Politics – PolitiCalypso

A March for Science Is Actually Long Overdue

The scientific community is divided about the planned March for Science. Adherents say that it is necessary to direct the public eye to the plight of scientific enterprise in an administration that apparently (and as many of us predicted) does not value scientific expertise. Detractors argue that the march would serve to politicize science and “turn scientists into another interest group.”

With all due respect to these views, I submit that science has already been politicized, and it was not the doing of the scientific community.

I’ve had this debate before. Some on social media like to argue that “advocacy” undermines scientific integrity somehow, or that stating an opinion about policies that are relevant to one’s research is a conflict of interest. I deeply disagree with both positions, and in fact, I think that the scientific community’s rigid adherence to the idea that “scientists don’t have political opinions” is a part of why we’re in the situation that we’re in.

You see, those in politics who have a problem with science—climate-change deniers, anti-vaccination activists, evolution deniers, anti-NASA advocates, whatever they may be—know very well that science and policy are intertwined. Scientists who assert that their research into climate change, medicine, etc., has no social policy dimension are saying something that, quite frankly, nobody else finds credible. It comes across as an attempt at deception, whether of oneself or of the general public, and it does not help the scientist’s case.

I’m going to propose that something like the following is what a layperson hears instead:

“My climate research has found a link between severe drought and global change, but don’t get me wrong—that’s not political! It’s just pure science. I’m not saying that any government should attempt to do anything about drought mitigation or emissions reduction; I’m just stating a fact! Now, more research money from the taxpayers, please?”

Yeah, I wouldn’t be convinced either.

It is true that it does not logically follow that a climate realist must support any given policy prescription. I’ve argued this before too: Accepting climate research does not mean that one must accept the entire “green” policy package. However, it is morally difficult to accept the reality of climate change and not think that something should be done about it. We can have differences of opinion as to what should be done, or who should do it, but inaction does not really seem morally defensible here (and in fact, some moderate-conservative Republicans are coming around to support carbon taxes, state-level action, and market forces in curbing emissions, such as the “Green Tea Coalition” that is pro-solar).

The layperson knows this. The (in this case) climate skeptic knows it too. Inaction is morally indefensible, so a person who—for whatever reason, be it financial conflict of interest, tribal partisan identity, or simple fear of personal disruption such as a coal miner might feel—doesn’t want to act can justify that decision only by denying the science itself. This particular field of scientific research (and many others) cannot be wholly decoupled from the political dimension, and it is a fruitless effort to attempt to do so. I don’t think we even convince ourselves of that, let alone anyone else, and as I said, I think we come across as dishonest when we try.

In the absolute best case, asserting that “scientists aren’t political” results in the removal of our voices from the debate about our research, our profession, and our integrity. If we take our speech out of the picture (and even attack those in our community who do speak out), the opponents of science are the only ones talking. The public doesn’t note our absence and think, “Oh, the scientific community isn’t speaking, so therefore the interests of scientists aren’t political.” They just don’t hear our side at all. It doesn’t take two sides to an issue for that issue to be “politicized.” It only takes one, and that one has already made scientists’ interests a political issue. The March for Science won’t do that; it’s already been done to us. We’ve been paying the price for our own timidity, and the march is a way to change that.

Let’s be perfectly clear about this: Federal research funding is under grave threat. Federal researchers fear a chilling of free scientific inquiry in the government. Young scientists and new graduates are afraid that they won’t even have jobs in the field that they just dedicated years of their lives to studying, and that they’ll be considered “overqualified” to do much of anything else. This is not “business as usual.” This is not the normal ebb and flow of policy, Democrat vs. Republican. This is a profoundly anti-intellectual populist movement that has scientists of all partisan leanings in its crosshairs, Republican scientists not excepted.

Further, I hold a position that the anti-marchers probably won’t like one bit: Scientists are an interest group. It’s time we started to act like one.

I don’t think the term “interest group” should be a “dirty word.” It’s simply an acknowledgment of an important fact in a pluralistic society: People are different and have different, occasionally competing needs. Policymaking is partly about balancing the needs of each “interest group” for the common good. You show me someone who isn’t part of an interest group, and I’ll show you a vacuum.

Populist movements like to use “interest groups” and “special interests” as bogeymen, turning them into tyrannical minorities and making them “the other” to the group of people that they are inciting to anger, but in reality everyone is part of an “interest group,” usually more than one. The “white working class” is an interest group. Fossil fuel labor is an interest group. Rural voters are an interest group (and all of the above are minorities of the United States population, in fact). The scientific community shouldn’t buy into the populist idea that being part of an interest group is bad, but instead, should embrace it as a stance against anti-democratic populism. American policy is at its best when it respectfully considers the interests and rights of all affected groups, instead of playing the deceitful, divisive game of pitting one minority population against another as “enemies.” (I don’t want to cast stones here, but I’d like to point out that both the Trumpian right and the identity-politics left do this, and it has been very harmful.)

Furthermore, interest groups that acknowledge their situation have done pretty well in policy, on both liberal and conservative sides. The civil rights movement wouldn’t have gotten too far if it had ignored the racial minority aspect. Same for the LGBT community. Religious groups acknowledge their distinguishing characteristic and openly lobby for favorable policies. Most recently, and perhaps most applicably to scientists (since it is a career), law enforcement lobbies have gotten legislatures in several states to pass “Blue Lives Matter” bills. Recognizing and uniting around a dimension of one’s identity turns a collection of disparate voices into a powerful force.

From a pragmatic standpoint, it’s in scientists’ best interest to band together around policy issues that concern them, get involved more (especially scientists who are Republicans—your voices are sorely needed!), speak out, and support science advocacy groups. Perhaps some do not want to participate in a March for Science for personal reasons. That’s fine. But let’s all recognize certain realities, including—especially—the reality that the status quo of scientists’ near non-involvement in policy discussion has materially hurt our profession, while doing nothing to prevent the “politicization” of science in the public mind. We are an interest group. Our research is frequently supported with taxpayer monies, and many of us conduct research that has policy implications (or connections, at a minimum). Like it or not, we’re part of policy and politics. Pretending these things are not so will not convince anyone to support science.

The Conduct of the House Science Committee Chair Should Horrify Climate Scientists

It should be apparent that I’m an independent thinker and that, as a scientist, I stick up for the interests of scientists when they are being shamed and harassed by political leaders and activists. That is why I called out progressive groups that are uninvolved in (and, I suspect, uninformed of) the extreme difficulties of acquiring funding for research and conferences when they attacked the American Geophysical Union for accepting a small amount of ExxonMobil money to help pay for its annual conference. There undoubtedly are instances for which ExxonMobil, and others in the fossil fuel industry, can be attacked—for actually influencing research in an improper fashion—but that is not one of them.

