Brecht Arnaert's Facebookcomments

Dewever en Arnaert

 N-VA-lid Brecht Arnaert, uiteraard weer een libertariër (zucht), postte recent op zijn facebookpagina dat hij niet wakker ligt van klimaatverandering en linkte daarbij naar twee filmpjes op De Groene Rekenkamer van Ton Begemann, die zeker niet foutenvrij zijn en die ik hier en hier al besprak (en waaruit bleek dat Begemann dus niet eens wist waar hij geweest was).

Wat vooral opvalt is echter het gegeven dat Arnaert's comments eerder een "gevoel" uitdrukken dan te getuigen van enige wetenschappelijke benadering. Altijd een slecht idee.

Arnaert: Is het u ook opgevallen dat na de val van de Muur het klimaatverhaal steeds populairder werd? De aarde zou opwarmen door het broeikaseffect, en dus moest de overheid maatregelen nemen om het milieu te beschermen. Moesten we ons niet meer onderwerpen aan het ideaal van de klassenloze samenleving, dan toch wel zeker aan het ideaal van de ongeschonden natuur. Wie kan daar nu tegen zijn?

De eerste experimenten rond warmtestralingen van John Tyndall vonden natuurlijk reeds plaats in het midden van de 19de eeuw, en Arrhenius was de eerste die uit die experimenten afleidde dat er wereldwijde invloed was. Dan zitten we nog steeds in de 19de eeuw.

Uiteraard is de kennis rondom de klimaatwetenschap enkel maar toegenomen, en de groeiende bezorgdheid leidde in 1988, dus nog voor de Val van de Muur, tot de oprichting van het IPCC. De oprichting van dit instituut gebeurde natuurlijk niet plotsklaps uit het niets, maar was een gevolg van een lange wetenschappelijke evolutie, waarbij bv. de conferentie in 1985 in Villach een belangrijke rol speelde in het rijpen van de geesten. Het is belangrijk eraan te herinneren dat de jaren '80 het tijdperk waren waarin de mens voor het eerst op politiek vlak besefte dat de menselijke invloed op de atmosfeer niet te negeren valt. Denk daarbij ook aan de problematiek van de ozonlaag, die in 1987, toevallig of niet, een jaar voor de oprichting van het IPCC leidde tot het akkoord van Montreal.

Al deze akkoorden waren gebaseerd op wetenschappelijke bevindigen, niet op een ecologisch ideaal. Dat is wat veel klimaat-pseudoskeptici wel eens over het hoofd zien: de hele klimaatdiscussie is een wetenschappelijke discussie. De wetten van Stefan-Boltzman of Kirchhoff zouden er heus niet anders uitzien als ze opgesteld werden door een communist of een nazi.

Overigens is het interessant op te merken dat Naomi Oreskes stelt dat klimaat-pseudoskepticisme zich nou net begon te manifesteren na de val van de Muur. De eerste klimaatskeptische artikels zouden de oppervlakte bereiken in 1989. Exact het jaar waarin de muur viel. Oreskes postuleert dat het net de anti-communistische krachten waren die, wegens het plotsklape gebrek aan een vijand, zich meteen stortten op de klimaatwetenschap en alles wat ze, net als Arnaert, als 'groen' percipiëren.
Of zoals de wiki-pagina van het - erg aanbevolen - boek Merchants of Doubt stelt:

The book states that Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg and Robert Jastrow were all fiercely anti-communist and they viewed government regulation as a step towards socialism and communism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, they looked for another great threat to free market capitalism and found it in environmentalism. They feared that an over-reaction to environmental problems would lead to heavy-handed government intervention in the marketplace and intrusion into people's lives

Arnaert: Prof. Begemann, die mij een eerlijk verhaal lijkt te doen, gelooft er niet in. Hij bezocht het hoge Noorden meermaals, en laat boerenverstand werken waar intellectualisme het heeft laten afweten. De mens is veel minder verantwoordelijk voor mogelijke klimaatwijzigingen dan tot nog toe werd verspreid. In het filmpje legt hij uit waarom. 

Zoals in mijn eerdere artikels al bleek (de foto's zijn helaas verdwenen in cyberspace), heeft Begemann geen enkele kennis van het terrein dat hij bezocht, maakt hij hierbij ronduit absurde claims (eskimo's die aan landbouw doen, alsjeblieft), en cherrypickt (allicht niet doelbewust) hij temperatuurtrends.

Arnaert: Maar wat interessanter is: Begemann vertelt ook waarom zoveel professoren dit zijn gaan beweren.

