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Friday,
January 14, 2005
And now an exchange of letters with a distinguished NASA scientist,
followed by a minor apology on my part. This is all long:
====
Subject: climate science and advocacy
This is in response to
your comments about realclimate.org and about climate in general.
I am a climate scientist, and I take my role as an
objective, sceptical, questioning enquirer very seriously. We agree almost
completely on what science should be. However, you make a serious mistake in
assuming that 'not many climate scientists' are like that. Almost all of
them are. None, not one, of the climate scientists I meet at conferences or
workshops or that I correspond with fit the stereotype you paint of
catastrophists making up worries to gain grant money. Personally, I don't
think I've ever made a dramatic statement in papers, public speechs, grant
applications or letters to the editor. Yet I still manage to keep my job and
support a couple of graduate students. This is the same in every institution
and university.
So let me explore where you get this idea from. You
mention Vikings, and the freezing Hudson, and so I presume that you are
concerned about climate and weather variability in the past. A perfectly
valid issue, and indeed one that I've written half a dozen papers about.
Mostly related to the potential of solar and volcanic forcings to influence
climate. But why do you assume that these things are not of concern to us?
Science by anecdote is, I'm sure you would agree, less
than satisfactory, and building up regional, global and long term pictures
is difficult. Yet many of us are involved in doing just that. Understanding
the potential feedbacks that may have operated differently in the past is
difficult, and yet many of us are involved in exactly this quantification -
based on sound physical processes and chemistry and (slightly less soundly)
biology. What is it in this that makes you think we are not valid
scientists?
Arrhenius's calculations were indeed back of the
envelope. The calculations made now, in the light of much more accurate
spectrometric data, and with a much better idea of what's in the atmosphere,
are actually much better - and give a smaller answer than Arrhenius's
original one.
Yes we make models. Of course. The quantification of
our knowledge and the testing of those models against past data is
fundamental to climate and indeed all science.
The conclusion that we've come to is that increasing
CO2 is important, and given that it is likely to increase further, will
become more so. We say this because of our understandings of pre-industrial
climate variability, because of our understanding of radiative transfer, and
because of our understanding of air-sea exchanges. Not despite that
knowledge. Are these understandings complete? Of course not. Are we
continuing to look at new processes and possible feedbacks? yes of course.
Does it mean that the sky is falling? no (except in a literal sense, due to
cooling of the mesosphere due to increased CO2, but that's neither here nor
there).
I do not go around being a doom sayer - but it is
incumbent on scientists to explain to people what it is we think we
understand, and what it is we don't.
The fact that a search for Vikings on the RealClimate
website turns up nothing, means merely that we are not an encyclopedia, it
says nothing about the quality of scientific discussion.
Hopefully, you would like to have a real discussion
about this with us one day. If so, I look forward to it.
Gavin
-- | Gavin Schmidt NASA/Goddard Institute for
Space Studies | | 2880 Broadway | | Tel: (212) 678 5627 New York, NY 10025 |
| | | gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~gavin
To which I replied:
> This is supposed to be a real discussion?
>
> You are concerned that CO2 levels are high and this may be important.
> This is about what Arrhenius said, and no one I know disagrees. The
> question is
> quantitative: how important, and what should be spent to alleviate it?
> And for that matter, in the real political world, can anything be done
> since stopping CO2 basically says that now that the rest of the world
> can get into the industrialization game, the game's over. Oh, and you
> can't develop nuclear power, either.
>
> Of course it's no good telling China that. Or the former USSR either.
> If the Kyoto accords are examples of good science, then we're in real
trouble.
> The Kyoto accords are shot through with ways for some to get rich,
> while doing darned little about the problem. Yet anyone who doesn't go
> along with the Kyoto agreement is denounced as an unscientific fool in
> the name of Big Science, and you know, I haven't heard very many of the
reasonable people
> you describe comment on that. Political statements are made in your name,
> and you say -- ?
>
> I used to go to AAAS meetings with some regularity, and I have
> listened to Hansen, Schneider, Margeret Mead, all of them highly
> regarded, make what sure sound like headline grabbers to me. Of course
> it used to be the Coming Ice Age that had them terrified, and when
> AAAS was in DC, it is odd how the talk turned to the need for more money.