That said, I also have mixed feelings about the large legal case that involves ExxonMobil potentially defrauding its investors and the public about climate change, because it also involves atmospheric scientists at certain institutions who are climate skeptics and have apparently been funded by the fossil fuel industry. In the first place, as a scientist, there’s a part of me that is troubled by the thought of the legal system being involved in matters of scientific misconduct rather than the scientific peer process. I realize that this case involves much more than that, and that ExxonMobil is the party actually in the hot seat, but this is a visceral “do not like” moment nonetheless.

I also don’t like the implication that any scientific researcher who takes money from certain industry sources is automatically suspect. I was funded by the fossil fuel industry. While working on my Master’s degree, I did a side project that was funded by money from BP in the Gulf oil spill aftermath. The purpose was to determine the atmospheric impact, if any, of the oil spill along the coastal wetlands. I was unable to find an effect. I suspect now that the reason for this is that the dataset we had available was grossly insufficient for the purpose, and that we simply didn’t have enough money to set up a new, high-resolution network of sensors along the wetland areas. Detecting atmospheric boundary layer changes in a small area is virtually impossible without a high-resolution sensor network, not that I knew that as a beginning Master’s student. The work was “put in the file drawer.” Is it possible that BP knew that we wouldn’t be able to find anything without that superior sensor network that we didn’t have? I suppose it is, in retrospect. However, if such a thing is the case, that does not implicate me or any other person working on the project. I had no correspondence from anyone in BP and no pressure from anybody to find a negative result. It is possible for someone to have funding from a “suspect” source and come up with negative outcomes and yet for no research fraud whatsoever to have taken place.

If I hadn’t had the BP money, I wouldn’t have been able to get my Master’s degree—or begin a doctorate. (Although it didn’t fund any part of my doctoral research, without an existing degree, I wouldn’t have been eligible for the Ph. D. program.) This is the part that, I think, many political activists don’t get. Funding is hard to come by and we take it where it is to be found. The overwhelming majority of atmospheric scientists do not allow their funding source to hurt their integrity.

So this is why I have misgivings about political figures questioning scientists about scientific research outcomes that they don’t care for, even when the scientists being questioned are diametrically opposed to me on an important research and policy issue. I’m not going to comment on the substance of this court case, because I trust that the court can handle it, but if I didn’t have a visceral concern about a court case that involves climate-skeptic atmospheric scientists, I would have to consider myself the worst sort of hypocrite to object to what is being done to non-skeptic climate scientists by the Republican majority of the House Subcommittee on Science.

And that is the actual topic of this piece.

Atmospheric scientists who are not aware of what is going on should be, because it is chilling and could very easily involve them at some point. There aren’t that many places that will employ atmospheric scientists to work in their actual field of study, but NOAA is one of them. And the Chairman of the House Committee, Lamar Smith (R-TX), has been doing nothing short of libeling the agency, threatening its employees, and impugning the scientific integrity of every climate scientist who works for it. That is not an exaggeration.

Last year, Smith sent threatening letters to NOAA Administrator Dr. Kathryn Sullivan. He has also gone to right-wing media outlets such as Breitbart and claimed that NOAA climatologists tampered with temperature data, presumably at Dr. Sullivan’s behest, to advance the Obama administration’s, quote, “extreme climate agenda” (his words). Scientists have all sorts of valid reasons to revise early data, especially from sources such as satellites. Satellite data calibration is literally an entire sub-field of meteorology, not that Smith understands or cares to understand that. Needless to say, this despicable assertion places him in the category of climate skeptic that I can have no respect for whatever: those who think that scientists are engaged in a conspiracy to commit research fraud. Like most making this baseless, slanderous assertion, Smith seems to either have no concept of the gravity of his accusation (proven research fraud is a career-ender in science), or he simply doesn’t care.

I suspect it’s the latter. Extreme climate-change deniers actually do want to put every scientist who disagrees with them out of a job and destroy them personally. It’s gotten to that point.

Smith has also seen fit to insert himself into the aforementioned court case involving ExxonMobil, which is a state-level matter and over which the House has no jurisdiction. He has demanded communications from state attorneys general that consulted with environmental and climate-realist nonprofit organizations (as if it’s somehow unusual or corrupt for political figures to talk to nonprofits), as well as from employees at the nonprofits themselves. He has demanded communication from climate scientists. For two years he has been conducting his own little version of the Benghazi Committee’s unending witch-hunt, but instead of it being about an event in which a United States ambassador was killed, he has been abusing his position to harass climate scientists—most of whom have had no involvement whatever in policymaking (not that that is an indicator of lack of integrity)—who produced research that has a conclusion he and some of his Committee majority don’t care for.

Think about that. A Member of Congress who heads up a committee has been summoning scientists to testify and provide him with e-mail correspondence, simply because his committee oversees NOAA and he doesn’t like the conclusions that researchers within NOAA have been finding. He apparently believes that his role includes making sure that NOAA produces data that the current Congressional majority likes.

If that doesn’t horrify you, it should. And he is not the only politician to conduct himself like this and abuse his authority. The former Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, did the same thing to climatologists at the University of Virginia while he was in office.

It’s pretty apparent why climate-change deniers don’t talk about the sun anymore, and don’t usually talk much about nebulous and undefined “natural cycles,” but instead accuse climatologists of producing fraudulent data to further a political agenda. The thought process, such as it is, seems to go like this:

Scientists receive salary and/or research funding from the government.
NOAA is part of the Department of Commerce, which is in the executive branch.
The President accepts the science of climate change and has promoted emissions reduction and clean energy throughout his term of office.
Therefore, all climate science conducted by governmental agencies must be done expressly and exclusively to promote the President’s policy agenda.
1. Corollary: Therefore, the only reason the scientists could possibly have to revise early data must be political pressure.

Obviously, the fallacy is in drawing a link between a source of funding and the outcome of a scientific research project (or, for that matter, its purpose). This is why I don’t like it when activists from any side go after scientists’ integrity because of who pays their expenses. If it seems that I go after my own side harder than I do my opponents, that is because I am more disappointed when my own side engages in shaming, and also because I know that people who already think my field is fraudulent aren’t going to listen to anything I say in defense of it. Those who are indeed defending scientists from people like Lamar Smith might be willing to hear a scientist’s perspective.

Not all scientists are going to have the stomach for jumping into the maelstrom of politics. I get that. I get that viscerally. It’s actually been a source of—not alienation, exactly, but something close to it, between me and many fellow doctoral students in my department. They’re pure researchers who don’t want anything to do with politics or policy, while I am not. But there is another class of scientists out there, scientists who do have an interest in the policy implications of their work, but who think that somehow it undermines their integrity as scientists—or that it presents a conflict of interest—to jump into the fray.

