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| Cover art by Will Staehle |
| STATE OF FEAR Michael Crichton New York: Avon, July 2004 |
Rating: 3.0 Fair |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-06-101573-1 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-06-101573-3 | 672p. | SC/GSI | $9.99 | |
In Appendix I, "Why Politicized Science Is Dangerous" (an essay available on the Web), Crichton writes:
"Now we are engaged in a great new theory, that once again has drawn the support of politicians, scientists, and celebrities around the world. Once again, the theory is promoted by major foundations. Once again, the research is carried out at prestigious universities. Once again, legislation is passed and social programs are urged in its name. Once again, critics are few and harshly dealt with." Once again, the measures being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once again. groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human consequences. Once again, vague terms like sustainability and generational justice—terms that have no agreed definition—are employed in the service of a new crisis. I am not arguing that global warming is the same as eugenics. But the similarities are not superficial. And I do claim that open and frank discussion of the data, and of the issues, is being suppressed. Leading scientific journals have taken strong editorial positions on the side of global warming, which, I argue, they have no business doing. Under the circumstances, any scientist who has doubts understands clearly that they will be wise to mute their expression. – Pages 636-7 |
This Appendix treats of eugenics and Lysenkoism. The former had to do with improving or "purifying" the race by weeding out undesirable genetic traits — that is, by preventing the "wrong people" from breeding. It was eagerly taken up by Hitler. Lysenko taught the inheritance of acquired characteristics, a doctrine embraced by Stalin and applied to agriculture with disastrous results. Both ideas are long abandoned, and both are morally suspect. Crichton may say he is not comparing global warming to these discredited theories, but by associating it with them in his Appendix (and with the murderous villains in the novel), he does exactly that.
There are many other critiques of the science in State of Fear. One of them is by David M. Lawrence, who teaches college-level science. Lawrence, like Crichton, bases his title on the larger theme of political scaremongering: He calls his chapter "Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid." He does a good job of debunking several of the novel's abuses of science in depth. These include: the greenhouse effect; eugenics and Lysenkoism; Chylek's work on Greenland;1 melting glaciers; and falling temperatures at specific locales. However, Lawrence misses Crichton's claim that a cooling stratosphere disproves the greenhouse effect, along with a few other claims. Despite this, his analysis is well worth reading.
Lawrence, D. M.
"Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid: Michael Crichton's State of Fear", pp 131-54
The Science of Michael Crichton
Kevin R. Grazier (Ed.)
Dallas: Benbella Books, 2008
ISBN 978-1-933771328
But let's turn to his treatment of the actual science.
The first example comes from page 47, where he cites an article from Climatic Change to imply that because Iceland's glaciers are advancing, global warming is not happening. The article makes it clear that Iceland is an anomaly. Crichton continues in this vein by presenting a series of temperature charts that show declining temperatures in many U.S. locations. For instance, he has Jennifer Haynes point to charts showing falling temperatures in Albany, NY while New York City has a rising trend over the period 1820-2000 (see page 418.) She implies that because Albany and New York City are only 80 miles apart, there cannot be an upward global temperature trend. These two locations, and more presented earlier, depend on a common Denialist technique: By pointing to results which apparently run counter to a uniform warming trend, they attempt to sow doubt on the reality of the general trend. The point is that no one expects the globe will warm uniformly at every location.
Crichton also uses this series of charts to bring in the Urban Heat Island distraction. This relies on the real fact that cities get warmer than the surrounding countryside. The bogus idea is that measuring temperature at stations in or near cities artificially skews the average global temperature upward. Scientists such as those at NOAA, the U.S. center for temperature data, at NASA's GISS, or at Britain's Hadley Centre, make statistical corrections for the extra heat in cities. There is reason to believe that their corrections might be insufficient in some cases. But then again, the city/country discrepancy tends to disappear during the day, and both ground and satellite measurements show the polar regions rising fastest. This is never mentioned; Crichton has Jennifer Haynes imply "misunderestimation" of the degree of UHI warming in cities (pages 407-8).
