Parallels between Lysenkoism and AGW

(originally published in my climate blog “The Unbearable Nakedness of CLIMATE CHANGE“)

Timely broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s “In Our Time” series, about Lysenko and “lysenkoism”, the propaganda-based “science” that Stalin’s agricultural adviser managed to sell as “truth” from 1928 to 1962 at least.

In 1928, as America heads towards the Wall Street Crash, Joseph Stalin reveals his master plan - nature is to be conquered by science, Russia to be made brutally, glitteringly modern and the world transformed by communist endeavour.

Into the heart of this vision stepped Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist who promised to turn Russian wasteland into a grain-laden Garden of Eden.

Today, Lysenko is a byword for fraud but in Stalin’s Russia his ideas became law. They reveal a world of science distorted by ideology, where ideas were literally a matter of life and death. To disagree with Lysenko risked the gulag and yet he damaged, perhaps irreparably, the Soviet Union’s capacity to fight and win the Cold War.

The MP3 of the programme can be downloaded here.

What makes it relevant to the climate debate is the list of parallels that can be made between Lysenko’s “Soviet biology and genetics” and contemporaneous thoughts of Anthropogenic Global Warming:

(a) Results, and success are declared before an experiment has completed (at position 12m10s, in the mp3 file above). In AGW, just look at the innumerable papers that take AGW as established truth, even as the debate on “attribution” is still very much open among mainstream scientists.

(b) Proponents always declare “victory”, no matter what happens, and are always ready to shift the ground (mp3 position: 14m15s). That’s quite common in AGW circles: nowadays, if the planet warms up or cools down, it’s anyway compatible with AGW theory.

(c) Science is presented as a series of “solutions”, not simply as “knowledge” (mp3 position: 19m45s). AGWers cannot disentangle research from advocacy: for example, the IPCC is politically active, to the point of qualifying for a Nobel Peace Prize.

(d) According to the scientists, central planning is better than free capitalism (mp3 position: 35m45s). From Al Gore to London School of Economics’ Professor Lord Giddens, there is only one thought: free markets are not good enough, and a big State intervention is needed to save the planet from climate doom.

Ironically, the BBC guests laughed only up to a point to the witty remark made by one of them: that Lysenko’s personality and attitude would have made him a “guaranteed success in British science today” (mp3: 24m15s).

Even more ironic is the fact that Lysenko himself did come up with a geoengineering way to change the climate of Siberia (by planting trees in clusters, so that the weakest ones would sacrifice themselves to let the most resistant plants survive).

And in case you wonder: no, it didn’t work…

Phil Plait’s Moon Hoax London Speech - Report

I had the honour to attend tonight in London a speech by Phil Plait “The Bad Astronomer” on the “Moon Hoax Hoax” (i.e. the hoax perpetrated by those that believe the Apollo manned lunar landings were a fake).

The presentation was organized by the UK’s Skeptic Magazine as part of their Skeptics in the Pub’s monhtly gathering, taking advantage of Plait’s schedule in-between his Colorado home and a visit to the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.

In front of a large crowd downstairs at the Penderel’s Oak in Holborn, Plait chose to wear a hat after dazzling us with an impressive hairdo (or lack thereof).

So how to respond to people still clinging to the odd notion that NASA has been able to pull off a multi-decadal hoax involving tens of thousands of people, something much more difficult that actually landing on the Moon itself? The Bad Astronomer went through familiar questions and answers, here summarized:

(1) No stars in Moon photographs? Obviously not. Those are pictures of bright spacesuits and a bright terrain directly hit by the Sun’s rays.

(2) Shadows are not parallel, “demonstrating” multiple light sources? First of all, multiple light sources cause multiple shadows, and there is none of that in the Apollo pictures. Furthermore, shadows are not parallel on Earth either: it’s called perspective!!!

(3) Astronaut’s suits in the dark shadows on the Moon are not black? Of course not, they are illuminated by the surrounding, bright lunar surface.

(4) Waving flags on the Moon? Sure, with nothing much to dampen any vibration, that’s exactly what to expect.

(5) No crater from the LEM’s landing engine? Large thrust, over  a large surface, means low pressure, hence…

(6) No flames from departing LEM’s upper half in Apollo 17 video? Flames are only visible for certain types of rocket fuel. Even the Space Shuttle’s main engines produce a barely visible blue flame at take-off.

There are two main problems with “moon hoaxers”: one, as Plait pointed out, is that they choose to tell only that part of the truth that suits them. The second, if I may add, is that they invariably never ever reveal what evidence would convince them to change their mind.

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I have only one remark for the Bad Astronomer: sometimes he goes too hard for it. All Moon-hoaxers’ claims I have seen so far are already ridiculous enough. Is it really necessary to build jokes around stuff that is already laughable on its own?

Anyway…it’s been great to meet somebody that enrolled me some time ago as one of his minions. Here some pictures from the evening…

Ride a Bike, Save the Planet (get killed in the process)

Fancy “Cyclehero” video on YouTube shows people riding towards sunset in a bid to save the planet from Climate Change.

The metaphor may be more apt than originally intended. As (push-)bike riding kills you 3.54 times more than walking, by switching to pedals you’ll be soon riding into the sunset for good…

…towards an untimely death, that is!

E-Day: Fudge or Fraud?

There is something supremely odd about the results published on the E-Day website.

The Energy Saving Day (E-Day) has been a UK-based ”experiment” running between 6PM GMT on Feb 27 to 6PM GMT on Feb 28, “to show how even small energy saving measures can be made to add up, and potentially play a part in tackling climate change.”

Fact is that nothing has added up, and consumption has been higher than expected all through the day. At 4:21GMT it was showing “current savings” of -4.8% and “total savings” of -1.6%.

That is, the UK was actually “wasting” energy, compared to the predicted values according to National Grid.

At 13:42GMT, “current savings” was -1.6%, and “total savings” -0.8%. No sign of any “total savings of money, energy and carbon associated with E-Day” that were supposed to be “calculated and made available in time of the evening news bulletins“.

On the website it is also displayed a chart of ongoing energy consumption, with a green line for the actual values and a red line for the predicted ones. 

Having followed that on and off for most of the day, I only noticed around 4pm finally, for the first time since the beginning of the E-Day the green curve dipping just a little bit below the red one.

For the rest of the day, the green line was consistently and evidently above the red line: that means, the UK has kept consuming more energy than usual, thereby nullifying the whole point of the E-Day.

