A Tear at the Edge of Creation: A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe / Marcelo Gleiser -- N.Y.: Free Press, 2010

One way of understanding the object of science is that it is to establish theories about the empirical world that are most explanatory.  An explanatory theory will first of all accurately accomodate past observations and it will predict future observations; however, this alone will not be sufficient to establish a theory.  After all, given a finite set of observations, several theories may be capable of providing equally successful explanations.  In such circumstances, other considerations come into play.  Commonly, "simplicity" is included among those considerations.  A theory which posits fewer independent elements (forces, entities, etc.) is preferred by most scientists, and so, in the course of the Copernican Revolution, the Aristotelian idea that the universe is composed of two different entities, terrestrial and celestial, and that these entities obey different laws of motion was rejected for a theory according to which all physical bodies obey a single law of motion.  In the 19th century another simplification of physical theories took place when electrical and magnetic forces were unified in a single theory of electromagnetic forces.

In A Tear at the Edge of Creation Marcelo Gleiser accepts the view that the desire to simplify physical theories into a single, unified "theory of everything" can be traced to the ancient Greek Ionian philosophers.  Following Gerald Holton and Isaiah Berlin, Gleiser calls this impulse "the Ionian Enchantment" or "the Ionian Fallacy." Gleiser attempts to "unmask" this fallacy.  He suggests that there is no reason to think that all phenomena in the universe can be explained by a single theory -- that the universe is "asymmetric" and "accidental."

His book is composed of five chapters.  The first chapter is a relatively breezy introduction to the Ionian Fallacy, with a healthy dose of autobiographical passages thrown in. The second, third, and fourth chapters are general introductions to cosmology, particle physics, and the origin of life respectively.  In each chapter, Gleiser seeks to underscore the oddity and irregularity of the universe.  By this, he believes he is able to establish his claim that there is nothing common about our universe.  Instead, its existence, particularly the existence of intelligent life is extremely rare and possibly unique in the universe.   The final chapter emphasizes this conclusion and draws the moral from it:  because we are so special, cosmically speaking, we should take greater care to protect the survival of life on our planet and especially our species.

In his introduction, Gleiser explicitly excuses his readers from reading the three chapters on science.  Clearly, he recognizes that a lay reader, particularly one with only a slight background in science, is likely to be overwhelmed by the blizzard of detail he provides.  He attempts to cover so much ground that he can not give sufficient explanation to many, if not most of the science in any of the three science chapters.  Some might call it a "slog" to get through these chapters; however, anyone with a moderate background in science and an interest in building on that knowledge will probably appreciate Gleiser's attempts to highlight the difficulties that theoreticians have had in developing a unified theory in any of the three fields Gleiser examines.

Setting aside the intelligibility of the science chapters, the general claim is one that seems curious and possibly untestable.  The main thrust of Gleiser's argument is that science has failed to uncover a single "theory of everything."  Furthermore, the  more  we learn about the universe, the more we learn that we have more to learn.  Gleiser concludes that this is evidence that the universe is not amenable to explanation by a theory of everything.  That there is not a "oneness" in the foundation of the universe.

Perhaps there are scientists who have a romantic attachment to the oneness of the universe, but I suspect most merely seek simpler theories on the grounds that they are theoretically superior to needlessly complex theories.  Scientist reasonably employ Ockham's razor when confronted with two theories that equally well describe and predict observations.  Curiously, Gleiser dismisses the importance of Ockham's razor when deciding between theories by asserting that is should not be employed when one theory is observationally superior to another.  Of  course not, but that misses the point.  Ockham's razor or the preference for simpler, but empirically equally good theories is an operational principle.   Granted: going beyond this and asserting that the world will ultimately be amenable to a unified theory is a step  too  far, but so too is making the opposite assertion that the world will never be amenable to a unified theory.  Early in his career, Gleiser was a "unifier."  He seems to have swung to the opposite pole.  He needs to find a resting place in the middle ground:  science explains the world through theories which cannot reveal the absolute truth, but should always strive to explain the world according to simpler theories.  To do otherwise would be to spin out any number of fanciful entities that are no more testable than the most crass religious dogma.

