(1) You may be right but it is by no means clear. What you are claiming is that the point at which it becomes unprofitable to fish is at a higher population than the point from which the population can recover. This may or may not be true (or may be true of some species and not others). I honestly have no idea.
(2) Even if you are right, it does not mean that this market system of regulating fish catch will work better from the point-of-view of us, the fish, or the entire ecosystem than would a system that actually tried to regulate things so that the fishing was at a more sustainable rate.
By the way, not to beat a dead horse, but back on the DDT thing, here is a link to another NAS report that apparently discusses DDT, as this description of the report explains:
Again, the lesson they take from the DDT saga seems a bit different than the lesson drawn by Millroy and his ilk.
jshore, I agree that a lot of science is published. I agree that it’s possible to do a meatstudy etc to support a position. However that does not make an ad hominem on a source of information valid in a debate. One does not follow from the other. If one wishes to dispute the information that’s accepatble. If one wishes to suggest that scepticism of the source is warranted given specific an verifiable* past experiences that is acceptable. (It’s largely what I am doing). But to suggest that facts can be dismissed simply because of the person or organisation presenting the information is not and never has been logically valid. In fact it’s aprovable logical fallacy.
While I don’t dispute that impartial reviews are of value, I would dispute what you have said here.
First I would have to argue whether any externally funded body is impartial. IPCC staff owe their positions to a belief in and accepatnce of global warming. If, after the first round of talks, the IPCC had drawn the conclusion that such a phenomenon did not exists would the organisation still exist in 2003?
I personally don’t have much doubt that anthropogenic global warming is occuring. However that does not detract from the fact that any claim of the independence from a body of people who owe their paychecks to the continued existence of the problem is a less than self evident.
The second problem I have is that you seem to be suggesting that science takes votes on the facts. That the few heretics who proclaim global warming to be overblown ahould be dismissed simply because they are in the minority. While reading what you wrote I couldn’t hewlp but be rmeinded of the ‘Hundred scientists against Einstein’ fiasco. And of course his response:“If I were wrong, one would have been enough.”
If the scientists publishing evidence against greehouse or DDT were wrong, then it shouldn’t take a panel or an academy to prove them wrong. One scientist would be enough.
I would hope that science has not yet arrived at the stage where the truth or otherwise of complex issues is decided by governing bodies or by vote,
And while I’m sure that the Natl. Ac. of Sciences report really does say ‘the data on adverse ecological effects are vast and convincing’, that’s an assertion and no more. There is no actual data to dispute. What we now have is your appeal to your authority that says the results are convincing and my appeal to my authorities that say the results are unconvincing.
With absolutely no evidence of these convincing results, but cited examples of reslts that draw the opposite conclusion, we only have one logical course don’t we?
Thanks Scylla. From the Master himself. This quote is very telling: “While DDT is highly toxic to insects and fish and can poison other animals in large enough doses, in moderate amounts it’s not especially harmful to birds and mammals, including humans. (Ironically, the EPA’s own judge agreed, but was overruled by its chief administrator)”
So the EPA says Carson’s case was overblown and that DDT is not especially harmful to birds and mammals. There’s one independant body that agrees.
This is the problem with deciding the facts by vote and consensus. Who gets to vote and which body’s consensus overrules which?
From Cecil’s column linked by Scylla, with some added emphases:
So DDT is pretty bad for the environment, no question about it. Carson’s fears may have been exaggerated, but I think Cecil explains pretty well why her efforts were valuable.
DDT is effective against malaria, and in that sense it’s useful. However the way I read it Cecil makes it clear that the effects to the environment from DDT cannot be written off. He’s saying we still use DDT not because it’s safe, but because it’s effective at controlling the spread of certain harmful diseases. The damage to the environment is a cost we assume because the benefits to humans are in evidence, but that does not make it a safe substance overall.
So Carson missed the mark on some of her claims… it’s been known to happen. I don’t see the need (or support) to vilify her efforts or discredit her work as a whole.
Blake, you are aware that science often works on informed consensus over matters that may not be immediately clear or demonstrable? You seem to have quite a simplistic view of this matter.
Most of the people involved in writing the IPCC reports are scientists who are working at other places-- universities, government labs, … I don’t think most of them are paid to do this work for the IPCC, or if they are, I doubt that the amount of payment amounts to much in comparison to the hours they put into it!