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Imagine my surprise then checking the site at 6PM today (officially the closing time of the e-day) to see “current savings” of -1.5% and

(a) ”total savings” of -0.1%

(b) green and red lines almost exactly superimposed, with the red one slightly higher above the other in two points, and the green one shooting up only at the very end

The above is simply not possible…the only way for savings to go from -0.8% at 1342GMT to -0.1% at 1800GMT would have been for actual consumption to be significantly below the predicted one.

And the graph does not show at all the giant 4:21GMT wastage of 4.8%.

The only explanation is that the E-Day organizers have retroactively moved the “predicted” red line up just enough to show a negligible difference with the actual “consumed” green line.

Fudge or fraud? Let’s see what they report:

E-Day did not succeed in cutting the UK’s electricity demand. The drop in temperature between Wed 27 Feb and Thurs 28 Feb days probably caused this, as a result of more lights and heating being left on than were originally predicted. The National Grid refined their assessments, based on actual weather data, during Thursday afternoon but I am afraid that E-Day did not achieve the scale of public awareness or participation needed to have a measurable effect. I will do my best to learn the relevant lessons for next time. Thank you to everyone who helped me or left something off specially as their contribution to E-Day, and this Leave It Off experiment. Please enjoy E-Day’s solution, video and science sections which all worked well. Warmest regards, Matt

So they admit they have changed the rules on-the-fly. But blaming the temperatures doesn’t appear a smart move. How are they supposed to demonstrate “how even small energy saving measures can be made to add up” if all it takes is a minor “drop in temperature” (if one indeed has happened!) to nullify every effort?

The organizers have said they were hoping for +3% savings. National Grid must have “refined their assessments” by around 2%, and the almost absolute coincidence between the final green and red lines looks very very suspicious.

I am not even sure the UK experienced as a whole a “drop in temperature” (London definitely did not). And how come nobody thought nor said beforehand a thing about possible variations due to temperature changes?

Let’s leave aside the “solution, video and science sections which all worked well” shall we. Is that some kind of a joke?

Obviously a lot of work has gone into organising the E-Day: if it has been an abysmal failure on all fronts (and it has), that should be a major learning point (nobody cares? switch-offs are less important than thought?).

Otherwise, it’s all a touchy-feely web equivalent of snake oil.

Skeptics Society: How Broadcast Journalism Is Flawed

I have already exposed in the recent past the obvious bias in global warming reporting by publicly-funded BBC.

Around very similar notes, but with a much much wider outlook, the Skeptics Society has now published a very interesting essay by investigative and feature journalist Steve Salerno, titled

Journalist-Bites-Reality!
How broadcast journalism is flawed
in such a fundamental way that its utility as a tool for informing viewers is almost nil..

It exposes broadcast journalism as reporter-of-nothing, when not creating panic out of that same nothingness. And it is especially critical of “campaign journalism”.

A couple of quotes:

“In truth, today’s system of news delivery is an enterprise whose procedures, protocols, and underlying assumptions all but guarantee that it cannot succeed at its self described mission. Broadcast journalism in particular is flawed in such a fundamental way that its utility as a tool for illuminating life, let alone interpreting it, is almost nil. “

“You’re in Pulitzer territory for writing about something that — essentially — never happens.“

In upcoming blogs I will return to parts of this essay that may be used to explain pretty much all the Climate Change scares that have ever (not) happened.

For now I strongly recommend reading it in full.

The Plus Side of Anthropocene

A group of British scientists has proposed to rename the current geological era as the “Anthropocene“, to register the fact that human activities are transforming the world.

The proponents, and many pessim-environmentalists all too happy to jump on the Anthropocene bandwagon imply no doubt that the aforementioned human activities are negatively transforming the world. But that is by no means a given.

If humans are transforming the world it may be the absolutely obvious, and thus ethically neutral if not positive, consequence of the fact that we have evolved brains: and it would look silly to feel cold in winter and hot in summer. Cue the discovery of fire, and the invention of air conditioning. Analogously regarding teeth: who would want to have them pulled without anaesthetic? Cue the history of medicine and dentistry, including metallurgy. And so on and so forth.

Or alternatively: could the Anthropocene be just one of the signs that the Technological Singularity is really going to happen, thereby possibly transporting humanity to a completely new way of living?

Those are only thoughts, of course: perhaps the doomers and gloomers are right. Still, it’s important to remember that seldom a word contains negative connotations per se. Those are more often than not, in the mind of the beholder…

Practical Consequences of Climate Worries

(comment to the IHT’s “Welcome to the new nuclear era”)

Let me understand…so far, the only practical consequences of all the climate change brouhaha have been:

(1) The transfer of billions of euros from European taxpayers to Big Oil/Big Energy firms, under the emission trading scheme

(2) The ballooning of agriculture subsidies to farmers to push them into cultivating corn (despite everybody well knowing the environmental impact from corn fuel will be worse)

(3) A substantial increase in food prices especially for very poor people in many parts of the world

(4) The return of a nuclear industry that will prosper on State guarantees and produce large amounts of radioactive garbage nobody has found as yet a good way to dispose of

???

If that’s what a cleaner, greener world looks like, I’d rather have it brown and dirty, thank you!

Lester R Brown’s Plan B’s Shaky Foundations

The Earth Policy Institute has published an excerpt from the first chapter of Lester R Brown’s book “Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble“.

Why did they do that, one wonders? It is truly quite amazing to see how the egregiously flawed the whole thing is.

Among the citations that should be reconsidered: Paul MacCready’s computations need be replicated and carefully contextualized. The St. Matthew Island’s reindeer population collapse-by-overgrazing story has been seriously questioned by scientists and may be more relevant to indicate the dangers of a cooling climate instead (and the peculiarities of ungulate wild population sizes).

The same can be said for Easter Island, where population is unlikely to have reached 15,000 (let alone 20,000 as quoted by Brown), and the decimation was more likely caused by European germs and slave traders than anything else.

Finally, Brown advocates a yearly expenditure of $190 billion dollars just for global warming. I am sure you and me and everyone elase could do a lot more good with a lot less than that money.

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Is the planet under stress? Is civilization in trouble? Do we need a Plan B 2.0 to rescue either or both? Perhaps. Or perhaps not, based on how weak the foundations of Brown’s reasoning are.