In what follows, I present some short passages of dialog on the left, indicating the names of the characters. You'll note that John Kenner (Crichton's alter ego) has an answer for everything — but these answers often gloss over inconvenient complexities, and are sometimes flat-out wrong. Perhaps this is why Kenner has a tendency to browbeat his discursants. My comments on the scientific issue(s) presented are on the right. References are either embedded in these comments or in the footnotes below.
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Jennifer Haynes: "Here is a graph showing carbon dioxide levels and temperature."
Peter Evans: "Okay," Evans said. "Just what you would expect. Carbon dioxide goes up, and makes temperature go up."
Jennifer Haynes: "Good," she said. "Now I want to direct your attention to the period from 1940 to 1970. As you see, during that period the global temperature actually went down. You see that?"
Peter Evans: "Yes..."
Jennifer Haynes: "Let me show you a closeup of that period." She took out another chart.
Jennifer Haynes: "This is a thirty-year period. One third of a century during which temperatures declined. Crops were damaged by frost in summer, glaciers in Europe advanced. What caused the decline?"
Peter Evans: "I don't know."
Jennifer Haynes: "Was carbon dioxide rising during that period?"
Peter Evans: "Yes."
Jennifer Haynes: "So, if rising carbon dioxide is the cause of rising temperature, why didn't it cause temperatures to rise from 1940 to 1970?"
Peter Evans: "I don't know," Evans said. "There must have been another factor. Or it could be an anomaly. There are anomalies within broad secular trends. Just look at the stock market."
Jennifer Haynes: "Does the stock market have anomalies that last thirty years?"
Peter Evans: He shrugged. "Or it could have been soot. Or particulate matter in the air. There were a lot of particulates back then, before environmental laws took effect. Or maybe some other factor."
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This is often presented as a show-stopper. Most people naturally assume that warming means an unbroken upward trend in temperature everywhere on Earth. Climate, however, is not so simple. Sunlight can cause warming, either because the Sun gets brighter, because the Earth gets closer to it in its elliptical orbit, or because the tilt of Earth's axis periodically faces the northern hemisphere, with more land mass, more directly toward the Sun, Carbon dioxide can also be a warming factor: a "forcing," in climatology terms. And it can be a feedback, amplifying warming due to another factor. This is thought to be the reason for warming in prehistory; sunlight starts the warming, and after some time the warmer ocean, soils, permafrost begin to give up their hoarded carbon dioxide. Once in the atmosphere, that CO2 causes more warming. Volcanoes generally cause cooling, by pushing vast amounts of dust into the stratosphere. The dust reflects some of the sunlight that would otherwise warm Earth's surface. There were several volcanic eruptions during these thirty years. Also there was was smog in urban areas and a lot of smoke from coal and wood fires over the globe, due to the conflagrations of World War II and the subsequent worldwide burgeoning of industry. Finally, this was another quiet time on the sun. That's why the planet cooled 1940-1970. The argument Crichton puts in Jennifer Haynes' mouth is misleading because it ignores the complexities of climate. (The bit about stock-market anomalies never lasting thirty years is just a distraction, intellectual sleight-of-hand.) Note that after 1970, warming took off faster than before. |
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Jennifer Haynes: "The theory of global warming predicts that the upper atmosphere will warm from trapped heat, just like a greenhouse. The surface of the Earth warms later. But since 1979 we've had orbiting satellites that can continuously measure the atmosphere five miles up. They show that the upper atmosphere is warming much less than the ground is."
Peter Evans: "Maybe there's a problem with the data—"
Jennifer Haynes: "Trust me, the satellite data have been re-analyzed dozens of times," she said. "They're probably the most intensely scrutinized data in the world. But the data from weather balloons agree with the satellites. They show much less warming than expected by the theory." She shrugged. "Another problem for us. We're working on it."
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Crichton asserts that the "upper atmosphere" (the stratosphere) should warm along with the surface. This is true if sunlight is driving the warming. However, it is wrong if warming is caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. These gases let the sunlight through. At the surface, the light is absorbed and later re-emitted — as longer waves of light that greenhouse gases block. Thus the GHGs act like a one-way blanket: as they block the longer-wave light (infrared) from passing out into space, the surface of the planet warms, but the stratosphere above them gets colder. And this is exactly what satellites — and weather balloons — observe. Crichton says as much, but tries to make the observation work against the reality of global warming. Instead, it supports that reality. |
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Peter Evans: "These guys are trying to break off an iceberg to coincide with the conference?"