I agree that science is not decided by voting. However, it is also not decided by purveyors of junk-websites on the internet. There are mechanisms in science such as peer-review that are intended to prevent science from becoming a free-for-all where people can publish misleading things, quote selectively, etc.
In general, it is best just to let science work things out for themselves through this process. However, when the scientific issues also have important public policy considerations, it is reasonable to have respectable groups like IPCC and NAS do surveys of the current state of the peer-reviewed literature to present to fellow scientists, policymakers, and the public at large.
I think the logical conclusion is to consider the authorities…NAS on one side vs. Steve Milloy on the other. Hmmm, well, that’s a tough choice. If you want to learn more, you can read that NAS report and look at their citations. However, I think it is ridiculous to pretend that you or I are in a position to read some garbage on the internet and then make pronouncements on scientific issues. (I am, by the way, a PhD scientist…but since my field is physics, I am not deluded enough to believe that I know more about DDT than an NAS Committee on Life Sciences.)
While I have a certain amount of respect for the idea of questioning authority, I also have enough respect for the scientific process and for impartial organizations like NAS. And I am not quite arrogant enough to believe that I am able to read a few things on a web page and then decide on the basis of the evidence better than the sort of respected scientists in their field who would serve on an NAS committee.
By the way, just to show you the sort of selective quoting that goes into the Millroy diatribe, here is a quote they give on that page from a 1970 NAS study:
Note first that this study is a lot earlier than the studies that I reported and comes at a time when they were first learning about the dangers from DDT. However, we can also see that, even so, this quote is quite out of context, thanks to the wonders of the web, as that report is now available on-line. Here is the page from which they quote, so you can get the entire context and realize that they are complimenting DDT in the context of real concerns about it and just trying to say that we must be careful to weigh and balance things. (Remember that this is a still few years before the EPA ban.) And, here is another page in the same study that talks about DDT. Note that this line from that page somehow didn’t make Millroy’s treatise:
But, of course, Milloy isn’t going to note this. He’d prefer to quote selectively and play science as political war rather than as the pursuit of knowledge.
From a reading of the Milloy cite, this appears to refer to the time when it was originally banned back in 1972. Presumably, a lot more of the science is better understood now so we ought to give the more recent conclusions from NAS more weight. Also, it is unclear exactly where Cecil got this story from (i.e., if it was from Milloy or others of his ilk) and what more of the background is. Here is a report off the EPA website that appears to give a more balanced account of the history. For example, it does note that the staff of the EPA, inherited from the USDA at the EPA’s inception backed the claim DDT was not “an imminent hazard to human health or to fish and wildlife”. However, it also notes:
Abe who do you think is doing that? All that I have ever said is that Carson predicted mass bird extinctions due to DDT that could never have happened. It was another example of a failed environmentalist prediction of catastrophe, and one base don flawed data. If you think someone has said otherwise then please find a quote to that effect.
I don’t think most of them are paid to do this work for the IPCC, or if they are, I doubt that the amount of payment amounts to much in comparison to the hours they put into it!
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Well when we have some evidence of the dollar value of funding, resume benefits from being on aboard for 10 years, junkets etc we can make an informed opinion about impartiality. Until then what I said stands. Assertions of impartiality are not self-evident.
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it is also not decided by purveyors of junk-websites on the internet
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I agree, that’s why the website I linked to was fully referenced and referred to peer reviewed journals and symposia. No one has suggested that anything is decided by junk websites. Glad we have cleared that up.
Agreed. No one ever said otherwise. As Cecil says, The EPA was such a group, decided that DDT use was acceptable based on such material, and was overruled based on unfounded scare tactics.
Do you know what a false dichotomy is?
NAS on one side, the EPA, Senate Committee on Agriculture and all the other scientists that Milloy cite sin support of his position on the other. You will notice on that page that Milloy says very little. He simply states facts with supporting references. It is the NAS vs those peer reviewed papers. This is something that you Natl Ac, Sci reference does not do.
I know nothing of Milloy and care less. Attacking him is a pointless ad hominem. Sayying that it is a coice between a lone Milloy in believing that DDT couldn’t cause the mass bird extinctions predicted by Cason and the NAS is a false dichotomy.
Gee, and who are you implying *is *I wonder? Nice try but I don’t make decisions based on a web page. I posted that page because it was a freely available collection of material that had been acceptably referenced for use in an informed debate. Nothing more. To imply that anyone made decisions based upon it is disingenuous.