Is your SUV Destroying the Universe?

Is your SUV destroying the Universe?

Supernovae data from the 1950’s to 2007 show trends very worrying for the fate of the whole cosmos.

The Magnitude (brightness) of observed explosions, after hovering for several decades around the 20 mark, has recently dropped to 15 (i.e. towards brighter supernovae).

Furthermore, the number of observed supernovae has been increasing at an exponential rate, again after many decades below 50 per year, to 95 in 1996 and a little less than 600 in 2007.

The fact that this is happening exactly as anthropogenic greenhouse-gases emissions are on the increase, cannot be just a coincidence. If this will not convince Governments about the importance of stopping CO2 emissions, nothing will!

Shame in Bali (Beware of the Gents!)

The UN Conference on climate change in a luxury resort in sunny Bali is likely to go down in history as the biggest waste of public money this side of Nero’s rebuilding of Ancient Rome. The idea that the only way to get less CO2 in the atmosphere is to organize the biggest event in UN history is beyond belief.

Anyway, as usual in everything called global warming, numbers simply never add up:

(1) the Sunday Times estimates 15,000 people, TV crews included

(2) Voice of America opts for 20,000, without the TV crews

(3) AP talks of more than 10,000 delegates, celebrities included

(4) Radio Australia says 5,000 police officers will be there, an extraordinary amount that will generate several tonnes of CO2 by itself (also, I didn’t think UN meetings could get rowdy?)

In truth, if anybody can manage to get anything meaningful out of 10,000/15,000/ 20,000 people in two weeks, either all those are there just to rubber-stamp something already prepared, or the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the wrong UN group

In any case…they better watch out when using the gentlemen’s lavatories

Why is the BBC Biased Against Climate Change Sceptics?

Letter sent to Richard Black, Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Dear Richard

I am not sure what you’ve set yourself up to show regarding “climate sceptics“, in the week “ahead of the launch of the IPCC’s synthesis report for 2007“.

First you treat the “sceptics community” as if it were some kind of monolith, or a political party (”Unravelling the sceptics“, Nov 12).

May I respectfully remind you that it is the Anthropogenic Global Warming proponents that need demonstrate their proposition, not the other way around.

In science, there’s usually only one way to agree, but lots of ways to disagree with something.

So what is “in the fringe” is as varied as it gets: outside the mainstream you will find those honestly doubting the Accepted Truth, alongside people with dodgy goals, and of course plenty of nutters.

It is not for the honest sceptics to answer for the dishonest ones, or for the fools.

And even among those sincerely disbelieving the IPCC’s claims, there will be quite a large range of opinions. That’s because they are not mainstream.

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Today (Nov 14) you have published another baffling article “Climate science: Sceptical about bias“  where you argue almost nobody provided you with evidence backing the accusations the “science itself is against” climate sceptics.

First of all it is a rather naive accusation you’ve decided to argue against. How can “science itself” be against scepticism of any sort?

At most, it would be the scientific Establishment that will show reluctance in admitting being wrong.

Anyway, in that article you proceed lamenting the dearth of evidence, only then to dismiss the biggest of it all, Nature’s rejection of Stephen McIntyre’s and Ross McKitrick’s rebuttal of Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick.

Please do make up your mind: either you are looking for evidence, or you are not looking for evidence.

The fact that you were looking for small stuff should not prevent you from seeing the big “elephant in the room”.

Also if you decide to mention something only to state that it “has been so well documented elsewhere” can you please insert at least a link of where that “elsewhere” is. It’s full of links on all BBC news pages, you know, so there must be a chance for you to help your readers investigate further, at least your own claims.

By the way, are you aware that the BBC and the IPCC have themselves pretty much rejected the Hockey Stick?

Look at this graph from one of the “In Depth” pages

That graph resembles no Hockey Stick anybody will ever want to play with. Looks more like a wide-bodied, irregular golf club…

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And finally since you like challenges, how about this one: can you please point me to a page on the BBC new website showing present evidence for climate change?

I do not want to see one of the many lists of things that may, could, perhaps will happen.

All I can find is “Climate change: The evidence” that speaks of tiny raises in temperature, centimeters of melting ice and millimeters of rising seas.

You must admit it does not look like the clearest of cases.

ADDENDUM NOV 21

Richard Black has responded. Here my reply to his private message. All text below is of course mine.

(about lack of evidence for anti-sceptic bias)
You’re missing something very important there. Let me try to convey the message with a made-up report:

***
“Women are not much at risk of domestic violence”, journalist Mr Red reported today. “I have sent a questionnaire to many of them but few bothered to respond. There is little evidence to support that claim”.
***

(about what “warmers” are finding out in the “real world”)
The real-world stuff is what I am studying at the moment.

In the AR4-WG2 documente there is a map repeated several times (eg fig 1.9, p 116) with numbers and percentages for observed physical and biological changes.

Now, there is an extremely large majority of “data samples” coming from biological changes in Europe (28,115 out of a total of 29,373). Furthermore: of those 28,115 “biological European data sets”, 89% are “consistent with warming”. In other words, 3,093 “biological European” changes (11%) are “NOT consistent with warming”. That is almost three times more than the total 1,177 number of observed changes outside of “biological European” and “consistent with warming”.

I still think the “warmers” need to demonstrate their case better than that.

(about the lack of skeptical articles in mainstream scientific publications)
Aren’t you arguing ad autoritatem there…

And don’t you know, when people publish for example on “Energy&Environment”, we are told that it’s not good enough.

regards
maurizio

Genetics, IQ and Racism

Why do many potentially intelligent people decide to look and sound silly for generations to come? Or “given enough bales you’ll find a few straws in all the colors of the rainbow”…

Some bloggers (and likely, some scientists) whose names and URLs I won’t spend a minute linking to, have started using the latest discoveries in biology to suggest “genetics differences between races” and a linking between high IQ and “several snippets of DNA“.

In other words, there are people out there hell-bent in demonstrating that blacks are inferior to whites.

They are wrong. And it’s not a case of being “politically incorrect“…rather, it’s an example of how to be “idiotically incorrect“.

