The Relgion of Environmentalism: C/D

Calling out for higher standards of scientific validation in environmental policies= hitting head with hammer

Pretending government (EPA et al) will ever veer far from political manuvering = pipe dream

Calling out junk science = underappreciated art form

However, Critchton IS responsible for Looker, totally incoherent and the most electroclash movie ever made apart from Liquid Sky.

Nevertheless, having seen Timeline no-one can be more embarressed than Michael Chrichton. Except maybe Richard Donner.

Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better. That's not a good future for the human race. That's our past. So it's time to abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly on that.

cf Zizek or Agamben on 'bio-politics' -- Crichton as prophet of our 'post-political' era. Science is and always has been political, not least because of its application to eg weapons.

Indeed, science has long been an instrument of politics despite widespread heresy and a lack of credible peer review in so many areas; the involvement of the social sciences in particular has muddied political waters greatly in the past five decades.

But the point he raises--the one most of you are ignoring--is that for many, environmentalism is quite similar to a religion. Can we discuss that now, as opposed to the predictable impulsive denouncements from the left wing political worldview? The rise of fundamentalism--and clearly, there are some fundamentalist enviromentalists out there--is harrowing. It warrants a further examination. What fuels it?

I have a friend who works at the CDC here (the Center for Disease Control). She has received death threats from the anti-animal testing crowd and has had her car vandalized in the parking lot--she doesn't even work in the lab!

My point is that I understand the longer, more documented history of organized religion and the fanatical fundamentalists that follow it--I get that there are some kooks who see the end of the world coming or whatever. But what on earth possesses the fundamentalist wing of the environmental movement? It's definitely quasi-religious.

or, michel houellebecq to thread

or, Syndicalists, Anarchists, Trotskyists, Maoists, Revolutionary Communist Leaguers, etc etc

Except for spiritualists and bicyclists, where the rule comes apart a bit.

That seems credible.

Look, I said the theory was flawed.

But! Bicyclists are usually Environmentalists, so it works out in one way...

About the whole gorilla/sign language thing: Some people have disputed that the gorilla understood the signs she learn, and that her trainers put too much of their own interpretation into her signing.

And you bring me to my greater point: that our belief system--whatever the credibility of the source it is--guides our perception of truth and facts. The greater the dogma the more hard pressed we are to consider anything else or other perspectives. That's what Crichton is saying--that there is an element of environmentalism that is dogma and not explained thoroughly enough through scientific method.

the thing about many of these studies is that for every one that 'proves' something there's another that 'proves' the exact opposite - take the point about passive smoking for example - apparently, crichton can tell us categorically that it is not harmful. this must be very rewarding for him, knowing that his point of view is inherently superior to all those scientists who conducted studies that suggested it was harmful. he's doing precisely what he condemns those with the opposing viewpoint of doing.

i agree with some tenets of his argument - the suggestion that blind belief (as opposed to faith or spirituality which are both very different) can be a highly destructive force, and the statement that many of us (me included) do trot out these environmental cliches without really knowing if they're true or not. but to THEN turn round, say 'studies show.....etc etc etc' and to ignore the fact that there's a substantial amount of scientific evidence to the contrary is just as blind as those he seeks to criticise.

perhaps, then, he falls by his own definition of the 'best' people - those who spurn religion. by adhering to his religion of non-belief in environmentalism, by making categorical statements ('ddt is not a carcinogenic' - how can you actually KNOW this, michael?) he sounds just a little bit like one of those loons on the sidewalk he wants to distance himself from.
a shame, because there are some interesting points there. made in a fair and balanced fashion, they'd be worth looking into.

also - he wrote jurassic park, and jurassic park is RUBBISH.

that's a scientific FACT*

*in my opinion..

i wouldn't be the first to do so, if i was, but i'm not saying anything so categorical.
a belief that we should have no belief system is going to be something of a contradiction, isn't it?

i'm suggesting that we be flexible, that we don't just say 'such and such is wrong' without looking into the alternatives. i'm actually advocating that crichton practices what he preaches.

and i certainly don't believe in scientific method above all else, did something make you think i did?

