Books and literature – Page 25 – a sibilant intake of breath

Bright-Sided

From Oprah to New Age philosophy, ‘positive thinking’ has become a hugely influential movement in business circles, the religious sphere, in pop medicine, and elsewhere. In Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, Barbara Ehrenreich makes the case that the movement is poorly thought out and damaging. Her arguments are convincing, especially when it comes to situations where positive thinking is used to blame the victim when they suffer as the result of developments beyond their control: be it the movement towards corporate downsizing (which corresponded with the rise of motivational speakers in the workplace) or the unjustified assertion that cancer patients are responsible for their own worsening or recovery, on the basis of the mental attitudes they maintain.

Ehrenreich highlights how relentless optimism leads to dangerous groupthink, in which risks are downplayed and those who raise legitimate worries are sidelined. She provides ample evidence that these factors played a role in the inflation of the global house price bubble, and have continued to have important economic and political effects. These include the weird state of deluded isolation in which society’s richest people now reside. She also spends considerable time discussing the warped theology in which god is seen as a sort of mail-order service, happy to send you whatever good things (houses, cars, promotions) you are able to ‘manifest’ for yourself, simply by fervently desiring them.

Positive thinking involves a weird reversal, when it comes to dealing with risks. They cease to be external (concern that your company might fire you to improve their short-term profitability) and become entirely internal (fears about what your state of mind might do to you). It is also tied fundamentally to the notion that happiness is not most important in itself, but rather insofar as it influences events: “Nothing underscores the lingering Calvinism of positive psychology more than this need to put happiness to work – as a means to health and achievement, or what the positive thinkers call ‘success.'” The former tendency puts people in danger of worrying about the wrong things, while the latter strategy puts them at risk of seeking to achieve particular outcomes in nonsensical ways. That is especially dangerous when it comes to making big purchases on credit, firm in your belief that the universe will provide you with the means of dealing with it later.

Ehrenreich’s points are well-taken, though the book can be a bit tedious to read at times. There are also some partial contradictions. It is repeatedly asserted that there is no medical evidence that thinking positively improves health outcomes, yet it is taken as plausible that George Beecher was able to speed his demise through negative thinking. In the course of her analysis on the medical evidence, Ehrenreich claims to be “not in a position to evaluate” evidence that those with a positive outlook may have some protection against heart disease, but is seemingly happy to evaluate research on other illnesses that confirms her hypothesis.

All told, Ehrenreich makes important points about the poisonous institutional culture that accompanies an excessive focus on positivism – and the view that individuals are almost entirely responsible for what happens to them. Her concluding call for ‘realistic’ thinking is certainly appropriate enough, though perhaps she does not go far enough in suggesting how the empire of positive thinking she has mapped the outlines of might be deconstructed. As the world continues to grapple with real problems, magical thinking cannot be a substitute for dispassionate analysis, risk management, and contingency planning. How we get from our world to one more like that, however, remains mysterious.

Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places

Bill Streever’s book takes a meandering and often macabre journey through various facts and stories about the world’s chilled regions: discussing everything from ground squirrel hibernation to the fatalities that resulted from the Schoolchildren’s Blizzard of 1888. While it contains a lot of highly interesting information, the book’s non-linear structure is distracting and contributes to its repetitiveness. Had Streever stuck to a conventional structure with chapters focused on different topics, the result would probably have been better.

Streever is at his best when discussing the human suffering brought on by cold, and the ingenious ways by which animals have learned to survive in it. The story of the Arctic caterpillars that freeze solid every winter, and take ten years to eat enough to undergo metamorphosis, is a poignant one. So too are Streever’s excellent descriptions of snow and feathers as insulating materials, as well as frostbite and hypothermia as unwanted consequences of extreme cold. The book has an entertaining habit of pointing out odd coincidences. For instance, readers will discover what a certain volcanic eruption has to do with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Mormonism, and the invention of the bicycle.