In fact, haven’t we seen this whole circus before (just read Stephen Jay Gould’s “The Mismeasure of Man“)? A circus where invariably:

(1) The most recent scientific findings get used to provide a rational basis to existing prejudices

(2) People jump to “certain conclusions” even before any scientific article is published

(3) Legitimacy is given to the incoherent notion that skin color can be used to classify people into racial groups, but only up to a point: so a Sicilian becomes a White like a Swede, and a Wolof from Senegal becomes a Black like an Oromo from Ethiopia

(I myself am semi-officially White during winter time, then after two weeks in the sun demonstrably a tad more black than an Ethiopian)

(4) It always boils down to black inferiority and white superiority. In fact, never ever in the History of Biology there has been any hint of consensus about the notion that blacks are superior to whites, or far-east asians superior to whites.

(5) We are told that even if it may be difficult to accept, still we have to accept that Blacks be inferior to Whites, because Science is said to say so

(6) People opposing such views are labeled as left-leaning “defenders of social justice” (i.e., “communists”)

(7) The discourse moves then to show Men, White Men that is, as superior to Women. Next, to show that White Men with Ancestors from Northern European Countries are superior to everybody else.

( After making a big mess, such a stale soup of fallacies is shown false but then only goes into some kind of “sleep mode” ready to come back to make many potentially intelligent people look and sound silly for generations to come.

This happens every few decases. Truly we never learn anything from history.

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On my side, the issue is not about defending social justice or imposing equality to all in the face of contrary evidence.

The issue is that if something has been shown wrong in the past, again and again, then it cannot be accepted as “true” unless there is some extraordinary evidence supporting it.

And at every round, the notch for “extraordinary” gets a little bit higher. I am afraid that the discovery of a few “snippets” among the thousands and thousands available appears way too ordinary, and at best the result of bad statistical analysis applied to extremely large sample sizes (in other words: given enough bales you’ll find a few straws in all the colors of the rainbow)

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All in all, I am starting to believe that the one difference between races, is in the genes that predispose to developing an Inferiority Complex.

Those genes are obviously very powerfully expressed among Racist White Men. In fact, for what other reason would they feel the need to try again, and again, and again, to find a scientific basis for their most stupid thoughts?

Sense and Global Warming

From a message by Willis Eschenbach:

I also think that increasing GHGs [greenhous gases] will warm the earth … but that is not the real question to me. The real question is, how much it will warm the earth. To date, I have not seen any “useful quantitative results” regarding that question [...] …

Once those quantitative results are in, we can proceed to the next question: is a warmer earth better or worse on balance?

The globe has warmed quite a bit since the 1600s, and in general this has been of benefit to humans. The sea level rise from the historical warming has not been a significant problem. In addition, a warmer world is predicted to be a wetter world, which overall can only be a good thing.

So, will warming be a problem, or a benefit? This is a very open question, and one which will be difficult to answer as some areas will win and some will lose. To date, however, recent warming seems to be occurring outside the tropics, in the night-time, in the winter … this does not seem like a bad thing.

And at some future date when those questions are answered, we can proceed to the final question, viz: If GHGs are determined to be a major cause of the warming (as opposed to land-use changes, or black carbon on snow, or dark colored aerosols, etc) and if we determine that the warming will be on balance a negative occurrence, is there a cost-effective way to reduce the GHGs, or are we better off putting our money into adaptation?

Until we can answer all of those questions, we should restrict ourselves to actions which will be of value whether or not there is future warming.

The key is to realize that all of the problems that Al Gore is so shrill about are here now with us today - floods, heat waves, famine, rising sea levels, droughts, cold spells, and all of the apocalyptic catalog are occurring as I write this.

Anything we can do to insulate the world’s population from these climate problems will be of use to everyone no matter what the future climate holds.

That is, “anything we can do to insulate the world’s population from these climate problems” “here and now“.

And that’s exactly what climate change catastrophists (not to mention climatofascists) cannot seem to grasp, with their fixation on GHG reduction, and their absurdist mixing of known problems with potential issues, like in the recent UN Geo-4 report.

IgNobel Peace Prize A More Likely Contribution to Peace than Al Gore’s

Apparently one of the reasons for Al Gore and the IPCC to receive the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize relates to “green” being nowadays equal to “peace”.

This is absolutely a fantasy as there are many, many wars and conflicts around the world and not even one can honestly be related to climate change or global warming.

The one example that is always used is the remote possibility that increased drought would be behind the Darfur genocide. Such a link has been fabricated in a recent UN report and it is a shameful way of abandoning all those women and children while providing a ready-made excuse for the people committing the genocide.

All that, because a bunch of rich people fear that world temperature may go up 2C in 40 or 100 years, and can only get their worries on top of everybody’s agendas by stocking up fears?

The issues about Darfur have nothing to do with climate. And in any case, on the entire rest of the surface of the planet there is not a single other place where armed conflicts can be even remotely connected to any presumed, measure or modelled change in the climate.

Israel is bombing nuclear targets in Syria and Damascus did not even complain, and we think that peace will come from lowering CO2 in the atmosphere??

———

The contribution by Al Gore and the IPCC to present or future peace remains a mystery indeed. And other big questions remain open:

• Why give a Prize before the fact, when we do not even have a Kyoto-II Agreement?
• Why a political award to what is supposed to be a non-policy-making international body of scientists like the IPCC?
• Why not a Nobel Prize in Physics for the IPCC if the science of global warming is strong enough to justify their efforts that earned them a Peace Prize?
• Why can’t concerned IPCC scientists group themselves outside of the Panel, thus separating Science from politics?

All in all, this year’s IgNobel Peace Prize does seem a more likely contribution to peace than what Al Gore and the IPCC have not yet done:

PEACE: The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA, for instigating research & development on a chemical weapon — the so-called “gay bomb” – that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other.
REFERENCE: “Harassing, Annoying, and ‘Bad Guy’ Identifying Chemicals,” Wright Laboratory, WL/FIVR, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, June 1, 1994.

A bit far-fetched, perhaps, especially about attracting annoying creatures, eliciting halitosis and the extraordinary application of the old slogan Make Love Not War to the battlefield: still, the Wright Laboratory’s efforts were (are?) about changing the nature of the armed conflicts of today, not the ones some very worried people are imagining now will happen in five or more decades.

Rock-bottom Quality at The Lancet

Plenty of red faces at The Lancet in a few years’ time when somebody will decide to carefully read what they have allowed onto such an esteemed publication:

“Food additives and hyperactive behaviour in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the community: a randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial” - www.thelancet.com - published online September 6, 2007 DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61306-3

To the eye of the busiest readers, such a paper could not be more explicit about the dangers of artificial food colouring and preservatives :

“Interpretation: Artificial colours or a sodium benzoate preservative (or both) in the diet result in increased hyperactivity in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the general population“

It’s just too bad that the results published in the very same article warrant such a conclusion not at all.

