A Day In Florence
If you want to know why an almost hysterical antagonism towards science is becoming the unifying issue of the right, a few items from today's news will tell you. On one hand a study of ice cores shows that CO2 and methane are at their highest in 800,000 years and are rising faster than any time that they were able to measure. At the same time a promising oil well is trumpetted as increasing Amercan reserves "up to" 50%.
The reality of the first is constantly underplayed, while the size of the second is constantly over stated.
Looking at the dry technical report we find a few things that are interesting. First the hyped up number from the Associated Press - which is now rapidly becoming an unreliable source - is at the top end range of estimates. It would be like a baseball manager saying "We could win 130 games this year."
The reality is more muted:
More than 12 Bbbl of oil in place have been discovered to date. Potential recoverable reserves per discovery range from 30 to 400 MMboe, with a 69% success rate, i.e., 9/13. Trend-potential ranges from 3 to 15 Bbbl of recoverable oil.
First note the range - the midline amount is far lower than 15 billion barrels of oil equivalent, the AP adds in the gas potential, again at its top number to get its total. 9 billion of petroleum is simply the average of the extremes, and that would be an the high side. Also note that even with this find, and even with the wildly optimistic estimates, half of the oil has already been found. While it is clearly a "world class" field, that doesn't mean as much as it used to. A billion barrels is enough to do that.
But number need comparisons, and we find them in this report:
The volume is 44 percent more than the estimated 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
In short, this is a drop in the bucket globally. And yet the top of possibility number is what is repeated like a mantra in report after report, even though the probability of that number panning out is at the level of roulette wheel odds.
And that's the good news. The bad news is that if this doesn't pan out, that is virtually it for oil in North America:
"If you look at North America and ask where there is significant oil yet to be discovered and produced, there are really only two areas: the Canadian oil sands, which we're a significant player in, and this area of the lower tertiary," he said.
And that is bad news because on the cosmic scale of things, 15 billion, even if we hit that number, is 1.5% of the total reserves estimated left to be found. Even putting wildly optimistic ANWR together with wildly optimistic that gives us 25 billion barrels. That sounds like a lot. It isn't.
According to the US Government, the US uses 20,656,000 barrels of oil per day that's 7.5 billion barrels per year. That means that wild optimism gives us less than 4 years of current consumption from the two largest US deposits left. We could cut our oil use in half, and it would only get us 8 years. This is not what you would call a long term policy. In order to avoid this simple reality, the Republicans would have to ban addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. No Child Left Behind and religious zealot home schooling are making them harder to find, but they aren't illegal yet.
For comparison, Iraq has 115 billion barrels of proven reserves - that is, already found or very likely to be found. And that's a relatively firm number, not at the top end of expectations number. It is 4 times what we might possibily find in the two largest remaining US drilling areas. And that is already there.
So the optimism on the oil supply side is being wildly over hyped. This is important news for oil companies - some 25% of the value of US oil majors involved probably rests on the outcome of the "Wilcox trendline" - but for consumers of oil, this is static on the edge of the dial.
In short the optimism only looks good when it is pushed to is wildly optimistic extreme, and stripped of the context of how much we actually use, and how many other such finds are potentially left.
There's another thing which needs to be mentioned, in the wake of Ivan, Katrina and Rita - and that is that the "Wilcox trendline" is sitting in ultra deep water, with platforms that float on the surface, in 8000 feet of water, and must drill down some 30,000 feet. Namely - the are in the gulf, which is swept by tropical storms and hurricanes.
In fact an atlantic tropical storm was declared to have formed during the time I've been typing this article. Florence is expected to recurve out to sea, and is no threat to oil, but every patch of convection on a tropical low is going to mean more and more.
While no serious person expects a repeat of last year;s Barry Bondsesque record season, the reality is that it only takes one storm loose in warm gulf waters to create a great deal of trouble. And what the oil press is saying is that no matter how you slice it, more of our oil supply in the US is going to be in harm's way.
The pessimism on the sink side, however, is growing for the simple reason that greenhouse gases are at their highest levels that we can measure, going back 800,000 years, and they are going up faster than any time as well. Not only are levels too high, they are going up even faster than ever.
While tiny band aid measures are trumpetted as wonderful news - they are, let's be blunt, almost entirely symbolic. It is good to give people something to do, and something that will remind them of the larger problem, but planting trees won't make a dent in the growth of CO2 globally.