Cold gives a fairly cursory treatment of climate change: mentioning it fairly often, but not getting into great detail. Streever takes it as a given that human greenhouse gas emissions will forever and substantially alter the world’s frozen places, and does not devote any time or attention to the kind of actions humanity could take if it wished to preserve the polar ice caps, glaciers, etc. The author acknowledges how his own jet-setting lifestyle is contributing to the destruction of the places that interest him so, but never takes time to really contemplate alternative behaviour for himself or humanity as a whole.

All told, Cold is well worth the couple of hours it takes to read. While some judicious editing would have been welcome, Streever’s book does manage to convey an appropriate sense of both curiosity and visceral dread about the importance that cold has played in our warming world.

Vancouver update, and travel options

The last few days of Vancouver downtime have been really enjoyable. It is impossible to disentangle the extent to which the enjoyment is the product of broader and deeper networks of friends here, and the extent to which it arises from characteristics essential to the city.

Tristan is on his way back to Ontario via train. While it seems to be a significantly more carbon-intensive way to travel, it is undeniably infinitely more interesting looking than the bus. He has already provided good photographic evidence of that. In my experience, the bus trip offers virtually nothing worth photographing during short winter days. Perhaps one day we will have low-carbon trains, and thus a way of going cross-country that is both environmentally responsible and tolerably pleasant and interesting.

I have been reading an excellent book and play: Tom Stoppard’s wonderful Arcadia (combining amusing talk of sex and science) and Bill Streever’s Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places. The latter offers an astonishing contrast between stories of success and failure in extreme cold: caterpillars that freeze every winter and take ten years to achieve metamorphosis, versus the final journal entries of doomed expeditions, documenting how the men died one at a time.

Less than four more days, and I will be back on the bus.

Crush the Cell

Michael Sheenan’s Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terrorism Without Terrorizing Ourselves covers ground that overlaps with that of Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent and Securing the City. Namely, the history of Al Qaeda in relation to the United States, and the question of what sort of policies the United States should adopt in response to terrorism. Sheehan brings an insider’s perspective, having served as New York’s Deputy Commissioner for counterterrorism. While Sheehan provides a lot of information and tries to argue a few key points, the book succeeds more as a source of raw information than as a source of analysis. In particular, Sheehan fails to fully justify his views that Al Qaeda will fizzle out in a few decades, and fails to provide a comparative justification for why targeting cells is the most effective way of undermining terrorist plots while avoiding unwanted secondary effects.

Sheehan covers a number of important and interesting topics: methods for counterterrorism, intelligence, and law enforcement; the (limited) competence of Al Qaeda operatives; the risks that arise then officials practice ‘cover your ass’ security; the significance of weapons of mass destruction; torture and human rights; and the importance of not granting terrorists the psychological advantages that arise when we allow ourselves to be terrorized. In the last of those, he echoes a point well-made by Bruce Schneier. Sheehan also provides an insider’s perspective on the controversial rebuilding of the former World Trade Center site, including why construction has been so slow to begin.

Among the three books I have recently read on this subject, Securing the City probably provides the most insight into effective counterterrorism strategies developed and deployed in New York, while Ghost may be the most compelling personal account (though one lacking in balance). Crush the Cell occupies a middle territory – worth reading for those who want even more details and examples than they have found from other sources, but probably not essential reading for those only moderately interested in the subject.

What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

Written by a high school science teacher, Greg Craven’s What’s the Worst That Could Happen? A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate is a worthwhile and unusual addition to the catalogue of books on climate change. Craven’s chosen task is not to determine whether climate scientists are right in their projections of what human activity is and will do to the climate; rather, he is trying to prepare readers to make the best choice, given the uncertainty that will always exist.