(1) The study included a tiny sample of 300 children, hardly something meaningful for the “general population”

(2) Unbelievably, importance is given to result of very little statistical significance.

Statistical significance is indicated, as usual, as “p”: in the article, “p=0.044” means the probability of the result being by chance is  1/22. “p=0.02” corresponds to  1/50 and “p=0.023” means 1/44.

In other words, out of 22 results with “p=0.044“, one of them will be statistically bound to be due to chance: and thus, meaningless. In fact, it is best practice for statistical significance to be granted only for “p=0.01” (1/100) or less.

(3) The only result with an acceptable p is “mix B” with “p=0.001” (1/1000). However, that corresponds to an increase in hyperactivity of just 0.17, that is around 8.5% of the threshold (2.0) defined by the authors for Hyperactivity Disorder/ADHD

Such a low value, and the fact that “mix A” has shown no statistically-significant results, can only be interpreted by saying that the impact of artificial colouring and preservatives on ADHD is irrelevant. 

Note also that if I am not mistaken not even one of the children in the study ever showed any indication of Hyperactivity Disorder. And I will not even be drawn in the discussion of if and how ADHD could truly be measured as claimed in the article.

———–

Oh boy! Could any of that have stopped the UK’s Food Standards Agency (sponsors of the study) from abusing the results to call for a lower use of artificial colouring and preservatives in food? ‘Course not.

Let’s give the FSA their due, though: having classified honey as junk food, incredibly claiming “science” to be on the side of such an abysmally stupid choice, they have to defend their reputation and therefore can only keep misusing “science” to provide foundations to their prejudices, for the foreseeable future.

———–

Should we try to avoid using artificial colouring and preservatives in food, especially for children? Yes. But should we base our choice on inconclusive evidence masquerading it as “scientific”? No. Never.

Because: is it ethical to add meaningless worries to parents already 100% busy with their children and ADHD? No. And it will never be.

———–

And by the way: shame to the science editors that don’t properly read the original articles they decide to write about. Critical eyes should not be confined to movie reviews.

Power Lines, Cancer and the Meaning of Statistics

Another day, another bunch of medical results draped in statistics. What is the right way to interpret them?

This article on Power Lines and Cancer provides the basic tools. In a sentence: take with a grain of salt all results based purely on statistics, where the risks or the benefits are less than 300%.

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Do overhead Power lines cause cancers, especially leukaemia in children?

Like in a “Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern” match of oratorical tennis, two sides of a supposedly scientific debate have not been able to get down to a reasonable conclusion after 30 years of research.

One month, we are told that Science has demonstrated that Power Lines induce leukaemia and other diseases. Cue schools asking for pylons to be removed; and people selling their houses before values start sliding down.

The following month (or year), we are told that scientific studies have shown that the danger, if it exists, is not discernible at all. Cue schools asking for pylons to be removed anyway. And so on and so forth.

How can one make any sense out of this? After all those children either get, or do not get leukaemia. Should that be a matter of debate?

In an era where Science appears to be tugged in all kinds of directions (think of the MMR vaccine debate; the forecasted disasters of Climate Change; the purported obesity epidemic), an analysis of the Power Lines and Cancer debate can teach important lessons on the limits of translating Science into Policy; the need to exercise critical thinking, also about “Authorities”; the perils of letting the media interpret the world for you; and the danger that scientific analysis, endlessly manipulated by unscrupulous hacks and pressure groups, will be used to dent our freedom.

The Science

Studies on adverse effects of electromagnetic fields have been concentrating recently on Power Lines and Mobile Phones [2]. Power Lines are a source of electrical and magnetic fields in their proximity and these can interact with biological material [8]. However, for the frequencies and strengths involved with overhead Power Lines, there is no indication from laboratory studies of any negative effect, for example on rats or cell cultures.

An alternative line of investigation is through epidemiological studies, using statistics to identify adverse effects if any. For example, an increase on the incidence of diseases in children living near Power Lines (“cases”), compared to children living far away from them (“controls”).

Results are usually provided in terms of Relative Risk (RR), the ratio between the percentages of people developing an illness among the “cases” and among the “controls”. A value of 1.0 for RR means there is no difference between cases and controls. A value less than 1.0 indicates that the “cases” are safeguarded against the illness more than the general population. A value above 1.0 is evidence that the “cases” are at greater danger to fall ill than usual.

For example, the RR of developing lung cancer is around 40 for habitual smokers. In other words, a smoker’s chance to get lung cancer is 4,000% that for a non-smoker.

The first report on higher leukaemia rate for children living near high-voltage Power Lines is the Wertheimer & Leeper study of 1979 and another by Savitz et al. in 1988 [2]. Much work has been done afterwards by organizations such the US-based Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) mostly disproving the findings above. The United Kingdom Childhood Cancer Study UKCCS (UKCSS) found no evidence for increased “risk for childhood leukaemia, cancers of the nervous system, or any other childhood cancer” in reports in 1999 (about electricity supply), in 2000 (proximity to electrical installations including Power Lines) and 2002 (electric fields in general) [5].

The most important recent scientific epidemiological results for Power Lines and cancer have been published in June 2005 by Professor Gerald Draper of the University of Oxford’s Childhood Cancer Research Group [4]. In the study:

• Children within 200 m of high-voltage Power Lines had a relative risk of leukaemia of 1.69
• Those between 200 and 600 m had a RR of 1.23. This is not compatible with current knowledge on biological effects of magnetic fields. At 200 m, fields from Power Lines are less than the average fields in homes from other sources.
• RR appeared to decrease with distance. There is less than 1% probability that this finding is purely due to chance (an estimate usually indicated with “p<.01”)
• No excess risk for other childhood cancers correlated to proximity to lines

Conflicting interpretations

At first glance, there may be something about children leukaemia, likely associated to proximity to Power Lines. Still, there is no known mechanism, and the relative risk is minimal. As pointed out in the editorial accompanying the Draper article, Power Lines may account (if they do) for no more than five cases of disease per year in the UK, compared to more than 200 children dying because of traffic accidents, and 32 in house fires [8]. Furthermore, there is no indication of effects for any other form of cancer [5]. This means that at present there is no incontrovertible data clearly indicating a cancerous danger in power lines for children and adults.

