New York Times' Tierney Wrong on "Saving the Planet"

We're not sure how much time you spend perusing the New York Times' Science section. With the Times Co. reporting a first-quarter loss of $74 million this week, chances are you're one of the hundreds of millions of Americans not relying on the Gray Lady for your science news and not clicking on the ads draped so desperately across her bosoms. But if you did happen upon the Science Times this week, you might have noticed an article by John Tierney entitled "Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet."

In contrast to left-wing sewers like the Huffpo, Legitimate News Outlets like the NYT do their best to present Both Sides of every issue. For political opinion, that means hiring William Kristol, at least until his columns become so inconsistent, hysterical, and poorly written that you are forced to dismiss him. For science news, that means hiring--in addition to all of the smart, hardworking science reporters at the Times -- somebody deeply contemptuous of both science and those who do it for a living.

John Tierney is that somebody. You may remember him from 2005, when he slithered onto the Times' op-ed page and managed to stay there for an entire year before somebody noticed and kicked him off. Tierney now writes a column for the Science Times ("Findings"), as well as a blog called TierneyLab, whose little logo of an antique microscope alerts the reader that this blog is all about putting the latest, hottest science under the kind of dim scrutiny that only a 19th-century instrument can afford.

TierneyLab is based on the premise that "Just because an idea appeals to a lot of people doesn't mean it's wrong--but that's a good working theory." Unsurprisingly, then, much of the blog is devoted to attacking what Tierney calls "conventional wisdom."

Nothing wrong with that, of course--attacking conventional wisdom is what both scientists and journalists are supposed to be doing all of the time. The thing is, when conventional wisdom is based upon evidence, then you can really only attack it if you have better evidence. For example, we would like nothing better than to disprove evolution by natural selection, which would make us scientific legends overnight. But we can't, because we don't have any data that would convince anybody. We cannot argue, Tierney style, that (1) Darwin was a scientist; (2) Scientists have been wrong about stuff; (3) Therefore Darwin was wrong about natural selection.

But we digress. In Tierney's latest Findings column, he invokes Kuznets curves from economics to argue that the best solution to climate change is to get rich, use energy, and let everybody else do the same. Briefly, Kuznets curves as applied to the environment show that some kinds of pollution tend to increase and then decline as per capita GDP increases--for example, as countries develop beyond a certain threshold, you get progressively less fecal matter in the water supply, less sulfur dioxide in the air, etc. Which makes sense--nobody wants to drink shitty water or breathe air with a strong, suffocating, pungent odor, and rich people can afford not to.

Tierney extrapolates: Because other pollutants have followed this Kuznets pattern, so will carbon dioxide. He then dissociates the issue from its social and political context: The best thing to do to mitigate climate change is to get everybody in the world as rich as possible, as quickly as possible, at which point the problem will solve itself without the radical intervention of any "leader, law, or treaty."

So far, Tierney has only stated a hypothesis, which is not unethical, even if you question the logic used to come up with it. Where Tierney gets disingenuous (and unethical) is in providing "evidence" to support his hypothesis, as exemplified in the following excerpted paragraph:

"As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources -- from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy. This global decarbonization trend has been proceeding at a remarkably steady rate since 1850, according to Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University and Paul Waggoner of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station."

Tierney's sleight of hand here is encapsulated in the phrase "per unit of energy." While our petroleum-based economy emits less carbon per unit energy than a wood-based economy in rural Africa, we are using orders of magnitude more units of energy. Thus, our carbon emissions continue to rise. In other words, carbon intensity--the ratio of carbon dioxide to energy from different fuels--is only part of the equation. The number of people using energy (which Tierney ignores), and how much energy they decide to use (which he casually dismisses), are also crucial in determining total emissions (which is what ultimately matters).

You cannot grasp the emptiness of Tierney's "global decarbonization trend" from looking at a Kuznets curve. For that, you need a Keeling curve. Named for Scripps scientist Charles Keeling, this curve shows the trend in atmospheric CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory since 1958. This trend is anything but "decarbonized," and it shows no sign of leveling out.

And the argument that China and the rest of the developing world (the population of which is still increasing) should continue to follow their Kuznets curves through massive coal-fueled industrialization followed by rampant consumerism and gradual "decarbonization" ignores the potentially devastating effects of all the CO2 emitted while that process ran its course.

All of this makes Tierney's laissez-faire attitude seem pretty irresponsible. He concludes the piece by saying that "a Kuznets curve is more reliable than a revolution," but that's a dangerous proposition. We need a revolution for energy on the scale that the internet was a revolution for information, and we need both public and private investment in research and development to make it happen. In the meantime, John Tierney owes us all an apology.

