Writing – Page 43 – a sibilant intake of breath

Climate book offer

Having personally populated a small library full of books on climate change, I can say with some authority that James Hansen’s book Storms Of My Grandchildren makes a substantial contribution to the debate, partly because of the clarity of his thinking and expression.

As such, and in the interests of improving debate here, I am willing to make the following offer:

Basically, if you are an active member of this community and you will read the book, I will send you a copy.

More specifically:

People requesting a copy must have actively and constructively participated in past discussions on this site (to be judged by me alone)
They must also be willing to read the book, or pay me back for the book and shipping in the event that they do not.
Copies will probably be shipped to people via the US, Canadian, or UK versions of Amazon. I may send them by another means, if a cheaper alternative is available, however.
Any copies shipped outside those places will be shipped at the expense of the recipient.
To begin with, I will pay for no more than eight copies.
I reserve the right to cancel the offer at any time.

People who can afford to are encouraged to buy the book themselves, rather than take advantage of this offer. Hardcover copies are on Amazon for $19.44 Canadian.

[Update: 5 February 2010] My review of Hansen’s book is online.

The Invention of Lying

The film Ricky Gervais film The Invention of Lying is based around a fascinating central conceit, but ultimately fails to explore it in an interesting way. The film imagines a world in which people are simply incapable of telling falsehoods, and in which they automatically accept any statement from another person as true. While bits of the film are very funny, it is disappointing that the protagonist who learns how to lie uses it for such uninspired things as cheating at casinos and manipulating the affections of the pretty but dull female lead. Indeed, beyond her appearance there is never any indication of why she is an especially desirable partner. You would think someone with truly awesome powers to manipulate all of humanity might dream up some grander projects than getting rich and rearing children with the woman he happened to meet just before his discovery.

One awkward issue is that people frequently provide bad information for reasons other than deceit. They provide old information, misunderstand things, get bad readings from equipment, and so on. In any functional world, people would need to be able to realize that these sorts of errors occur. Furthermore, this kind of basic scrutiny seems absolutely necessary for the development of science and technology. It is hard to see how people could be capable of parsing out bad information that others provide by accident, while simultaneously being unable to imagine that someone might intentionally tell them something incorrect. As such, Gervais’ world would either be seriously lacking in scientific or technological sophistication or simply be very improbable.

I also think a world without lying would be dramatically different from ours in ways that go beyond dialogue, the procedures at banks, and the kind of films that are made. I doubt that the basic political and social structures in such a world would so closely resemble ours, given the extent to which falsehood and misinformation are fundamental to our political and economic systems, and even our day-to-day interactions. The film never shows much of the world beyond the first world town in which it is set. You have to wonder what the world at large would resemble. For instance, it seems unlikely that dictators could emerge or endure in a world where they needed to be entirely truthful. It is also interesting to imagine what the world of international relations and diplomacy would look like.

The actual invention of lying is what security researchers would call a ‘class break’ – a discovery that renders an entire system vulnerable by creating new sorts of attacks. For instance, while learning the combination to one lock could permit a security breach, realizing that all padlocks of a certain type can be opened with a shim is a class break. Being able to lie to people who would automatically accept anything you claimed as true would be an overwhelming instance of this effect. Indeed, it seems impossible that in a world governed by natural selection, the ability to be deceitful would not spread rapidly, completely eliminating the trusting world that existed before, and which was in an unstable state as soon as lying became possible. You would eventually expect a new equilibrium to arise with key features present in our own world: from mental scrutiny to background checks to legal systems designed to minimize the damage caused by malicious individuals.

In any event, the film prompts some interesting thinking, even if it sticks to a rather conventional romantic comedy structure (complete with the nasty bad guy competing for the trophy woman in question). I suppose the film’s value lies more in the comedy than in really exploring the central concept. Some of the explicitly truthful dialogue is certainly quite amusing, particularly when it occurs in places where we expect white lies, rather than malicious falsehoods, to be told. For instance, the first date between the male and female lead, set in a somewhat fancy restaurant, is perhaps the best part of the film. It is when the most trivial lies are avoided that the most amusement results.

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar…

In their attempt to express how important philosophical ideas relate to jokes, Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein are largely successful. Indeed, their hypothesis that there is a relationship between the philosophical and the joking mentality ends up seeming like a plausible one, as jokes are used to illustrate issues in metaphysics, logic, epistemology, ethics, the philosophy of religion, existentialism, the philosophy of language, social and political philosophy, relativity, and meta-philosophy.

Some of the jokes in Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes do feel a touch dated – with a strong emphasis on somewhat off-colour jokes based around traditional attitudes towards sexuality. Still, the book is a fun, quick read and worth a look if you are looking for some light-hearted yet academic contemplation.

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.

Rapier’s insights into blogging

Over on his energy blog, Robert Rapier has written a summary of what he has learned, blogging about energy issues. The points seem pretty broadly applicable to those writing about technical and politically contentious topics. For those thinking of giving serious blogging a whirl, a couple of his points seem especially pertinent and well matched to my own experience. In particular, you won’t be able to predict which posts are popular and produce discussion, and which will not. Also, you shouldn’t expect to make any significant amount of money, and you should expect to be plagued by spambots trying to do so.

At its worst, blogging on substantive issues just produces a discordant echo chamber of people yelling at one another, continuing to use discredited arguments, and generally not advancing the state of discourse. That being said, I do think blogs have a lot of societal and pedagogic value. By forcing the author and commenters to defend their views in the face of criticism, they provide a valuable mechanism for sharpening thinking. Here’s hoping that helps to address the world’s grave problems, over the long term.

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.

Spoofing Canada on climate

Earlier today, pranksters impersonating Environment Canada issued a phony press release which contained new targets for greenhouse gas mitigation in Canada. While Canada’s actual targets are 20% below 2006 levels by 2020 (equivalent to about 3% below 1990 levels) and 60-70% below 2006 levels by 2050, the press release included the much more ambitious figures of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and over 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. The release also made reference to a major transfer of funds to the developing world, as compensation for past harm and to encourage both mitigation and adaptation actions.

Compared to Canada’s real targets, the phony tougher targets are much more in line with an emissions pathway set up to reduce the risk of more than 2°C of warming. The stunt also draws attention to how Canada isn’t really negotiating in Copenhagen. We came in with a pair of targets that we say we will reach, regardless of what anyone else does, though we also frequently say that we won’t do anything until the US acts. Indeed, our environment minister was saying less than a month ago that Canada won’t take meaningful action for years. It should also be recalled that the government once promised that their intensity-based approach would lead to emissions peaking by 2012. Nobody mentions that pledge anymore.

The identities of those behind the stunt remain unknown. Hopefully, it will draw attention to Canada’s evasion and lack of ambition, prompting a genuine change of targets and approach soon.

Copenhagen global editorial

Along with 56 other newspapers in 20 languages, The Guardian recently printed a front page editorial about the Copenhagen climate change conference. Apparently, the tactic of having many papers print it simultaneously has not been used previously. It seems fitting that this happen on an issue of such universal importance.

The editorial highlights the risks associated with climate change, and the inadequacy of actions taken so far. It also includes a brief response to the CRU emails issue:

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

They acknowledge that a comprehensive deal is unlikely in Copenhagen, but propose that one be adopted in next year’s June meeting in Bonn.

The whole piece is worth reading.

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.