But it is not possible to design a study proving the negative, that Power Lines do not cause any risk of cancer. The consequence is that the public controversy is likely to stay with us for the foreseeable future. The diversity of comments to the Draper study is in fact truly remarkable [4].

Take for example the opinion of Denis Henshaw, Professor of Human Radiation Effects at the University of Bristol [3] (my emphasis): “[Draper’s] latest findings not only strengthen further the evidence that children living in proximity to high voltage power lines are at increased risk of childhood leukaemia, but in finding effects up to 600 metres away they invoke electric field corona ion effects as a possible causal mechanism”.

Professor Henshaw, whose work is funded by the charity “Children with Leukaemia”, goes as far as stating that “this may be the tip of the iceberg […] in terms of the many other illnesses also associated with magnetic fields such as adult leukaemia, adult brain cancer, miscarriage and depression”.

Which side is “right”? The “Authority” of the “Authorities” is not an answer: because Science is not about following the Authorities; and there are well-known scientists and organizations either side of the debate. Among those skeptical of any cancerous danger in Power Lines, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (2001); the International Agency for Research on Cancer (2001); the U.S. National Institutes of Health (2002); and the U.K. National Radiological Protection Board (2004) [8].

Obstacles on the road to a good Policy

Where Science cannot reach, opinions start kicking in, and competing interests maneuver to cajole us in one direction or the other. In the case of Power Lines and Cancer, the controversy has indeed been “sustained by uneven reporting on this issue by the mass media” and “lay-oriented books that allege that there has been a conspiracy to conceal the health risks of power-frequency fields” [8].

“Uneven reporting” is visible on the BBC News Website. Again in response to the publication of the Draper article [1], there is an article that presents the issue in scarier traits at first: “leukaemia rates are significantly higher among children who live close to power lines”.

It then progressively mellows “In the past, evidence suggested that low frequency magnetic fields, generated by high voltage cables, may be implicated in some way - a theory which hasn’t been endorsed by [Draper’s] Childhood Cancer Research Group” before ending with “we also spoke to Dr David Grant, director of the Leukaemia Research Fund. He told us he thought the higher incidence of leukaemia near pylons was a coincidence”.

Statistical indicators are explained poorly and in an alarmistic manner. For example, a Relative Risk of 1.69 is described as a 69% increased probability to develop leukaemia. Such a reporting is mathematically right, conceptually wrong and frankly misleading. Is there as 400% growth in increasing one’s savings from £1 to £4? Yes, but it’s still just £4. Moreover, as explained below, values of RR less than 3 seldom are considered worth of note in epidemiological studies.

Perhaps, given that the page is from the Breakfast section, the BBC’s was a clumsy, rather misinforming attempt at eliciting controversy and comments from the audience (see form at bottom of page). That’s bad news for present-day Britain, where its media-conscious Government gives “insufficient weight to available evidence” placing “too great a reliance on unsubstantiated reports that often have their origin in the media” [12]

There is concern also reading on the bias of the published scientific literature. For example, a study done in Montecito [6] reported as much as seven cases of children with leukaemia or lymphoma around a school in the vicinity of overhead Power Lines. However, “five of the seven Montecito children […] attended the school. Of those five, two attended the school for a very brief duration, leaving only three with plausible cases for school exposures as a possible cause” [7].

The Montecito study is one of the scientifically flawed pillars behind the most famous “conspiracy” book, “The Great Power-Line Cover-Up” written by Paul Brodeur [10]. Mr Brodeur set out to demonstrate the cancerous effects of high-voltage power lines, and to denounce a world-wide conspiracy to keep such evidence hidden from the public.

Long rebuttals have been published since [7]. In a telling sign that there may have been a case of “investigative journalism with a purpose”, few if any opinions of the “conspirators” were either solicited or included in the book, leading to a commentator to state that “Brodeur’s criticisms of the people […] are no more than unsupported innuendo, gross exaggeration, and serious misstatement.” [7].

Dealing with epidemiological studies

Epidemiology is a powerful tool. It can even provide estimation on the likelihood that the outcome of a study is due to random coincidences, rather than an actual casual link. The Draper article cited above scientifically asserts that there is less than a 1% chance (“p<.01”) that such its findings are due to a random quirk in the measurements, instead than actual physical processes.

That 1% may appear a very low figure. On the other hand, it also means that among the epidemiological studies published every year with a similar p, one out of every 100 will on average report irrelevant findings.

Trouble is, we do not know which one. An epidemiological study like Draper’s may indicate a link childhood leukaemia-Power Lines. But there is always the possibility that by a run of bad luck, that study is the one out of 100 that “got it wrong”.

And with values of p around .05, incorrect findings will affect one out of every 20 of the great majority of Power Lines and Cancer studies. This problem is further compounded by the normal “reporting bias” (when “multiple studies are done but only some are reported” [8]). A result labeled with p<.05 may have no real meaning: when 20 or more measurements are performed, one of them will be randomly positive.

With other issues at play like “confounders”, (non-electromagnetic causes like traffic density and socioeconomic class); and “publication bias” (as “positive studies are more likely to be published than negative studies”) [8], epidemiology alone cannot suffice in understanding a phenomenon. What else is needed to complement it? Here’s a checklist [7]:

1. Epidemiology should find a strong association (i.e. a high value for RR, e.g. above 3)
2. A very specific disease should be involved (for example, one type of leukaemia)
3. There should be a consistency between studies and with data from laboratory work, cancer incidence trends and other sources. In fact, “when two studies with similar designs find different results and the differences cannot easily be explained or rationalized, neither study is accepted as definitive” [7].
4. The results should be preferably not involve a rewriting of biology and physics

Obviously, an enormous RR could be used to justify investigations on how to rewrite biology and physics. Vice-versa, a very plausible biological mechanism only needs a relatively low value for RR.

Future investigations?

As of June 2006 criteria 3 and 4 (consistency and plausibility) are still missing, and relative risks are no more than 1.5-2.5 (sometimes, they are less than 1.0).

More of the same types of epidemiological studies are unlikely to resolve anything [8]. Decades of laboratory studies have shown “little evidence of a link between power-frequency fields and cancer” even in “life-time exposure of animals”. And despite the increasing use of electricity, a 1993 report by the World Health Organization and an analysis for Sweden from 1960 to 1991 have found no discernible changes in leukaemia incidence in adults or children [7].