>
> But when there was a paper doing a Bayesian analysis of the problem
> with the conclusion that what was needed was money for more data to
> reduce uncertainties, rather than ever larger sums for remedies in the
> despite of uncertainties, the paper got almost no publicity -- I think
> I was the only member of the press who attended its reading -- and
> oddly enough none of the AAAS officers thought it important that this
> be included in the press conferences.
>
> I assume that previous states of the Earth, particularly those which
> happened in historical times, are of no concern to climate scientists
> because I never hear them talked about, and I certainly don't see
> explanations of how those conditions came about included in the models
> that keep being put forth. The models so far do not seem able to take
> the initial conditions of 1900 and get us to the year 2000 with any
accuracy whatever.
> But they sure can take the conditions of 2004 and tell us about the
> year 2020!
>
> I think I recall a NASA scientist in a congressional committee hearing
> rolling huge dice. Don't I? But that was of course good science, not
> sensationalism, and couldn't possibly have been related to getting a
budget.
> This from the agency that took an operational Skylab and Saturn and
> made Smithsonian exhibits and lawn ornaments out of them. The most
> powerful machine humanity every built. A lawn ornament. Now there's
judgment for you.
> Couldn't possibly have had anything to do with budgets. Must have been
> good science that dictated that we do that.
>
> I don't know what an anecdote is. Many "anecdotes" are perfectly good
data.
> An anecdote is a data point you don't want to deal with. The Hudson
> froze stiff in 1776. We know it because Hamilton and Washington
> recorded it, with Hamilton able to bring the guns of Ticonderoga
> across the ice to Washington in Harlem Heights. Now why is that an
> "anecdote" rather than data? Would it have been data if Franklin had
> published it in an almanac? Any climate theory that does not allow for
> the Hudson to be frozen in 1776 is a no good theory; and while we are
> at that, the theories need to account for all those stories about Hans
> Brinker and the Silver Skates, and skating on brackish water canals.
> And skaters supplying Dutch cities under siege from the Spanish by
> skating across the Zuyder Zee which is salty water. It froze solid
> enough for that to happy. This is data. Calling them anecdotes doesn't
make the data go away.
>
> I wrote once about the Voodoo Sciences, by which I mostly meant the
> social sciences. In that essay I pointed out that novelists like me
> need only be
> plausible: I just have to get you to believe it. Lawyers want evidence.
> Scientists, though, use data, and are required to explain it all, or
> have a damned good reason for throwing out data points. The perihelion
> of Mercury provided data that needed explaining. Newton couldn't do that
properly.
>
> I am willing to believe that CO2 is important, but when I hear about
> it from someone denouncing a political candidate because the candidate
> doesn't want to fund the Kyoto Accord, what am I to make of that? And
> particularly when the scientists don't want to be bothered with things
> like the Lowell Observatory's records of the brightness of Mars and
> Venus, and insist on climate models that begin with a constant solar
constant. That's science?
>
> And tell me about your climate model that explains why things were
> warm around 800-1000 AD and got cold starting about 1300, until in
> 1776 the Hudson was frozen solid enough to bring cannon across. Show
> me a model that doesn't require me to let you pick arbitrary start and
> stop years to establish climate trends.
>
> You said
>
> I do not go around being a doom sayer - but it
is incumbent on
> scientists to explain to people what it is we think we understand, and
> what it is we don't.
>
> I agree. Completely. And I see precious little of that happening. I do
> see efforts to get the Danish guy fired for publishing a book that
> doesn't go along with the current politically correct theories. And I
> haven't forgotten those big red dice rolled down the table in the
> Congressional Hearing Room.
>
> I'll give you the dice if you give me my Vikings and Alexander Hamilton.
>
> You also said
>
> Yes we make models. Of course. The
quantification of our knowledge and
> the testing of those models against past data is fundamental to
> climate and indeed all science.