This is the same basic message he popularized in a series of viral videos, the first and last of which are especially worth watching:

I do have one slight quibble with both. Craven’s decision grid suggests that we will eventually be able to look back and know if we made the right choice. I don’t think that’s true. If we take aggressive action and stop climate change, we may never know with certainty just how bad it would have been if we had ignored it. No matter how sophisticated they become, simulations can never give us total certainty, and we don’t have another planet with which to run an experiment. Similarly, if we take no action and climate change proves catastrophic, we will never know for sure what level of action would have been sufficient to stop it – or whether doing so was still possible at any particular point in time.

Craven’s approach is based around heuristics: examining the ways in which people make decisions, taking into consideration pitfalls like confirmation bias, and then developing an approach to make an intelligent choice. In this case, it involves developing a way to roughly rank the credibility of sources, look at who is saying what, and complete a decision grid that shows the consequences of climate change either being or not being a major problem and humanity either taking or not taking major action. His own conclusion is that taking action unnecessarily isn’t likely to be exceptionally economically damaging, and can be considered a prudent course for ensuring that the worst does not happen.

On the question of why action has not yet been taken, Craven focuses primarily on human psychology. We respond to threats that are immediate, visible, and have a hostile agent behind them. Since climate change is none of these things, it doesn’t trigger strong responses in us. Cognitive factors also help explain why people are so confused about the state of climate science, though individual failings in information assessment are accompanied by the failure of the media to pass along good information effectively.

Craven concludes that raising political will is the key action that needs to be taken, and that cutting individual emissions is of very secondary importance. Like many others, he draws on the analogy of WWII to show what the United States is capable of achieving when it has the determination.

Some readers may find the book’s informal style and fill-in-the-blanks exercises a bit annoying, or feel that they trivialize the issues at hand. That being said, Craven has produced a very accessible book that recasts the climate change debate in a valuable new way: evaluating what choice to make, under uncertainty, rather than trying to determine authoritatively who is right. For those wishing to grapple with the practical question of what ought to be done about climate change, this book is well worth reading.

Climate Cover-Up

James Hoggan’s Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming is a valuable exposé of the efforts that have been made by self-interested actors to prevent political action on climate change, by manipulating the public debate and confusing people about the strength of the science. Written by a Canadian public relations professional, and written with a focus on actors and events in Canada, Hoggan’s book examines how the media has been involved in the debate, how companies have worked to create false grassroots campaigns (‘astroturfing’), the role played by think tanks, the use of lawsuits to intimidate and silence critics, the ‘echo chamber’ effect wherein false claims are endlessly repeated by sympathetic sources, and more. Hoggan makes a convincing case that status quo actors – particularly petrochemical firms – have been working for decades to keep the public confused, and keep legislators inactive.

Hoggan provides both logical and documentary evidence to back up his claims – pointing out things like how most of the scientists that actively deny the consensus view of climate change are being funded as advocates, not as scientists:

The Intermountain Rural Electric Association isn’t paying Pat Michaels to go back into his lab and do research helping the world to a better understanding of how human activities are affecting the climate. The coal-fired utility owners are paying him to “stand up against the alarmists and bring a balance to the discussion.”

Hoggan provides many specific examples of malfeasance, and argues that the public relations personal directing the campaign against action on climate change are often indifferent to whether the claims they are making are true or false. They are tested for how well they affect public opinion, not how well they represent the reality of the situation.

Hoggan does sometimes present information in a misleading way. For instance, he compares the risk of climate change with the risk of car and house insurance, and says that: “in both cases the risk of disaster is significantly less than the greater than 90 percent certainty that scientists ascribe to the climate crisis.” He is referring to how the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report concluded that: “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.” and defined ‘very likely’ as cases where “expert judgment and statistical analysis of a body of evidence” support an assessed probability of over 90%. The IPCC was saying that there is a scientific consensus that there is a 90% chance that the unequivocal warming that has been observed has anthropogenic causes, not that the “risk of disaster” is 90%. The question of how serious the consequences of warming will be is distinct from the question of what is causing warming. Another odd error is one sentence written as though the consulting company McKinsey was a person: “When McKinsey talks about a carbon revolution, he strikes the right tone.”