That's what I see reading a day of news, not really good news blown up out of proportion, and very real bad news shoved into the back pages. Oil is down in a speculative blow off - we've seen several in the current oil run up - but the realities that drive the rise in oil prices from their 1998 bottom are still in place. The US uses too much, the Chinese will use more, and there are a couple billion people who want to have the same affluent lifestyle.
On the other side of the equation the realities are the same too: the better the news is on the oil supply front, the worse it is on the sink front. The more oil we have to burn, the more waiting will be the option that people making a profit now will choose, and the worse the problem will be.
What's puzzling to me is how scientific scepticism became a "conservative" issue. Certainly that high-profile issue of evolution is clear enough to understand in terms of being a continuation of the debate on the origins of man. But denial of global warming? It's unclear how this fits into the worldview of the social conservative.
I would tentatively offer the following explanation. Conservatism, as a political movement, has benefited greatly from the intellectual work that preceded and paralleled it in journals of opinion, think tanks, new media, etc. The conservative intellectual movement struggled with and never quite resolved the tension between its libertarian and traditionalist wings, achieving consensus largely through anti-communism and opposition to the New Deal welfare state. This coalition was practical, in short, and once the movement began making political gains, the struggle was less about intellectual consistency but power; which people, constituencies, would gain the most from the fruits of electoral victory. The libertarians got to have their experiments (solutions in their mind) with laissez-faire economics and the traditionalists got to use government to make the world conform to their prejudices. But on each side, I believe, there was and is a deference to authority that unites them and it is this deference to authority that has allowed present-day conservatives to continue supporting Bush despite the abundance of evidence that he (and the Republican Congress) is ruining the country.
Science derives from authority as well, but one in which authority is earned through acceptance by the scientific community. What upsets these conservatives is that scientific decisions are being made independent of an explicitly political faction. Yes, there are scientists who politicize their findings, but it works in that order only--scientific consensus precedes political action. Global warming challenges some (un)stated assumptions of the libertarian worldview. And despite their professed faith in freedom and individualism, libertarians are quite doctrinaire about their worldview. The intellectual forebears of libertarianism are the authorities and an independent scientific consensus challenges that. And because the conservative coalition is a practical one, seemingly unconservative, uncontroversial, issues like global warming are attacked by conservatives from both the libertarian and traditionalist camps.
What's really pathetic is the failure of conservative opinion-makers and power brokers to muster the courage to admit they might be wrong. Over the course of my research into the conservative intellectual movement I have, as a progressive, come around to some points made by conservative intellectuals in the 1950s-60s. I was persuaded by evidence and argument. Today's conservatives are nothing but ideologues who can not or will not think critically. I'd like to think those that laid the intellectual framework for them would be appalled.
September 5, 2006 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am curious. How does Iran compare?
September 5, 2006 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's not scepticism about science, it is out right hostility and denial.
Stirling Newberry http://www.bopnews.com
September 5, 2006 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, the trouble is science runs counter to the greedy happiness of corporations, not least giant oil, all of which have been depended upon to fuel conservative political victories. So you turn that into a religious crusade: off with the scientists' heads.
That British Antartic Survey came up with a deadline, and I mean dead. They gave the UK ten years to turn this around -- five years to think about it and five years to implement.
Determine the destiny of our planet. Let's see Chevron fit that one into a full-page NYTimes ad.
September 5, 2006 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
OPEC reserve numbers are basically bogus, Crissie. Back in the 80s, OPEC decided to proportion its production quotas to its members' reserves. The members' reserves -- just about all of them -- magically doubled overnight, though no major discoveries were made. Since then, not one of them has been willing to admit to declining reserves, even though they've been producing vigorously and discovering little.
It's a miracle! You look at the graph and the numbers bounce up and down through the sixties and seventies, then suddenly in the eighties they go flat as a board and stay that way.
One might make a rough guess, based on how much Iran produces and the rate of decline in that number, that their reserves are comparable to those of Iraq, give or take 20%. But what that comes to in real numbers I have no idea.
September 5, 2006 2:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Conservatives have become scientific skeptics -- or rather outright science denialists, as Stirling says downthread -- because the problems that scientists are pointing out, such as global warming and increasingly dire depletion of the energy base of our civilization, would require coordinated action by governments all over the world. Conservatives don't like that. In fact, they don't like action by individual governments even in the countries they govern. Therefore the problems don't exist. QED. It's an intellectually corrupt argument, but that only means it can't be made in the full light of day.