Gleiser's final conclusion, that the rarity (and possible uniqueness) of our existence can be a powerful force to motivate protecting our survival seems a rather weak contribution to the a argument.  Humanity is certainly arrogant enough -- self-absorbed enough -- to want to continue the species regardless of the presence or absence of other intelligent life in the universe, but if it motives Gleiser (or anyone else), that's all for the good.  I suspect the real challenge will be to impress upon people the mechanisms through which our collective behavior is undermining the conditions for our children's survival (or even just our own continued well-being.)  Such an understanding will do much more to address our global political and environmental crises than the threat of the extinction of a unique intelligence in the universe.

All in all, Gleiser seems to have been an idealistic "unifier," who has lost his faith and instead of simply accepting the utility of simple theories, he has embraced a new religion based on an assumption of the "asymmetry" of the universe.  Happily, from this, he has found a new reason to value humanity, but humanity is hardly in need of hightened valuation.

Climate Coup: Global Warming's Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives / Patrick J. Michaels, ed. -- Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2011

In the Introduction to Climate Coup, the volume's editor Patrick Michaels describes how he leads his students through an dialog in which he links climate change to any subject of public significance that his students can name. Furthermore, he claims that the effects that it is having are in general deleterious. He writes that this "game" is enjoyable, but rather than giving "glib answers to insouciant students," Michaels decided "to consult some experts" regarding his views. The result is Climate Coup, a volume containing eight papers discussing law, politics, defense, peer-review, trade, economic development, health, and education and their relationship to climate change.

Of Michaels's eight experts, five have positions (along with Michaels) with the Cato Institute, a sixth has been frequently published by the Cato Institute, a seventh works (along with Michaels) at the University of Virginia, and an eighth is a co-author with Michaels. This is not to say that none of the authors is well-regarded or does not have views worth serious consideration, but merely that by selecting these authors, Michaels is not really testing his hypothesis. The volume is, instead, an effort to make his case by employing his ideological allies, In general, the wider community of experts does not support his case.

Broadly put, Michaels and his co-authors argue that the dangers posed by climate change are overstated and that continued economic development is our best remedy for the harms it poses, even if that means continuing to emit carbon into the atmosphere.

The first chapter on law by Roger Pilon and Evan Turgeon is among the best. It lays out the legislative and legal history of environmental regulation, arguing that the executive branch is relatively free to implement whatever regulations it deems appropriate to protect us from climate change. This is judged to be overweening state power that is in conflict with the principles of limited government established by the Constitution. The value of this chapter lies in its legal brief related to the executive's regulatory power. It does not, however, make a particularly strong case that these powers are unconstitutional nor does it address the argument that the Constitution is an evolving document to be interpreted differently by different generations. In the late 18th century, limiting the power of the Crown may well have been a necessary political goal to provide the benefits described in the Constitution's Preamble, but limiting the power of a more democratic government may not be so critical in the early 21st century, particularly as we now understand how common market failures are and how disasterous they can be.

The second chapter is written by Michaels himself. It is among the weakest. He attempts to describe the recent political circumstance related to climate change policies and regulations, but fails to provide any coherent story that sheds light on our politics. It is instead, a hodge podge of disjointed observations related to cap and trade legislation, the "climategate" emails, the 2009 Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The third chapter, by Ross McKitrick, is a critique of the peer review process used by scientific journals. This is something that climate change "skeptics" have been complaining about for quite some time. They argue that the peer review process is controlled by a small group of editors who dismiss any findings that contradict the editors' views about climate change. Consequently, the appearance of a consensus has formed around specific climate change hypotheses, when in fact many scientists disagree with the received opinions.

It is interesting to note that the hypotheses that journal editors have been said to have summarily dismissed have changed. At first, the skeptics asserted that there was no real consensus that the planet is warming, but such views could not be published. Eventually, they began accepting that the planet is warming, but that the warming was not a product of human actions. Today, they appear to be coming around to accepting that human actions -- at least in part -- is warming the planet, but that the consequences of this are not as grave as is being asserted by the experts. The only consistency in the skeptics' position is that we shouldn't worry about climate change and that we should continue to emit carbon at the rates we have been, lest our economy suffer.

It is hard not to read McKitrick's complaints about the peer review process as so much sour grapes for not seeing his and his ideological friends' papers accepted for publication. If their arguments were genuinely strong, a cabal of editors could not keep them from the scientific community. Today, science employs "pre-publication" databases; the most prominent of which is arXiv (see arXiv.org) which permits any academic or person sponsored by someone with posting privileges to post papers to the arXiv database. In many fields, particularly physics, publication in a peer reviewed journal will only occur after the paper has been posted to arXiv and has been favorably cited in arXiv by other researchers. Publication in a peer reviewed journal is becoming a way of archiving a finalized version of already well-received research. Pre-publication databases and other open source venues are eroding, if not destroying, the power of journal editors as gatekeepers of scientific research.