Comments

[kosgr]

I say let's look at the historical data for US carbon emissions. And the historical data are very inconvenient for Mr. Tierney and his pseudo-scientific hypotheses.

Even his assertion that "...The amount of carbon emitted by the average American has remained fairly flat for the past couple of decades...­" is flawed. The per capita emissions from the transportation, residential and commercial sectors continue to increase. Only the emissions from the industrial sector are decreasing, since so much of our manufacturing has moved offshore. So, his argument falls flat even before one throws in the population growth to come to the "realization" that the US carbon emissions continue to increase.

But, Tierney is also wrong when he says we will move to natural gas, nuclear or other less carbon-intensive energy sources as our income increases. The data give no indication whatsoever that this will happen. Take a look at some of the data at

http://kosgr.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/inconvenient_data/

or go to http://eia.doe.gov/ if you want to do your analysis!

[Overtone]

Breakthrough technology will rapidly make possible inexpensive energy that will sharply reduce the need for fossil and nuclear fuels, worldwide.

Ignorance, greed, and arrogance, are the primary causes of both our economic and energy dilemmas.

Fortunately, the planet is becoming a new type of universal university, thanks to the internet.

See The Brooklyn Project at http://www.aesopinstitute.org for a path to accelerate necessary and desirable changes.

See http://www.chavaenergy.com for surprising information concerning a few breakthrough technologies with the potential to stimulate rapid reversal of our economic and energy concerns.

One example is new technology that can turn new, fuel-free, cars, trucks and buses that need no external battery charge into power plants when parked. Imagine vehicles that pay for themselves - by wirelessly selling power to the local utility. This will be a cost-competitive alternative to building new coal and nuclear power plants.

[SonofLiberty1]

Obviously, Rhett, you didn't see "An Inconvenient Truth"
nor do you believe in a concept called "Air Pollution"?

Start there.

Also, I would like to recommend reading the November issue of "The National Geographic"
entitled "The End of Night: Why we need Darkness"

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/light-pollution/klinkenborg-text

Then get back to me:)

[Rhetticent]

Son, I'll make you a deal. You read "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming", which in my very humble opinion totally refutes "An Inconvenient Truth" with hard science, and I'll look at the National Geographic.

I do believe in air pollution, and I don't at all deny that there are genuine environmental issues that need to be addressed. I do not believe that CO2, a trace gas in our atmosphere that is essential to life and non-toxic, is a pollutant. I also believe that it is being used as an excuse to generate a massive new income stream for government. One analogy to illustrate. In my state, gambling used to be illegal, which represented a moral position that one could argue is laudable, not one I share, but there's a reason why society has attempted to ban that in the past. Gambling became legal in my state only when the government decided to sponsor a lottery, thereby gaining millions in new tax revenue. Government at all level grows constantly: it's virtually the nature of bureaucracy. More revenue must be found at any cost to support that growth. It's that issue that is the most powerful motivation of my opposition to this whole global warming scare.

[Rhetticent]

Gentlemen: I'm delighted to discover your blog, and hope that you can help me by providing some civil and knowledgeable discourse about our current environmental controversies. I am a skeptic regarding climate change and global warming, and would very much like to get your take on some of the problems I have with all this stuff.

Here's some of my concerns: Water vapor is by a massive factor more significant as a greenhouse gas. Why is that not mentioned, and why does the research not address that? It appears to me that carbon dioxide, a trace gas (now, as I understand it, around 380 ppm) has been selected because it allows government to invent cap and trade, something they could never even remotely do with water vapor.

I also understand that all of the models that reflect climate change are possibly flawed because no one really knows how to input water vapor changes into those models.

My concern, as a conservative, is that we are going to drastically impact our economy, provide billions of dollars of income to an already bloated government, all in the name of fixing a problem that I cannot believe even exists. Mind you, I'm old enough to have lived through the Ice Age scare of the mid 70's, read Erlich's "Population Bomb"and Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" in the 60's, seen the Radon, ozone hole, Y2K and asbestos hysterias. So I come to the table as a skeptic, but I would welcome honest discussion.

[StanlyManly]

Good luck Rhett. The only folks that give honest discussion are already on the same side as you.

[elmerfude]

Not to worry rhetticent. Carbon dioxide will catalyze the reverse sublimation of the water vapor greenhouse gas causing the glaciers to grow. We will be lucky if we don't have another ice age with glaciers in New York freezing up what is left of all the credit.