Perhaps it may be interesting to finally identify the role of the “confounders” [8]. But this may be like shooting in the dark: and there may really be no need to invest resources in trying to identify a link between Power Lines and Cancer.

Lessons learned

One side of the debate states that leukaemia cases do not depend on the presence of overhead power lines: because there is no evidence in that direction. The other side goes as far as to say that children, if not everybody, should be kept at distance from those same lines, in order to lessen the chances of getting leukaemia and other disease: because there is no evidence that power lines are safe.

I do not see any reason to fear power lines. More in detail: for power-line-induced leukaemia to be actually happening, a small, yet peculiar but not impossible rewrite of biology and physics is necessary. We would need very hard evidence to back that up. And there are a lot of other causes of deaths that kill much more than 5 children per year in a country like the UK.

An opinion, but that is the whole point. The problem is if and how we translate a potential risk into a policy, a set of guidelines defining our course of action. If we leave the interpretation to interested parties and sensationalistic media, they will be in charge of regulating our lives in ways unwarranted by our own scientific data.

Do we have to evacuate all areas around power lines because there is some possibility that they will cause leukaemia? Or should we agree that it is much wiser to keep living our lives, unless something is ultimately proven dangerous? To put it simply: shall we move forward only if we can get an “all clear”? Alternatively, shall we stay put only if there is any clear danger in moving?

Are we for being very cautious, or ready to embrace progress? The natural answer for Humanity seems to be the latter. Our brains are hard-wired into recognizing and appreciating the novelties in our environment. From very early childhood, we find it natural to explore, investigate. And walk. Who among us would refuse to walk until checking the ground ahead at every step?

Some have suggested to resolve the controversy by implementing “Prudent Avoidance”, one kind of Precautionary Principle, “taking steps [of modest costs] to keep people out of fields, both by re-routing facilities and by redesigning electrical systems and appliances” [7]. For example, underground lines have been suggested. But they are expensive, and “difficult, time-consuming and expensive to repair […] (and they do break)” [8].

“Prudent Avoidance” is quite dangerous for a free society [12]. It may end up becoming the hijacking tools for vocal individuals and organizations to lock up resources that could be better spent in making everybody’s lives freer and easier, instead of in the futile attempt to eliminate all chance of risk.

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The Power Lines debate is not just about electrical power, and is not just about personal choice. It is a matter of societal power.

The definition of the very rules governing our society is at stake: if the Ultra-cautious Party wins, it will be one of the first steps in the future prohibition of most of what it is new. After all, who can demonstrate that there is no danger at all in using WiFi to get to the Internet? Or that there are no negative consequences in distributing ideas through online magazines?

References

[1] Power lines and childhood cancer, Friday, 3 June, 2005, from the BBC Breakfast programme

[2] Michel Ianoz, ‘Biological And Health Effects Of Electromagnetic Fields’, IEEE EMC Society, 2004

[3] Reported in “Responses to the CCRG study of power lines and childhood cancer”

[4] Gerard Draper et al., ‘Childhood cancer in relation to distance from high voltage power lines in England and Wales: a case-control study’, British Medical Journal 2005; 330: 1290

[5] ‘EMFs and childhood cancer’, by the British company National Grid’s EMF Unit Public Information Line

[6] R Kreutzer et al., ‘Investigation of the Montecito Leukaemia and Lymphoma Cluster Final Report [Draft]’, California Department of Health Services, 1990

[7] R D Miller, ‘Unfounded Fears: The Great Power-Line Cover-Up Exposed’, IEEE EMBS Committee on Man and Radiation (IEEE, 199

[8] J Moulder, ‘Power Lines and Cancer FAQs’, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisc, U.S.A,

[10] P Brodeur, ‘The Great Power-Line Cover-Up’ (Little, Brown 1993)

[12] J Luik, “Risk vs. Liberty”, TCS Daily, 27 June 2006

A Fred Fisher Moment for Climate Supremacists

The beginning of the end of Senator McCarthy’s 7 years in the spotlight was surely and improbably his mentioning of young Boston lawyer Frederick G. Fisher, Jr.: whose left-wing past the Senator unwarrantedly used to undermine US Army’s attorney Joseph Welch. On live TV, June 9, 1954, Welch famously retorted “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

Having seen what excesses the Senator could reach in his campaign to uncover Communists, public opinion turned against him.

Are we witnessing something similar about Climate Change? Have the catastrophists finally overreached, to the point of toppling themselves over? The indications are all there: because after Newsweek’s 9-page-tirade against anybody that dares to doubt anything about anthropogenic climate change (Aug 13, 2007), the tide is starting to turn.

In fact, no less commentators than Jeff Jacoby on the Boston Globe, and Robert J Samuelson in the next issue of the very same Newsweek magazine, have recently denounced the absurd attitudes of people apparently allergic to any form of dissent in matters of climate change.

For years, in the best of circumstances one has been labeled a “skeptic” (as if there were anything wrong with that!) at the first hint of not following the exact line behind the likes of Al Gore, James Hansen and the IPCC. Some of us had to repeatedly answer charges of “denialism”, a slur meant to create the impression of equivalence between those skeptical of a _possible_ FUTURE catastrophic change in the climate caused by human activities’ carbon dioxide emissions, and those still doubting the historical, PAST _fact_ of the Holocaust.

Note that I haven’t even mentioned the veiled and not-so-veiled threats of future trials ‘a-la-Nuremberg.

Between that and a complete picture of Climate Change Supremacism, only violence appeared to be missing in the actions of those carrying out a hard-headed campaign bent on stifling any hint of opposition to upcoming grand, poorly-thought-out lifestyle-changing plans such as carbon-emission-rationing.

Who knows, perhaps crosses will start burning on somebody’s lawn as soon as a zero-carbon-emission flame becomes readily available? But then, psychological violence has already started creeping in. How else to characterize President of the American Council on Renewable Energy, Michael Eckhart’s threat of career destruction against Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute?

That must surely be the most egregious example of the poisonous atmosphere concocted up by climate totalitarians. But it is just the latest and the biggest in a series.