September 5, 2006 2:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was perfectly aware when I wrote it that "scientific scepticism" is a light criticism for what has been called a "war on science" on behalf of Republicans and conservatives. What I was trying to get at was how conservatives distinguish between "good" and "bad" science, my suggestion being its proximity to authority. A good example of this would be the application of science to military technology. Even if the athoritarian sctructure of the military is subordinated to civilian authority, conservatives are happy as long as the man in the White House echoes these authoritarian tendencies. Furthermore, the application of resources toward military ends by the state demonstrates that conservatives are perfectly happy using the government to solve problems--it just depends on the problem. Sorting that out was my primary concern, since I think there is more going on here than traditional conservative animosity towards the state. The very fact that conservative animosity towards science (I don't see any evidence that they are hiding their arguments from the "light of day") is public and confident (they're assuming Middle America is in agreement with them) makes the selectiveness of conservative scientific scepticism an interesting and complex analytical problem.
September 5, 2006 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: But denial of global warming? It's unclear how this fits into the worldview of the social conservative.
It doesn't. To the extent that the Religious Right has played along on this issue it's just a quid pro quo for the corporatist support of their agenda. However that may be coming to an end as there is a now strong sentiment among politically active evangelicals to include environmental issues among their portfolio of moral issues they care about. I doubt they will ever put up there in rank with abortion, but they are starting to care about these issues. Add to that the fact that the rank and file of social conservatives are affected by the same economic malaise that the rest of the country is experiencing and that their sons and daughters are at risk in Iraq while the GOP has not exactly scored any major triumphs on their high priority issues and I think this faction will no longer be quite so fervid in their support of the GOP. No, they won't support Democrats either, but they may just start retiring to church to pray instead, as some of their leaders advised them to do back in the last years of the Clinton administration.
September 5, 2006 3:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pretty good essay.
September 5, 2006 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
More than one factor at work, I'd say. Science was revered when it served the money ("Better living through chemistry", "Science says," etc.) Once it found some inconvenient data, such as dangerous cars and cigarettes, and environmental damage, it was banished to the sneering lower case usage, "scientists".
Another is the dogma clash, with evolution still making some folks uncomfortable, and climate change asks the question "Are we not living up to our obligation as stewards" as in biblical dominion. I find, among conservative acquaintances, some willingness to accept it is happening, but a real resistance to accepting we are causing it. This is because of the same question as above. It can't be our fault, since we are doing God's will and therefore it isn't happening, or it is supposed to happen.
Of course, like my favorite bumper sticker, "Stop Continental Drift" evolution happens, and there is a whole pile of new CO2 in play. IF dramatic changes are in store, it may be that the best we can do is at least appear to be trying to help.
September 5, 2006 4:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually there's another reason for the Right's denial of scientific bad news. It is the aversion to everything 60's. Among much else, the "60's" brought many many predictions of horrors to come, soon, any one of which would devistate life as we know it. Many of the predictions were backed up by scientist advocates and even scientific articles.
Well it hasn't happened. In fact the global outlook has improved markedly since the 60's. So it is natural that the reactions against 60's radical politics would reach to a reaction against dramatic doomsday predictions. The scientists were lying then and they must be lying now.
The dangers of crying wolf. Now that global climate change is a real danger (or rather, certainty) it is easy for them to dismiss as just more lefty scare tactics.
September 5, 2006 4:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, they're pretty happy with techological innovation generally, regardless of its connection to authority. A lot of them are essentially technological cornucopians. Instapundit wants to send his brain into space in a robot, for god's sake. Military technology is linked to authority, war fetishism, Tom Clancy novels, and probably a lot of other things that conservatives like. But iPods, microwave ovens, and MRI machines are not; yet I don't see any lack of enthusiasm for that kind of stuff on the part of conservatives. It's the scientific study of biology at the ecological level, or of human beings, or of the environment that raises their hackles. I think that's because they know those are the things that we fucking up beyond repair, and they don't want to know about it.
No, they're not hiding their arguments from the light of day. I was trying to describe the roots of a mind-set -- an intellectually corrupt one, IMO -- just as you are.
But I'm happy just to agree to disagree.