That said, Climate Cover-Up succeeds in its key purpose: revealing that not everyone is engaging in the climate debate in an honest or ethical manner. The scientific consensus that climate change is real and risky is exceedingly strong, and yet the public and policy-makers have been very effectively confused and encouraged to delay action. By revealing the extent to which the debate has been manipulated, Hoggan’s book will hopefully contribute to the eventual improvement of public understanding of climate change, and the development of a will to act sufficiently strong to sort out the problem before the worst potential consequences become inevitable. Hoggan also continues that effort through DeSmogBlog – a site he created to provide ongoing updates on climate change misinformation campaigns.

[Update: 13 October 2010] Another good book on the same topic is Naomi Oreskes’ Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

Climate denial and conservative think tanks

In 2008, three academics published the paper “The Organization of Denial: Conservative Think Tanks and Environmental Scepticism” in the journal Environmental Politics. The researchers analyzed 141 books published between 1972 and 2005, all of which expressed skepticism about the seriousness of environmental problems, including climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, resource shortages, air pollution, and others. Of these, the researchers found that over 92% were published by conservative think tanks, written by authors affiliated with those think tanks, or both.

Contrast that with Naomi Oreskes’ 2004 Science article: “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” in which she examined the positions taken on climate change within peer-reviewed scientific articles. Of the 928 articles examined, none expressed disagreement with the consensus view that humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change.

Peter Jacques uses their survey to argue that “scepticism is a tactic of an elite-driven counter-movement designed to combat environmentalism.” That is to say, groups with an economic or ideological commitment to the present arrangement – where most energy comes from fossil fuels and the atmosphere is a free dumping ground for greenhouse gasses – are continuing to press for policy inaction by self-serving means, using information and arguments at odds with that in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. None of that is surprising, though it does demonstrate the irony of climate change deniers claiming to be an embattled and persecuted minority, concerned only with getting the truth out despite the efforts of nefarious scientists and environmentalists to silence them.

Oil 101

Written essentially in the style of a textbook, Morgan Downey’s Oil 101 moves systematically through the major areas of knowledge required for a basic understanding of the global petroleum industry. These include:

The history of oil use, including predictions about the future
The chemistry of crude oil
Exploration for and production of oil
Refining
Petrochemicals
Transporting oil
Storing oil
Seasonal demand variation, pricing, and oil markets

Downey covers each in a clear and informative manner, though he sometimes delves into a greater level of detail than most amateurs will prefer. For instance, some of the forays into chemistry are at a level of sophistication well above what casuals readers are likely to retain. That said, the book is laid out in a highly structured way, so it is easy to gloss over technical portions without losing track of the overall structure of the text.

One thing the book strongly demonstrates is the enormous amount of expertise and capital that have been developed within the petroleum industry. For instance, the section on how offshore oil platforms are constructed and operated shows what an astonishing number of things can be executed deep underground, from a steel platform above the ocean’s surface: everything from horizontal and vertical drilling to the assembly of steel pipes (cemented in place), the use of explosives, the installation of automatic or remote-controlled valves, the injection of acids and chemicals, etc. The discussion of refining and transport technologies and infrastructure is similarly demonstrative of sustained investment and innovation. While it is regrettable that all of this effort has been put into an industry that is so climatically harmful, it does suggest that humanity has a great many physical and intellectual resources to bring to bear on the problem of finding energy. As more and more of those are directed towards the development of renewable energy options, we have reason to hope that those technologies will improve substantially.

The final portion of the book, about oil prices and forward oil markets, was the least interesting for me, as it deals with complex financial instruments rather than matters of chemistry, geology, etc. Still, for those who are seeking to understand how oil prices are established, as well as what sorts of financial instruments exist that relate to hydrocarbons, these chapters may be useful. Downey does provide some practical advice to those whose organizations (companies, countries, etc) are exposed to changes in oil markets: “The decision not to hedge [Buy financial products that reduce your exposure to a risk of major price changes] should be an active decision. Management should clearly inform investors why they decide to face the full volatility of the oil market when they have an opportunity to manage the risk.” Managing such risks on an individual level has been discussed here before.

