismissal of University of California San Francisco cell biologist Elizabeth Blackburn from the President's Council on Bioethics. Blackburn often expressed dissenting opinions on the 17-member council, which has frequently championed conservative views on biotechnology issues such as cloning and stem cell research. Leon Kass, chair of the Bush-appointed group, has said Blackburn's dismissal was not politically motivated.
o In a 2003 report, the Environmental Protection Agency omitted data linking human activity to global warming.
o In May, the Food and Drug Administration rejected an application to sell an over-the-counter version of a "morning after" pill called Plan B for women who want to avoid pregnancy. The FDA had set aside the advice of an independent review board that said the drug was safe.
John H. Marburger III, science adviser for President Bush, said the White House has the authority to choose who serves on the scientific committees that advise federal policymakers.
"The role of the (committees) is to make sure the official knows what the science is, and the official makes the decision," he said.
Among scientists, many say they have an obligation to promote their work -- as long as they are careful to separate their political views from their discussion of the facts.
"I do not believe a scientist hangs up his citizenship at the door. . . . We are all steeped in unconscious bias," said Stephen Schneider, a Stanford University climate scientist who has testified before Congress and spoken around the world about global warming.
Jane Lubchenco, a researcher at the University of Oregon and a member of the Pew Ocean Commission, said scientists have an obligation to share what they've learned.
"New information that exists only in the peer-reviewed scientific literature does society little good," she said.
The more scientists speak out in public, however, the more difficult it can be for people to distinguish advocacy from a presentation of the facts, said Marburger.
"What I don't agree with is the ease of distinguishing between advocacy and the actual substance of what scientists say," he said.
Last fall, stem cell scientists in California participated in forums on Proposition 71, the successful initiative to spend $3 billion over a decade to jump-start the field.
Scientists worked hard to present the science of stem cells, said La Jolla cell biologist Evan Snyder. He maintains that they didn't allow their enthusiasm for the ballot measure to cloud the reality that it could take years before stem cells might be used to treat disease.
Yet campaigners on both sides of the measure distorted the truth -- one side overstating the prospects for success and the other claiming that money-hungry scientists were trying to mislead the public, Snyder said.
"I'm afraid the worst came out," he said. "Politics doesn't engage in shades of gray."
The intersection of science and ideology also applies to the global warming debate.
Some climate scientists said they are increasingly frustrated about distortions by people on all sides. That includes scientists supported by the fossil fuel industry and Hollywood writers exaggerating the dangers of a warming climate.
One particular misrepresentation comes from Michael Crichton's new novel, "State of Fear," said Jeff Severinghaus, a scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who studies the atmospheric conditions that drove drastic climate changes thousands of years ago.
Crichton created a fictional plot but added footnotes that cite studies on climate change. By selectively choosing data, Crichton distorted scientific facts and misled his readers, Severinghaus said.
"I thought, here we go again," Severinghaus said of Crichton's book. "It's like stamping out forest fires. Misinformation has an amazing ability to propagate, and you have to spend a lot of time and energy trying to set the record straight."
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The Boston Globe
February 6, 2005, Sunday THIRD EDITION
SECTION: IDEAS; Pg. E5
LENGTH: 1051 words
HEADLINE: CHECKING CRICHTON'S FOOTNOTES
BYLINE: By Chris Mooney
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MICHAEL CRICHTON'S latest novel, "State of Fear" (HarperCollins), arrived with near-perfect timing. Even as real-world tsunamis slammed coasts across the Indian Ocean, here was a book in which radical eco-terrorists plot to douse California with fake onesall to convince the public to worry about global warming and the disasters it can cause.
But if Crichton's story-line of a vast environmentalist conspiracy didn't impress literary reviewers, the novel came festooned with footnotes aimed at convincing readers of his scientific bona fides. Seeking to debunk the notion that human-caused global warming should worry us, Crichton allows his hero, Richard John Kenneran MIT professor of geoenvironmental engineering who battles the eco-terrorists across the globeto instruct various less-informed personages in the basics of climate science. During these conversations, Crichton provides actual scientific citations to back up Kenner's contrarian arguments. As he intones in his epigraph, "Footnotes are real."