John Kenner: "Exactly. All part of any good starburst media plan. You arrange an event with good visuals that reinforces the point of the conference."
Peter Evans: "You seem awfully calm about it," Evans said.
John Kenner: "It's the way things are done, Peter." Kenner shrugged. "Environmental concerns don't come to the public's attention by accident, you know."
Peter Evans: "What do you mean?"
John Kenner: "Well, take your favorite fear, global warming. The arrival of global warming was announced dramatically by a prominent climatologist, James Hansen, in 1988. He gave testimony before a joint House and Senate committee headed by Senator Wirth of Colorado. Hearings were scheduled for June, so Hansen could deliver his testimony during a blistering heat wave. It was a setup from the beginning."
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Like many of Crichton's arguments, this one has a kernel of truth. Finding the day of the hearings to be sweltering, Dr. Hansen had the air conditioners turned off. It was theatrics intended to reinforce his point that a warmer climate would produce many more such days. But Crichton gives the good doctor too much credit. If he is to be believed, Hansen really could predict the weather — an ability he later denies any climate scientist. |
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John Kenner: "When Hansen announced in the summer of 1988 that global warming was here, he predicted temperatures would increase .35 degrees Celsius over the next ten years. Do you know what the actual increase was?"
Peter Evans: "I'm sure you'll tell me it was less than that."
John Kenner: "Much less, Peter. Dr. Hansen overestimate by three hundred percent. The actual increase was .11 degrees."
Peter Evans: "Okay. But it did increase."
John Kenner: "And ten years after his testimony, he said that the forces that govern climate change are so poorly understood that long-term prediction is impossible."
Peter Evans: "He did not say that."
John Kenner: Kenner sighed. "Sanjong?"
Sanjong Thapa: Sanjong pecked at his laptop. "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 1988."
Peter Evans: "Hansen didn't say that prediction was impossible."
John Kenner: "He said, quote, 'The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change,' endquote. And he argued that, in the future, scientists should use multiple scenarios to define a range of possible climate outcomes."
Peter Evans: "Well, that isn't exactly—"
John Kenner: "Stop quibbling," Kenner said. "He said it. Why do you think Balder is worried about his witnesses in the Vanutu case? It's because of statements like these. However you attempt to reframe it, it's a clear statement of limited knowledge. And it's hardly the only one. The IPCC itself made many limiting statements."
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Kenner speaks of Dr. Hansen recommending the use of scenarios to bracket the future behavior of climate. This is much like the way a skilled photographer works. If he's unsure of the precise exposure needed, he will make his best guess and also use exposure settings one above and one below that guess. In this way, he's sure of getting a worthwhile picture. Dr. Hansen understood the limits of his knowledge in 1988. So he used three scenarios. Call them bad, middling, and good. In the bad scenario, greenhouse gases increased at an accelerating rate. In the middling scenario, the rate of increase dropped until it became constant. The good scenario had greenhouse gas concentrations fixed (unchanging) after the year 2000. Both the good and middling scenarios assumed a volcano would erupt in 1995 and cause some cooling. In reality, this was Mount Pinatubo, which happened in 1991. Reality has turned out to follow the middling scenario most closely. (In fact, it's running a bit under that.) But the 3.5°C number appears to come from the bad scenario. Also, Hansen's 1988 model had the sensitivity set too high: about 4.2°C rise for a doubling of greenhouse gases. A value of 3.4°C looks more accurate. With this change, Hansen's middling-scenario model comes quite close to 1997's actual temperature rise of 0.11°C. The other part of this exchange denigrates Dr. Hansen for admitting uncertainty. But honest scientists are never certain of their results. They will give you their best possible answer, along with an estimate of how uncertain that answer is. (The term is error bars.) Then they will set about reducing the uncertainty. The proper role of policymakers is to base their decisions on the bad side of the answer: the worst case. For example, if science projects a range of temperature rise between 1 and 4 degrees, policy should be based on the 4-degree figure. If, later on, that turns out to be high, spending can be cut back. Responsible leaders do not expect perfect knowledge going in, and neither do they stick with the original program after conditions are found to be less dire than expected. Denialists who assume otherwise work in service of the status quo. Ref: http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptic_arguments/models-dont-work.html |
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Hentley: "Just think of how far we have come!" Hentley said. "Back in the 1970s, all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming. They thought the world was getting colder. But once the notion of global warming was raised, they immediately recognized the advantages. Global warming creates a crisis, a call to action. A crisis needs to be studied, it needs to be funded, it needs political and bureaucratic structures around the world. And in no time at all a huge number of meteorologists, geologists, oceanographers suddenly became 'climate scientists' engaged in the management of this crisis. This will be the same, Nicholas."
Nicholas Drake: "Abrupt climate change has been discussed before, and it hasn't caught on."
Hentley: "That's why you are holding a conference," Hentley said patiently. "You hold a well-publicized conference and it happens to coincide with some dramatic evidence for the danger of abrupt climate. And by the end of the conference, you will have established abrupt climate change as a genuine problem."
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This myth is widespread. It can probably be traced to a cover story in Time or Newsweek. The fact is that while an ice age is coming, it is not expected for several thousand years at least. The myth refers to something more imminent. But while some scientists in the 1970s wondered about a near-term cooling trend, more were concerned about warming. The American Meteorological Society surveyed scientific papers of the period and found 7 on cooling versus 44 on warming. Another lapse of Crichton logic: Why would warming be more of a crisis than an ice age? The larger issue here is Crichton's distrust of climate science. Did he really think it was nothing but PR and stunts? |
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Sanjog Thapa: Sanjong nudged Evans and handed him a sheet of paper. It was a printout of a press release from the NERF website. (sic) Sanjong pointed to the text: "...scientists agree there will be trouble ahead: more extreme weather events, like floods and tornadoes and drought, all as a result of global warming."
Peter Evans: Evans said, "This guy's just reading a press release?"
John Kenner: "That's how they do it these days," Kenner said. "They don't even bother to change a phrase here and there. They just read the copy outright. And of course, what he's saying is not true."
Peter Evans: "Then what's causing the increase in extreme weather around the world?" Evans said.
John Kenner: "There is no increase in extreme weather."
Peter Evans: "That's been studied?"
John Kenner: "Repeatedly. The studies show no increase in extreme weather events over the past century. Or in the last fifteen years. And the GCMs don't predict more extreme weather. If anything, global warming theory predicts less extreme weather."
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This is simply false. While no single weather event can be definitively tied to global warming (yet), theory says a warmer world will have stronger hurricanes and a longer hurricane season. Also, more water vapor in the atmosphere means more rainfall and snowfall. And the jet stream is expected to shift, bringing drought to mid-latitude regions. |
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John Kenner: So," Kenner said, global warming represents a threat to the world?"
Ted Bradley: "Absolutely," Bradley said. "a threat to the whole world."
John Kenner: "What sort of threat are we talking about?"
Ted Bradley: "Crop failures, spreading deserts, new diseases, species extinction, all the glaciers melting, Kilimanjaro, sea-level rise, extreme weather, tornadoes, hurricanes, El Niño events—".
John Kenner: "That sounds extremely serious," Kenner said.
Ted Bradley: "It is," Bradley said. "It really is."
John Kenner: "Are you sure of your facts?"
Ted Bradley: "Of course."
John Kenner: "You can back your claims with references to the scientific literature?"
Ted Bradley: "Well, I can't personally, but scientists can."
John Kenner: "Actually, scientific studies do not support your claims. For example, crop failure—if anything, increased carbon dioxide stimulates plant growth. There is some evidence that this is happening. And the most recent satellite studies show the Sahara has shrunk since 1980. As for new diseases—not true. The rate of emergence of new diseases has not changed since 1960."
Ted Bradley: "But we'll have diseases like malaria coming back to the U.S. and
Europe."
John Kenner: "Not according to malaria experts."
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There are quite a few assertions folded in here. Let me take them in order. Crops depend on more than CO2, of course, so more CO2 does not guarantee a good crop. It's not even a sure bet that more CO2 plus plenty of water and nutrients means more plant growth. Two kinds of photosynthesis exist; one does not respond to more CO2, and many of the plants that do respond are weeds. Kudzu. Poison ivy. The extra CO2 tends to go into structure instead of seeds. Also, a few degrees of temperature rise may cut growth; may even prevent fertilization in crops like rice. And I've said nothing about the influence of drought, or new pests coming into the area, or beneficial insects like bees leaving or dying. It's far from clear whether global warming is a net win for agricultural productivity. As for the spread of malaria and other tropical diseases, see the book Changing Planet, Changing Health by Dan Ferber and the late Dr. Paul R. Epstein (Berkeley: University of California Press, April 2011.) Or just follow the news. The U.S., for example, has seen more cases of cholera, dengue fever, and West Nile virus in recent years. Kenner does not name his "malaria experts," nor does he cite their work. |
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John Kenner: "Now, about all the glaciers melting—not true. Some are, some aren't."
Ted Bradley: "Nearly all of them are."
John Kenner: "Kenner smiled thinly. "How many glaciers are we talking about?"
Ted Bradley: "Dozens."
John Kenner: ""How many glaciers are there in the world, Ted?"
Ted Bradley: "I don't know."
John Kenner: "Guess."
Ted Bradley: "Maybe, uh, two hundred."
John Kenner: "There are more than that in California. There are some hundred sixty thousand glaciers in the world, Ted. About sixty-seven thousand have been inventoried, but only a few have been studied with any care. There is mass balance data extending for five years or more for only seventy-nine glaciers in the entire world. So how can you say they're all melting? Nobody knows whether they are or not."
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The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) tracks glacier growth and decline. Its latest report finds a loss of mass for the 100 glaciers it tracks. Plotting its data for prior years shows the rate of loss is increasing. And the WGMS is not alone. The Swiss Glacier Study of 2008 found 78 glaciers retreating, 2 stationary and 5 advancing. Fourteen of 16 glaciers in the Kebnekaise Mountains of northern Sweden retreated over the period 1990-2001. In the Spanish Pyrenees, the glaciers of the Maladeta massif lost significant ice from 1981 to 2005. The thousands of glaciers in the Himalayas of Asia are shrinking, threatening that region's water supply. See Retreat of Glaciers Since 1850. And the National Snow and Ice Data Center states on its Glacier Balance Page that "With few exceptions, glaciers around the world have retreated at unprecedented rates over the last century." Dramatic then-and-now photographs and events like the discovery of Ötzi the Iceman in the Italian Alps underscore the reality of this glacial retreat. Overall, 95 percent of the world's glaciers are losing ice. A relative handful is growing. This happens in places where wet winds reach high mountains: the North Cascades and part of Alaska in the U.S.; in Norway and Iceland; on the South Island of New Zealand — isolated exceptions, bucking the general trend. (And those winds are wetter because of... Global Warming.) |
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John Kenner: "Now then—sea-level rise? Was that the next threat you mentioned?"
Ted Bradley: "Yes."
John Kenner: "Sea level is indeed rising."
Ted Bradley: "Ah-hah!"
John Kenner: ""As it has been for the last six thousand years, ever since the start of the Holocene. Sea level has been rising at the rate of ten to twenty centimeters—that's four to eight inches—every hundred years."
Ted Bradley: "But it's rising faster now."
John Kenner: "Actually, not."
Ted Bradley: "Satellites prove it."
John Kenner: "Actually, they don't."
Ted Bradley: "Computer models prove it's rising faster."
John Kenner: "Computer models can't prove anything, Ted. A prediction can't ever be proof—it hasn't happened yet."
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The book Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum by Dr. William F. Ruddiman makes a good case that humans began warming the globe around 8,000 years ago, with the invention of agriculture. But back to the present: Satellites like TOPEX/Poseidon and its successors do indeed measure sea level rising and the rate of rise increasing. That rate doubled within the past 20 years. At 3mm per year, it's no imminent crisis — but it can fairly be laid to AGW. And note the character of these answers by Kenner: "Yes it is!" — "No it's not." |
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John Kenner: "Tell me, do you think it's possible to reduce carbon dioxide?"
Ann Garner: "Of course. There are a host of alternative energy sources just waiting to be adopted. Wind power, solar, waste, geothermal—"
John Kenner: "Tom Wigley and a panel of scientists and engineers from around the world made a careful study and concluded it is not possible. Their paper was published in Science. They said there is no known technology capable of reducing carbon emissions, or even holding them to levels many times higher than today. They conclude that wind, solar and even nuclear power will not be sufficient to solve the problem. They say totally new and undiscovered technology is required."
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The paper Crichton cites is actually by Martin Hoffert et al. "Advanced Technology Paths to Global Climate Stability: Energy for a Greenhouse Planet", Science 298 (Nov. 1, 2002): 981-87. He quotes the conclusion: "Energy sources that can produce 100% to 300% of present world power consumption without greenhouse emissions do not exist." This is perfectly true. But, like the discussion of the Kyoto Protocol that immediately precedes the passage I quoted, it intentionally misses the point. The point of the Kyoto Protocol is that, as Ann Garner states in the novel, it is a first step on the path toward laws which effectively lower greenhouse gas concentrations. Kenner turns that on its head, saying that Kyoto is worthless because it can't do the whole job. Likewise, the true statement that we cannot replace every power source in the world with a carbon-free alternative today misses the point that no environmentalist expects or proposes that. Instead, what we propose is a realistic development of laws to cap greenhouse gases, and the technology to implement them, over the next several decades. Crichton's argument is in fact a straw man, frequently heard from those who oppose real progress. If we can't do the whole job right now, they argue, we must abandon the effort, or at least postpone it until some unspecified future time when suitable technology becomes available.2 Bjorn Lomborg, whom Crichton rates "particularly revealing," makes this argument frequently. And while I'm on the subject of advanced technology, consider the technology Crichton has his bad guys using: Devices that can amplify storms, trigger earthquakes and tsunamis, call down lightning from the sky. One of them even vaporizes a bad guy's body, leaving only a wisp of greasy smoke. Not as clean as a Star Trek phaser or as handy as the zat'ni'katel of Stargate SG1, but equally science-fictional. |
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Ted Bradley: "But—"
John Kenner: "No buts, Ted. Name an action that had only positive consequences."
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* * Ted Bradley: "Banning DDT."
John Kenner: "Arguably the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century. DDT was the best agent against mosquitoes, and despite the rhetoric there was nothing anywhere as good or as safe. Since the ban, two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. All together, the ban has caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler, Ted. And the environmental movement pushed hard for it."
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DDT was completely banned only in the U.S. By the time it was banned, its use had begun to drop because it was becoming ineffective. Due to extensive application of DDT to control crop pests, the Anopheles mosquito that carried malaria was becoming resistant. Nevertheless, the ban includes an exception for disease outbreaks. In Africa, DDT was banned only for outside use. But Africans had to be trained to apply it to interior walls, a poorly funded and intermittent program. And again, the problem of resistant mosquitoes cropped up. The malaria parasite became resistant as well. As in many other areas, the picture Crichton has his characters paint is mono-hued. |
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John Kenner: "So the real question with any environmental action is, do the benefits outweigh the harm? Because there is always harm."
Ted Bradley: "Okay, okay. So?"
John Kenner: "When do you hear any environmental group speak that way? Never. They're all absolutists. They go before judges arguing that regulations should be imposed with no consideration of costs at all. The requirement that regulations show a cost benefit was imposed on them by the courts after a period of wretched excess. Environmentalists screamed bloody murder about cost-benefit requirements and they're still screaming. They don't want people to know how much their forays into regulation actually cost society and the world. The most egregious example was the benzene regulations in the late 1980s that were so expensive for so little benefit that they ended up costing twenty billion dollars for every year of life saved. Do you agree with that regulation?"
Ted Bradley: "Well, when you put it in those terms, no."
John Kenner: "What other terms are there, Ted, besides the truth? Twenty billion dollars to save one year of life. That was the cost of the regulation."
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Benzene (C6H6) occurs naturally in petroleum deposits. It is a known carcinogen. The permissible exposure limit (PEL) for the workplace was set by OSHA in 1970 to 1ppm. EPA set the PEL for drinking water to 5ppb. NIOSH has an IDLH limit of 500ppm. In Industrial Union Department v. American Petroleum Institute (The Benzene Case), 448 U.S. 607 (1980), OSHA regulation of benzene was challenged. Feitshans, I. L., "Law and Regulation of Benzene," Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 82, pp. 299-307, 1989 "The petroleum industry has long been aware of benzene's hazards, yet has both manipulated research on benzene hazards and fought federal regulation designed to protect workers. For more that [sic] one hundred years, scientists have suspected that benzene is hazardous to humans. By 1950, human and animal studies confirmed that benzene inhalation could cause leukemia, and was associated with poisoning at less than 10 ppm. When addressing its members privately the American Petroleum Institute (API) stated that there was no safe level of exposure to benzene in 1948. However, the API kept this information from the medical community and even challenged OSHA's emergency temporary standard (ETS) of 1 ppm in 1977. They successfully delayed the acceptance of a 1 ppm benzene limit for a decade. This delay has been estimated to have caused over 200 excess deaths in workers. This is one example of how corporations can use their power over the discovery and distribution of knowledge to enhance profits and externalize environmental and occupational costs to an unsuspecting public. The petroleum industry's subterfuge regarding benzene fit a pattern of unethical industry manipulation of scientific and regulatory standards that interferes with the public's right to full information about workplace and environmental risk." http://apha.confex.com/apha/132am/techprogram/paper_81147.htm A note by Antonin Scalia in Regulation (4-page PDF) http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv4n4/v4n4-5.pdf |
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Peter Evans: Evans sighed, shaking his head. "Breast implants?"
Norman Hoffman: "Yes. You will recall that breast implants were claimed to cause cancer and autoimmune diseases. Despite statistical evidence that this was not true, we saw high-profile news stories, high-profile lawsuits, high-profile political hearings. The manufacturer, Dow Corning, was hounded out of the business after paying $3.2 billion, and juries awarded huge cash payments to plaintiffs and their lawyers.
"Four years later, definitive epidemiological studies showed beyond a doubt that breast implants did not cause disease. But by then the crisis had already served its purpose, and the PLM had moved on, a ravenous machine seeking new fears, new terrors. I'm telling you, this is the way modern society works—by the constant creation of fear. And there is no countervailing force. There is no system of checks and balances, no restraint on the perpetual promotion of fear after fear after fear..." Peter Evans: "Because we have freedom of speech, freedom of the press."
Norman Hoffman: "That is the classic PLM answer. That's how they stay in business," Hoffman said. "But think. If it is not all right to falsely shout 'Fire' in a crowded theater, why is it all right to shout 'Cancer' in the pages of The New Yorker? When the statement is not true? We've spent more than twenty-five billion dollars to clear up the phony power-line cancer claim. 'So what'? you say. I can see it in your face. You're thinking, we're rich, we can afford it. It's only twenty-five billion dollars. But the fact is that twenty-five billion dollars is more than the total GDP of the poorest fifty nations of the world combined. Half the world's population lives on two dollars a day. So that twenty-five billion would be enough to support thirty-four million people for a year. Or we could have helped all the people dying of AIDS in Africa. Instead, we piss it away on a fantasy published by a magazine whose readers take it very seriously. Trust it. It is a stupendous waste of money. In another world, it would be a criminal waste. One could easily imagine another Nuremberg trial—this time for the relentless squandering of Western wealth on trivialities—and complete with pictures of the dead babies in Africa and Asia that result."
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Whew... The Professor gets up a full head of steam, doesn't he? And here Crichton gets it right. But just because some claims of harm are false, it does not follow that every alarm is crying wolf. This is another lapse of logic. |
"I found the texts by Beckerman, Chase, Hubert, Lomborg, and Wildavsky to be particularly revealing." – Page 641 |
Other points to examine:
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