It doesn’t. An opinion is not a conflict of interest (or if it is, then everyone has one), and an actual conflict of interest does not mean fraud. Climate scientists who do want to have a say in this sort of thing need to stand up and be heard. Their 3% of colleagues who are climate-change skeptics may largely be polite and respectful (or passive-aggressive, at worst—and scientists of all stripes have refined that into a fine art). They may propose some combination of natural climatic cycles that partially account for one source of temperature data, while not really attempting to challenge the enormous mass of data supporting anthropogenic climate change. But their adversaries in politics are not going to play nice.

They are going to disgrace the dignity of their offices by going to racist conspiracy-theorist media outlets, and baselessly accuse entire governmental agencies—and every scientist in them—of making up data, the very worst thing one could say about a scientist in the professional sphere.

They are going to demand private correspondence from government scientists for open-ended witch-hunts.

They are going to inject themselves into legal cases over which they have no jurisdiction and demand private correspondence from attorneys general and nonprofit organizations.

They are going to call scientists up to Congress and harass them for hours about their research findings.

And sitting back and hoping that they won’t touch you because you’re a pure researcher, not involved in policy, no “conflict of interest”—so very good—won’t stop them from doing it. It just tells them you won’t fight back.

Carbon Taxes: Where I Stand

I complain a lot about the divergence of political ideologies toward their extreme points, and the accompanying (or causative?) increase in ideological “team” or “tribal” identification, but I’ll give this much to the people who do it: It makes it easier for people to understand exactly where you stand. One of the difficulties of staking out positions on a case-by-case basis (as opposed to accepting the entire package of an ideology) is that others may sometimes become confused as to exactly what views you support. At worst, people may think that such a person is a crank who mindlessly rails against everything, when in fact the person is just thoughtful.

I grumble about environmental policy positions of the hard left. This is not because that element of the hard left is the most offensive to me, but because the cause is—and always had been—the most important policy matter to me. I care more about progress being made in it, and I’m a pragmatic idealist. I happen to believe that pretty much any suggested regulation from these people that is aimed at private individuals would be counterproductive. People tend not to like “the government” telling them what to do in their own homes, especially if it causes financial hardship or personal discomfort.

And the fact is that a lot of these ideas would do both.

I am in support of a corporate carbon tax. Corporate taxes are already handled very differently than individual taxes, so the legal precedent exists to impose a carbon tax on business (large business, even, given that small businesses are often exempt from any manner of tax laws that apply to business) without doing it to individual households. And if companies wanted to avoid the tax consequences of high carbon production, then their options would consist of carbon offset purchases (or donations to environmental causes, perhaps) instead of squirreling money into tax-free accounts. I think it would be a net benefit to everyone.

I am not, however, in support of an individual carbon consumption tax. In a time where the middle and working classes are already squeezed and unable to get ahead, this type of tax policy could impose an even greater burden. Furthermore, it would be unequally applied and arguably regressive. People who were fortunate enough to live in areas with public transportation, multifamily housing, and the like would have lower carbon usage than others. Given that in urban areas, poor neighborhoods are usually underserved by public transit, and that the rural poor often have no options at all except personal vehicle ownership, the transportation part of the tax could very easily become highly regressive. Furthermore, let’s look at those vehicles. People who cannot afford a new, efficient car, or an upgrade to their existing one, would be penalized by a carbon tax as well. One could even argue that people who eat meat, dairy, or buy leather would be penalized, as would people who lived in historic properties and did not have the money to insulate them.

People would also be penalized based on the climate of their location. Those in highly temperate climates, such as the Pacific Northwest, would have lower home energy usage than those in the Northeast corridor (hot summers and cold winters), the Southeast (very hot summers), the Plains and Midwest (very hot summers and very cold winters), or, well, pretty much anywhere else.

And sure, a corporate carbon tax would penalize businesses in regions with extreme weather conditions more than it would penalize businesses elsewhere. But unlike private individuals, businesses have more ability to pay for the upgrades to make their facilities more energy-efficient. If such a carbon tax were to be implemented, it would even make sense to extend credits to businesses for making the upgrades, on top of the advantages that would be in place under the tax code once it took effect.

In sum, I don’t think an individual carbon tax is good liberal policy or politically pragmatic. It could antagonize huge swaths of voters and possibly even open up a rift between the environmental community and the “economic justice” faction of the left. However, I would favor a business carbon tax. It would bring in extra revenue, give large companies fewer options for evading taxes, and result in lower industrial emissions from any sector subject to it. Perhaps it would be ideal to reduce individual consumers’ carbon footprint too, but I think the best and most pragmatic way to do that is to encourage the production of greener products on the market, to offer tax credits (rather than imposing tax penalties) for green choices, and phase people into a new energy economy without slapping them with a regressive tax in an era of economic hardship.

Decoupling Climate Science Acceptance from Political Beliefs

As readers of this blog are very aware, the radicalization of American politics is one of my personal pet issues. Social scientists and other observers have studied it in greater detail by far than I have, and their findings bear out my own anecdotal observations. Increasingly, self-identified conservatives and progressives do not only hold diametrical political opinions, but they also identify with diametrically opposite non-political positions and make opposite lifestyle choices because they believe that is what good conservatives/progressives ought to do. The rural/conservative-urban/liberal association is only becoming stronger, for instance, and part of that is that there is increasing migration to communities for political reasons. This particular phenomenon is, I think, creating myopia on both sides about how to deal with large-scale problems, because what works for one type of community might not do at all for another. More on this later.

It goes deeper. Rigid conservatives and rigid progressives enjoy different types of entertainment: The progressives want to feel “global” and “multicultural” and so they partake of foreign art films; the conservatives want to feel “patriotic” and seek out military-themed movies; neither side wants to watch what the other side likes. They make certain dietary choices based on what “their people” are “supposed” to eat. They engage in different hobbies. And they do it on purpose, for reasons of political identity, rather than because of natural preferences. It’s “the personal is political” taken to the nth degree. If that sounds like cliques and social interaction in junior high (“cool kids don’t like X; they like Y”), well, that’s because it pretty much is the same thing. It’s incredibly toxic, and it has expanded to many other aspects of life. What I’m going to discuss here in depth, however, are climate science acceptance/denial and opinions on climate change mitigation policies.