Begemann's claim dat klimaat-pseudoskeptici hun mond niet kunnen opendoen uit angst hun fondsen te verliezen wordt hier tegengesproken door Bas van Geel. En als je even rondsurft, zal je zien dat veel skeptici rechtstreeks verbonden zijn aan overheidsinstituten.

Arnaert: Sinds duidelijk werd dat de klassenloze samenleving niet kan werken, is er geen groot verhaal meer waaraan we ons allen moeten onderwerpen. Maar het ideaal van de ongeschonden natuur, dat heeft wel nog wervingskracht. Koste wat het kost moet dus bewezen worden dat de mens schuldig is: een verstoorder van een natuurlijk evenwicht. 

Ook hier geeft Arnaert vooral weer te kennen hoe zijn wereldbeeld eruitziet. De klimaatdiscussie gaat niet over het handhaven van evenwichten maar over hoe de wereld eruit zal zien als het huidige, relatief stabiele klimaat in het holoceen, verandert. In feite is het een quasi zuiver economische discussie: hoeveel kost het de mensheid om zich aan te passen aan een veranderend klimaat ? Er komen uiteraard nog een aantal sociale en ecologische factoren bij te pas, maar de hoofdvraag is zuiver economisch, niet meer, niet minder.

Arnaert: Laat u niet vangen: groenen zijn ecologische marxisten. Het zijn meloenen. Groen van buiten en rood van binnen. Met dank aan Peter Visser, die mij attent maakte op het filmpje.

Tenzij Arnaert voluit voor complotdenken gaat en wil beweren dat iedere wetenschappelijke academie ter wereld enkel en alleen maar uit communisten bestaat, geeft deze slogan vooral Arnaert's wereldbeeld bloot. Of dat er toe doet is nog maar de vraag: het is in ieder geval irrelevant voor de klimaatdiscussie, want zoals hoger aangehaald laten wetenschappelijke wetten zich heus niet leiden door ideologie. Het verwerpen ervan, des te meer. Zie ook creationisme.

Arnaert: Wat een arrogantie van de mens om te denken dat hij het klimaat kan beïnvloeden. Klimaten veranderen, punt.

Uiteraard kan de invloed van de mens op de atmosfeer makkelijk gemeten worden, en dan blijkt dat de invloed van de mens duidelijk zichtbaar is :

Evolutie van enkele broeikasgassen voorbije 2000 jaar

 Hoe groot onze planeet ook moge wezen, er is dus een duidelijk meetbare invloed op de samenstelling van de atmosfeer t.g.v. menselijke activiteiten. Dat heeft niets met arrogantie te maken, maar met keiharde wetenschap en het registreren van een realiteit.

Arnaert: Ik heb gezegd dat de politiek de wetenschap koloniseert door hun financiering van hen afhankelijk te maken. Prof. Begemann zegt zelf dat vooraanstaande wetenschappers die nu op emeritaat zijn, vrijuit spreken, en verklaren dat heel wat van het onderzoek niet wetenschappelijk is.

Een uitspraak die uiteraard getuigt van de nodige dosis paranoia.
Maar een bewering die je wel vaker hoort in libertarische kringen, maar hoe dat proces dan wel zou spelen heb ik nooit te horen gekregen. Zoals ik al eens opmerkte in mijn post over Frank Van Dun : Hoe het mogelijk is dat libertariërs die de overheid willen wegdenken, toch verbonden kunnen blijven aan overheidsinstellingen en universiteiten ? Dat is toch een zuiver toonbeeld dat er géén kolonossatie van de wetenschap gebeurt, anders waren die personen allang op het budget 'nul' gezet.

Arnaert: Dit is trouwens geen complottheorie: politiek zoekt altijd naar een legitimering van zijn macht. Vroeger was die legitimering het ideaal van de gelijkheid. Toen dat niet bleek te werken, moest een andere legitimering gezocht worden. Wat is hier complottheoretisch aan? Beweer ik dat er geheime genootschappen zijn die de opwarming van de aarde als hoax bekokstoofd hebben? Helemaal niet: deze onzin werd open en bloot verkondigd.

Er zijn genoeg politici die NIET ijveren voor het ideaal van gelijkheid. Basically gaat het hier uiteraard om de spanning tussen liberalisme en socialisme. Dat wetenschappers verschillende politieke strekkingen aanhangen, is iets waar te vaak te snel over wordt heengegaan in bepaalde kringen.

Arnaert: Het incident dat Prof. Begemann aanhaalt in verband met de ijsschots ter grootte van Californië die zogezegd afgekalfd was, en nadien een fout van de satelliet bleek te zijn. Nieuwsfeit één: breed in de media. Nieuwsfeit twee: verzwegen. Als daar geen bias in zit, dan weet ik het niet meer.