>
>
> Son of a gun! Really! I never would have guessed. But then I'm just
> an old OR man who had to make models back in the days before we had
> Excel. Now tell me how to suck eggs.
>
>
> Sorry, I couldn't help that one. I would have thought my credentials
> regarding modeling and its relevance to science were obvious. And I'm
> the one who quotes Helmholtz that the most practical thing in the
> world is a good theory.
>
> Now for your key question:
>
> What is it in this that makes you think we are
not valid scientists?
>
> Leaving out the dice rolling down the table, what I think is
> unscientific is the insistence that we take heroic measures to remedy
> a situation before we have a good handle on what the problem is. I
> have always been for bigger budgets to get more data and nail down
> what climate variations we have to deal with. Science, it seems, is for
the Kyoto accords.
>
> But if it turns out that solar constant is the actual driving force,
> and we are headed for a lower solar output in future, we have one course
of action.
> If it's CO2 causing warming we have another. They don't both need the
> same remedy.
>
> By the way, if the goal is to get CO2 out of the atmosphere (and why
> that's so much worse than water vapor isn't entirely clear to me, but
> it's not my area of expertise) I would have thought there might be
> more attention paid to processes that can do that. Then I watch the
> ocean bloom people try to get a few bucks to go test their theories,
> and just how hard it is to get any money for any theory not in line
> with the party line that "WE NEED KYOTO" and -- well does that answer your
question?
And received:
Jerry, Thanks for you quick reply.
Ok, let's take a step back here. Reasonable people can
disagree on the economic costs and benefits of Kyoto, and we would both
agree that this was fundamentally political argreement, not a scientific
one. I would also point out that I never mentioned Kyoto, and I will
continue to confine my comments to the actual science.
Let me expand on the problem of anecdotes in climate
science. I often hear people say things like 'how can this year be the one
of the warmest on record, when my town/city/state had a record freeze last
week/month etc.' You are of course correct that this is a data point that
needs to be taken into account, but it is not any more valuable than all the
other (possibly less dramatic) data points around the world. The globe as a
whole can be warming without that being reflected in every location. Given
the chaotic dynamics that influence local weather, we expect that the year
to year variation at any one locality is much greater than any small change
in the global mean. This is extremely well understood.
The Hudson River almost froze over last winter
actually (which was the first time that I had seen sea ice outside of the
polar regions). Did that imply that 2003 was not in the top 5 warmest years
in the instrumental record? No. It means that the extremely cold NE winter
was more than balanced by warming in the West, in the tropics and in
Eurasia. So single anecdotes are valid data points, but they must be
balanced by the rest of the data that didn't coincide with geopolitically
important events.
The dice incident was Jim Hansen (who in the interests
of full disclosure, is my boss), and while it may have seemed sensationalist
to you, he was trying to convey to a rather scientifically naive
congressional committee the role of stochastic variability in climate. What
he said was that global warming does not mean that every summer will be
warmer than the last, but that the mean of the distribution is shifting
slightly such that the probablity of a warm summer is slowly increasing, as
if you had loaded the dice. Given that congressmen are probably more
familiar with dice games than probability distribution functions, this was
an attempt to explain varaitions in way they could grasp. A fair attempt in
my opinion.
I would add that, Jim's testimony in congress had to
be as a private citizen because NASA HQ did not want him to say anything.
NASA's funding of climate related research is tiny compared to the ISS or
Space Shuttle (and particularly our lab which has barely 25 NASA employees
and is in New York City, not Maryland).
In fact if we really wanted more funding, we would be
going around saying we need more research, instead, we collectively write
1000 page reports that say that the balance of evidence supports a
significant anthropogenic effect on climate in the 20th century.