I’m an atmospheric scientist. I have written on many occasions about how it feels like a personal attack for someone to deny that anthropogenic climate change is taking place, because in almost every instance now, the claim is not that something else is causing climate change, but that climatologists are engaging in mass data forgery. Accusing a scientist of research fraud is character defamation of a very serious degree. Those few (but loud) skeptical climatologists also like to beat the drum of “advocacy” every time one of their non-skeptical colleagues expresses a political opinion about what should be done. This is a less overt, non-explicit insinuation of misconduct, because it is empirically irrelevant if a scientist holds a given opinion about their research as long as the methodology of that research is sound.

The skeptics’ shift in recent years from proposing alternate testable hypotheses (the sun’s causing it all, interactions of atmospheric-oceanic teleconnection patterns are doing it, etc.) to accusing 97% of climatologists of research fraud is, I think, yet another manifestation of ideological polarization. No longer is it okay on the hard right to accept that the climate could be changing, even if one doesn’t accept that we are causing the greatest part of it. And it is certainly not okay to accept that we are changing it.

Why is that? I think that for many people, unfortunately, it’s just an emotional reaction to side with their “team” in any circumstances. But for some, probably especially those who are the most articulate and influential on their side, I think there’s something else going on. After all, if we accept that the climate is changing, then at a bare minimum that calls for community resilience measures. If we accept that we are doing it, that calls for us to cut back on what we’re doing. Hardening and mitigation call for the government to regulate private-sector activity. The concepts are linked and can’t be taken apart. Right?

Actually… wrong.

Accepting a scientific finding does not logically require accepting a policy prescription.

It is absolutely possible to believe that the climate is changing due to human activity and also to hold the political opinion that we shouldn’t regulate anything relating to that change. “Freely choose to adapt or die” is a position I have seen at least one very politically conservative meteorologist advocate. This is not my own position, of course, but it is one I can at least respect, because it accepts empirical scientific data. This scientist correctly recognizes that he can hold his chosen political ideology without believing that his colleagues in climatology are engaged in mass scientific misconduct.

Accepting a scientific finding does not logically require accepting a policy prescription. That does not just go for general policy prescriptions, or (in the above example) the political opinion regarding whether anything at all should be done as a matter of regulation. It also goes for specific policy prescriptions.

Accepting anthropogenic climate change does not require advocating punitive taxes on the purchase of animal products (food or otherwise).

Accepting anthropogenic climate change does not require advocating punitive taxes on home energy consumption.

Accepting anthropogenic climate change does not require advocating punitive emissions penalties for cars.

Accepting anthropogenic climate change does not require advocating “smart fuel pumps” that read one’s odometer, check it against a database, and assess a tax based on miles traveled.

There is a reason I have mentioned those four policy ideas, by the way. It is because I am an atmospheric scientist who accepts anthropogenic climate change and I am against every single one of them. A couple of them I’m against in any circumstance, and the other two, I’m against as one-size-fits-all national policies. I generally do not favor using the heavy hand of government on private individuals in this situation, for a variety of reasons.

First, it’s not politically pragmatic. It is arguably counterproductive, in fact. People respond much better to the carrot than to the stick, and I do support measures such as tax credits for making the choice to get a green car or to upgrade one’s home.

Second, it is large-scale industrial operations that have a greater effect on the global carbon dioxide balance, and private citizens do not often have much say-so in broad corporate policy. Not even through their buying choices, at least when we are talking about the power sector or the automobile industry, which are almost impossible for new competitors to enter that are not already very well-funded (and even then face difficulties, such as the determination of some states to lock out Tesla Motors from selling to people because they do not use a dealership model, but sell directly to drivers).

Third, consumers often have limited choices, especially for big expenditures. Not everyone can afford a new, highly efficient car. Prior to the new standards requiring 35 mpg, not that many cars even were highly efficient, let alone affordable ones. Not everyone can afford a home renovation to become greener. Not everyone has access to public transportation or carpooling options, and not everyone can afford to move closer to work.

And finally, the fourth reason I’m against the broad application of this sort of regulation is that it is a one-size-fits-all approach that is utterly inappropriate in some situations. For instance, on the subject of personal energy consumption, it is not even safe to forego heating or cooling in some regions during winter or summer. A limited-AC-usage efficiency prescription that isn’t that onerous for San Francisco would be a major public safety hazard in Atlanta in the summer. (Heat is the leading weather-related killer in the US.) The same thing is true for car usage: If a municipality wants to have strict emissions standards for privately owned vehicles, that is defensible when reliable public transportation is available in the area and perhaps they want to discourage driving when other options exist. It is potentially quite onerous in areas where your options are generally to drive to work or not work at all. And even in those cities where it is defensible, it makes sense to offer exemptions in cases where people cannot afford new vehicles or vehicle modifications. We were able to implement mandatory health insurance coverage without imposing a harsh burden on people who can’t afford it, after all. Even in large cities with good public transit, there are some situations when people need to use a car instead. Public transit may take you to work, but it generally can’t take you everywhere you need to go unless you happen to live in a place like New York City.

Sustainability must be fine-tuned to localities, in fact, because areas will have different needs. In fairness to right-wingers who complain that “liberals” always think in terms of how things are in “liberal cities” (San Francisco, Portland, New York, etc.), I’ll even grant that some of these suggestions, when considered for the entire country, do appear that way, since they work so poorly outside of such areas. But this cuts both ways. For instance, I will argue down anyone who is against any emissions testing at all in large cities. I have been in East Coast cities where, even leaving aside carbon dioxide emissions, particle matter and ozone can create truly oppressive—and hazardous—health conditions. I have felt my chest constricting on “code orange” ozone days. I’ve coughed up blood on high particle matter days. If your own experience is limited to medium-sized towns and suburban communities where this does not happen, then you too should remember that other types of environments have different needs, and your community’s situation shouldn’t be the blueprint for policies everywhere any more than the communities that your political adversaries often live in.

I know that it may be difficult for people accustomed to thinking in terms of “us versus them” politics to consider that “mixing it up” is even possible, but it is. It is possible to accept climate change science without supporting the entire hard-left policy package… or even any of it. It is possible to think that some things should be done without believing that they should all be done exactly the same way everywhere. From my own admittedly biased perspective, I think it’s not just possible, but preferable to think that. This us-versus-them, with-us-or-against-us, no-gray-area form of politicking benefits nobody, not even those who do it, except in the very cynical way of perpetuating their own existence by always having an “enemy” with whom common cause is impossible. It certainly doesn’t achieve anything concrete for the issues themselves.

Online Activism, Framing, and the Guilt-By-Association Fallacy

If you’ve spent any time at all looking over political blogs, political debates on social media, or online comments for political articles, you will have noticed a type of argument that is repeatedly made by both left and right. It goes something like this:

“You’re arguing for X [relatively mainstream opinion with which I disagree]. The person/group Y argues for X, but they also argue for Z [non-mainstream, politically extreme or fringe issue]. Defend that!”

