Objectivism and Environmentalism

Besides, the rain forests have little to do with us in this country, and the cry of trees being cut for the paper bags and books, even houses, etc., omit that these trees come from tree FARMS, where there is continued REPLACEMENT...

Post 41

Thursday, January 6, 2011 - 9:22am

Ecologists will retort that while trees return, ecosystems do not, implying either that we need whole ecosystems or that the ecosystems have intrinsic value.

Post 42

Thursday, January 6, 2011 - 12:12pm

Mosquitoes are part of the eco-system in Africa and since DDT was banned they're responsible for 3 billion malaria deaths.

Post 43

Thursday, January 6, 2011 - 2:22pm

I think there are some viable alternatives we can explore but they will take quite some time - for solar, we have to get outside the earth's atmosphere and use the sun in orbit and beam down the energy. Currently, this is science fiction, but it could conceivably work. The second option is fusion, which is in the same boat right now.

I do think the best option is to start seriously developing nuclear, and stop letting fools get in the way of that - interestingly, the original founder of Greenpeace now believes nuclear is the best option.

Post 44

Thursday, January 6, 2011 - 3:41pm

Delong, if you're in the mood, and have the time (which you should, if this is important to you), I highly recomend http://www.wattsupwiththat.com for an alternative view of environmental science. I think you'll even enjoy it. :)

Post 45

Thursday, January 6, 2011 - 10:59pm

I posted something to William Dywer but apparently it didn't get accepted or something. Huh oh well.

Reading this is rather frustrating. Although I may not be able to understand all the science behind Global warming just yet I can say that the vast majority of scientific organizations support the claim that global warming is real and is man made. Yes it's true that just because other people say so doesn't mean it's the case. But I find it hard to believe that virtually every scientific organization in the country would be drastically wrong about the issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

In any case, I still think environmental health and climate changes are complex and pressing issues. I simply cannot see the Earth as an infinite resource and blithely intolerant to all our activities. Everything has consequences. I want to understand how they all connect. I do care about health, very passionately, and not just those of humans, but that of all life on Earth. That is why I'm studying all this science and math at school to be prepared for it. I gave up studies in philosophy just so I could focus more on the actual science behind these issues anyway. But anyway

I read your site Teresa and I do like it :). I think I will read some more about it. This discussion has taught me to study more seriously the science behind climate change and environmental issues.

Post 46

Friday, January 7, 2011 - 12:04am

Delong,

You wrote, "...vast majority of scientific organizations support the claim that global warming is real and is man made." And then, "...virtually every scientific organization in the country would be drastically wrong about the issue..."

That is the first premise I'd check if I were you. Since it is the one that is bothering you. So, is it true that the vast majority of scientific organizations support that claim, or is it being made to look that way?

As to Wikipedia, I used to do a lot of editing there and can tell you that there is a very strong politically-biased view in the block of editors who work on climate issues. You can determine that for yourself by reading the give and take on the discussion page (click on the tab at the top of the Global Warming article). You can also look at this page but you will see on its discussion page that the war continues.

I love Wikipedia and use it constantly, but I've learned to read between the lines on the discussion pages to get a feel for which side the bias lies on - which team is asserting it's world view - which 'politically correct' take on the subject is winning - and what main points are in contention.

I believe that there is always climate change and that there are natural, long cycles quite apart from anything man is doing. The evidence I find to have been doctored is what is being used to support the assertion that man is the cause and in the use of the models that have been gamed to make unwarranted predictions of the future.

If you are at the beginning of a career in the hard sciences you are in an excellent position to have an open mind and practice examining the different sides as if either has an equal chance of being wrong. There is certainly no urgency for you... make it a hobby :-)

Anyone that is using peer pressure or intimidation to get you to take a position is coming from politics - not science. But you don't have to go along with them and adopt that framework. You can divide the issue up into all the different hypothesis and then pick at the purported evidence.

Have fun.

Post 47

Friday, January 7, 2011 - 7:45am

Delong:

But I find it hard to believe that virtually every scientific organization in the country would be drastically wrong about the issue

I don't. Although I'm not even sure that's accurate anyways.

