Bad science, worse politics

As the Kyoto Accords regulating greenhouse emissions went into effect today, without the support of the world's largest polluter, the United States, it is 34 degrees in Chicago, warm and sunny, a rare February day where you can get away with just a sweatshirt. We haven't had significant snow in weeks: the worst weather was a few days of cold rain, practically equatorial by our usual standards. It would be easy here to make a connection- indeed, the normal joke is that maybe global warming isn't so bad. Fortunately, that isn't the case. A rare warm stretch in a normally brutal Chicago winter has nothing to do with global warming. And unfortunately, both sides of the debate on climate control use these arbitrary facts to prove a case.

Let's start with the warmth. It is a warm winter, to be sure. But global warming is not the culprit (hero?). Global warming, if it does exist, works by fractions of degrees over decades. It is a slow process, and to treat a statistical quirk like a pleasant day as proof the sky is falling does a great disservice to a very real problem.

Because it is a real problem, and one has to work backward from ideology to pretend that it isn't. Because climate change happens so gradually, it is easy for people- and yes, let us call a spade a spade, conservatives with industrial connections- to claim that global warming doesn't exist. What is a quarter of a degree over 10 years? Absolutely nothing, right?
Well, no. Even small changes in the climate can be catastrophic. The median temperature of the Ice Age was only a few degrees colder than the preceding epoch, and we are only a few degrees warmer than that. And yet, the ecological differences are enormous. It doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to say that if a few degrees can end an Ice Age, a few more degrees can have a similarly great impact. There has been enough discussion of the effect of melting ice caps that it need not be repeated here.

This is more about the politics behind the issue. It is politics that threatens to get in the way of science. President Bush, when talking about climate change, likes to talk about needing "sound science" before he makes a decision. This is supposed to be a nod toward rationality, but it is just the opposite. It is a sop to those on the right who despise science, and scientists.
For some reason science has a very bad name. There are many people who are proud of their ignorance- or even disdain- for science (this is discussed at length in Richard Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow , an excellent book about the wonders of science and the fear many people have of it). And the reason they are proud is because it shows they stick to their guns regardless of what mere facts have to say. I don't like those enviro-freaks getting in the way of business- therefore, global warming is a hoax. This is working backward, letting ideology influence how you look at facts, instead of letting facts influence philosophy.

(To be fair, of course, science isn't always correct, and has been used for awful, evil purposes. One has to look at the great evils of the 20th century- Nazism and Bolshevism- to see those who twisted science for their own ill ends. But that is exactly the rub: they used science to fit preconceived notions, and that is what those opposed to global warming are doing. It isn't carried out to the same degree of flagrant cruelty, but the effects on humans could be equally deleterious.)

Sadly, the red herring of "enviro-freaks" is a charge that is easy to conjure. There are many in the environmental movement who seem to have no grasp on reality. The common bogeyman erected is the (admittedly rare, but popular) case of a group of hippies shutting down a factory to save a Three-spotted woodtick (one can insert their own ludicrous sounding animal here. Duckbilled titmouse, firesloth, whatever. The facts are irrelevant). These cases are rare, but happen enough, and it doesn't matter if the "hippies" are the EPA and the animal is actually crucial to the ecosystem- the broadstroke of extremism is easily painted.

As I was writing the last sentence, I struggled to find another word for "ecosystem," which is as good an example of how absurd the debate on the environment has gone. "Ecosystem" just sounded very New Agey, prejudicial, made me sound like I should be carrying around a didgeridoo. And that is ridiculous. It just shows how good the right is at manipulating terms, and how good the left is at letting themselves be painted in ridiculous terms. The stubborn nature of some of the more odious nature-freaks (the Earth Liberation Front being only the most extreme example) lends itself to this caricature and to the bastardization by politics of sound scientific terminology.

Because words like "ecosystem" or "environmentalism" are not political words. They are science. It is ostrich-like to the extreme to pretend that it doesn't matter what humans do to the planet. It is neither liberal nor conservative- it is deadly cold pragmatism. To divorce human actions from the arena in which they are performed is not bold or brave or infused with passionless, worldly, realpolitik: it is stupidity.

The Kyoto Protocols are flawed, and the US had the right not to sign them, as it would be penalized more than any other country (and yes, the US is the largest polluter, but it also drives the global economy). But for the President to use a flawed accord as a means of sidestepping any discussion of the issue is a abdication of his duties. An Administration that presents itself as willing to make tough decisions regardless of politics should be able to tackle an issue that will bring no political gain, but will help billions around the world. Unfortunately, science is a dirty word at the White House, and until it is not, clean skies remain a pipe dream of the fringe.