If that sounds like a fallacious line of argument to you, you would be correct in thinking so. It is a named informal fallacy, guilt-by-association. In this instance, it is used in a twofold way: to dirty both the debate adversary and the mainstream issue by associating them, respectively, with a radical entity and a fringe cause.

As I said, I’ve seen this done time and time again by both sides. It is occasionally called out when one party is on the ball and recognizes the fallacy (whether they associate that term with it or not). That doesn’t necessarily mean that the person making the fallacious argument is going to back down, of course. As social science studies into the topic are increasingly finding out, ideology trumps logic and empirical evidence in, well, pretty much everyone, if allowed to. It can happen with any kind of ideology—political, social, religious, anti-religious, or intra-disciplinary (such as taking a hardline position on a controversial topic in a science—as a scientist). Unfortunately, most of the time that this fallacy is called out in an online debate, the person using the fallacy only doubles down on it. The usual gist of the doubling down is something like, “I don’t care if you don’t agree with view Z. It’s still your side!” –Sometimes with the pivot of “Why don’t you agree with view Z? Not progressive/conservative enough?” Which is a dodge from the original debate, but one that puts the attacker at a clear advantage if the opponent takes the bait, since doing so requires the opponent to defend himself instead of sticking to the topic.

However, more often than not, the guilt-by-association fallacy is not called out. The debater confronted with the guilt-by-association fallacy who doesn’t recognize it will feel compelled to defend another member of his own “side.” Humans are a deeply tribal species, another social science finding that I have long suspected to be true. We are driven to defend “our own” against “the other.” I rather suspect, in fact, that the social media use of the guilt-by-association fallacy is a contributing factor to the radicalization of the left and right in American politics. People who, before the rise of Facebook and Twitter, would not have been adherents of fringe views—seeing such views as, indeed, fringe, and feeling no obligation to defend them—are now being put on the spot by aggressive online “activists” who have access to search engines and networks of ideologically oriented websites that sometimes even list pithy, fallacious “talking points” for online political brawls. They are being compelled to view people as part of their “tribe” whom, in the past, they would not have, and are acting accordingly. Eventually, some of them do come to agree with the fringe views simply out of a sense of maintaining solidarity with one’s “team.”

That brings me to my final point, and it is, to me, the most disturbing one. I don’t think that the “masterminds” of such tactics sites care that they are encouraging anti-intellectual forms of debate. I certainly don’t think they care that they are contributing to political radicalization. I remember a number of years ago, when this type of online activism was first coming into its own, how the concept of “framing” exploded in the political blogosphere, and they were very open about what they were trying to do.

It was not the smooth marketing of “real” politics (not political campaigning, mind, but rather, deal-making and persuasive lobbying among elected officials and interest groups). In that environment, people are generally wiser to fallacious arguments. Half the people there, if not more, have legal education. In fact, I am pretty sure that this is why horse-trading does exist. To get something done with a truculent would-be ally, one must promise something tangible or concrete, or make an objective-sounding argument for why they should sign on. Fallacious appeals to emotion won’t cut it.

No, this “framing” that burst on the online grassroots scene around 2007 or so is something quite different from that. The point of it, as its originators proudly state, is deliberately to appeal to emotion, including the emotion of revulsion for an opponent because of guilt-by-association with a more extreme opponent. It is to take advantage of a widespread lack of critical thinking or logical analysis, and to play off the most primitive evolutionary parts of the human brain.

If this were the only way to get things done in politics, then it might be justifiable. But the fact is that this is not the case. In reality, this type of politicking is responsible for the rise of polarization and the inability to get anything done now, because it discourages people from stepping out of their reactionary knee-jerk “lizard brain” responses. I don’t see that it benefits anyone at all, except perhaps the PACs and firms that thrive on the ability to present their political opponents as crazy inhuman aliens who cannot possibly be reasoned with.

I’ve said before that I consider this type of populism to be anti-intellectual in the extreme. This is, by now, a running theme of this blog. Here’s yet another bit of evidence for it.

Why I’m Against Privatizing the National Weather Service

Note: This was an essay for a seminar. I thought it turned out pretty well, though, so I’m putting it online too.

Introduction

The issue of the proper role of government is an extremely controversial—and often emotional—topic in the United States today. Lines are drawn and sides are staked out, with people on both sides often taking a hard-line principled stance, looking only at resources supporting their own position, and applying their principled belief no matter what the circumstance. Over the past thirty years, this overarching debate has come to include a governmental agency whose function had not been questioned previously: the National Weather Service. Since 1983, the idea of cutting taxpayer funding for the National Weather Service and related agencies, and turning over their operations to private companies, has periodically surfaced. The proposal has taken two primary forms: the suggestion of cutting funding for forecasting operations with the expectation that private firms would take over the task, and the suggestion of selling weather satellites or other sources of weather data to the highest bidder and buying back the data that the sources generated.

History of the National Weather Service

The National Weather Service (NWS) originated after the American Civil War with the advent of a national telegraph system. For the first time, weather observations could be transmitted immediately. The science of meteorology had also advanced to the point that scientists studying the atmosphere knew that they would need observations from a broad geographical area in order to apply physical principles and produce a weather forecast, and the new technology had finally made this possible. In 1870, President Grant signed a bill of Congress authorizing the creation of a government agency to collect these observations from official stations and issue notice to downstream areas about incoming storms. The agency was initially part of the Department of War (now named the Department of Defense), but late in 1890, it was moved to the Department of Agriculture, a civilian agency, and renamed the Weather Bureau.

Throughout the twentieth century, the Weather Bureau steadily improved its forecasting capabilities with the addition of new technologies for gathering data and a continuous refinement of its numerical weather prediction tools. The invention of the computer in the 1940s provided an obvious opportunity, and in 1950, the first computer was, in fact, used to produce the first computer-generated weather forecast. In 1954, an inter-agency group of specialists formed the Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit, which processed weather observations from ground stations and began to generate basic forecasts on the computer. Radar made its mark on the government’s weather-related agencies in the 1950s as well, and in 1960, the launch of the first weather satellite provided a source of observations from far above the troposphere. In 1970, in the 100^th year after its formation, the Weather Bureau—which had been moved to the Department of Commerce five years earlier in recognition of the profound impact of weather on commerce—became known as the National Weather Service.