But, when does scientific method lend itself to dogma or at what point can we begin to quit questioning supposing and other "proven" works?

Going back to Crichton's field of expertise--medicine--there are many reasons to push research forward, including the use of experimental treatments, that require a dogmatic belief that progress will be made. Indeed, the practice of medicine is RIFE with dogma and religious tendencies. He kind of avoided that, no?

The scientific method (or binary, "hypothesis-based" investigation) isn't the only way to do science. Choosing it over some other way is an act of faith in itself.

Anyway, why do right-wingers enjoy picking on such politically marginal figures, assuming these "eden-worshippers" really exist at all. You've got the government, now shut the fuck up.

yes, they are made of very environmentally-correct straw

Furthermore, to suggest that the right wing has a monopoly on the fringes of the world is laughable. You're so pissed off that Crichton was critical of your dogma that you fail to relate your comments to the crux of the discussion. But if you think it adds to the discussion to yell fuck off, then so be it.

There's a part in the Bell Curve where the the authors start cherrypicking the most marginal of opponents, pulling quotes from lunatic academics who seem to believe blacks are genetically predisposed to things like "soul" and "vibe"; they do this to try and undermine the credibility of their opponents. As if that point of view is at all representative of the huge scientific community Herrnstein/Murray are up against. It's the same thing Bill O'Reilly does -- once on his show he was moderating some kind of debate on "freak-dancing" and the participants were a woman who was obviously some professional spokeperson for a religious group, and this poor girl who was a just freshman undergrad at Stanford. The girl was hung out to dry.

Finally, I never claimed to be some kind of "objectivist". I'm not the one railing against fundamentalism. I believe fundamentally that society has a role in choosing the most parsimonious course for itself.

to make a "non-religious" case that
i. environmentalists rule the world, and
ii. that science plays no part in their arguments,
you do actually have to PROVE both facts, you know, like maybe SCIENTIFICALLY? not just wave yr arms abt and wail abt how the pervasive demons of back-to-nature are possessing the sons and daughters of the righteous

if you actually wanted a serious discussion abt science and politics, why the hell point to crichton of all people in the first place - he's always been a complete halfwit

(also "refuted" doesn't mean what you think it means)

But let's say his claims on DDT are all wrong. His claims on global warming are not--the science behind global warming is shaky with regard to the source of it, and the solutions for global warming are just as hypothetical. Crichton's point is that environmental dogma--either side--is fallible and deserves greater scientific scrutiny.

As I've stated time and again in this thread, it's not meant to be some evaluation on Crichton or any other scientist or non scientist in the world or their views. And he hardly was decreeing that environmentalists rule the world.

As for you Kris, I never accused you of being an objectivist. I merely pointed out that Crichton and you disagree about DDT. And if we're going to bring up the Bell Curve then let's throw in the new Paul Krugman book, a similar tome of disputed facts meant to represent credible empirical data.

I have no idea who Paul Krugman is.

I don't know anything relevant about DDT to lend to this discussion but knowing how the legal-scientific debate went between issues like asbestos and silicone breast implants, I feel comfortable in assuming that what Crichton discussed is not nearly the absolute bullshit you declare it to be. I'll take your word for it that he may be substantially wrong about DDT, but it barely detracts from the larger issue he raised, especially given the science behind global warming as another obvious example to his thesis.

Even without global warming (I don't know anything about global warming) there are plenty of good reasons to multilaterally wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. I'd much rather my tax money were going towards research into solar cells or nuclear fusion or whatever than to build roads and oil wells in Iraq.

Kris says: If Michael Crichton can claim to know with certainty that DDT is not carcinogenic, despite the fact that studies in the early 70's (which have not been refuted since) showed that DDT and its metabolites cause tumors in mice in a completely dose-dependent manner, then he is the dogmatic fool.

Proving a negative isn’t the issue here.