Throughout the history of science we can see instances of a consensus' that were wrong. In fact the greatest scientists were great because they broke with the consensus. Michael Crichton gave many examples of this in a lecture he gave to CalTech students titled "Aliens Cause Global Warming", he said:

"In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.

In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth. One woman in six died of this fever.

In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no.

In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no.

In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women. "

http://www.s8int.com/crichton.html

Now let's look at the track record of the environmentalist movement. DDT used to be a widespread pesticide that was used to keep mosquito populations down, mosquitoes being basically flying hypodermic needles which are the vortex for much of the diseases that claim huge human death tolls. Malaria was almost completely wiped out from the globe because of DDT. The scientist that invented it was given the nobel peace prize and credited for saving millions of people. Malaria was reduced to just a few dozen deaths a year because of the widespread use of DDT. When DDT was banned because of Rachel Carson's book "The Silent Spring" that claimed DDT was toxic to humans, the death toll from malaria skyrocketed into the millions every year after its ban. Malaria could no longer be contained to a relatively rare disease on the African continent and instead became a full blown epidemic. Since that ban 3 billion souls have expired from malaria.

Rachel Carson springboarding the modern environmental movement has 3 billion deaths on her head. This is a huge black mark in the environmentalist record. But was DDT toxic to humans? To date not one scientific study has shown this to be true. In fact one science professor ATE DDT for 40 year and suffered no deleterious effects.

Environmentalists still do not acknowledge this horrific death toll the movement is responsible for. If we are to respect this movement then their own track record ought to examined and judged and their current claims ought to be met with plenty of skepticism.

Post 48

Friday, January 7, 2011 - 8:08am

An excellent Junk Science article on DDT exposes the many myths surrounding this pesticide such as the "egg shell thinning" argument.

Post 49

Friday, January 7, 2011 - 1:23pm

Delong,

But I find it hard to believe that virtually every scientific organization in the country would be drastically wrong about the issue

Do you also "find it hard to believe that virtually every scientific organization in the country" doesn't bother to directly measure the greenhouse effect (and report on the results)?

:-)

I'm not saying that they're all evil, but all wrong -- and in many cases, innocently. What allows for a bunch of scientists to be wrong about an issue is bad philosophy (bad thinking). I witnessed this, extensively, at a few institutions of higher learning. Even theoretical physicists gripe and bemoan the fact that they have to wait for proponents of older physics theories to die off, before their theories -- which contradict the establishment status quo -- will be seriously entertained.

I'm not saying that all humans are locked-up inside of group-think epistemological-relativity prisons, all I'm saying is that every scientist who practices bad philosophy is (and this includes many, if not most, scientists today).

:-)

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/07, 1:24pm)

Post 50

Friday, January 7, 2011 - 1:37pm

Luke,

What an amazing expose` regarding the politics behind the "scientific" assessments of DDT! Something almost exactly like that occurs a lot in pharmaceutical science. There have been cases where nearly half of the "new-drug approval" committee were indirectly on the payroll of the drug company, itself!

Ed

Post 51

Friday, January 7, 2011 - 2:02pm

Ed, your note about pharmaceuticals shows why the FDA can do more harm than good!

Post 52

Friday, January 7, 2011 - 3:31pm

Delong wrote,

I posted something to William Dywer but apparently it didn't get accepted or something. Huh oh well.

Who's William Dywer?

Oh! you meant me! ;-) Well, the reason it didn't get posted is that you addressed it to the wrong person!

Just kidding!

I don't know why it wouldn't have got posted; by all means post it again. :)

Post 53

Sunday, January 9, 2011 - 9:57am

I think he may have deleted it my mistake, or something. There was nothing in the queue to post from Delong, and everything that was there was posted by me, or someone else.

Post 54

Sunday, January 9, 2011 - 8:13pm

sure well basically I just said that if global warming preceded carbon emissions then carbon emissions most likely did not cause the warming. I don't know however how increased global climate temperatures could be responsible for increased carbon dioxide emissions. Perhaps the increased temperature releases carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans but I don't know what consequence that would have otherwise than if the greenhouse effect.

Post 55

Sunday, January 9, 2011 - 9:59pm

Delong,

You wrote, "I don't know however how increased global climate temperatures could be responsible for increased carbon dioxide emissions. Perhaps the increased temperature releases carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans but I don't know what consequence that would have otherwise than if the greenhouse effect."