We have the same problem here. You are not arguing against what has been presented, rather against the reasons or the path leading to those reasons.
Yes you have presented assertions by ‘authorities’ that DDT is horribly harmful, but not one piece of actual evidence. I have presented an equal number of assertions by equally authoritative bodies that DDT couldn’t have caused the extinction of birds as Carson predicted. In addition I have presented the actual peer reviewed material that supports this. The problem with assertions of the kind you have presented is that they can’t be dealt with with anything more than gainsaying.
The problem we have here is that there is no credible evidence that DDT could ever have caused the mass bird extinctions Carson predicted. And for my appeal to authority I’ll say that Cecil agrees with me.
To me that is not the same as “'substantive evidence” in the record to support the contention that DDT use will liklely lead to mass bird extinctions."
That is what is being discussed, not whether it should have been banned for killing spotted newts.
Do you believe that your above quote provides evidence to support Carson’s predictions of mass DDT induced extinctions?
Well, I have now presented evidence of why this still isn’t good enough. I looked at exactly one of the papers referenced on that cite and showed how selectively it was quoted from. What we have here is someone both choosing selectively from the peer-reviewed literature only those studies that support his thesis or choosing studies that don’t support his thesis but quoting from them selectively. This is why it is not good enough to just say, “Look, it has lots of nifty citations!”
And, I have now pointed out that in fact the decision was based on the recommendation of two commissions (although admittedly over the objections of some of the EPA staff that had been brought over from the USDA when EPA was formed). And, I have shown that a court ruling and a subsequent EPA review study (under order of Congress to consider affects on agriculture) supported the original decision.
No, it is selected quotations from selected peer-reviewed papers vs. the study of an NAS commission dedicated to impartially reviewing the full peer-reviewed literature.
Well, I honestly don’t know what the evidence is concerning whether these mass extinctions Carson predicted would occur. But, what exactly does that prove? It certainly doesn’t prove that DDT is not very harmful to bird species. And, just to remind you of what you said in this thread a few posts back:
Note that this statement was made by you before I even joined in the fray here.
Your whole case seems to be that if you take the most extreme predictions by environmentalists, they turn out to often not actually come true. Well:
(1) If you take the most extreme predictions of anything, it is likely that many of them will not turn out to be the case. That is why they are the most extreme.
(2) Since in many of the cases, we took actions to present the most extreme possibilities from coming true, it is often hard to determine how far off the mark the claims might have been if we had not taken such actions.
But, yes, I am willing to grant you that the most extreme predictions by environmentalists about things often will not come true. However, as it turns out, this is pretty much irrelevant because I don’t see cases where policy is decided based on the most extreme predictions. Policy usually lags enough, and there are enough special interests pushing back the other way, that policy ends up being based on a more sober presentation of the dangers. Look how far action on global warming is lagging. Hell, even the CEO of BP now believes global warming is a real threat and we ought to implement Kyoto and yet our President still refuses to do so.
By the way, while you may talk about the dangers of believing extreme predictions, the NAS report seems to worry about the opposite problem too (e.g., in its point that ‘another “DDT” would be inexcusable’): That one has to be cautious and very aware in order not to be caught by surprise by environmental dangers that weren’t adequately considered.
I disagree that it was selectively quoted from. Are you suggesting that the author wouldn’t agree that historically man owes a debt to DDT and that it has saved lives? If the author would agree then that’s not selective quotation at all. Nowhere was it implied that that author believed anything than that DDT had historically saved lives… How exactly is that misleading the reader as to the authors views on the subject of DDT’s historical role? Would you suggest that if I did an expose on Maoist agriculture and quoted the one section of Mao’s Red Book that dealt with being kind to animals, then I was selectively quoting Mao because I didn’t quote what he said on everything else? The sub-section is ‘Historical Background’. How do you figure what was quoted in any way selectively represents the authors views on the historical value of DDT? You seem to be implying that the author’s views on future trends should have been quoted in a section on historical background. If this is what you believe, how do you justify such a juxtaposition? If this is not what you believe then how exactly is the author’s opinion on future trends relevant?
No it is those papers. I have read them. Given that you have admitted that you have not then how can you make such a comment? What is your opinion concerning selective quotes based on? That one section where Milloy quoted the author’s writing on historical values in the section concerning historical background, but didn’t quote the author on future trends in a section entitled historical background?
