The Real Junk Science
By George Monbiot, AlterNet
May 14, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/22008/
For the past three weeks, a set of figures has been working
a hole in my mind. On April 16, New Scientist published a
letter from the famous botanist David Bellamy. Many of the
world's glaciers, he claimed, "are not shrinking but in fact
are growing. . . . 555 of all the 625 glaciers under
observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in
Zurich, Switzerland, have been growing since 1980."
His letter was instantly taken up by climate change deniers.
And it began to worry me. What if Bellamy was right?
He is a scientist, formerly a senior lecturer at the
University of Durham. He knows, in other words, that you
cannot credibly cite data unless it is well-sourced. Could
it be that one of the main lines of evidence of the impacts
of global warming -- the retreat of the world's glaciers --
was wrong?
The question could scarcely be more im****tant. If man-made
climate change is happening, as the great majority of the
world's climatologists claim, it could destroy the
conditions which allow human beings to remain on the planet.
The effort to cut greenhouse gases must come before
everything else. This won't happen unless we can be
confident that the science is right. Because Bellamy is
president of the Conservation Foundation, the Wildlife
Trusts, Plantlife International and the British Naturalists'
Association, his statements carry a great deal of weight.
When, for example, I challenged the Society of Motor
Manufacturers and Traders over climate change, its spokesman
cited Bellamy's position as a reason for remaining sceptical.
So last week I telephoned the World Glacier Monitoring
Service and read out Bellamy's letter. I don't think the
response would have been published in Nature, but it had the
scientific virtue of clarity. "This is complete bull****." A
few hours later, they sent me an email.
"Despite his scientific reputation, he makes all the
mistakes that are possible." He had cited data which was
simply false, failed to provide references, completely
misunderstood the scientific context and neglected current
scientific literature. The latest studies show unequivocally
that most of the world's glaciers are retreating.
But I still couldn't put the question out of my mind. The
figures Bellamy cited must have come from somewhere. I
emailed him to ask for his source. After several requests,
he replied to me at the end of last week. The data, he said,
came from a website called http://www.iceagenow.com
.
Iceagenow.com was constructed by a man called Robert W.
Felix to promote his self-published book about "the coming
ice age." It claims that sea levels are falling, not rising;
that the Asian tsunami was caused by the "ice age cycle";
and that "underwater volcanic activity -- not human activity
-- is heating the seas."
Is Felix a climatologist, a vulcanologist, or an
oceanographer? Er, none of the above. His biography
describes him as a "former architect." His website is so
bonkers that I thought at first it was a spoof. Sadly, he
appears to believe what he says. But there indeed was all
the material Bellamy cited in his letter, including the
figures -- or something resembling the figures -- he quoted.
"Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of
the 625 mountain glaciers under observation by the World
Glacier Monitoring group in Zurich." The source, which
Bellamy also cited in his email to me, was given as "the
latest issue of 21st Century Science and Technology."
21st Century Science and Technology? It sounds impressive,
until you discover that it is published by Lyndon Larouche.
Lyndon Larouche is the American demagogue who in 1989
received a 15-year sentence for conspiracy, mail fraud and
tax code violations. He has claimed that the British royal
family is running an international drugs syndicate, that
Henry Kissinger is a communist agent, that the British
government is controlled by Jewish bankers, and that modern
science is a conspiracy against human potential.
It wasn't hard to find out that this is one of his vehicles:
Larouche is named on the front page of the magazine's
website, and the edition Bellamy cites contains an article
beginning with the words "We in LaRouche's Youth Movement
find ourselves in combat with an old enemy that destroys
human beings . . . it is empiricism."
Oh well, at least there is a source for Bellamy's figures.
But where did 21st Century Science and Technology get them
from? It doesn't say. But I think we can make an informed
guess, for the same data can be found all over the internet.
They were first published online by Professor Fred Singer,
one of the very few climate change deniers who has a vaguely
relevant qualification (he is, or was, an environmental
scientist). He posted them on his website
http://www.sepp.org
, and they were then reproduced by the
appropriately named http://junkscience.com
, by the Cooler
Heads Coalition, the National Center for Public Policy
Research and countless others. They have even found their
way into the Wa****ngton Post. They are constantly quoted as
evidence that manmade climate change is not happening. But
where did they come from? Singer cites half a source: "a
paper published in Science in 1989." Well, the paper might
be 16 years old, but at least, and at last, there is one.
Surely?
I went through every edition of Science published in 1989,
both manually and electronically. Not only did it contain
nothing resembling those figures; throughout that year there
was no paper published in this journal about glacial advance
or retreat.
So it wasn't looking too good for Bellamy, or Singer, or any
of the deniers who have cited these figures. But there was
still one mystery to clear up. While Bellamy's source
claimed that 55% of 625 glaciers are advancing, Bellamy
claimed that 555 of them -- or 89% -- are advancing. This
figure appears to exist nowhere else. But on the standard
English keyboard, 5 and % occupy the same key. If you try to
hit %, but fail to press ****ft, you get 555, instead of 55%.
This is the only explanation I can produce for his figure.
When I challenged him, he admitted that there had been "a
glitch of the electronics."
So, in Bellamy's poor typing, we have the basis for a whole
new front in the war against climate science. The 555 figure
is now being cited as definitive evidence that global
warming is a "fraud," a "scam," a "lie." I phoned New
Scientist to ask if he had requested a correction. He had
not been in touch.
It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to
dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over
a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which
then disintegrates in your palm. You must ignore an entire
canon of science, the statements of the world's most eminent
scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published
in the foremost scientific journals. You must, if you are
David Bellamy, embrace instead the claims of an eccentric
former architect, which are based on what appears to be a
non-existent data set. And you must do all this while
calling yourself a scientist.
George Monbiot is the author of 'Poisoned Arrows' and 'No
Man's Land' (Green Books). Read more of his writings at
http://Monbiot.com
http://www.alternet.org/story/22008/
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1587154838/thedanclorenecro/
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
|