Ivan Eland's chapter is on U.S. security. Eland argues that the recent evaluations by the Defense Department overstate the dangers that climate change poses to U.S. strategic interests. His arguments are better than most in Climate Coup. Eland acknowledges that the most egregious effects of climate change are likely to affect Africa and southern Asia, but these regions historically have not been seen to be vital to US interests and, according to Eland, are not likely to be so in the future. More realistic threats to U.S. interests stem from the stationing of U.S. forces around the world. If these forces were brought home, the U.S. would not be blamed for the suffering that climate change might cause. Furthermore, the oceanic barriers that the U.S. enjoys will be sufficient to insulate the country from social and political upheavals in the rest of the world.

Eland's analysis is consistent with the growing isolationist tendency among libertarians and is compatible with the views of the peace movement of the American left. Furthermore, he indicts the Pentagon for exaggerating the security threat posed by climate change. Its motive is to justify continued or increased defense appropriations.

Among the better chapters in Climate Coup is Sallie James's article on international trade. James argues that any country that would unilaterally implement a policy to reduce carbon emissions will place itself in a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis countries that do not implement comparable policies. In this respect, she particularly criticizes cap and trade policies. In principle, this sounds right; however, it isn't clear how significant the disadvantage would be nor whether a cap and trade policy might not stimulate the creation of alternative industries that would in the long run provide an economic advantage to a carbon regulating country. Furthermore, she does not entertain the possibility that were the United States to show international leadership by passing a meaningful carbon tax, this would create an economic climate that would allow others to follow suit without economic disadvantage.

James also considers the possible equalizing effective of a tariff placed on goods coming from countries that do not take measures to reduce their carbon emissions. She concludes that either these countries would merely take their business elsewhere or the tariffs would ignite retaliatory measure that would destroy the possibility for international cooperation which is necessary to tackle a global problem like climate change.

While one might take issue with some of James's conclusions, one must acknowledge the expertise of neo-liberals regarding the dynamics of international trade. The dangers, however, must be weighed against the costs (often externalized) of continuing to emit carbon.

In the sixth chapter, Indur M. Goklony addresses the consequences of climate change on developing nations. It is widely believed that developing nations are most vulnerable to the harms that climate change threatens, both because of their geographies and their poverty. Goklony argues that imposing emission controls on developing nations will cripple their economic growth which will be necessary for mitigating or adapting to the harms of climate change.

Goklony's arguments are reprised in Robert E. Davis's chapter on health. Davis challenges the claim that climate change has caused significant health problems and will in the future cause significant health problems; however, the claim about the interaction of climate change and health in the past is of little consequence as few people argue that climate change has yet had a significant effect on public health. Regarding future health threats, it is hard to believe that the dislocation of coastal populations, droughts, floods, wildfires, and transformed ecosystems will not have significant effects on human health. Davis argues that populations have dealt with all of these kinds of problems in the past and with continued economic growth, health indicators will continue to improve even in the face of climate change.

The final chapter by Neal McCluskey examines how climate change is portrayed in primary and secondary schools. It is so riddled with elementary fallacies that it is not really worth reviewing.

The recurrent appeal to the importance of economic growth for addressing climate change is at the heart of Climate Coup. As climate skeptics have progressively abandoned positions that they have held previously, their arguments are crystallizing around the view that the dangers of climate change are too slight to justify public regulation of the industry. This should come as no surprise as the skeptics rarely are climate scientists, but are more often economists, businessmen, and politicians. Their stake in the carbon industry has been revealed by many including Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their excellent book, Merchants of Doubt, reviewed in this blog.

What is most worrying about the skeptics' public relations campaigns to stave off action to protect the planet is that as green house gases accumulate in the atmosphere, we genuinely risk reaching a tipping point that will propel the planet into a new stable state that makes civilization as we know it or even life itself impossible on the planet. To argue that we must continue down this path as the most effective way of escaping its dangers is a kind of brinksmanship that risks everything and it is based on scientific heterodoxy and a dubious economic theory.

At the same time, it is important to accurately assess the genuine dangers that climate change possess and not to overstate them, particularly as geo-engineering proposals are being seriously discussed. Geo-engineering would be enormously risky in that the unintended consequences of deliberately modifying the ecosystem to the extent that unprecedented climate change might be halted may cause greater problems still.