We know why DDT got banned in the US, right? Debatable evidence that many see as junk science (http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm). You also would be well served to check out www.fightingmalaria.org.

Whoa, I know bringing up Mr. Junk Science Guy causes an impulsive shriek of “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” so let’s go a little further into the stacks.

“Although DDT is being banned worldwide, countries in sub-Saharan Africa have sought exemptions for malaria control. Few studies show illness in children from DDT, and the possibility of risks to them from DDT use has been minimized.

“...The prohibition of DDT use for malaria control was probably not the sole cause of increasing malaria burden in sub-Saharan Africa.”
--"Non Malarial Infant Deaths and DDT Use for Malaria Control." Chen, Rogan. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. August 2003.

“But scientists are almost unanimous that many of these deaths could be prevented with the use of DDT, the acronym for dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane.

“It is cheap, three to five times cheaper than the pyrethroid insecticides prescribed by the WHO and the U.S. Agency for International Development [USAID].

“It is more effective than the alternatives - a few ounces sprayed on the inner walls of a dwelling once a year confers protection. And despite its pariah status, numerous scientific studies indicate that for humans, it is less poisonous than aspirin.

…

“Scientists and researchers say that the people who oppose DDT are environmentalists and policy-makers with little or no scientific training.

"There is no big controversy in the scientific community over DDT. The controversy is between scientists vs. the politicians and environmental activists," said Donald Roberts, professor of tropical public health at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda.

“Mr. Roberts was one of more than 400 scientists, Nobel Prize winners and medical doctors from 57 countries who signed an "open letter" last year demanding thatDDT be allowed for malaria control.

"’At worst there are small heath risks, and very large benefits to DDT house spraying,’ the letter said. ‘It would be a terrible error to eliminate DDT, which probably saves hundreds of thousands of lives a year from malaria.’

Harvard's Mr. Attaran, who organized the petition, said environmentalists are correct when they say DDT may be a cancer-causing carcinogen, even if there is not a single scientific study that confirms the possibility.”
--The Washington Times, June 16, 2002, Sunday, Final Edition. (The whole article is revealing.)

“Research center favors DDT use; Malaria toll trumps ecological threat.”
--The Washington Times, May 9, 2003.

“DDT is hardly risk-free. It poisoned the environment because farmers sprayed it on crops, a use properly banned today. But very little DDT is needed to spray houses twice a year. The evidence about DDT's effects on humans is inconclusive. The uncertainties must be weighed against a demonstrated effectiveness in fighting a disease that now kills 1 in 20 African children. DDT also costs one-quarter the price of the alternative, pyrethroids.”
---The New York Times, 12/23/02.

“In 1972, on the basis of dubious data about toxicity to fish and migrating birds, the Environmental Protection Agency banned virtually all uses of the pesticide DDT,an inexpensive and effective pesticide once widely deployed to kill disease- carrying insects…the government should undertake a re-evaluation of the voluminous data on DDT that has been compiled since the 1970s. It should also make DDT available for mosquito control in the United States.
--Long Beach Press-Telegram (Long Beach, CA), August 10, 2003.

FACT: The carcinogenic effects of DDT on humans are still unproven. There is circumstantial evidence but it’s far from conclusive. And if that is our guiding rule then we wouldn’t be using any synthetic chemicals around the house at all.

Kris says: More recent studies have suggested (not proven, obviously) that DDT is particularly harmful to the proper functioning of the female endocrine system.

These are also inconclusive, though they are being intensely studied right now.

Kris says: It's also known that DDT kills wildlife other than what it's being used to control.

So do all pesticides and insecticides. It’s all a matter of tradeoff since chemical treatments alter the biological environment. There is not a study that DDT is worse in this area than other insecticide alternatives to DDT. And it’s all in how DDT is applied. It’s not sprayed on the birds and fields like it was back in the 50s. It’s tactfully applied to walls and the like. There’s no reason it can’t be done safely here in the US, where things like literacy make application much more reliable and safer on the environment.

