Environmental Insider Goes to Washington

The Texas Environmental Insider trekked back to the scene of many of his early crimes the first week of February (where he cut his teeth working for Uncle Sam). It was surely the right time to go to the nation's capital. President Bush was readying his State of the Union address. There was snow on the ground (and in the air). The only sun he saw was printed in Baltimore and full of stories about Sammy Sosa (the newest Oriole).

As fate would have it, we took along the new Michael Crichton book, State of Fear, to read on the plane, in the airport, and at times when we were quiet and awake and curious. Little did we know that global warming (er, abrupt climate change) would be the subject of the keynote address at the conference (sponsored by the nonpartisan National Council for Science and the Environment).

While State of Fear is just as stimulating as many of Crichton's earlier novels (Congo, Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, to name a few), our focus here will be on an appendix titled, "Why Politicized Science Is Dangerous." [How often, though, does one read a novel with footnotes and an extensive bibliography?]

Crichton draws our attention to a scientific theory that drew support from leading scientists, politicians, and celebrities around the world. Distinguished philanthropists funded research done at prestigious universities, and the theory was taught as fact in college and high school classrooms. Supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and even Winston Churchill, as well as Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, Alexander Graham Bell, Margaret Sanger, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Leland Stanford, and Luther Burbank.

Legislation to address this "crisis" was passed in states from New York to California, building on research done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins. The theory had support from the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council. Those who opposed this theory were deemed reactionaries or ignoramuses and shunned.

The theory was eugenics - and it was the foundation for the Holocaust.

The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. [What is odd is that those nations which embraced eugenics - aimed at increasing the birth rate among northern Europeans and their American descendants - are today losing population (other than from immigration) due to catastrophically low birth rates.] Crichton says the eugenics movement prospered for so long for three reasons:

* despite the absence of any real scientific basis for the theory, eugenics theory prospered because it employed vague terms (feeble-mindedness, for one) never rigorously defined.

* the eugenics movement was really a social program masquerading as a scientific one.

* the scientific establishment in both the U.S. and Germany did not mount any sustained protest to eugenics theory, but instead (especially in Germany) fell into line with the theory in order to obtain research grants.

Crichton admits that eugenics and global warming are not the same, but notes that politicians, scientists, and celebrities around the world have flocked to support the theory. Measures being urged have little basis in fact or science, and groups with other (hidden) agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Crichton concludes that, once again, open and frank discussion of the data and of the issues is being suppressed.

As evidence, so many of the outspoken critics of global warming are retired professors who are no longer seeking grants and no longer have to face colleagues whose grant applications and career advancement may be jeopardized by their criticisms. [For example, it has been widely publicized that the peninsular ice sheet of Antarctica has been weakening, but rarely is it mentioned that the ice sheet in interior Antarctica has been thickening.]

In a separate "Author's Message," Crichton acknowledges that we are in the midst of a natural warming trend that began after 1850 and that atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, most likely due to human activity. But, he cautions, it would be reasonable to require that climate models accurately predict future temperatures for, say, 10 years, before making expensive policy decisions on the basis of these models.

Crichton says the "current near-hysterical preoccupation" with safety is a crimp on the human spirit and at worst, an invitation to totalitarianism. He calls for a "new" environmental movement, with new goals and new organizations, more people working in the field (the actual environment) and fewer behind computer screens. We need more scientists and fewer lawyers (sorry, guys). The reason?

"We cannot hope to manage a complex system such as the environment through litigation."

Finally, Crichton calls for a nonpartisan, blinded funding mechanism to conduct research to determine appropriate policy. Today, scientists know that continued funding depends on delivering the results the funders desire. [The same was true of soothsayers in Old Testament times.] This leads to biased and suspect "studies" from both environmental organizations and industry - and even government, where the slant of research studies depends on who is in power at the time.

In a climate in which just about everyone is accusing everyone else of politicizing science, blinded research that equally rewards good and bad (depending upon one's perspective) news would be a godsend. Today it is often difficult these days to discern what is real from what is manufactured to please one's patrons. Our cardinal rule is that whoever mixes his scientific revelations with political speech may not deserve to be fully trusted, no matter which side he (or she) is on.

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