De media is bovenal ongeïnformeerd: hoeveel journalisten hebben ook maar enige wetenschappelijke achtergrond ? Juist ja.  Overigens komen klimaat-pseudoskeptici onevenredig vaak aan bod in de mdia, terwijl ze in de wetenschappelijke literatuur vooral uitblinken door afwezigheid.
Die discrepantie toont aan dat de media inderdaad niet neutraal is. In pakweg de Nederlandse krant de Telegraaf zal je niet veel correcte informatie over klimaatverandering vinden, want die krant publiceert quasi enkel pseudoskeptische artikels. Als daar geen bias inzit, weet ik het niet meer. Ik hou Arnaert niet tegen een klachtenbrief naar de Telegraaf te sturen.

Arnaert: Het is best mogelijk dat de mens ecologische veranderingen veroorzaakt, en dus regenval door zijn toedoen op sommige plaatsen kan veranderen. (Zie Aral-meer). Het punt is: waarom zou dat ongerechtvaardigd zijn? Is de natuur iets waar we niet in mogen bewegen? Heeft de natuur, zijnde een omgeving zonder bewustzijn, rechten?

Deze alinea is voornamelijk interessant, omdat ze de hele problematiek van libertarisme en wereldwijde "milieu"problemen. Ik zet milieu tussen aanhalingstekens omdat, zoals hoger aangehaald, de klimaatproblematiek slechts in beperkte mate een milieuprobleem is.

Of natuur rechten heeft is lekker filosofisch interessant (hadden de dieren die in het Aralmeer leefden een bewustzijn? Hoe zit het met de belevingswaarde voor de verschillende indivisuen, elk met hun eigen subjectieve smaken en voorkeuren ?), maar voor de vissers aan het Aral-meer, ooit met 40.000, doet dat natuurlijk weinig ter zake. Die zijn gewoon hun job kwijt. Is dat gerechtvaardigd ? Of hebben ze recht op stabiliteit, met name hun job ?

Arnaert: Ik stelde ettelijke reacties geleden al dat het niet gaat om een complottheorie, maar om de nuchtere vaststelling dat politiek altijd op zoek is naar legitimering. Met de val van de muur kon de legitimering niet meer het grote Gelijkheidsideaal zijn, want dat heeft duidelijk gefaald, en dus moest naar een ander ideaal gezocht worden waar wij ons allen kunnen aan opofferen: het Ongeschondenheidsideaal, wat individuen opnieuw in krak dezelfde ideologische positie plaatst.

Arnaert toont met zijn posts, niet enkel de comments op klimaat, dat hij vooral tegen heel veel zaken tégen is.Neem het negativisme tegen al wat, in zijn ogen, links is weg, en zijn facebookwall is niet half zo vol meer. Misschien komt het Arnaert -cfr. de stelling van Oreskes- wel net goed uit een vijand te hebben waar hij tegen kan ageren ?

Het ongeschondenheidsideaal, dat allicht door bepaalde strekkingen wordt aangehangen, is echter compleet irrelevant voor de werkloze vissers van het Aralmeer. Die zijn gewoon hun job kwijt.

Arnaert: De enigen die hier schuld aan hebben zijn de overheden dat de wetgeving zo organiseren dat het goedkoper wordt om grondstoffen te consumeren, dan de arbeid hier te laten verrichten. Of vind je het normaal dat de garnalen die aan de Vlaamse kust gevangen worden overgevlogen worden naar Marokko, om ze daar te laten pellen, en teruggevlogen worden? Voor elke euro die ik jou zou betalen als werknemer, moet ik er als werkgever nog twee bijleggen. Het laten doen van die arbeid in een lageloonland is dus het meest morele wat je kan doen: het is immoreel om een systeem te voeden dat inherent exploitatief is.

In landen waar nauwelijks belastingen zijn, zijn de leefomstandigheden van arbeiders niet noodzakelijk beter. Werkgevers willen hun winst maximaliseren, punt.

Arnaert: Ja, arbeiders worden uitgebuit in onze samenleving, maar enkel en alleen omdat werkgevers daar door sociale wetgeving toe verplicht worden: pushen ze die arbeiders niet, dan kunnen ze hun belasting niet betalen.

In de vroege industriële revolutie was er géén of nauwelijks een sociale wetgeving. Ik zou het toch niet meteen als voorbeeld durven nemen als maatschappelijk model.

Arnaert: Of dacht je dat men in de horeca niet liever wat MEER personeel in dienst zou nemen?

De horeca wil vooral zijn winst maximaliseren, dus nee, ze gaan niet uit altruïsme meer personeel aanemen.

Arnaert: Dus: check eens hoe wetgeving vervuiling veroorzaakt. Je zult vaststellen dat het altijd neerkomt op een probleem van geschonden eigendomsrechten. Privatiseer de zee, en morgen is ze proper.

Je hoeft het helemaal niet op zee te gaan zoeken, kijk gewoon naar de atmosfeer. Privatiseer de atmosfeer, en ieder industrieel bedrijf moet morgen zijn deuren sluiten, onder druk van de omringende eigenaar die die troep niet in hun licht willen hebbens.

De facto is de atmosfeer boven land echter 'eigendom' van de staat. Maatregelen opgelegd door diezelfde staat, de eigenaar dus, worden echter in bepaalde kringen met hand en tand verworpen. Niet echt consequent me dunkt. En tekenend voor het probleem dat de filosofische stroming libertarisme heeft wanneer ze de toets moet aangaan met de werkelijkheid. Al te vaak wordt de werkelijkheid onder de bus gegooid om de filosofie overeind te houden.

Belgian Scientists Frank van Dun & Claude Javeau were paid by the tobacco lobby

The Belgian newspaper Le Soir today published an article Le lobby du tabac recrutait des profs d’unif (in English : The tobacco lobby recruted university professors) in which Le Soir claims sociologist Claude Javeau of the ULB and philopher of law Frank Van Dun of the UGent were paid by lobby tool ARISE to promote the conclusions of the tobacco lobby.
The tactics used by ARISE was putting tobacco in the same line as ‘daily little joys’ like drinking a cup of coffee or eating chocolate, stating these things increase your happiness in life. Tim Lambert had a closer look at the activities of ARISE in his post Just how many astroturf groups did tobacco fund?
The fact Van Dun was part of ARISE has long been known, Tim mentions him in the post above and i had a closer look at Van Dun’s tobacco activities last year in my post Libertarism, climate change and the tobacco lobby.
The online article of Le Soir is referring to the newspaper itself for the full details and unfortunately i don’t have this paper copy so i’m not really sure if there’s a deeper reason why they are publishing this article exactly today. Nor do i know where they get the information that both professors were paid for their affiliation with ARISE.
I always assumed Frank Van Dun was just a libertarian blinded by bias who got manipulated into the tobacco lobby by agents provocateurs and by not being able to switch of his own superstrong personal libertarian bias. And it’s because of this strong bias libertarians tend to end up in industry-spinned astroturf groups attacking ‘unwanted’ scientific conclusions. The only thing the industrial agents-provocateurs need to do is feed the bias. In case of tobacco subjects, the lobbyists just need to use the word “Freedom”.
They did so in the time of ARISE, and they still do so for the TICAP-conferences which show the symbiosis between libertarism and lobby : the TICAP-conferences were organised by libertarians and I’m actually pretty sure they honestly believe the sloganesque language around freedom that was spoken on that conference.
The only problem with the speakers they invited is that those guys were professional tobacco-lobby spokesman. The agents provocateurs feeding the bias. The i’m talking about lobbyists like John Luik, Gian Turci or Gio Batta Gori.
Unless Le Soir managed to find new information, i think Van Dun, even though he participated in conferences of ARISE, was not a tobacco lobbyist but ‘only’ a libertarian.
.

Le Soir dugg up a text from Javeau from 1994 titled Choix des plaisirs de vivre et de defense de la democratie (in English : “The choice for the pleasures in life and for defending democracy”) [sic]. in this text Javeau is playing with all the well know libertarians fears. An example of a sentence (p2) : Brave New World isn’t far away and we’ll be meeting to play 1984 with some delay.
So again, just like was the case for Van Dun, libertarism might be the real motivator behind Javeau’s actions. But for Javeau there's more. While in Le Soir he claims he was unaware ARISE was funded by the tobacco industry, a draft version of the IARC action plan for Belgium shows Javeau was deeply involved in a broader strategy to influence policy makers.

While I’m willing to give Frank Van Dun benefit of the doubt, things for Claude Javeau look worse. If i were Brussels University, I’d wanna have a chat with the man.

Climate change skeptical organisations in the low countries. Part 1 : Stichting Meer Vrijheid

As mentioned many times on this blog, climate skepticism often is associated with libertarian thinkthanks and organisations.

As we will see, this is not only true in the English speaking part of the world, but also in the Low Countries.