Continue reading “Why I’m Against Privatizing the National Weather Service”

Types of Climate-Change Skepticism

As a meteorologist, I’ve obviously got some thoughts about anthropogenic climate change. Let’s get those out of the way first, so that it’s clear exactly where I am coming from. (Also, there is an increasing trend, with political polarization, for people to simply name-call in “response” to a viewpoint with which they disagree. To the point of view of a typical grassroots activist conservative/tea party type, anyone who disagrees with that ideology in any point whatsoever is a “lib” or some such. To the viewpoint of a typical grassroots activist progressive, anyone who disagrees with anything in that ideology is a “bagger.” With us or against us, ally or enemy, no nuance. It is pathetic and utterly contemptible. But I digress.) I do not question the science of anthropogenic climate change. I take extreme offense to one particular form of skepticism of this hypothesis, in fact… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I accept the science, but I have issues with some of the usual prescriptions for addressing it. I don’t think that it is even viable to demand that everyone give up their cars, stop eating meat, reduce a first-world standard of living to a less advanced one, and move to “sustainable” urban box apartments, let alone that it would be a horrendous overreach to make such demands. Keep out of my garage and thermostat! Furthermore, at this point, even if the developed world dropped emissions to 0, climate change would still continue because of the gas that is already in the atmosphere. It takes a very long time for it to filter out. I think the real solution to the problem is a combination of geoengineering to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and improvement of technologies to limit emissions (without sacrificing quality of life). Technology caused this problem and I think technology is going to have to solve it. And in the meantime, we need to have very sound research on what local and regional impacts are to be expected so that areas can prepare and shore themselves up.

Anyway, that’s the viewpoint I’m coming from. It’s not an exceedingly common one. There is strong resistance to geoengineering in the environmental community, for some reason. Maybe one of these days I will go after the hardline activist left, who are largely deeply opposed to geoengineering, for their belief that control-freak government intervention into people’s private lives will even fix anything (climatologists say it won’t anymore), but that’s not the subject of this post. This post is about the other side of the coin: the climate-change skeptics. It is, let us say, a taxonomy of the types of skepticism currently out there, from least anti-scientific to most.

“It’s the sun” and other alternative, but disproven, hypotheses about the cause

You don’t see too many of these people anymore, but they were abundant a number of years ago. They did not dispute the data indicating that warming was taking place, nor that carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere was on the rise, nor—in many cases—that weather events were becoming more extreme as a result of the changes. They just disputed the primary hypothesis about the root cause, namely, man. Instead they offered other suggestions, the most common one being the idea that the sun was increasing its radiation output. The increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was proposed as an effect of warming rather than the cause (which is scientifically plausible).

The solar hypothesis was scientific. It was clear, defined, and testable—other effects, such as warming of all layers of the atmosphere, would have been observed, and the radiative output of the sun can itself be measured quite minutely—and therefore scientifically respectable. Adherents of the anthropogenic hypothesis owe these types of skeptics gratitude for proposing it, in fact, because it was an idea that needed to be either validated or disproven before the anthropogenic hypothesis could move forward. It was a rational thing to suggest.

It was just incorrect, as we now know. The sun’s radiative output isn’t on the rise, and all layers of the atmosphere are not warming. The warming/cooling pattern of the entire atmosphere follows the prediction of the anthropogenic hypothesis instead.

I have focused on the solar hypothesis, but if some other scientific hypothesis were to come forward that might explain the data, what I have said would apply to it also. I respect this type of skepticism, and so should every scientist. It has a fine tradition in the history of science and serves a great purpose even when the skeptical alternate hypotheses turn out to be incorrect.

“It’s a natural cycle,” a pseudo-scientific excuse that sounds scientific to people who don’t know better

You might have noticed a stark difference in tone between that heading and the previous one. There’s a reason for that. The second group of climate-change skeptics are more respectable than the third (which I’ll get to) because they don’t deny the climatic data record, but the explanation that they propose for it is not scientifically legitimate. “It is a natural cycle” is essentially a tautology to science, which is about the predictable—i.e., cyclical with the same circumstances—workings of nature. Taken literally, it is an acknowledgment that the phenomenon belongs in the domain of natural science, which we already know! With the context and connotation specific to climate change, this non-explanation amounts to little more than saying, “I don’t know what it is, but I don’t believe it’s what they say it is.”

Natural cycles in meteorology and climatology obviously exist. However, in order for a proposed cycle to be accepted in the scientific canon, actual details about it—with supporting observational evidence—must be provided. Otherwise it is not testable, not defined, and simply not a scientific hypothesis. It is an excuse for saying “I don’t know and I’ve got nothing.”

Any proposed explanation, or hypothesis, for a set of observed data should be testable. That means an additional set of observations can be gathered that either confirms or refutes the hypothesis (within a statistical confidence interval). Granted, within the past few decades, the rise of progressive ideology in academia has caused postmodernist relativistic philosophy to—I’ll say to contaminate discourse about science, because I, along with almost all scientists I know, remain firmly an old-school empiricist. If the methodology is sound, there’s no relativistic “catch” about the data gathered. Postmodernist philosophers of science can debate the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, but we empiricists will consider the radius of the pinhead and the Planck length and give an exact number, in the meantime. 😉 In the domain of actual scientific experimentation, especially in the realms of natural science, empiricism still rules the roost. This means that data rule the roost, and the claim “it’s a natural cycle” with no additional explanation of what the supposed “cycle” consists of is not something for which data can even be tested. There is no specific claim made, so there is nothing to test.

The deniers and defamers: “They’re all making up their observations to get grant money!”

This is the type of skepticism that I said I took extreme offense to, and I am not going to be charitable toward these people. They are attacking the integrity of my entire discipline with no supporting evidence, and I do not owe any politeness to people who are calling my people a bunch of frauds.

It, unfortunately, seems to be on the upswing. I suspect this is because of the political polarization that I mentioned in the very first paragraph. The people saying this crap tend to be complete scientific illiterates, most commonly political talking heads/columnists and their legions of trained keyboard warriors. They have a conspiracy theory mindset in which only their approved sources of “information” can be trusted and everything else is in on the conspiracy to undermine their ideology. If the trusted people—the columnists and talking heads—say that climate scientists go to the Arctic and make up data because they love living high on the hog with their grant money, well, the keyboard ignorati will believe that without question and repeat it.

There was a scandal in the UK about climate scientists saying suspicious-sounding things in e-mails. “Climategate,” as it was dubbed, was investigated thoroughly, and no scientific misconduct was found. The infamous phrase “hide the decline” referred to minimizing the contamination of a climate data set by a poor source of historical data. Why use poor data? Well, because when it comes to any period before the Enlightenment in any area of the globe other than the West, there really aren’t human-recorded weather observations to speak of, and we use what we have in nature. We know that some are better than others. It is scientifically sound to discount less reliable observations in a data pool.