All told, this book is well worth reading for all those who are curious about the energy basis for global civilization, why it is established the way it is, and some of the key factors that will determine which way it goes. Downey is a low-key proponent of the peak oil theory. He argues that reserves, especially in OPEC, are inflated and that a peak and bell-shaped drop-off in production are inevitable: probably between 2005 and 2015, provided depletion occurs globally at about the same rate as it did in the United States following their peak in 1970. For those hoping to grasp the implications of that projection, as well as those hoping to plan for a world based on other forms of energy, the information contained in this book is both valuable and well-presented.

The Secret Sentry

Less famous than the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the American National Security Agency (NSA) is actually a far larger organization. It also provides the majority of the intelligence material provided to the president daily. Matthew Aid’s The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency tracks the history of the organization between the end of the Second World War and the recent past. While the book contains a fair bit of interesting information, it suffers from some significant flaws. Notably, it is very thin on technical detail, not written with a neutral point of view, and not always effective at putting the role of intelligence in context.

Aid’s book contains virtually no technical information on the main work of the NSA: codebreaking and traffic analysis. Confusingly, it doesn’t even clearly indicate that a properly implemented one-time-pad (OTP) is actually an entirely secure method of communication, if not a very convenient one. For those hoping to gain insight into the past or present capabilities of the NSA, this book is not helpful. It does provide some historical background on when the US was and was not able to read codes employed by various governments, but does not explore the reasons why that is. Is certainly doesn’t consider the kind of non-mathematical operations that often play a crucial role in overcoming enemy cryptography: whether that is exploiting mistakes in implementation, or ‘black bag’ operations where equipment and materials are stolen. On all these matters, David Khan’s book is a far superior resource. Personally, there is nothing I would rather know about the NSA than how successfully they can break public key encryption systems of the kind used in web browsers and commercial encryption software.

The Secret Sentry consists largely of brief biographies of NSA directors interspersed among accounts of the numerous conflicts with which the NSA has been involved. The most extensively described of these are the Vietnam War and the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The information on the Gulf of Tonkin incident is quite interesting, given the ways in which it shows how intelligence can be misused by politicians spoiling for a fight (as obviously happened again with Iraq in 2003). Indeed, some of the best information in the book concerns how intelligence can be both badly and poorly used. For example, it discusses how keeping sources and methods secret makes intelligence less credible in the eyes of those making choices partly based upon it. At the same time, having sources and methods revealed reduces the likelihood that current intelligence techniques will continue to work. On the politics surrounding intelligence, it was also interesting to read about how the NSA was involved in bugging UN officials and representatives during the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The book is also strong when it comes to providing examples of policy-makers ignoring intelligence advice that conflicts with what they want to believe – as well as explanations of why there was no prior warning before major events like the fall of the Soviet Union, the Yom Kippur War, or September 11th, 2001. Rather, it describes how the various bits of information that would have gone into such warnings were not pieced together and properly understood in time.

The book contains a number of errors and unclear statements that I was able to identify. In addition to the aforementioned matter of the cryptosecurity of the OTP, I think it is wrong to say that the 1983 marine barracks bombing in Lebanon was the world’s largest non-nuclear explosion. The Minor Scale and Misty Picture tests were larger – as was the Halifax Explosion. The term JDAM refers to a guidance kit that can be attached to regular bombs, not a kind of bunker buster. Also, GPS receivers determine their locations by measuring the amount of time signals from satellites take to reach them – they are not devices that automatically broadcast their own location in a way that can be triangulated by others. These errors make me fairly confident that the book contains others that I was not able to identify.