Merchants of Doubt / Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway -- N.Y.: Bloomsbury Press, 2010

If I were to nominate a "Book of the Year," it would certainly be Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. Their history of "how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming" is timely and important.

Meticulously researched, Merchants of Doubt traces the formation and development of a contrarian cabal of scientists. Funded by commercial interest groups, these scientists implemented a concerted strategy to discredit scientific research that might lead to the regulation of industry. In some instances, the effort led to the defamation of the scientists behind the research.

Four names stand out in the origins of the effort: Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg, Fred Seitz, and Fred Singer. All were physicists who had worked on important defense projects during the Cold War and all were ardent anti-communists. Two of their early efforts to affect the public debate surrounding scientific conclusions were the defense of the tobacco industry and the defense of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.

In the 1960s, Seitz led the effort (paid for by the tobacco industry) to sew doubt on the connection between tobacco and cancer, despite the industry's full knowledge that smoking caused cancer. This was done through the "Council for Tobacco Research," formerly the "Tobacco Industry Research Council," which had been renamed to avoid its obvious connection to the tobacco industry. Seitz was following the footsteps of C.C. Little whose work for the tobacco industry also attempted to sew doubt about the dangers of smoking. There is "no proof" served as the public relations mantra of the industry and it was lent credibility by a small number of scientists on their payroll. Eventually, they could delay public acceptance of the science no longer. Tobacco was regulated and the industry was convicted of racketeering.

Robert Jastrow lead the effort to promote the perception that a space-based anti-ballistic missile system would not only be possible, but would ensure the safety of the public, adopting the premise that a nuclear war was winnable. This effort pitted him against Carl Sagan whose research with four other scientists suggested that even a limited nuclear exchange would plunge the world into a "nuclear winter." Later research suggested that the consequences would not be a severe as Sagan et al. thought, but they would be sufficient to destroy global food production. So contrary to Jastrow's claims, a nuclear war could not be won. Nonetheless, Jastrow pressed his claims by creating the George C. Marshall Institute, with Fred Seitz as the founding chair. In the end, not only has it been accepted that a limited nuclear war would have dire consequences for the planet's ecosystem and vital global economy, but that the possibility of a workable space-based nuclear defense shield is a fantasy.

As the debate over the Strategic Defense Initiative wound down, one participant in the debate, William Nierenberg, co-founder of the Marshall Institute, was appointed by President Reagan to chair the Acid Rain Peer Review Panel, charged with reviewing the results of U.S.-Canadian research on acid rain. His panel included Fred Singer who was suggested to him by the White House. Nierenberg's panel recommended significant reductions in sulfur emissions to control acid rain; however, after showing the draft to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Nierenberg returned the report to the committee with changes that significantly reduced the level of confidence in the danger of sulfur emissions.

More amazingly, Fred Singer, charged with writing the final chapter, could not draft anything that the other eight members of the committee could accept. Still, Singer's chapter became an appendix that completely rejected the force of the Panel's report. To top it off, at the behest of the OSTP, Neirenberg attached -- without the consent of the committee -- an executive summary which belied the report's conclusions. These changes confused the public reception of the panel's conclusions, resulting in significant misunderstandings of the science of acid rain.

After leaving the Acid Rain Peer Review Panel, Fred Singer, supported by the Marshall Institute, began promoting a counter narrative to the science establishing the depletion of ozone by CFCs. He was joined in this by Fred Seitz and Patrick Michael, an agricultural climatologist who would later participate in casting doubt on the effects of green house gasses on the climate. The counter narrative to ozone depletion once again stressed the uncertainty of the science, despite the fact that the relationship had been firmly established among the experts in the field.

Beginning in 1998, Fred Seitz and, shortly after, Fred Singer took up the cause of discrediting the dangers of second hand smoke on behalf of the tobacco industry. In this effort, the tobacco industry's public relations firm APCO Associates formed The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition led by lobbyist Steven Milloy to help sway public opinion against the conclusions of the EPA which was warning of the dangers of second hand smoke. Milloy and TASSC coined the tag line "junk science" to smear whatever scientific conclusions (or scientists) were the target of their anti-environmentalist campaigns. This tag line is currently being used by Milloy to attack climate science.

By now the basic pattern of attack was well established: find any reason -- even assert demonstrable falsehoods -- to cast doubt on the scientific conclusions that might possibly call for commercial regulations, and make use of non-peer reviewed mass media channels to confuse public opinion.