Ok, finally, lets talk about solar forcing. This is
real - no argument. But how important is it? The direct mesurements since
1979 show that the variations over two sunspot cycles are small (around 0.25
W/m2 averaged over the globe from solar min to solar max), and while you can
see this clearly in the upper atmosphere ozone and temperature fields, this
does not produce a detectable signal near the ground (both because of other
things going on like ENSO or volcanoes, and the thermal inertia of the
oceans which damp down high frequency variations). So what about longer term
varaitions, i.e. going back to the Maunder Minimum ~1650-1710? This is much
more uncertain. We have proxy measurements (sunspot counts, cosmogenic
isotopes 14C and 10Be) that go back that far, but they can't be indepentedly
calibrated to solar output. They are correlated to the irradiance over a
sunspot cycle, but they are really magnetic-related phenomena, not
irradiance-related. So, absent a good physical model for the sun that links
these things, people make estimates based on their best guesses. Thus there
is a huge variation in estimates of this long-term component.
Our best analyses of the spatial patterns of change
related to the solar forcing indicate that continental NH temperatures were
about 1 deg C colder in the mean during this period, with slightly more
cooling in western Eurasia, with a pattern reminescent of the response to a
weakened NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation which describes the zonality of the
westerly circulation). I was a co-author of a paper in Science in 2001, that
looked at whether climate models could replicate this pattern given the
known physics of solar change. We found that two features were key, allowing
the solar irradiance to vary more in the UV than in the visible (consistent
with what is seen over the sunspot cycle), and allowing the ozone field to
vary as a function of the UV and temperature in the stratosphere. With both
of these effects, the model produced global cooling (as you would expect)
but also a robust change to the circulation (a weakened NAO) that amplified
the cooling in western Eurasia and over the mid-latitude continents.
Obviously given the uncertainties in the forcing, the data that we were
trying to match, and uncertainty in the model response, we can't use this a
proof that we got all of it right. However, in the absence of better data,
there is no obvious need for 'new' or unknown physics to explain what was
going on. This was just a first cut, and better models and more data are
being brought to bear on the problem, so the conclusion may change in the
future. As of now though, this is still the current state of thinking.
I would add that volcanic forcing over this period was
actually significant as well, and we estimate about the global cooling over
this period was about half-half solar and volcanic.
So how does this compare to 20th C forcing? Even if
you make the most generous estimates of solar forcing, it is still less than
a quarter of accumulated forcing by greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, N20, CFCs,
and O3). There is no doubt which has been the biggest effect. Plus, the
changes over the last 25 years (measured by satellites) show no significant
increase, while GHG forcing has continued to increase.
Over the whole of the 20th Century, the global mean
temperatures are actually well matched by computer simulations (FYI, I
attach a few figures from one of our papers we will be submitting to the
next IPCC report - though I would ask that you not distribute them since
they are not yet published). The first panel are the best estimates of the
forcings (GHG, solar, volcanic, aerosols, land use change etc.), and the
second panel has the global mean temperatures that you get from 1880 to
2003. The regional match is not as good of course, and that seems to be
related to poor estimates of aerosol distributions - and we are working on
improving that. The key figure that suggests that this is a serious problem
is the estimate of the global energy imbalance which has reached around 0.75
W/m2 over the last decade. This energy is going into warming the oceans, and
that has been estimated from in situ measurements and satellite inversions
over the last decade (shown in figure 2). I re-iterate, this is not proof
that we have everything right, but it does support the contention that we
are not completely wrong.
Respectfully,
Gavin
I thought this quite reasonable. Perhaps my reply
was not. I said:
> Anecdotes:
>
> Captain Alexander Hamilton relied on the fact that the Hudson would be
> frozen over. Not that it might be, or that it might almost be; but
> that it would be frozen hard enough to drag cannon across it. There is
> no record that 1776 was an atypical year. Ergo, the reasonable
> assumption, without my going and looking for more data on the subject,
> is that the Hudson used to freeze solid.
>
> Holland and brackish water: there were many sieges during the 16th
> Century, and one reason the Spanish Armada was sent against England
> was the inability of the Spanish troops to take cities in the
> Netherlands; and the reason they couldn't do that was more than once
> that skaters were able to bring food to the cities. These are anecdotes
but my God, man, they are also evidence.
>
> Of course if the models can't account for such data, it's sure more
> scientific to declare the anecdotes and refuse to pay attention. As I
> said before, so far as I can see an anecdote is a data point that
> science doesn't want to explain.
>
> It was anecdotal that the patients of Ignatz Semmelweiss didn't die of
> childbed fever while those of far more prominent physicians did. We
> now know why; but had we never learned why, would we be justified in
ignoring him?
>
> It was anecdotal that a Glendale physician prescribed aspirin for his
> heart patients and had a patient list with heart attacks far lower
> than some of his colleagues. I was at "scientific" medical conferences
> where they laughed at his "anecdotes."
>
> An anecdote is a data point that science wants to ignore. Remember
> this useful phrase. You will find you need it again and again.
>
> Since Congressman Rohrabacher, who chairs one of the relevant
> committees, was my undergraduate student some years ago, let us hope
> that he is able to tell the difference between sensational stunts and
> evidence. Of course talking down to mere Congressmen is traditional
> among academics and bureaucrats. Whether it's justified or politically
wise is another story.
>
> Going back to the Maunder Minimum, I see: if you have no good theory
> of why there were variations in solar output we don't need to worry
> about the possibility in the future. Thank you. I am sure they spoke
> to Semmelweiss that way.
>
> In any event, since the "consensus" of science seems to be that Kyoto
> is better than nothing, and we all know that absent restrictions on
> emission levels from India and China Kyoto will accomplish next to
> nothing, please explain to me the coupling between science and policy?
>
> As I have said before: simple Bayesian analysis shows that when you
> have uncertain alternatives, and the indicated action in case of each
> alternative is very expensive, you are better off spending money on
> reducing those uncertainties.
>
> One reason I haven't been arguing with my Congressional friends for
> larger budgets to reduce those uncertainties is that it is very clear
> that most of the science establishment is as open to scientific
> arguments regarding atmospheric science as the adherents of Velikovsky
> were open to scientific arguments.
>
> Lawyers want evidence and advocate. Scientists need data and are
> required to explain it all, and admit their uncertainties.
> Not to roll dice down a congressional hearing table.
>
> One more question: has anyone paid attention to the records of the
> brightness of Venus?
>
> Incidentally, doesn't Dr. Baliunas have slightly different views,
> particularly on solar variability?
>
> I'll close with a repetition:
>
>> Now for your key question:
>>
>> What is it in this that makes you think we are not valid scientists?
>>
>> Leaving out the dice rolling down the table, what I think is
>> unscientific
> is
>> the insistence that we take heroic measures to remedy a situation
>> before
> we
>> have a good handle on what the problem is. I have always been for
>> bigger budgets to get more data and nail down what climate variations
>> we have to deal with. Science, it seems, is for the Kyoto accords.
>>
>> But if it turns out that solar constant is the actual driving force,
>> and we are headed for a lower solar output in future, we have one course
of
> action.
>> If it's CO2 causing warming we have another. They don't both need the
>> same remedy.
>
To which I received as reply:
With all due respect, I tried to have a scientific
discussion but all I get back is an allusion to Velikovsky. You appear to
not have read my email at all (where I tried to give you a sense for what we
do actually understand about solar and volcanic forcing), and instead
re-iterate points I never contradicted. The basis of any communication is
that each person actually listen to the other. Absent any indication of this
here, I see no point in continuing further.
Too bad, you might have learnt something.
Gavin
Which is where things ended. It took me a moment to
see where I mentioned Velikovsky, and I would argue that I had more to say
than that one allusion; but perhaps Professor Schmidt ran out of time. I
sometimes do. He did cause me to go have a look at one of my assumptions,
generating the following disquisition on anecdotes and climate:
Now one admission, apology, and comment on
anecdotes and science:
The first rule of data is, are the facts stated
correctly. In my case one was not. I seem to have confused Hamilton's
actions with General Washington in December 1776 around New York with Henry
Knox and his actions in January 1776 from Ticonderoga to Boston. Moreover,
in January-February 1776 there was "an unusual thaw" that made life a lot
more difficult for Knox. This does illustrate a real problem with anecdotal
evidence: it's often cited from memory and seldom verified. There is thus
every reason to be suspicious. However, in this case, it's not terribly
important: there is a very great deal of data concerning the severity of
winters in the period prior to 1800, including the use of skaters during the
various Spanish sieges of the Netherlands in the 17th Century, the stories
of skating on brackish canals, etc. I don't think anyone serious argues that
up to about 1800 the Earth was a lot colder than it is now.