The book also has a somewhat perplexing structure. Roughly chronological, it is written in the form of little vignettes with headings. An example of the way this can seem disjointed is found in the chapter on the Reagan and Bush Senior administrations. One one page, it describes the tenure of William Odon as NSA director. It then jumps into short description of America’s signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellite technology at the time. Then, before the page is done, it jumps to the topic of Ronald Pelton selling NSA secrets to the Soviets. One sometimes gets the sense that the order of these chapter sub-units was jostled after they were written. Terms and abbreviations are sometimes explained well after their first use, and sometimes not at all. Bewilderingly, the Walker-Witworth spy ring is mentioned only in passing, in a single sentence, and yet is included in the index.

The Secret Sentry shows a lack of objectivity that becomes more acute as it progresses, culminating in tirades against the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the NSAs controversial domestic wiretap program. While there are certainly grounds for criticizing both, it is arguably the role of a historian to provide facts and analysis, rather than moral or legal judgments. It is also a bit odd to see the attack of one American armoured vehicle as ‘tragic’ while the destruction of large Iraqi military formations is discussed only in factual terms. It would also have been welcome for the book to include more information on how those outside the United States have perceived the NSA, and the SIGINT capabilities of states not allied with the US.

Perhaps a second edition will eventually correct some of this book’s flaws. That would be welcome, since the topic is an important one. While the record of the NSA at providing useful intelligence is checkered, it is almost certainly the most capable SIGINT organization in the world today. Its future actions will have implications for both the privacy of individuals and for geopolitics and future conflicts.

The Greatest Show on Earth

Despite the overwhelming evidence for evolution, Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution is depressingly necessary. Even in rich countries with good educational systems, large numbers of people believe patently false things about themselves, life, and the universe: among them, that the planet is less than 10,000 years old, that all life forms emerged simultaneously in their present forms, and that humans and dinosaurs co-existed. Dawkins refutes all of these claims with logic and scrupulous evidence: considering the fossil record, embryology, molecular biology, artificial selection (such as plant and animal breeding), and other demonstrations of how life and our planet have changed together. While some of the content is technical, this is a strong book for many audiences, from those already well versed in evolutionary theory and the evidence for it to those wavering and looking for more information to develop their own understanding.

Having personally read almost all of Dawkins’ books, this one nonetheless contained a lot of new and interesting information (as demonstrated by the string of posts it prompted while I was reading it). As ever, Dawkins is skilled at using analogies and examples to illustrate complicated concepts – a talent he shares with the best of science writers. The subject matter of this book also gives him the solid grounding necessary to come across as justifiably passionate, rather than the somewhat abrasive persona he sometimes projects when discussing topics less closely married to empirical evidence. Along with The Selfish Gene and Unweaving the Rainbow, I think this is Dawkins’ best work.

The evidence for evolution is truly overwhelming. The truth of it is shouted out by the embryological development of animals, by the common elements in the developing biochemistry of nature, by the genetic linkages between all species, by fossil records and isotope ratios, and by observations of evolution across human timescales, such as when bacteria evolve to resist antibiotics. Dawkins touches on all of these, using illustrative and often unusual examples. Even those who have studied a lot of biology are likely to find many of them novel and engaging. All this makes it rather tragic that there are still educational institutions that shrink from teaching it, or insist on presenting it alongside theories for which there is not only no evidence, but excellent evidence contradicting key tenets, such as the fact that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old. Quite simply, students learning biology in a way not infused with evolutionary theory are being an inferior education and needlessly blinded when it comes to the true character of the world. Hopefully, Dawkins’ continued advocacy will help play a role in resisting that insidious phenomenon.

My one complaint about the book is that the hardcover edition seems to have been cheaply printed, on rough and fast-yellowing paper. A book that goes to such lengths to be a celebration of the wonderful character of life on Earth ought to display it all in a somewhat more splendid way. That said, I can appreciate how the advocacy agenda of the text favours a $25 printing, rather than the $50 kind usually associated with slick glossy nature books.

Prior posts inspired by the book: