| MERCHANTS OF DESPAIR Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism Robert Zubrin New York: Encounter Books, April 2012 |
Rating: 3.0 Fair |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-59403-476-3 | ||||
| ISBN 1-59403-476-1 | 318pp. | HC/BWI | $25.95 | |
"You maniacs! You flooded it! Ah, damn you!! God damn you all to hell!!!" – Harrelton Cheston |
Here I examine some of the specific claims Dr. Zubrin makes in the book. I explain how close to reality they come, and provide references to back up my contentions. The boxes with a pale yellow background contain quotations from the book, with any emphasis I add shown in purple. My replies are in the boxes with a light blue background.
Let me repeat that I respect Dr. Zubrin's work toward furthering the exploration of space.1 It's also true that I do not automatically reject an impassioned narrative simply because it is impassioned. Passion and zealotry have their place, as I try to show in the sidebar.
This book itself demonstrates the commendable scholarship of which Zubrin is capable. Chapters 3 through 7, on eugenics and Hitler's Third Reich, offer a valuable exposition of the evils that arose during that period of history — this despite the fact that he makes some unfounded charges in these chapters. I make only a minimal attempt here to refute these charges, because I don't have the time to acquaint myself sufficiently with the detailed history of those past decades.
However, I read and reviewed Silent Spring and have followed the disputes over climate change closely since about 2007, so I will comment in detail on these areas. But let me summarize Dr. Zubrin's main points.
In today's world, zealotry from deep thinkers is desperately needed. It is valuable — probably essential — in challenging and overturning the status quo, which often impedes innovations of great benefit to society. I could cite a hundred examples, but the classic one for our time is the personal computer.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." – Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977 – h/t Spark a Synapse |
And it is even more vitally needed in order to counter the unthinking sort of zealotry so often marshalled in defending aspects of the status quo that, considered objectively, are indefensible and can even block effective response to crisis.
So, Dr. Zubrin, please hang tough on Mars Direct. But this latest kick about how climate change is some sort of covert power grab? Forget it!
Pages 158-9: "An Office of Population was set up within USAID, and Dr. Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt was appointed its first director in 1966. He would hold the post until 1979, using it to create a global empire of interlocking population control organizations operating with billion-dollar budgets to suppress the existence of people considered undesirable by the U.S. State Department."
Page 161: "Ravenholt also had no compunction about buying up huge quantities of unproven, unapproved, defective, or banned contraceptive drugs and intrauterine devices (IUDs) and distributing them..."
Page 168: "Since the mid-1960s, the United States government has served as the leading funder of a global empire of population control slaughterhouses."
Page 169: "In selling the effort to Americans, USAID and its beneficiaries claim that they are providing third world women with 'choice' regarding childbirth. There is no truth whatsoever to this claim. As Betsy Hartmann, a (genuine) liberal feminist critic of these programs, has trenchantly pointed out, 'a woman's right to choose' must necessarily include the option of having children—precisely what the population control campaigns deny her. Rather than providing 'choice' to individuals, the purpose of the campaigns is to strip entire populations of their ability to reproduce. This is done by national governments, themselves under USAID or World Bank pressure, setting quotas for sterilizations, intrauterine device (IUD) insertions, or similar procedures to be imposed by their own civil service upon the subject populations."
This appears to be largely true. Ravenholt was an early director of USAID's Office of Population, he did have a billion dollar budget, and several sources paint him as dictating policy to foreign governments. The Population Research Bureau, in Reimert T. Ravenholt, USAID's Population Program Stalwart, has this to say: "Ravenholt succeeded in a hostile environment primarily because he considered the word "no" to be operative only when he used it." Other sources include Connelly and Mosher as well as Reproductive Rights and Wrongs by Betsy Hartmann and My 17 Years with USAID by Nancy Dammann.
There is also support for Dr. Zubrin's charge of dumping defective birth-control devices on third-world countries. The dumping of the Dalkon shield specifically, after that device caused a surge of toxic-shock syndrome in American women (with 18 fatalities), was exposed by Mother Jones. See Money for mischief: USAID and Pathfinder tag-team women in the developing world for a brief account.
So for the moment I'll take Dr. Zubrin's charges of unethical practices by USAID under Dr. Ravenholt as substantiated. I don't have time to do a thorough appraisal; when I do I'll rely principally on Betsy Hartmann's book, which is a) accessible and b) balanced. Even so, it's clear that he exaggerates in places.
Page 159: "In his devastating book Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits, author Steven Mosher provides a colorful description of Ravenholt:
"Who was Dr. Ravenholt? An epidemiologist by training, he apparently looked on pregnancy as a disease, to be eradicated in the same way one eliminates smallpox or yellow fever. He was also, as it happens, a bellicose misanthrope.
"He took to his work of contracepting, sterilizing, and aborting the women of the world with an aggressiveness that caused his younger colleagues to shrink back in disgust. His business cards were printed on condoms, and he delighted in handing them out to all comers. He advocated mass sterilization campaigns, once telling the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that one-quarter of all the fertile women in the world must be sterilized in order to meet the U.S. goals of population control and to maintain 'the normal operation of U.S. commercial interests around the world.'"
In fact, this statement is quoted by Betsy Hartmann. "In a 1977 interview Dr. R. T. Ravenholt made his now famous statement that the United States was seeking to provide the means by which one quarter of the world's fertile women could be voluntarily sterilized." (Hartmann, p. 246) There is a discernible difference between the two versions. It consists in one word: the word "voluntarily." (But those multicolor condoms? Yes, they were real.)
Page 99: "Carson told a powerful fable..." and "...Silent Spring was very poor science. Indeed, considered as a scientific work, Carson's book can only be described as a mendacious fraud. Carson claimed that DDT was threatening many avian species with imminent extinction. Her evidence for this, however, was anecdotal, and unfounded. In fact, during the period of widespread DDT use preceding the publication of Silent Spring, bird populations in the United States increased significantly, probably as a result of the pesticide's suppression of their insect disease vectors and parasites."
It would be churlish of me to demand that Zubrin refute every bit of this so-called anecdotal evidence, in order to justify his calling it unfounded. But the claim that bird populations increased is a different matter. He supports this in his focus section, reproducing on page 105 the Audubon Society Christmas bird counts for 1941 and 1960. It is not that there were four times as many observers in 1960, since he gives us the count of each type of bird per observer. But were the 1960 observers better trained, so their identifications were more reliable? (It would be understandable if the Christmas 1941 counts were done with less than total dedication: the country had newly begun mobilizing for war.) Did they observe then in locations more likely to hold the birds of interest? Were these locations known to have been dosed with DDT? Were the observing sessions the same length in both years, and at the same local times of day? Without knowing these things, we cannot judge the comparison. Too, many listings are generic names like eagle, gull, or "Swatlow" (swallow) rather than individual species. And Zubrin's guess that any increase must have been due to DDT removing bird parasites or disease vectors is shaky. DDT, a broad spectrum pesticide, is known to kill many kinds of insects. Supposing it killed only those harmful to birds, and not the insects they fed upon, is unlikely.
Zubrin's claim of "anecdotal evidence" refers to pages 104-109. There are anecdotes in these pages, to be sure. But there are also citations of serious work — like that of Professor George Wallace and his graduate student John Mehner at Michigan State University in 1954. Spraying of DDT began that year on campus, aimed at controlling the elm bark beetle that spread Dutch elm disease. The city of East Lansing joined in the following year. Over several years, the two researchers documented the drastic local decline of robins. Dr. Roy Barker of the Illinois Natural History Survey laid bare the pathway by which DDT reached the birds: elm leaves to earthworms to robins. His paper was published in 1958. Studies soon found robin mortality in other DDT application areas. Professor Joseph Hickey and his students at the University of Wisconsin compared sprayed and unsprayed areas and found robins dying in the sprayed areas at rates of "at least 86 to 88 per cent" (Carson, p. 109.) I note that the anecdotal evidence appears first in the pages Zubrin cites. Perhaps he expects his readers will turn to page 104 of Silent Spring, see some anecdotes, and decide he is right.
Page 99: "In her chapter 'Elixirs of Death,' Carson wrote that synthetic insecticides can affect the human body 'in sinister and often deadly ways,' so that cumulatively, the 'threat of chronic poisoning and degenerative changes of the liver and other organs is very real.' In terms of DDT specifically, in her chapter on cancer she reported that one expert 'now gives DDT the definite rating of a 'chemical carcinogen.' All of these alarming assertions were false as well." (Cites J. Gordon Edwards, "DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud," Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, 9, no. 3,(2004): 86.)
These three quotes are found on pages 16, 22, and 225 in Carson's book. The first two pages are from her chapter "Elixirs of Death", a chapter that describes the growth of pesticide manufacture and the nature of these synthetic compounds in general terms. The third quote, as Dr. Zubrin says, comes from her chapter on cancer, "One in Every Four." The expert she cites is Dr. W. C. Hueper of the National Cancer Institute. Presumably he had some acumen to justify making his classification.
The choices Dr. Zubrin made in selecting these quotes are puzzling. If there is no solid link between DDT and cancer in humans (except perhaps at massive doses unlikely to occur by chance), there is abundant evidence of the other sorts of harm it can cause in lower doses. Also remember that Carson's title is plural: "Elixirs of Death." She indicts aldrin and dieldrin, heptachlor and chlordane, and many other pesticides. These too have well-documented potential to harm humans. Many are worse than DDT. I'm left with the conclusion that his case amounts to rhetoric alone.
Page 102: "In 1972, following a campaign of wild allegations spearheaded by Rachel Carson through her book Silent Spring, DDT was banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States, and international funding for DDT projects abroad was ended, resulting in untold millions of deaths. While critics of Silent Spring have tended to focus on the one-sidedness of Carson's case or on those of her claims that have not held up over time, the fraudulence of Silent Spring goes beyond mere cherry-picking or discredited data: Carson abused, twisted, and distorted many of the studies that she cited, in a brazen act of scientific dishonesty.
On the surface, this looks like nothing more than another rhetorical blast. Cites Charles D. Rubin, The Green Crusade, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), 38-44.)
"No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored," Carson wrote in Silent Spring. "The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. . . . Resistance to insecticides by mosquitoes . . . has surged upwards at an astounding rate."
"Unfortunately," notes the FAIR article, "her words were ignored."
The article also cites Mosquito by Andrew Spielman and Michael D'Antonio.Pages 103-108: In the book's second focus section, three claims about DDT are allegedly debunked. They are:
Dr. Zubrin scores with his first claim-debunking. No connection has been established between DDT and cancer in humans. It is in no way comparable to the ironclad link between smoking and lung cancer. But see below.
But claim 2? Spot on. There is abundant evidence of common birds like robins being harmed by DDT concentrations induced by local applications done to control insect pests. Not only that, but DDT and chemically similar pesticides killed significant numbers of poultry and livestock as well as fish, crabs and shrimp. There is also laboratory work that demonstrated thinning of the eggshells of raptors due to DDT. Much of this evidence comes from field and lab work done well before Silent Spring was published. See my review of DDT by Thomas R. Dunlap and click on the "Notes on the effects of DDT" link.
Of course, no bird species was actually made extinct by DDT. But that's because Carson's warning was heeded, and the massive overuse of DDT was halted.
Claim 3 also seems to have been wrong. But it was not made by Rachel Carson; Charles Wurster published it after her death "[i]n a note published in Science magazine in 1968." Wurster claimed a concentration of DDT that ocean water would not support. (See Zubrin, p. 106.)
But Dr. Zubrin's main charge against Rachel Carson — the "killer rap" if you will — is that Silent Spring led to a worldwide ban on DDT and as a result millions of people died of malaria in tropical third-world countries.
Page 99: "The panic raised by Carson's book spread far beyond American borders. Responding to its warning, the governments of a number of developing countries called a halt to their DDT-based anti-malaria programs. The results were catastrophic. In Ceylon, for example, where, as noted, DDT use had cut malaria cases from millions per year in the 1940s down to just 17 by 1963, its banning in 1964 led to a resurgence of half a million victims per year by 1969. In many other countries, the effects were even worse."
Ceylon, of course, officially changed its name to Sri Lanka in 1972. But I digress.
It is true that DDT was banned in the United States in 1972 for agricultural use (with an explicit exception for control of disease vectors.) By that time resistant mosquitoes had appeared, largely because of the widespread overuse of DDT against agricultural pests. The proven harm it caused to wildlife and beneficial insects was also a factor in the ban. It is true that Edmund Sweeney, judge of the EPA hearings, recommended DDT use continue. But, contrary to what Zubrin implies, Ruckelshaus did not arbitrarily ban it; the hearings heard from both sides over several months, and the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in 1973 that the EPA had acted properly. Reference: Wikipedia — DDT History
The more important fact is that there was never a general ban on DDT use overseas, and U.S. companies continue to manufacture and sell it to other nations. Worldwide, 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes are still produced and used every year for vector control. The resurgence of malaria is due to resistant mosquitoes, resistance of the malaria parasite to first-generation drugs, inadequate funding, and ineffective administration of control efforts (especially in sub-Saharan Africa.) References: Wikipedia — DDT Use against malaria; Bill Moyers Journal
Toxicity. No ironclad links between DDT and human cancers have been found, but epidemiological studies point to possible links between exposure and cancer of the liver, pancreas, and breast, as well as developmental problems in fetuses. DDT exposure has been linked to diabetes. Occupational exposure has been linked to neurological damage in adult humans, and animal studies reveal DDT and its metabolite DDE as endocrine disruptors. References: Wikipedia — DDT Effects on human health; DDT Fact Sheet (five-page PDF)
Almost everyone now admits the Earth is gradually getting warmer. The mute testimony of melting Arctic ice makes any other position ludicrous. But some dispute the cause, and even more doubt the dire mainstream projections of civilization-threatening conditions near the end of this century.
Zubrin is a member of this latter group. He maintains that more CO2 in the atmosphere will greatly boost agricultural productivity; Indeed, he claims that it already has boosted plant growth in the U.S. by 14 percent. Let's see what he actually wrote, and examine his source.
Page 206: "More recently, we have even been making the air more fertile by adding carbon dioxide; one study has shown a 14 percent increase in plant growth in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century, with increased carbon dioxide levels as a contributing factor."
The source is Ramakrishna Nemani et. al, "Recent Trends in Hydrologic Balance Have Enhanced the Terrestrial Carbon Sink in the United States", Geophysical Research Letters 29, no 10 (2002): 106.1-106.4. Hydrologic balance, of course, refers to water; it and nitrogen are the most important nutrients for plants — moreso than carbon dioxide. The Nemani paper is behind a paywall, but its abstract supports this, albeit ambiguously:
"Climate data show significant increases in precipitation and humidity over the U.S. since 1900, yet the role of these hydro-climatic changes on the reported U.S. carbon sink is incompletely understood. Using a prognostic terrestrial ecosystem model, we simulated 1900-1993 continental U.S. carbon fluxes and found that increased growth by natural vegetation was associated with increased precipitation and humidity, especially during the 1950-1993 period. CO2 trends and warmer temperatures had a lesser effect. Two thirds of the increase in observed forest growth rates could be accounted for by observed climatic changes, including the confluence of earlier springs and wetter autumns leading to a lengthening of the vegetation carbon uptake period. However, regional differences in precipitation trends produced differing regional carbon sink responses. The strong coupling between carbon and hydrologic cycles implies that global carbon budget studies, currently dominated by temperature analyses, should consider changes in the hydrologic cycle.This is to say that rising temperatures bring more rain and longer growing seasons, and these let the trees capture more CO2. On the larger question of whether more CO2 boosts crop yields, there is no clear-cut answer.
For example, higher CO2 concentrations help C3 plants grow faster, but do nothing for C4 plants. (C3 and C4 identify two types of photosynthesis.) Also, some crops grown under more CO2 lower their defenses against pests. This could mean more crop losses. And as you might expect, among the plants that do better under more CO2 are weeds.
The higher temperatures that go with this increase in CO2 can slow plant growth. Studies have found that anything over 1°C lowers the growth of tropical forests by as much as 50 percent. Certain crops, notably rice, will not germinate in temperatures above 35°C — temperatures which have already been seen a few times. And in some plant communities, the extra CO2 itself can cause the crop yields to drop.
Finally, consider the oceans. An atmosphere richer in CO2 will drive more CO2 into sea water, making it more acidic. Beyond a certain point, this extra acidity prevents phytoplankton from forming shells. Phytoplankton are the basis of the ocean's food web.
So it is far from certain that increased CO2 will mean a net win for agriculture. And Zubrin does not discuss the related observations that higher temperatures allow insect pests to spread farther toward the poles, or the projection that climate change portends rainfall redistributions which will make regions currently fertile into dustbowls.
Page 231: "Human industrial CO2 emissions may be having a modest effect on climate, but they are having a positive effect on plant growth worldwide; one study has shown a 14 percent increase in plant growth in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century with increased carbon dioxide levels as a contributing factor. Studies done at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on forest trees have shown that increasing the concentration of CO2 to 550 ppm, the level projected for the end of the twenty-first century, will likely increase photosynthetic productivity for both agricultural and wild plants by at least a further 24 percent."
Page 232: "The fact that such alteration of atmospheric composition is constructive and highly beneficial to both mankind and the natural world is ignored. Rather, for those seeking cause to oppress humanity, any change in nature effected by humans is criminal on its face. Since all human activity must perforce release CO2, all human existence is a crime against nature. Therefore, nothing we can do is right—and so, in the name of the Higher Good, we must be constrained to do as little as possible."
The first sentence on page 231 again cites Nemani, this time as Ramakrishna Nemani et. al, "Recent Trends in Hydrologic Balance Have Enhanced the Terrestrial Carbon Sink in the United States," GRL 29, no 10 (2002): 1468. The second sentence cites ORNL, "Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Is Neither Boon Nor Bust," press release, Feb 15, 2004, http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-02/jaaj-cdf020504.php. Per the press release, this six-year experiment at ORNL found that most of the benefit from elevated CO2 levels was greater development of the trees' fine root structure, which collapses back into the soil within a year.
Page 221: "Furthermore, the Earth at that time was actually undergoing a cooling trend, so the climate doomsayers of the day were predicting global freezing." Cites The Impact Team, The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age (Ballantine Books, 1977).
The late Dr, Stephen H. Schneider examined this book (PDF) and found it unreliable. In addition there was no consensus that a global cooling was under way. The American Meteorological Society documented that convincingly (13-page PDF) in 2008. The majority concern at the time was, you guessed it, warming.
Page 221: "In contrast to industrial smoke, which can be—and was—dealt with using pollution-control technology, CO2 emissions cannot be stopped without radical restrictions on modern civilization."
First of all, Zubrin overstates the case here: Industrial smoke is still a widespread problem, not a thing of the past as he implies. It is true that we have the technology to control it; but resistance to deploying that technology persists.
Controlling CO2 is more difficult. But Zubrin resorts to another strawman here, because no one seriously argues for an immediate end to CO2 emissions as he implies. These emissions can be reduced immediately by conserving energy, in proportion to the amount of energy saved — and there is a lot that could be saved. However, conservation is only a stopgap measure. The real solution is phasing in renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.), and developing novel nuclear reactor designs. These programs will take decades. We could have started them decades ago,2 and we would have been much farther ahead today. But back then there was adamant opposition to such programs, just as today Zubrin adamantly opposes them — despite his advocacy of nuclear power.
Page 249: "Over the past several years, many climate scientists have presented data that call into question much of the orthodoxy of the IPCC." Cites books by Christopher Booker, S. Fred Singer & Dennis Avery, Roy Spencer, Patrick Michaels, and Ian Plimer. (See note 74, page 304.)
Christopher Booker is a journalist. S. Fred Singer is a physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science. Dennis Avery is a food policy analyst at the Hudson Institute. Roy Spencer and Patrick Michaels are climatologists. Ian Plimer is a mining geologist who directs four mining companies. Of these authors, only Singer, Spencer and Michaels have any professional expertise in climate science. In addition, the books they have written do not raise any cogent arguments against mainstream climate science. I won't attempt to back up that contention here. You have only to plug any of their names into Google or another search engine to find as much of that as you need. These contrarians they should know it, but I think I'll say it again: 3
Page 250: Zubrin cites Richard Lindzen's 2006 WSJ op-ed "Climate of Fear". He quotes Lindzen as follows:
"There is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis. . . . Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding."
As it happens, I discussed this op-ed back in 2007. The analysis is part of my collection of pages on global warming. I can't link you directly to the analysis of Lindzen's op-ed at the moment. But here is the lead-in to that set of pages: Disbelieving in Global Warming. I think reading them will repay your attention.
Page 25: "Human beings, on balance, are creators, not destroyers. Each human life, on average, contributes to improving the conditions for human life overall. We live as well as we do today because so many people lived in the past and made innumerable contributions, great and small, toward building the global civilization we now enjoy. If there had been fewer of them, we today would be poorer. If we accept Malthusian dictates and act to reduce the world's population, we will not only commit a crime against the present, but impoverish the future by denying it the contributions the missing people would have made.
"The world needs more children."
This idea does not originate with Dr. Zubrin. I am not sure of its provenance, but I have heard it from a number of sources. It opens the door to some interesting sociological work. Since cultures are what promote this sort of innovation, and since cultures are isolated from one another to at least some degree by national borders, language differences, and corporate rules, we should expect the larger nations and corporations to be more innovative. However, the opposite is more often the case: large corporations are famously sluggish at innovating; and among modern nations, China and Russia have historically lagged the U.S. and the nations of Europe.
Of course innovation requires people. But it is far from clear if more people means more innovation. In this respect, there is an interesting parallel between the amount of carbon dioxide and the amount of people present at any time. If more CO2 always produces more plant growth, increasing CO2 up to and beyond the 550 ppm Dr. Zubrin says is beneficial would be warranted — at least until it approached levels toxic to animal life. Similarly, if more people increase the rate of innovation, a more populous world should have fewer problems.
However, plants require nutrients other than CO2: water, minerals, and sunlight. Any one of these in short supply can limit growth. So it is with innovation: the people need to be educated in fields where innovations are needed; their creativity needs to be fostered and rewarded; and the tools and resources with which to build and test innovative devices or processes must be readily available. Absent any one of those things, creativity founders.
This observation, of course, is not definitive. But consider: Is the U.S. more innovative now, at over 311 million people, than it was in say 1950 with less than half that population?
Page 234: "The Heritage Foundation estimates that Waxman-Markey would have cost the U.S. economy $161 billion in 2020—or $1,870 for a family of four, rising to $6,800 by 2035."
The Heritage Foundation estimates have been found to be incorrect. As my second reference shows, the EPA estimated a cost of $80-$111 per household; the latest CBO result was a $175 average cost per household in 2020 and a $40 benefit for the lowest twenty percent of earners.
References
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