Yes, and it’s what I’m saying now. My position hasn’t changed.
My whole case hasn’t changed from my first post ** jshore**. I’ll quote myself: “If dowsers have a success rate of 20% with claims that can be verified, then we rightly reject dowsing claims until they can be validated. When John Edward has a success rate of 10%, we rightly reject Edward’s claims until they can be independently validated. When environmentalists have a success rate of <1% with claims that can be validated, it seems to be forgotten within 5 years. Even the intelligent people on this board are willing to swallow the next scare claim.”
That has been my claim form the outset. The fish extinctions are yet another extreme prediction, and past experience tells us that extreme scepticism is the most logical reaction.
To quote “The Simpsons”
Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That’s specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn’t work.
Homer: “Uh-huh.”
Lisa: It’s just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
We have no evidence that such prophecies would come true. In most cases we have been able to find out because A) No action was taken or B) New data showed the effects to be impossible we have found that the prophecies could never have come true. IN the case of DDT we find the original data to be flawed, that DDT was nowhere near harmful enough to cause mass bird extinctions.
But you claim that the rock just might keep tigers away this time..
Call me old and cynical, but I don’t buy it. If the prophecies never came true every time we can prove it, and there is no reason to believe they would have come true the few times we can’t, then the smart money is on this being another doomsaying beat up.
Unless you want to buy my rock.
I can think of a few situations of where it is, but that’s beside the point.
Firstly this isn’t under discussion. I was merely bringing to the attention of the concerned that every other doomsaying environmentalist prophecy of a similar scale to this one has been proven untrue. I think that’s as relevant to this discussion as the dowser’s success rate is to a discussion on dowsing.
Secondly policy tends to be based to some degree on public perception. The extremist scares tend to stick in the public mind, influencing policy towards the extremist camp. The opposite extreme of “No fish species is under any danger”, is a non story and will never be heard by ‘the public’.
Thirdly policy, as you imply, is based on a median with some lag. A few ridiculous extremist alarms like this latest fish kill or the WTOs predictions of 50% of “all life extinct by 1990” form ‘policy outliers’. They pull the trend towards this extremist end. It’s impossible for any interest group to push policy to the other extreme because all they can possibly say is tat things ill stay the same. There is an absolute lower value but no absolute upper value.
I agree that the various groups pushing their version of the truth acts as a check to the most extremist elements, at least in the US, but lies being told by both sides is hardly our ally in the fight against ignorance is it?
But I don’t think that predicting a multi-taxon mass extinction event within 10 years is going to guard against that. Quite the opposite. It’s ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ syndrome. Tell people that things the world will be dead in 10 years time too often, and they will be less inclined to listen to you in 15 years time when you say that the world has a slight sniffle that could get worse.
You point out the alleged errors in logic of other posters, but you indulge in similar errors yourself. As an example the quote above, in which you seem to erect a false dichotomy involving consensus and falsification. Needless to say, the picture is rather more complex, particularly in situations that are not clearly or immediately demonstrable. And particularly in situations that also involve political action, such as the banning of a substance.
The Einstein reference is good, but it was in the context of a different problem, one that is clearly demonstrable on paper with available data using the appropriate methods (hence Einstein’s words). The whole point of the DDT discussion (or the Greenhouse discussion) is that things are a little bit murkier.
I have no problem with your statements that Carson was wrong on some counts, but, based on the self-correcting nature of scientific inquiry, I also don’t see them as terribly damning.
Of course. But that all hinges on whether the observations are in fact considered dependable, and whether they can be replicated, whether their underlying thinking survives peer review, etc. Biased sources are all too commonly cited on these boards, and they are always pointed out. Earlier someone justly criticized a Web site you cited as being a biased source. You complained it was an ad hominem attack. Then barely a little later you post:
Yet you will happily use and defend a cite that seems at the very least guilty of confirmation bias, if not more overt kinds.
Other than that, I think jshore makes a compelling case when he puts your objections in perspective. In any given set of predictions there will usually be extremes that could turn out wrong. That is of course not contested.
I just saw your last post on preview, and I have to agree with the Cry Wolf comment. I also think that scientific consensus in situations that are somewhat murky is absoultely vital to maintain a balanced view, and I’m talking about both extremes. For an example in the area of the Greenhouse discussions, just look at all the complacent, politically-driven views that Philip Stott gives us. I’d consider Stott a worse offender than Carson, whose efforts at least were founded on a reasonable view (that DDT can be quite harmful).