By 1979, climate science was arriving at the conclusion that green house gasses are a significant threat to the planet's climate. Of all environmental threats, green house gases, particular CO2, strikes at the core of the world's industrial economy. So it is no surprise that the merchants of doubt would quickly turn there guns on climate science and its scientists. The first responses came from economists Tom Shelling and William Nordhaus, but other familiar actors soon joined the fray, particularly William Nierenberg.

In 1988, James Hansen's testimony to Congress asserting empirical evidence of climate change, raised the stakes, and the Marshall Institute responded, enlisting Jastrow, Seitz, and Nierenberg. Singer joined the attack by publishing an article he purported to be co-authored by Roger Revelle, an eminent scientist who had warned the world of the threat of global warming. Singer's article suggested that Revelle had changed his mind about the certainty of global warming, but Revelle's family and closest friends denied that he had changed his mind. Singer appears to have taken advantage of an ailing (indeed dying) octogenarian to advance Singer's own political agenda. Also joining the global warming deniers was Patrick Michaels who previously had risked depleting the ozone by defending CFCs.

Perhaps the most amazing attack of the doubt merchants is a recent attack on Rachel Carson's indictment of DDT in her book Silent Spring. In this instance, the campaign appears to be generated by a number of libertarian think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Hoover Institute, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Oreskes and Conway suggest that attacking Rachel Carson and the long settled debate about the dangers of DDT is a deeply strategic move. They write that if the deniers could effectively suggest that "Carson was wrong, then the shift in orientation [that Silent Spring inaugurated]might have been wrong, too. The contemporary environmental movement could be shown to have been based on a fallacy, and the need for government intervention in the marketplace would be refuted." Whether this is the deniers' intent or not, the campaign against Carson at very least shows the extent to which the merchants of doubt are willing to go to attack environmental science.

With the amazing advance of science and technology, our ability to affect the planet has been significantly increased. Understanding the consequences of those effects is critical to our survival, whether they are various carcinogens, ozone depletion, acid rain, or global warming. Oreskes and Conway have made an unimpeachable case that the ideological agenda of libertarian think tanks and lobbyists and their hired scientists is to discredit whatever scientific research supports regulation. This is a grave threat to the planet and to the quality of our life on it. Oreskes and Conway's expose of these machinations should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand current environmental debates.

Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science / Robert L. Park -- Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008

Atheists have been on the offensive recently. Note, for example, Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion or Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. In something of this vein, Robert L. Park has written Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science. It's a fairly successful indictment of some simple superstitious follies, but it addresses easy targets.

Park takes on, for example, creationism, the efficacy of prayer, homeopathic medicine, and acupuncture; all in an effort to establish that the only basis for knowledge of the empirical world is science. The critical ideas are observation, causation, and testability. What comes of this is a fairly pedestrian scientific realism. What doesn't come of this is a more probing inquiry into ontology and the scientific method. This is, perhaps, forgivable in that a popular understanding of even the simplest version of science is sorely lacking, and many important public policy decisions are being made based on the rank superstitions that Park attacks.

Perhaps the most interesting passage in Superstition comes in the chapter "Schrodinger's Grave," in which Park attempts to discredit the arguments against materialism that have been developed as a result of Schrodinger's wave equation and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Park describes the argument for non-materialism this way: "..since events on an atomic scale are affected by the act of observation, and since everthing in the universe is made of atoms, we should not be surprised to find our thoughts influencing events on the macroscopic scale in which our lives are lived." Put this way, Park's opponents are, of course, easily defeated; however, subtler arguments against Park's materialism are quite common and unaddressed by Park.

Reading Superstition led me to pick up A.A. Eddington's The Nature of the Physical World, published in 1929. Most of this work is a popular presentation of the state of physics of the time; however, the last chapters argue that we must entertain seriously an idealist ontology. Eddington observes that with the success of quantum mechanics, the concept of causation is no long particularly useful when seeking the most fundamental explanation of phenomena. Instead, probabilities are employed. One might further note that as physics has moved well beyond observable, macroscopic phenomena, its bread and butter lies with inferred objects that are only made meaningful in mathematical descriptions and that non-empirical aspects of theories, for example, simplicity, are as important to establishing a theory as are often dubious observations. For Eddington, the consequence of such considerations is that idealism and even mysticism are now a viable positions for the most tough minded scientists.

Park never addresses these more philosophical arguments. He is content to tackle more popular notions.