Kris says: DDT would not have been banned in the first world without the findings of these studies; we politically decided that, all things considered, the alternatives to DDT were better.

"We" was an activist head of the EPA, who ignored science that contradicted the agency's decisions as well as the judge who oversaw the case. The book "Silent Spring" turned the issue into a political football and was based on inconclusive, weak evidence that has been disproven many times over.

Kris: Furthermore, I'm not sure how banning DDT in America has irrevocably harmed the third world; they still use DDT in the much of the third world to contol malaria, with the complete sanction of international public health organizations.

DDT is the least expensive, most effective insecticide for mosquito control. The extra money spent by using alternatives that could have gone elsewhere—water treatment, for one. DDT is not, in fact, the exclusive agent used worldwide because of the penance that the US put on it in the early 70s and the resulting movement against it ever since. Environmentalists--not the scientific community--continue to lobby the WHO to inflict a ban on sub-Saharan African countries, which, where a million people a year die of malaria, would be pretty tragic. According to the U.N. World Health Organization [WHO], malaria kills one child under the age of 5 every 30 seconds. "It is a death toll that far exceeds the mortality rate from AIDS," according to the WHO fact sheet on malaria.

Kris: Shouldn't the third world be looking forward to the age when they don't have to use suspicious chemicals like DDT, just like in the first world? Who's being the luddite here?

Life is a series of tradeoffs and decisions. Crichton posits that we would have saved money and lives (because DDT is more effective) by using DDT. But we couldn’t and don’t because of the debatable science behind its banning.

Kris: We don't use DDT in this country and miraculously nobody here is dying of malaria or anything else DDT would be used to prevent. How is this tragic (as Crichton claims)?

It’s a waste of money, and there’s no reason to be using other more expensive, less effective chemicals unless they are more safe than DDT. And science has not given a resounding answer on this. It would be more effective to use DDT to combat the West Nile virus, a true problem that is growing and has killed people already. There's no reason that we shouldn't be using DDT to eradicate the West Nile virus right now.

Kris: Even if it turns out that DDT doesn't cause cancer, has there been any tragedy at all coming from our decision to ban it? What if it turns out that DDT does cause cancer?

We’ve been studying DDT for at least 50 years and the results are still not conclusive. Why are we spending more money on a less effective chemical? What’s more, the chemicals we are predominantly using now haven’t been studied nearly as much as DDT, so isn’t there a possible growing tragedy in that?

Are there problems with DDT? Yes. Are the insecticides we use now (for similar situations) safer? Evidence remains inconclusive.

Kris: The same arguments apply to global warming, which is only one of many reasons to pursue alternate energy sources.

The problem with global warming is that a) the source of it is not at all conclusive and b) we don’t know the degree of effect conservation would have on it. It sounds ludicrous, right? It’s sounds totally fucked that if all of a sudden, we stopped using petrochemicals, that global warming would change. The fact is, we have nothing but wild assed guesses as to how to reduce global warming. It’s all estimates based on computer modeling. It’s very much possible that we could spend trillions of dollars to reduce emissions by 50% and find out that it’s still getting warmer. Why is that a waste? Because it may very well be that we are not in control of why the planet is warming, and all those trillions might be better spent trying to figure out how to live with a warmer planet. The problem with talking global warming from an international treaty perspective is that it guarantees that we will spend a lot more money than necessary on highly unstable scientific data.

Kris: In every case such as these, there are risks from action and risks from inaction. This is why DDT is still used in certain countries -- policy makers, based on scientific evidence, have decided that the risk of banning DDT (malaria escalation) does not justify the theoretical reward (preventing other health/ecological problems). This is one of the few pieces of concrete evidence Crichton uses in his speech, and he is simply talking out of his ass on it.

Crichton is not talking out of his ass, but instead raising a realistic possibility that there’s a lot of competing, legitimate evidence questioning the conventional wisdom of the DDT issue.