But are they? Certainly Crichton's numerous citations refer to actual scientific publications. But in many cases, they also reference the work of scientists who accept the mainstream scientific view that human greenhouse gas emissions fuel global climate change.
"It's such a transparent literary device that Crichton uses," says Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who's cited in the book. "He makes the enviros out to be dummies." And Wigley isn't the only one surprised by the nature of his cameo.
The Kyoto Protocol. Toward the end of the novel, Kenner lectures another character on the futility of the Kyoto Protocol, which requires participating nations to adopt binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions. "The effect of Kyoto would be to reduce warming by .04 degrees Celsius in the year 2100," he says. "Four hundredths of a degree." When another character disputes this claim, Kenner promises, "I can give you the references."
Tom Wigley, author of a 1998 article Crichton cites to back up this point, has complained previously that others have misused his research to undermine Kyoto. While that paper did indeed find that the treaty would have a relatively small long-term effect, Wigley has subsequently warned that his analysis "assumed that Kyoto was followed to 2010, and that there were no subsequent climate mitigation policies." The point of the paper was not to bash Kyoto (which goes into effect internationally on February 16) but rather to demonstrate that it represents only a first step toward climate stabilization. "Once we've done Kyoto we're obviously going to do other things," says Wigley.
The Glaciers of Kilimanjaro. Similarly, Kenner highlights the case of this famed African peaka favorite of climate-change skepticsin the process of debunking concerns that global warming is causing glaciers to retreat. Kilimanjaro has melted "because of deforestation," Kenner says, not global warming: "The rain forest at the base of the mountain has been cut down, so the air blowing upward is no longer moist. Experts think that if the forest is replanted the glacier will grow again."
Again, Crichton supplies references. But UMass-Amherst climatologist Douglas Hardy, a coauthor of the 2004 paper on Kilimanjaro cited, says Crichton is distorting his work. Crichton is doing "what I perceive the denialists always to do," says Hardy. "And that is to take things out of context, or take elements of reality and twist them a little bit, or combine them with other elements of reality to support their desired outcome."
For example, while the case of Kilimanjaro does seem more complicated (with factors like drier conditions and less cloud cover also implicated in its glacial retreat), Hardy notes that for other glaciers, especially in tropical latitudes, "the link is very clear between changes in tropospheric temperature and [glacial retreats]." And even in the case of Kilimanjaro, Hardy adds, climate change may be playing a role.
As for the notion that replanting the forest at Kilimanjaro's base will help the glacier to grow again, Hardy says: "The forests need replanting for many reasons, but I think that [Crichton's] idea is preposterous, without some larger-scale changes."
Atmospheric CO2 Levels. Here, at least, Crichton seems aware that he's building his case on the backs of scientists who don't agree with him. In a cross-examination scene early in the novel, one character who has been raising doubts about human-caused climate change observes that the data she's citing have all been "generated by researchers who believe firmly in global warming." Crichton then cites a paper by David Etheridge and his colleagues at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, which concerns changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations over the last 1,000 years.
But Etheridge says he objects to this characterization of his so-called beliefs. "There is little indication for Crichton of what beliefs I may or may not have," he said via email. "My work as a professional scientist allows me only to produce and deal with evidence, not beliefs."
The Big Picture. In Crichton's defense, those seeking to counter consensus scientific conclusions on climate changeand to use published evidence to support their own viewsface an uphill battle. Naomi Oreskes, a science studies scholar at the University of California, San Diego, recently analyzed more than 900 scientific articles listed with the keywords "global climate change," and failed to find a single study that explicitly disagreed with the consensus view that humans are contributing to global warming. While such literature may exist, it appears minimal.
That hasn't stopped Crichton from expounding his views in recent speeches, including a talk on "Science Policy in the 21st Century" held late last month at the American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution's Joint Center for Regulatory Studies in Washington, D.C. In an appendix to "State of Fear," Crichton frets about "Why Politicized Science is Dangerous." But he may himself have provided a case study.
NOTES:
The Fine Print Chris Mooney, a freelance writer in Washington, D.C., is writing a book about the politicization of science.
LOAD-DATE: February 8, 2005
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