Martin Durkin, author of the Great Global Warming Swindle documentary found himself under an unduly heavy barrage of condemnations of various sorts, including highly-browed calls for censorship by esteemed Professors. Steve McIntyre, the blogger/statistician that has recently discovered a bug in the software used by NASA to incorrectly attribute the warmest of US years to 1998, has seen his website crushed by an apparent DOS attack just hours later.

My own views (a basic question: if the climate is changing, where is the change in weather, not just temperature?) have been abused at times to “demonstrate” I wasn’t worthy of engaging in a discussion in a completely different area.

We literally live in the middle of an escalation of tones. Even people genuinely worried about Global Warming must understand how dangerous and ultimately self-defeating the attitudes of climate totalitarians and climate supremacists are.

If there really is an upcoming disaster, shouldn’t efforts concentrate on getting the world prepared, rather tan on stamping out differences of opinion?

Jacoby is right when he specifies that good intentions are not an excuse. All revolutions are avowedly meant for the betterment of Humanity. But whilst the American one led to the Constitution, the French Revolution brought years of guillotined Terror.

There is no need to remind the horrors perpetrated by Italian Fascists, German Nazis and Russian Communists, believe it or not all in the name of great ideals of peace and prosperity.

Justice Louis Brandeis is quoted by Jacoby as saying “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.“

We are the children and grandchildren of the millions that either fought to contain and defeat dictatorships, or were misguidedly seduced into selling out their freedoms to monomaniacal, homicidal types with illusions of omnipotence.

History will not and cannot forgive us, if we let that happen again.

The Psychological Boost of Believing in AGW

From The New York Times (*):

“Let us talk about the weather.” What is to be said of such weather as we had in the middle of the week? How is it that the weather experts do not give us some good, or at least plausible, excuse for it? Every year we have a few days of exceptionally warm weather early in the season. Usually it comes in April. It is altogether unusual for it to come in March. Some persons remember very distinctly that the days of the warm weather just past were the anniversay of the great blizzard. Why is the weather so inexplicable?

Climate has always scared us like a wild beast, so it’s all to natural for humans to kid themselves into pretending it can be tamed.

Centuries ago we would have had to sacrifice cattle to a Weather God, nowadays it’s all about “fighting Anthropogenic Global Warming”, and getting a Prius.

(*) March 13, 1898

Newsmedia, not History Books

Somebody has posted a great list of all that is wrong with newsmedia:

1. Great emphasis on the dramatic
2. Failure to distinguish between opinion and fact
3. Repetitive dissemination of original reports from a few limited sources without checking or questioning information
4. A catering to what the media perceives as the popular belief or their belief over reporting the facts
5. Reporters that have disturbingly low levels of knowledge in the areas they report on
6. Sometimes blatant misrepresentation of the facts by reporters in major news organizations
7. A tendency to run with the “latest story” to the point of boredom at the expense of broader, more informative reporting
8. Information becoming “truth” based on degree of repetition

Those points truly are the way contemporary newsmedia work, and especially those dealing with day-to-day stuff.

We should never forget that newspapers, newsmagazines, TV/radio news programs are meant to be sold and capture the widest possible audience.

They are built to re-inforce the prejudice and convictions of the people that are going to buy them. Sometimes, they could challenge their readers, but bankruptcy is in order if they do that too boldly.

You simply can’t do that by being 100% honest, informative, opinion-free…articles based on that would bore to death most of the readership.

That’s why history books are written by scholars, instead of being reprints of old newspapers.

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The above is not meant to be taken as an insult. Hey, I am a part-time journalist myself!!

I see it more as the way things “are”, just as new models of cars are always presented with scantily-clad girls and watches invariably point to 10 past 10 in photo ads.

People have tried to act differently but few if any of those businesses have survived.

On the other hand I do agree there is no internal, contemporary  ”media trend” toward alarmism. Readers’ titillation has always been the order of the day, so any change is likely to have been as a result of a change in what the readers wanted.

As an example, compare the opening pages of London’s The Independent from 20-30 years ago with the screaming trendy single-issue front page of today. And don’t forget the failure of the “good news” newspaper put out a few years ago, again in London (by the Guardian, I believe)?

I don’t think I need to mention any self-proclaimed “Fair and Balanced” news network here.

Perhaps the newspapers of 1907 were scary, exciting and dramatic for their readers, but they don’t appear as such to us simply because (by definition) we are not the people those were meant to be sold to.

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There is only one challenge for all the readers: and that is to provide ourselves with the tools for critically managing the streams of news we are bombarded with.

And by that I mean being able first of all to look for cause-and-effect, so that if event A should cause event B, don’t believe A has happened until B has showed up too.

The Death of Climate Change

G-8 leaders are preparing to go through the motions about “doing something against Climate Change” (presumably, with similar successes as their wars on poverty and drugs). Countless pacts, accords, international conferences have not meant much as yet, and in all likelihood they won’t make any perceivable difference in the future either.

In the meanwhile, the “science” of Climate Change is as clay-footed as ever. A leading IPCC reviewer publicly states “We should respond prudently to the threats from climate change“. The NASA top honcho Michael Griffin commits the cardinal sin of saying the obvious against all “consensus”:

“I’m not sure it’s fair to say that [global warming] is a problem we must wrestle with [...]

I would ask which human beings—where and when—are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we might have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings.“

In a further sign that something is amiss, there is not even the suggestion of designing a satellite capable of collecting global data and possibly evidence of global warming / climate change.

GoreSat itself is not mentioned anywhere, despite sitting ready to fly for the past 7 years.

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The above clearly indicates that “Climate Change” as a real issue has died already, or is at a terminal stage.

At best, it has revealed itself as a proxy for something different, at worst a smokescreen, ancillary issue.

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Let’s give everybody involved the benefit of the doubt. What is the real problem they are concerned about, then, if “Climate Change” is just a proxy?

Possible candidates include: (1) the will to counteract the power of global companies by establishing some kind of (toothed) global government; (2) a general feeling tha Humanity must be cleansed of its sins, especially of greed and of disrespect for the Environment; (3) a way of keeping the development of places such as China and India in check, by making their lives difficult with newly-fangled emission caps.

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But the one trouble I am presently more inclined to consider, it’s (4) the worry that there simply are too many humans alive at the same time, and their numbers keep on increasing: at the same time, we have the attitude but not the tools nor the will to provide them all with a decent life.

That’s a much more interesting topic than silly measures of atmospheric carbon dioxide and unreliable, patched-up, secretive historical temperature recordings.