Nor that between about 800 and 1300 it was
considerably warmer, with habitations in Greenland, vineyards in England,
and generally longer growing seasons throughout the northern hemisphere. I
continue to contend that climate models must deal with these two known
conditions. Note too that the change from warmer and benign in 800 to 1300,
and cold and getting more hostile between 1320 and 1700, was quite rapid and
quite dramatic. I continue to contend that climate models must deal with
this fact. It may be that early industrialization and human activities are
at fault, but I haven't seen anyone show how. If they were not, then it
seems to me an established fact that we have had dramatic and significant
climate shifts in history: and that climate models must deal with that.
Instead, I get defenses of Kyoto; and I am afraid
that reasonable people cannot disagree on the costs and benefits of Kyoto;
at least I have not seen any of its defenders argue that the costs are not
very high, and the benefits are all political; the actual benefits are at
BEST zero. I'd be pleased to see an economic argument for Kyoto. I have yet
to do so.
Perhaps I could have learned something, but it
doesn't matter since the discussion seems to be closed.
I will say, yet again:
> Now for your key question:
>
> What is it in this that makes you think we are not
valid scientists?
>
> Leaving out the dice rolling down the table, what I think is
> unscientific is the insistence that we take heroic measures to remedy
> a situation before we have a good handle on what the problem is. I
> have always been for bigger budgets to get more data and nail down
> what climate variations we have to deal with. Science, it seems, is for
the Kyoto accords.
>
> But if it turns out that solar constant is the actual driving force,
> and we are headed for a lower solar output in future, we have one course
of action.
> If it's CO2 causing warming we have another. They don't both need the
> same remedy.
I would think that we could all agree that what is
needed is less political enthusiasm for the Kyoto Accords, and more
"consensus" on just what data we need: on just what would be a crucial test
of the Global Warming Hypothesis (and its causes: that is, is the Earth
warming overall or only in spots; and if it is, what is causing it); of the
need for remedies; and a general understanding of what is going on. The
questions are not trivial, but the debates don't seem to be serious. Or
perhaps I have misread Professor Schmidt.
Discussion continues below.
=================================
Subject: Global Dimming
Maybe somebody else read Fallen Angels...
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L12551308.htm
Fossil fuel curbs may speed global
warming-scientists 13 Jan 2005 00:00:42 GMT Source: Reuters By Matt Falloon
LONDON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Cutting down on
fossil fuel pollution could accelerate global warming and help turn parts of
Europe into desert by 2100, according to research to be aired on British
television on Thursday. "Global Dimming", a BBC Horizon documentary, will
describe research suggesting fossil fuel by-products like sulphur dioxide
particles reflect the sun's rays, "dimming" temperatures and almost
cancelling out the greenhouse effect.
The researchers say cutting down on the burning
of coal and oil, one of the main goals of international environmental
agreements, will drastically heat rather than cool climate.
"When the cooling affect goes away -- and it
must do because particles like sulphur dioxide are damaging to humans --
global warming will be much stronger," climate change scientist Dr Peter Cox
told Reuters on Wednesday.
Temperatures could increase in the worst case
by up to 10 degrees by the end of the century, the researchers said -- much
more than current estimates.
Scientists differ as to whether global warming
is caused by man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse"
gases, by natural climate cycles or if it exists at all.
Take away fossil fuel by-products like sulphur
dioxide without tackling greenhouse gas emissions, and the extra heat will
speed warming, irreversibly melting ice sheets and rendering rain forests
unsustainable within decades, Dr Cox said. <snip>
=======
Subject: Global dimming
Jerry
It appears that due to global dimming about ten
percent of the sunlight that used to reach the surface of the earth is now
reflected off clouds that are present due to particulate pollution. Pan
evaporation data ie. measuring the amount of water that evaporates from a
pan shows this phenomena, is as hard as data gets, and has been collected
for many years . There is a plausible mechanism for the additional cloud
formation in that very small particles from industry and vehicle exhausts
have the property of providing the nucleus for a raindrop without allowing
the raindrop to become big enough to fall as rain. Initally these results
were ignored and I do wonder if this was because they would have messed up
the climate models.
Regards John Edwards
I doubt that it was deliberate in that sense
And see below
==
Subject:
DDT
DDT is effective and cheap as dirt: this matters for
Mozambique. If they have to use something else, they end up using nothing.
Next, the preferred method today is to spray a bit inside the house, which
discourages mosquitoes from entering. Using this approach, you end up using
less DDT on the whole of Mozambique than people used to use on a single
cotton farm.
So, does DDT make sense as an antimalarial measure in
dirt-poor countries? Yes. There is insignificant risk to man or beast.
The problems arise because some of the countries
giving aid ( Nordic countries, mostly) oppose any use of DDT in order to
appease idiots back at home, and threaten to cut off aid to anyone who uses
it. . This has in some cases caused African countries to give up DDT and
have a nice malaria epidemic. To complicate things, when everybody else
pretends that that DDT is dangerous, guys in Africa don't know enough to
understand that it's just propaganda.
The people responsible for this should be treated as
the Romans treated their parricides.
Gregory Cochran
Sewn in a sack with a live rat, monkey, and viper
and thrown into the Tiber, as I recall. Hmm. (On checking, it's into 'the
sea', and a rooster was involved.)
Subject: re DDT
You might find this of use:
http://junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm
===== Tiomoid M. of Angle JD MBA
'For forms of government let fools contest;
That which is best administered is best.' -- Alexander Pope
========
Subject: RE: DDT reintroduction.
Again, thank you for your response. After you printed
our series of emails, you said, "what I am looking for is some science, not
conclusions with some scientific terminology (which is what the above letter
really is). " Given that you seem to be implying that I am drawing
conclusions without the necessary scientific background, I feel is necessary
to defend my personal qualifications in this area. I am a Phd student
researching the effects of xenobiotic (specifically pesticide) exposure on
global genetic expression levels in invertebrates. My training in the areas
of molecular biology, genetics, ecology, statistics, and toxicology was both
rigorous and comprehensive. I am quite competent to discuss the specifics of
any class of pesticides you care to mention. I went to great lengths to
remove any extraneous scientific jargon, leaving only what was necessary to
make my point. To be perfectly honest, I feel that you are guilty of what
you accuse me of - of drawing conclusions without sufficient knowledge of
the subject. Nonetheless, should you have any scientific evidence that DDT
would be more useful in field applications than, say, the mosern pyrethroids
I mentioned, I would love to hear it.
Sincerely, Joe Griffitt.
No sir. I didn't say you don't know, I said your
letter is proof by assertion with some scientific terminology. The
current letter is a list of your credentials, but it is still not
evidence. Nor, of course, is Dr. Cochran's note other than as assurance
to me that I am not entirely without qualified supporters. So far we
have a battle of conflicting statements, but not one of conflicting
evidence.
I don't have any expertise on this. I am willing to
believe you know far more than I do. But I am not entirely comfortable with
ending a discussion after hearing proof by repeated assertion coupled with a
citation of credentials. (Were I being unkind I could say assertion of
credentials.) There may well be some published studies that show all you
have said. I don't know. I don't know the relative costs of DDT vs. the
other materials. I have seen it said, often, that the problem with DDT was
that it was far too widely used. That seems universally agreed.
Whether that also means that none should ever be
used is not so clear to me. You say there are insecticides that are both
more effective and reasonably low cost. I would think most people in the
world would be glad to know this. It would help, though, if we knew where
they are available, at what costs, and what published studies show their
effectiveness.
I like sea birds and eagles a lot, and I don't
really want them to die. On the other hand, while 180,000 killed in a single
tsunami is a world attention attracting disaster, 2 million dead of malaria
doesn't seem to concern many. Surely it would be worth an actual scientific
investigation to determine if DDT might reduce that number of dead? And if
there has been such an investigation, perhaps it would be useful if we knew
where to find it.
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