A character defamation suit by climatologist Michael Mann against a right-wing magazine and a writer for it is (to my knowledge) currently underway. This rag apparently alleged that Mann falsified his data. Again, there was a very early (late 1990s) Nature article with Mann as lead author that had some historical climate graphs of dubious statistical quality. He has done work in the field since then, and in any case, a poor article in a borderline pop-sci magazine (as opposed to a journal of climatology, which would have higher standards) is certainly not the final word in climatology. To hear these deniers say it, though, it is the underlying foundation of a house of cards that they clearly believe is anthropogenic climate change theory.

In sum, the skeptics who propose alternative, but scientifically testable, hypotheses about the data are respectable. They are carrying on a long tradition of contributing to the scientific enterprise, and it really isn’t fair for ideological keyboard warriors on the other side of the aisle to bash them. The skeptics who propose the excuse “theory” of some unspecified “natural cycle” are at least respectful of the data, but they are not operating within a true scientific framework, and they are probably further muddying the understanding of laypeople of just how the scientific profession works. However, the skeptics who deserve no respect whatsoever, the ones who are actively undermining science by claiming that it is just part of a grand conspiracy to suppress their political ideology, are the ones who make unfounded accusations against the character of researchers.

I’ve said before that proven research fraud is a career-ender in science. The ironic thing about these jerks is that their stream of offensive character defamation might actually make it harder for actual frauds to be rooted out in any area of science. People have a tendency to protect their own “tribe” when they are under attack, and it is conceivable that the calls of “fraud” from people with a political agenda could harden even empirically minded scientists against the idea of appearing to cede anything to a pack of rabid dogs who are clearly not motivated by a desire for integrity within science. Why give them fuel, one might reason. Distrust of the first type of skeptics, the ones who are respectable, might be a casualty as well, and that would be unfortunate. These are yet more possible outcomes of the vast and destructive reach of political polarization. Not all climate skeptics are created equal, and it’s important to sort out the ones worth listening to from the ones who deserve the back of your hand.

Alleging a Conflict of Interest Does Not Discredit Research

A few days ago I wrote that the new populism was an anti-expert phenomenon that discounted, often even disparaged, the skills of negotiation and compromise in politics. As it turns out, the new populism is also deeply anti-scientific, given that it appears to have just as little comprehension of the logic involved in the scientific research enterprise. I’m speaking in particular of the practice of attempting to discredit a study by claiming that the researchers had a financial conflict of interest. This assertion is thrown around whenever a piece of research comes out with a conclusion that a given side doesn’t like. And the grassroots on both left and right do it.

On the right, this is prominently shown in the climate change denial crowd. Even on FOX News, hardly a grassroots-based source, climatology studies that show warming and indicate a very high probability of its being due to human activity are dismissed on the grounds that “those scientists get grant money that’s contingent on them coming to that conclusion.” The tea party foot soldiers (or keyboard warriors, more typically) repeat this claim ad nauseam. On the left, this behavior is most commonly found among the anti-big-agriculture crowd. A study comes out that finds that a dietary bogeyman of the left really isn’t bad? Well, the study must have been influenced by Big Ag, so therefore it can be dismissed among the faithful without a second thought.

The term “conflict of interest” is thrown at scientists by these people, and they fail to realize (or more probably, simply don’t believe) that even if a researcher was receiving funding from a source that has an interest in the research conclusions, that does not discredit the research. In fact, you can’t find any scientist anywhere who doesn’t have a “conflict of interest” of some variety. In most sciences, positive findings (in science, this means finding a real effect instead of failing to do so) are a lot more likely to be published than null findings. Scientists therefore have a personal interest in seeing positive results. Scientists can also have a personal conflict of interest that is ideological rather than financial. There is no such thing as a truly detached, objective human being, and the political populist squawking about “conflicts of interest” in science amounts to little more than the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem.

What matters for assessing the credibility of research are the methodology of the research and whether the study can be replicated. Does it “look bad” for, say, the corn industry to contribute funding to research indicating that high-fructose corn syrup isn’t harmful in moderation? Well, yeah, it does. But “how it looks” means NOTHING in the scientific method. If there is a problem in the way that the study was done, then call that out. If there isn’t an obvious problem but the study cannot be replicated by other researchers, then it might be time to question whether the claimed methodology was the actual one. But in the absence of these other issues with the research, going after the people who paid for the study doesn’t prove a thing about its validity.

As an example, a couple of years ago, a right-wing think tank funded a sociologist to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars to conduct a survey into the personal outcomes of adult children who had been raised by various types of families. The study was, for a little while, used in court cases to support denying marriage to gay couples. The claim made was that people who grew up in these households had poor life outcomes in the surveyed areas. Naturally, there was pushback against this study, due to the political nature of its topic. The type of pushback that ultimately went nowhere (and rightly so) was that which was based on attacking the funding source and asserting “conflict of interest.” The pushback that was successful was to go after the methodology of the study. As it turned out, the people that the researcher and his allies were claiming had been “raised by gay couples” were almost entirely from broken homes in which one parent was gay but was originally in a doomed marriage with an opposite-sex person. The real takeaway from the study was that gay people shouldn’t marry straight people and definitely shouldn’t have kids with them, because—no particular surprise—kids from broken homes tended to have more issues than kids who grew up in happy families. Making attacks on the source of the funding didn’t discredit the conclusions that were being bandied about; going after the methodology and finding that it did not support the claimed conclusions was what did the trick. (And, as a footnote, some ideologues among the critics did not at all like that the more scientifically minded critics urged them to knock it off with the irrelevant attacks on the funder and focus on methodological problems. This is another anecdote in support of my conviction that there is a strongly anti-scientific strain among modern-day grassroots political activists.)

The final problem with ideologues claiming “conflict of interest = discredited study” is this: It is an implicit allegation that the scientists involved in the work committed research fraud to please their funders. This is an incredibly serious allegation to make, the gravity of which these ideologues apparently have not a clue. Deliberate research fraud is a permanent career-ender in science. The world of scientific peer review is based on an honor system that what the researchers claimed they did is what they actually did. (Replication of studies bolsters the system, but again, there is a preference for positive original research, so a lot of replication studies don’t get published. There is awareness of this problem in the scientific community and steps are being taken to address it.) If a person wants to claim that a scientist committed research fraud, this claim is so serious that the claimant had better have proof of it. And yet, political activists with a definite conflict of interest (the desire to see certain results so that they are not disturbed in their ideological convictions) toss it around implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) without the slightest regard for what they are saying.

The net result of this ignorant, slanderous, conspiracy-theorist, and scientifically irrelevant line of attack has been an undermining of the trust in certain areas of science, depending on where a person falls on the political spectrum. In other words, they’ve touched science and managed to poison it too in the public mind. So yes, between the bad logic and a destructive mode of skepticism that completely undermines the foundation of the scientific method, I think I am entirely justified in saying that there is an anti-scientific current running through the new populism.

Sucker Punched Very Slickly

As any writer of Southern literature would tell you, the central Gulf Coast is a tragic place. It is the final destination of many terrible hurricanes, including Katrina, Ivan, Camille, Betsy, Audrey, Andrew, and a plethora of unnamed hurricanes in the early 20th century that caused devastation equivalent to that of their named brethren. It has been and continues to be the laboratory for the experiments of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, which incidentally are at least peripherally to blame for the damage from Katrina in New Orleans. The Gulf of Mexico itself has had a biological “dead zone” for several years from chemical runoff in the Mississippi River. Coastal wildlife, too, is constantly under threat, with various birds and seashore creatures perennially on the endangered species list and the coastal wetlands under assault. The threat of inundation from sea level rises from global warming looms in the future.

And yet, the coast has managed to maintain a certain charm. Visiting some areas is like living in a Jimmy Buffett song. Taking a tour of historical sites—those that have survived the onslaught of hurricanes—brings one into a bygone era of simplicity, a certain kind of elegance (even for the more rustic historical sites), and closeness to nature. Visiting one of the many wildlife sanctuaries on this coast and observing the unique plants and animals that live there can make an environmentalist out of anyone but the most hardened plutocrats, even though (or especially since?) such jaunts are darkened by the inevitable signs indicating that some creature is critically endangered. And anyone who has ever taken a walk on the white beaches of Alabama or far western Florida at night can attest to the subtropical marine beauty of the Gulf. The coast is its own travel advertisement.

Were it not for the hurricanes, and the fact that they have a much higher tendency to make landfall at devastating intensities on the Gulf Coast (and southeast Florida) than the subtropical Atlantic coast, I would consider living as close to the shore as I could manage.

But once again, the Gulf Coast has been sucker punched.

I’m not going to go into depth about the science of this oil spill or the technological requirements of damage control. Mechanical engineering and petroleum engineering are not my specialties, nor have I read much of anything about them in my life, and unlike many bloggers, I’m not inclined to make an ignorant-sounding fool out of myself by pretending that I know something about a topic when all I’ve done is to read about it on the news and maybe check a Wiki article or two. Not to mention that I, quite frankly, no longer believe one word coming out of the mouths of anyone protecting BP, the various supporting industries such as Halliburton (though I haven’t believed them in eight years), or the White House. You simply cannot believe any source except scientists if it has an agenda to protect that relates to the topic at hand, and sometimes even certain scientists lose sight of the fact that they are supposed to accept the truth even if it is not what they wanted. This is going to be an absolute disaster; bits of information are trickling out now to indicate just how thoroughly these entities tried to lie to the American public about the scope of this, and like the spill itself, the trickles are only going to get worse.

It is incredibly hubristic to imagine that one could prevent the truth from getting out about something as large-scale and catastrophic as this, but power knows no boundaries in its arrogance. Though history is littered with the figurative corpses of former power-brokers who thought they could get away with massive lies, each new set thinks it is invincible until put to the test. BP’s reputation is shot. And the White House may well try to do damage control by implementing a temporary ban on offshore drilling, but that does not erase the fact that the president broke a major campaign promise by getting out there and supporting this type of thing in the first place and then sent a spokesman to say that the spill didn’t change his mind. (The time to act like George W. Bush is when you are trying to get a piece of legislation passed in a non-watered-down form, not when you have just witnessed the American Gulf Coast experience a disaster on your watch that could have been either mitigated or entirely prevented. Heck of a job.) People will pay a price for dishonesty.

As for the “progressive” South-haters who will say in so many words that the people of the Southern coast (we’ll ignore the innocent wildlife for now) got what they deserved for voting for politicians that support offshore drilling, well, to dignify this bile with a response is beneath me.

The only remotely positive outcome I can think of is that of disaster-as-catalyst. It is far past time for the world’s economy to get away from fossil fuels. If I believed that God destroyed innocents on Earth in order to teach the survivors a lesson, I would say that the oil spill and the recent tragic coal mining disaster are one heck of a message. As it is, I think it’s just a terrible coincidence. Still, we can always choose to take a lesson from it even if the events themselves have no greater meaning. We are in the 21st century. We should not have our civilization so utterly dependent on the compressed or liquefied remains of prehistoric life forms. Do I think that this will serve as a catalyst to finally get away from the intravenous drip of oil and the crack pipe of coal? Not really. But then, I’m a cynic and a pessimist. I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, both about the impact of the spill and about our future.

I do love the Gulf Coast, after all.

The Ministry of Truth Is Located in Texas

A little more than a decade ago, my family and I were heavily involved in the local public school system in one county in Mississippi. The school district was monumentally corrupt in many ways, from the fact that one could place a majority of the teachers in one school on the same three family trees, to the blatant insertion of political agendas into class lectures, to the county superintendent of education’s inclination toward vicious revenge and abuse of power. We fought many well-intentioned but extremely bad ideas that probably actually originated in the bowels of a state-level office. Of course, every now and then something would crop up to which we could not even give the benefit of a doubt. One example that immediately springs to mind is that the district handbook allowed administrators to let certain students take foreign language in the eighth grade “at their discretion,” but because my family and I had already tied up with the school district, my school principal vindictively abused this “discretion” and refused to let me, the top student in my grade and recently coming out of Washington, DC as a National Spelling Bee finalist, into the class.

We were active in the process. We took our grievances first to the administrators, then to the school board. We helped manage a campaign to unseat the superintendent of education, which failed. We wrote letters to the local newspaper, including one that I wrote as a freshman about ridiculous “security” policies instituted in the wake of the Columbine school shooting. By all measures, we did the activism part right.

However, we were up against a strongly apathetic populace and a small group of people who were very committed to their agenda, and that agenda was not just ill-conceived educational policy. Over the course of my high school education, I was informed in a history class that, in the teacher’s opinion, “Nixon was innocent in Watergate and the Democrats just set it all up because that’s the kind of thing they would do.” This was after the Nixon tapes had begun to trickle out. In a social studies class, I was told that a single president could undermine years of legal precedent by changing the Supreme Court makeup “like the current president (Clinton) has done.” Never mind that Roe v. Wade, the case that was almost certainly on this teacher’s mind, had been settled law for 25 years. I was “taught” evolution in one of my science classes by being told to outline the chapter as a single night’s homework assignment. I don’t recall learning anything in school about the Big Bang, though in private reading I had long moved on to articles about the theorized heat death of the universe.

Our efforts to fix that particular school district ended in complete, total failure, and my three sisters and I all withdrew from school long before graduation. Continue reading “The Ministry of Truth Is Located in Texas”