It evidently does release CO2 from the ocean, but surprisingly the increase in atmospheric CO2 appears to have had little effect on global warming. If we look at the record of arctic-wide surface air temperatures from 1870 to 2000, there is virtually no correlation between air temperature and atmospheric CO2. In fact, between about 1920 and 1970, there is a large divergence. On the other hand, what we do find during that period is an almost perfect correlation between arctic air temperature and solar radiation.

See: "Variable solar irradiance as a plausible agent for multidecadal variations in the Arctic-wide surface air temperature record of the past 130 years." Willie W.-H. Soon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 32, L16712, 5 PP., 2005 doi:10.1029/2005GL023429

For the abstract: http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2005/2005GL023429.shtml

The entire article can be found here: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~wsoon/myownPapers-d/Soon05-SolarArcticTempGRLfinal.pdf
(See the second page for the graphical correlations.)

(Edited by William Dwyer on 1/10, 10:47am)

Post 56

Monday, January 10, 2011 - 1:33pm

That's why it's important to measure the greenhouse effect, rather than to merely claim that all recent climate change is due to the increase of a greenhouse effect.

It is the same epistemological conundrum as claiming that all weather is due to God's emotions (or God's will) -- without ever actually measuring God, or the supposed emotions.

Ed

Post 57

Sunday, March 6, 2011 - 5:06am

hello. Didn't read your message until today. My apologies. So I have thought a little bit more about environmentalism and here are some of my thoughts. The advancement of technology is a good thing and should be continued but it is an advancement that must be purposeful and meaningful. All existing technology and future technology exists to serve the human interests which shouldn't be stopped but a note should be added.

When we say human interests we really mean self-interests but the serving of self-interest in a rational and respecting society fosters a harmony among individuals that all humans benefit from anyway. In the same way we should find a similar relationship with nature where we can serve our interests in a respectable way that harmonizes with the ecosystem.

Part of our interests is the quality of our health and so our technology obviously should work to optimize the state of our health. But the state of our health is generally connected to the health of our environment and if the environment suffers than so will our health. So it is in the best interest of human beings and of individuals ultimately to use technology to establish the health of the environment and in a sustainable manner so that we don't have to keep fixing it from time to time.

This requires a good scientific understanding of how the quality of our life and health is sustained by the environment and how we can maintain a healthy environment that will enrich our own health. Part of this means that humanity as a whole needs to learn to desire only what can be naturally sustained because anything else would lead to environmental collapse or degradation which in turn hurts humans.

This does not mean that we cannot continue to enjoy more things from nature but only that we should consciously decide only to consume at the level that we can sustainably produce. Analogous principles can be found in objectivism where an individual should desire only what he or she can earn by honest work and not by cheating or mooching. In the same way if we view the ecosystem as an economy of natural resources with other living organisms we should, on principle, desire only what we can naturally and sustainably obtain from the environment in order to serve our long term interests.

The analogy can only be carried so far because an ecosystem does not run like an economy and the relationship humans have with other organisms is biological and not social. Still the analogy is useful to help us to begin to think on an ideological level how to work with the environment. The idea that we should only take from the environment what is natural and sustainable is an intuitively pleasing notion to humans since for the most part we desire natural things with the least amount of tampering.

Although the advancement of technology should increase, humans, I suspect, will be disappointed if technology ruins the mutually beneficial relationship we enjoy with nature. And we will also be disappointed if it does so in the future. It is in our best interest to perserve the cycling of natural resources and services indefinitely and to do so we need to understand the rules of the ecosystem and desire only what we can naturally obtain from it.
(Edited by Delong Tsway on 3/06, 1:47pm)

Post 58

Sunday, March 6, 2011 - 12:37pm

Delong,

Would you do me a favor and break that last post up in to paragraphs? I've have trouble reading from a computer screen when there are more than 6 lines running together (as if in one long, drawn-out paragraph). You can just copy & paste it in as another post or reply and -- before hitting the "Post" button -- go in and insert spaces in order to break the thing up into chunks of 6 lines or less.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/06, 12:41pm)

Post 59

Sunday, March 6, 2011 - 1:35pm