More fundamentally, I'm not sure that the standard of evidence you seem to favor when it comes to environmental regulation is the right one. You seem to be saying that environmental regulation is only appropriate in the presence of overwhelming, uncontested evidence that proves that the status quo is harmful and that the proposed solution is the best possible solution. That may sound nice in theory, but in the real world, one seldom has overwhelming uncontested evidence of why any reasonably complex phenomenon is occurring, and furthermore, one must make one's best guess as to the most effective solution. Now, it's true that the potential harmful side-effects of any solution must be weighed, but when we are dealing with real problems that will have real consequences, that weighing of side effects must not simply become an excuse for inaction.

It's true that we don't know with 100% certainty what the results of reducing petroleum conception will be. Given the current state of our science, it is probably impossible for us to know that. However, we live in a world of uncertainty, and sometimes we can't wait for 100% certainty. We have to make our best guess and act on it. Perhaps there are some scenarios in which global warming would have positive effects on the environment and our society. There are also undoubtedly scenarious in which not wearing a seat belt is safer than wearing one. However, statistically speaking, better than 50% of the time wearing a seat belt is safer, and that's why it's the law.

Yes - more condoms for oil wells!

And don't assume that I necessarily agree with everything I posted regarding DDT--I merely wanted to show that there are plenty of people--many respected scientists and experts--who don't have, relatively speaking, a problem with using DDT. If Crichton was lying or talking out of his ass, then he's not alone and he's not among whack-jobs either. It's a legitimate position to take, not some obscure loony call from the fringes of the right wing. (Further, DDT could easily be used to combat West Nile. The whole point is that it doesn't NEED to be sprayed to keep mosquitoes down.)

As for whatever environmental policy I favor, I would like at least a modicum of concrete evidence before I start a) banning an insecticide outright or b) spending trillions of dollars trying to end a problem I don't even know that I can solve at all. Sure, we can't know what will happen for sure in the future and we have to make at least someleap in faith--we can't let trash pile up, for example, becasuse someday we know we'll find a way to send it into outer space. My problem with Kyoto--and to a larger degree, other crusading movements of the environment--is that the science behind it is heavily contested, and the solutions are dubious as well. Yes, we should pollute less, much less than we do. But there has to be a cost-benefit analysis someplace, too. If we are going to start trying to save the earth, I think there are more proven ways of doing it rather than a climate treaty based on unsound evidence. Our money and resources are used better elsewhere.

Yeah, if everyone who lived in areas where there is West Nile coated their walls with DDT, I guess it wouldn't need to be sprayed, but good luck trying to get your average American to do that - it would cost a fortune as a public health project, and your argument was that using DDT would be less expensive.

This is just dumb.

Ideally, price should always be directly related to demand (i.e. supply is predicated by demand. If there is no demand, then supply is irrelevant.) Ergo, if the supply of DDT is scarce and demand was high, the price would be higher than if the supply were robust.

Being that DDT has been synthesized in the US since 1874 and used as an insecticide since the 40s, it could be assumed that creating DDT would be relatively simple and inexpensive (depending on barriers to entry such as government regulation) to produce. Because of the laws now, DDT isn't manufactured in the US anymore and we'd have to go to Mexico and China to get it immediately. And unless there was widespread scaling back of current regulations against DDT, I doubt any US company would want to divert assets to DDT production.

I will note that virtually every article I found last night on DDT reported that it was a vastly cheaper alternative to current insecticides. Is this because of demand being relatively low? Possibly. But because it's been around for so long it is also safe to assume that the production cost (synthesizing the chemical) is very low as well, which
probably is the core of the lower cost rather than differences in demand.

But I've seen nothing anywhere that says DDT is anything other than the least expensive treatment (by a factor of 3 to 5 times), and it's safe to assume that application would be part of that economical equation. If I'm wrong on this I'd appreciate someone pointing out even one credible source that says DDT would be even comparable to other treatments in cost factor. (What's wrong with spraying open areas with conventional chemicals and doing indoor treatments with DDT? Who has to be doing the application? Would it have to be insecticide professionals? I don't know.)