There are several organisations denying man-made climate change, but the first one i want to mention is the More Freedom Foundation (in Dutch : Stichting Meer Vrijheid) : The discours used towards environmental issues is just what one would expect to hear from a libertarian movement.

Think of any cliché and it can be found in their environmental statement :

We think the existance of large environmental risks like the greenhouse effect, acid rain or the hole in the ozone layer are exaggerrated.
(...)

We think some environmental regulations are unnecessary and are nothing but a result of a hatred against economical growth & technology.
(...)

MoreFreedom thinks environmental taxes aren't helping the environment, nor are they meant to do so. They are meant to finance the State Treasury; or to manipulate our behavior. (...) MoreFreedom therefore pleads to abandon all environmental taxes.

As seen very often in climate skeptical environments, MeerVrijheid's climate skepticism fits into a broader picture where other environmental issues also are dismissed, and where regulations are seen as an attempt of the state to gain more power or control over citizens. The skepticism isn't scientific, but originates from a paranoid vision twoards anything governmentlike.

Marcel Roele - The secretary
The secretary of MeerVrijheid is Marcel Roele. Roele is a politicologist who is working as a freelance science-journalist.

Roele is a rather controversial figure. To quote the Dutch wikipedia :

In his article "Our own people first"* Roele argues Hitler got his race-theory from the Jewish people. Meaning the Jewish people fell in the hole they dug themselves. Furthermore he claims it has been scientifically proven black people and women are less intelligent; and that handicapped people make mankind ill.

* in dutch it's titled "eigen volk eerst" and is controversial as this very same slogan was used for a long time by the Flemish ultra right-wing party Vlaams Blok (which nowadays is called Vlaams Belang, as the party was forced to change its name after three organisations associated with the party were convicted for violating Belgian law on racism & xenophobia).

Roele claims Africa is such a poor continent because the inhabitants simply have a low iq and that :

the national iq in african countries is 20 iq-points too low to make it possible to create a western style society.

Marcel Roele copies some of the usual arguments about climate change in this article which repeats the "it's the sun" story.

Us knows us
Other people associated with MeerVrijheid are omnipresent Hans Labohm who is part of the foundation's advisory board and who on a regular basis publishes his climate change nonsense on MeerVrijheid's website.

Other articles on environental issues that are published on the website are from the hand of some other people i mentioned before like Vincent De Roeck. The website was one of the four places where his climate change is a religion, not science got published simultaneously.

On the list of authors, we also find the name of climate change skeptics Theo Richel and the names of some people i didn't blog about yet, like Elsevier-journalist Simon Rozendaal who is well known in the low countries also for his skeptical articles and for this book he co-authors with Hans Labohm and Dick Thoenes.

Another new name is Karel Beckman who in 1992 wrote the book "the greenhouse effect doesn't exist"

And then there's Peter van Maanen, who besides MeerVrijheid is associated with the the Belgian libertarian Murray Rothbard Instituut where he's one of the 7 people of the scientific advisory board. Also on this advisory board are two climate change skeptics i adressed before : Jos Verhulst & Frank Van Dun. (to be fair : as far as i know both gentlemen have completely stopped commenting on climate change ever since i mentioned them on my blog.)

The important thing is that we start to see a pattern of, as we say in Dutch : "us knows us". From now on, the same names will keep returning over and over again.

In my opinion, with the MeerVrijheid foundation we are looking at one of the most important branches of Dutch climate change tree, because in almost every other skeptical group we there will appear one of the people mentioned above as we will see in the next parts of this post.

Yet even now my conclusion already is, as you will have already guessed, that in the low countries the same thing is valid as in other parts of the world : climate change skepticism is seldomly scientific, but is usually originating in libertarism. Science gets attacked because it falsifies a polical worldview.

Libertarism, climate change and the tobacco lobby

For people new to the climate change debate, at first glimpse it might be strange that so many climate skeptics have a past in which they, one way or another, deny a relationship between tobacco and (second hand) smoking. It's strange, because the two topics are totally unrelated, and it's strange because it is unlikely that a single person is an expert in both a medical topic and one dealing with earth sciences.

Prof Naomi Oreskes in her presentation The American denial of Global Warming seeks where the root of this denialism lays : her conclusion (which I agree with) is that the scientific denialism actually is a consequence of the libertarian hatred against the ‘state’ and where science gets attacked because of the eventual political consequences it might have. When in conflict with the libertarian political-religious dogmatic framework, the scientific information in conflict with the dogma simply has to be wrong…

The thought expressed above of course does explain why so many skeptics have a history of denying so many different and independent scientific issues : the infamous skeptic S. Fred Singer has a past of denying aspects in completaly differents domains as the relations between : tobacco & cancer; CFC’s & Ozone-depletion; asbestos & lung cancer; CO2 & global warming...

Singer might be an extreme case, but people like Tim Ball or Richard Lindzen all have expressed their doubts not just on climate change, but also on the tobacco-subject. All those people are linked to right wing libertarian "free-market" thinkthanks. Given the fact it’s often the same names denying scientific findings for both of the subjects, it’s no surprise to find a remarkable similarity in the tactics of the organized denialism on tobacco & global warming.

Global Warming skeptics basically copied the strategy developed by the tobacco industry in the 60’ies which have proven to work back then. And, given the high dose of confusion amongst the public on the field of climate change, there's no doubt the tactics still work.

As a result of a trial on tobacco related illnesses, an American court obliged some tobacco companies to release internal documents. The result is available on the website Tobacco Legacy Documents which gives a clear insight in the tactics useb by the tobacco-lobby. The documents reveal the names of people associated with this lobby, names which all too often sound really familiar for someone following the global warming debate.

When the American government came to the conclusion (1989) that tobacco is just as addictive as heroin or cocaine, the tobacco lobby’s response was (a.o.) to create an Astroturf group called ARISE. This group fabricated the argument that smoking brings pleasure to its users and therefore is a good thing. ARISE states :

The sensory and pharmacological effects of substances such as alcohol, chocolate, coffee, tea and tobacco give pleasure, and so can have beneficial effects on health . They also provide a pharmacologically calming effect, which aids relaxation, and in moderation are also beneficial to health

(..)
Pleasure is a vital component of human life and, amongst other things, can be a positive contributor to living as well as an antidote to negative mood states . Research shows that the human immune system can be enhanced or suppressed on the basis of psychological state . So if pleasurable activity enhances one's mood, then one's health is likely to be affected in a positive way.

The fact smokers are ill more often than their colleagues who don’t smoke was well known already in the nineties, yet still ARISE writes:

The pharmacological effects of coffee, tea and tobacco improve attention and memory and increase achievement at work.

The thing sounding very familiar is this statement by ARISE that clearly sounds very libertarian :

The recent emergence of neo-puritanism whereby people in positions of authority and so-called 'experts' make pronouncements telling us which pleasurable things are permissible and which are not, is at best misguided and at worst, potentially dangerous to our wellbeing.

Another fine example of how the lobby was communicating toward the public is shown in this article published in the Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad (12 okt 1993) some fragments :

“Daily little joys” like coffee or tobacco, indicate humans need pleasure to recuperate from our daily efforts, and they increase our quality of life. A surprising point of view, as it’s expressed by real scientists “The positive effects of such products are often neglected” prof Warburton [founder of ARISE] explains.

The professor works at the university of Reading (UK) The newspaper depicts the lobbygroup as follows : ARISE is an international association conducting research towards the joy that some products can bring.

The remarkable final conclusion reads : Prof Warburton doesn’t have much respect for people that warn the public for the dangers : today people informing the public for a good cause are the new high priests that control pleasure, with epidemiologists as their oracles.

It’s impossible not to notice it: this phrasing sounds very familiar for anyone who ever read libertarian/right wing liberal texts

When reading the "freedom"-discours of Warburton, it won't such a big surprise that a Belgian associate to the lobby Group is the aforementioned Belgian philosophy of law professor Frank Van Dun.
Frank van Dun wrote a text called "Pleasure and Political culture" which can be found in the tobacco legacy documents library and which goes as follows :

Frank Van Dun

Intolerance is back in style, drinkers, smokers, drivers, are depicted as evils to bedealt with severely . Just look at the campaigns involving cancer. The use of political means for the prevention of disease requires totalitarian control over the lives of people . Making such control acceptable is the hidden agenda behind anti-pleasure campaigns . The moral issue is whether the results justify the costs . To live is to make choices . To drink alcohol and coffee, a to smoke are all personal choices

The question of course how this vision on politics and science is combined with scientific reality :

The political question who is to make the choice . The medical and economic arguments against smoking are only of relatively small importance, since they are buried under imponderables which vary from one person to the next, i.e, genetic susceptibility.

Clearly, van Dun mineralizes the negative effects of smoking. In the beginning of the nineties (when this text was written), the effects of active smoking were well known. Above that the question arises whether Van Dun’s (and many other libertarian’s) viewpoint is right that smoking is an individual choice. Given the big budgets the tobacco industry did spent in publicity, the question if a free will is as free as Van Dun claims is one that could be asked. And i think it should be asked, because imho it is answered in an incorrect manner by libertarians, resulting them to make conclusions on society and politics that are just as incorrect ..

Frank van Dun ends his text on tobacco with something that is totally non related to the topic of smoking, and is so general actually it can be “used” as a libertarian conclusion for a whole lot of non-related topics :

Decency moreover dictates that they are not misused to disguise unstated moralistic and political motivations, the craving of tyranny and intolerance of those who can justify their existence only in the control over the lives of others

I have the feeling that this exact same quote could’ve been used to express a libertarian’s feeling when speaking on the subject of climate change. Anything is possible, except a government taking actions that affects individuals. No matter if the subject is smoking, the economy or … climate change

Meanwhile, recently the Dutch government has imposed a ban on smoking in public places. Much to the regret of the liberarian website vrijspreker.nl (the same site where Hans Labohm published his ridiculous article), which in the past years had dozens of articles urging the public to oppose to this unacceptable violation of individual rights the ban in their eyes is.

In their latest post, the website draws the attention to the nice people of TICAP (The International Coalition Against Prohibition), which soon will hold a conference to oppose a smoking ban.

Of course the first thing I did was entering the names of the speakers on the conference in the tobacco legacy documents search string. Even though that database is quite outdated, still most names of speakers on the TICAP-conference can be found in this lobby documents. One example : Barrie Craven turns out to have been a member of the lobbygroup The European Science and Environement Forum or ESEF. When looking at the academic members of ESEF (p31) you can find the names of …. well known climate skeptics like Sallie Baliunas, Robert C Baling, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, Fred Singer, Willie Soon and Vincent Gray.

Global warming skepticism cannot be understood without understanding the background of the skeptics, that much is sure. The skepticism in my opinion results from a dogmatic, quasi-religious, belief in the libertarian dogma of free market capitalism without any interference. The fallacies used in climate change discussions remind me to the fallacies made by creationists. Anything is possible, except the dogma to be wrong. If it requires attacking science to save the dogma, science gets attacked ...

Loose thoughts on some frequent fallacies

Some of you will have read parts of this post before, because I’m recycling some thoughts expressed in the erased post that was commenting on Frank Van Dun’s writings. I consider the ideas expressed back then important enough to take them up again. My apologies for that :-)

Proof vs. Doubt
Often in a discussion you'll see people dismissing scientific findings as unproven without ever getting close to formulating something to support their claim that the science isn’t proven.

An important thing to take into account is the context or meaning the word "proven" is used in, because there's a subtle difference in the meaning, depending how the word is used in different situations.

As a lot of philosophers of science have stated, in a certain way a 'positive' proof is something that simply doesn't exist or at least cannot be proven ‘absolutely’. Even when a proof survived plenty of verifications and failed attempts to falsify it, it still doesn't mean the proof in the future cannot be proven 'wrong' any more. In other words, there's simply no way telling if a proof will be standing till the end of times or not; because theoretically there's always the possibility it will be proven wrong somewhere in future.

This idea that a positive proof at the very fundamentals maybe doesn't even exist could lead into dismissing every form of scientific conclusion as being 'unproven'. Of course this thought isn't compatible with how every day science works : science uses, one way or another, some kind of 'positive' proof as a mean to support a conclusion (do notice the context I'm using the word 'positive' in, I'm not saying the proof itself has to be 'positive').

Yes, scientists have to be aware that every proof can turn out to be wrong at some point in the future. But this notion doesn't paralyze science because a 'positive' proof isn't discarded by expressing nothing more than the thought that it could be wrong. Nor is it rejected on grounds of the notion at the heart a positive proof doesn't exist. Rejecting a proof on such grounds would imply rejecting science.

One has to make a clear distinction between the "philosophical" meaning of the word proven and the concrete daily use of the concept (positive) proof.

From a "philosophical" point of view, an 'unproven assumption' vaguely has the sound of a pleonasm in it.

In some fields of science, you can have a nice mathematical proof, but in most earth sciences, a proof often will consist of estimates based on some sort of assumptions. The scientific question regarding the assumptions made, is whether those assumptions have been built up the way they should. Or have been ‘proven’, to call it differently. Such a positive proof which will only become 'unproven' by demonstrating some sort of flaws in it. In a debate, often you’ll see a skeptic getting stuck in lots of insinuating and suggesting things could be wrong. Which, as just stated, doesn't disprove anything.

I like this quote (certainly with Inhofe's "650 scientist SAY that" list) which can be found in the first chapter of IPCC's AR4 :

Indeed, when Albert Einstein was informed of the publication of a book entitled 100 Authors Against Einstein, he is said to have remarked, ‘If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!’ (Hawking, 1988); however, that one opposing scientist would have needed proof in the form of testable results.

In discussions, I’ve noticed often skeptics will express an unwritten law that says that whatever the facts are, there may not be any actions imposed by governments. By claiming there's no consensus, and constructing lots of doubt about the scientific certainties, skeptics like libertarians are able to convince themselves there's no need for action on the subject of AGW because there's no proof there actually is an AGW.

Such (eventual) governments actions are not rejected because science is wrong, but because of a vague idea of doubt it could be wrong or unproven, so there's no need to act (yet)

Lobbygroups have understood very well that by creating such doubt amongst the public is a very useful way of preventing any actions on whatever the subject will be taken because there'll be no support for such actions amongst the general public.

This tactic of manufacturing doubt has been given some attention on this blog before. As said in that previous post, the aim of the skeptics-lobby was to create confusion about the views of the scientific community. And with success. It's a tactic first used by the tobacco-lobby when they attacked scientific conclusions about the relation between tobacco and cancer and has been further refined ever since.

Daniel Engber describes it as follows in his paper "the paranoid style in American Science"

This corporate strategy of "manufactured uncertainty" has become only more refined in the last 40 years. According to former Assistant Secretary of Energy David Michaels, whose startling new book, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, comes out this week manufacturers routinely hire "product defense" firms to challenge scientific findings and stave off government regulation. Scientific consultants are brought in to dust off and reanalyze data sets, group and regroup subject pools, and dream up confounding variables-all so that a given study can be discredited as inconclusive or, worse, labeled as "junk science"

The way to reach such doubt is easy, and whether the arguments are any good isn’t important at all because : throw enough dirt, and some will stick.


A consensus
Because of all the lobby work, a lot of people have the impression there’s a lot of arguing going on within the scientific community itself whether there actually is a human induces global warming. Now it is clear there’s no unanimity, but the AGW is much more supported than the general public often thinks.

Professor Naomi Oreskes, a science historian, did have a closer look at how scientists themselves think about anthropogenic global warming in a paper on "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change" For this, she did a random scan through peer review literature. Her conclusion is very clear :

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect. (2)

No matter how hard skeptics have tried to create the illusion scientists disagree themselves on the topic, the Oreskes paper makes clear there's little controversy within the scientific community.

Of course the fact there's a consensus by itself by no means proofs anything. The only conclusion which can be made is the idea that publishing scientists don't agree on the topic is wrong. Or in other words, it’s does indicate there’s a lot of noise produced by a certain lobby, noise that isn’t represented within the scientific community itself. Which demonstrates how powerful the lobby's tactics have proven to be…


The case of Simple logics
During discussions, often I see people with little or no scientific background debating the subject of climate change as they seem convinced just a little "common sense" definitely is more than sufficient to join a debate on a scientific issue.

Also, I’ve seen people express a firm belief that a logician can help finding fallacies scientists aren't able to see. They are convinced knowing the ancient Greek philosophers can help finding flaws in climate science. The case of Aristotle vs IPCC.

The important thing they completely fail to see is that having no scientific background and without having sufficient knowledge on the topic; you probably won't even understand the arguments used, the result being 'simple' logics won't bring you far in finding fallacies. Also, a layman will often fail to incorporate the science that is not mentioned in the article, whereas this science usually is necessary to make a valid judgment on the subject.

Actually, a lot of lobby arguments consist of cherry-picked conclusion, where the flaws aren’t in what they wrote, but in what they didn’t write. While everything written in the article can be 100 % correct, the paper can be wrong. Not having the background makes it impossible to detect such faulty science.

Earlier I’ve written, half-mockingly, that "common sense" is the thing every scientist fears coming out of the mouth of the layman, because way too often "common sense" equals "nonsense". The layman will often fail to detect a certain process with as a result the layman’s simple logics will demonstrate nothing more but the layman's lack of knowledge on the topic.

As an example, an argument I've heard several times being used is that CO2, because it's heavier than O2 should be 'hanging' lower in the atmosphere than more lightweight gasses like O2. There's one thing this simple logics fails to see though: the fact there's turbulence in the atmosphere resulting in a fairly good mixture of the different gasses, making the lower atmosphere rather homogeneous. Only at very high altitudes (> 80 km) there indeed will be a separation depending on the molecular weight. Not knowing this extra factor made the"common sense" fail. The common sense was simply ... too common

UPDATE : Mike Kaulbars of the excellent greenfyre blog wrote a post dealing with some more fallacies and logical flaws in often heard arguments : Have you stopped debating your climate science? Well worth reading !