No. If it is science then no consensus is involved. A scientist can accept something on consensus, as can ‘the scientific community’. But that isn’t what you said. You said that science will work on consensus. This isn’t a false dichotomy, it is a true dichotomy. If nothing is ever accepted as fact except as a flasification, then facts can’t be accepted based on consensus, divine revelation or anything else. Where is the false dichotomy here?
Then we aren’t talking about science any more are we? Once something is accepted without clear proof or demonstration how can it be science?
Who is talking about banning anything? As I made quite clear in my last post to you we are talking about whether or not there is evidence that DDT use will ever lead to mass bird extinctions as predicted by Carson.
Really?
The ‘problem’ that prompted the action was s series of lectures and interviews Einstein was giving that were anti-war and particularly anti-fascist. Could you please show us the paper where Einstein’s viewpoint was clearly demonstrated. I mean this, please either show us this paper or else retract that statement. It will be very hard for the discussion to continue without clarification here.
Who said they were damning? I said that she predicted multi-taxon, continent-wide mass extinctions and that she was wrong. Along with every other prediction of such mass extinctions this century. What does this tell us is the likely outcome of this current prediction of multi-taxon, global extinctions?
Yes, what’s your point? What are you having trouble with? That no externally funded body can be said to be independent? That scientists are willing to accept science on its merits despite a lack of independence? What do you see being the problem here?
I think you have started arguing my case for me: that the independence or otherwise of Milloy or Natl Ac, Sci. or the IPCC is and must be irrelevant in any attempt to falsify any position.
If you believe I have ever said otherwise Abe then please point out where I did so.
But in this situation every extreme prediction has turned out to be wrong. We now have yet another extreme prediction. Logically, what is the likely status of this prediction?
You are missing the forest through the trees here. The point is that he is presenting only one side of the story. And, he is only noting ways in which people agree with him and not noting the ways in which they seriously disagree with him.
He could have quoted the other parts of the NAS report in the other sections. I mean, come on.
Well, that makes him one for one in misrepresentation in my book. And, he didn’t even put the views of the NAS report on historical background in the full context in which they appeared in the report. [And, by the way, I know more of Milloy’s misrepresentations from other subjects, so I know very well his motis operandi.] It’s also obvious that if Milloy’s page was at all a well-balanced view of the issue, then few scientists, let alone NAS committees in two different reports (well, 3 if you count the 1970 one), would conclude what they did concerning the evidence of DDT’s effects on ecological systems.
Well, you haven’t proven that the views expressed in the study that the OP cites are another extreme prediction. I am willing to agree with you that this study is not the last word. But, that doesn’t mean we should dismiss it either.
Well, if I claimed that these predictions would certainly have come true if not for what we did, then you would have a point in attacking my logic. I just questioned whether we can conclude for sure that they wouldn’t have. As it is, your logic is sort of like saying, “You told me that if I got into an accident like that in my vehicle, I’dlikely die and I did get in such an accident and I didn’t die.” And, then I point out that when I made the claim, you were driving a motorcycle and now you are driving a car with air bags that actually deployed in the accident and then you trying to tell me that this is somehow all beside the point.
Well, in some cases that may be true. We’d have to examine the cases on an individual basis and it would have to involve a reputable scientific authority to be sure.
On the other hand, extreme claims on the other side, e.g., claims involving the economic costs of environmental regulations, don’t often seem to come true either. And, worse than that, even the not-very-extreme cost claims (such as the counterestimates by the EPA to the inflated claims of industry) often seem to end up quite high of the mark. See this article in The American Prospect: http://www.prospect.org/print/V8/35/goodstein-e.html
On the other hand, those who have a vested interest in things as they are have lots of money and power and can use lots of economic scare-tactics. (E.g., “If we ban CFCs, the cost of air conditioners …”)
As, I noted, the other side can invoke economic boogymen and can appeal to the idea that banning this or regulating that will destroy our quality of life. (“Do you want to all live in grass huts just so we can save the yellow-breasted warbler wart?”)
Well, here we agree. I don’t like lies being told either. However, I fail to see how you have shown this Nature study has lies in it. In fact, as far as I know, you haven’t even shown Carson’s book has lies in it. (It may have things that have turned out to be incorrect, but that doesn’t necessarily make them lies.)