September 5, 2006 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, let me just add another thing. In my experience, as soon as a conservative, very few of whom know anything about the actual science behind global warming or oil depletion, gets it into his head that there's a purely technological solution to these problems -- giant venetian blinds in space, say, or ethanol from corn -- the resistance to the science goes down sharply. The science-denialism stems from a reluctance to agree that we might have to do something about these problems that is not a technofix, such as changing the way we live on the planet. As I said in my earlier post, I think that's because any such change would involve government action on the economy, which would be a no-no.
So I still agree to disagree, but I wonder how your hypothesis accounts for this wondrous change in conservative attitudes toward science whenever a technofix swims into their ken.
September 5, 2006 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
The global outlook now is pretty much what it the doomers thought it was in the sixties, actually. The reason all those Cassandras were "wrong" is that we caught a couple of good breaks (though very costly ones long-term) to push things back a few decades: the "green revolution" in agriculture, which was the rough equivalent of using the roof for firewood because the sun is shining; and some enforced energy efficiency combined with Saudi cooperation to produce an oil glut. (The Saudi cooperation being the rough equivalent of throwing the furniture into the fireplace after the roof.) Things like that are no longer in the cards.
And by the way, a great deal of life, whether it's "life as we know it" or not, has in fact been devastated since the sixties. So far the giant die-off has been confined to plant and animal species, be patient.
September 5, 2006 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thoughts from all over:
"We have a no-analogue situation. We don't have anything in the past that we can measure directly," (Like over 800,000 years ago)
--From the referenced article
Not quite, for science has been gleaming the record of both paleontology and geology:
"A period of global warming, called the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM), occurred around 55 million years ago and lasted about 100,000 years. Current theory has linked this to a vast release of frozen methane from beneath the sea floor, which led to the earth warming as a result of increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."
-- From a NASA study
The Gulf of Mexico, the energy gift that just keeps on giving:
The "Wilcox Group in the Gulf of Mexico basin spans much of the Late Paleocene and Early Eocene."
-- From a Chevron/Texaco geologist
So Chevron et. al. has just found oil from a time when global fauna teemed in one hot greenhouse, and the science of it all has only now come full circle–inclusive of a dash of perennial irony.
September 5, 2006 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
This BTW is probably what is behind Iran's nuclear program. They do have at least some honest need to provide energy in the future at some point. Perhaps the urgency they display reveals something about actual reserves?
September 6, 2006 5:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
This BTW is probably what is behind Iran's nuclear program. They do have at least some honest need to provide energy in the future at some point. Perhaps the urgency they display reveals something about actual reserves?
September 6, 2006 5:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The global outlook now is pretty much what it the doomers thought it was in the sixties"
No. Far far far from it. The spread of Sovietism and other forms of totalitarianism did not overrun the world -- democracy has proved very attractive everywhere. The eventually certainty of massive nuclear war -- nuclear winter -- has passed. The population explosion has abated; we'ld be anticipating 100 billion people rather than peaking at 10 billion. The computer revolution arguably increased personal freedom rather than eliminating it. They predicted all the rivers would burn like the Cuyahoga in 1969. The air would be permanently unhealthy to breathe. All industrial materials would be exhausted (the Simon-Ehrlich bet).
Get real.
September 6, 2006 8:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Regarding changing attitudes toward science in light of technofixes.
Bear in mind that this is still pretty much at the level of pet-theory, but I strongly suspect that there is a link in the libertarian mind between innovation and freedom that, in the end, validates for them the perfection of the market. Technology, particularly the speed with which it now comes to market, validates the superiority of private enterprise over government, heightens distrust of politicians and bureaucracy, and elevates the entrepreneur to somewhere between "captain of industry" and "visionary." Wired magazine is perhaps the best example of this mindset. It is still a well-written and generally thoughtful (notable exceptions include its founder and the juvenile writings of Jennifer Granick) periodical with a unabashed optimism about humanity's potential through technology. I might be overstating or even exaggerating the point, but my feeling is that the message of Wired is that liberated individuals can triumph over archaic authority, whether they be sacred or profane.
Clearly the focus of the modern tech-savvy libertarian is on the impedance of government and politics. The X-prize contest two years ago was something I speculated on at the time: is the success of a privately-funded spacecraft going to rachet up the criticism of NASA as a bloated government program? I suppose what troubles me is that there is a real lack of historical perspective amongst this crowd. Most technological innovation in this country--indeed the innovation that made us an post-industrial powerhouse--originated in federally-funded programs or joint ventures that were transitioned to the market after costs came down. The libertarians seem to forget this. For them, government is always an obstacle, never a partner, and this certainty of thought is reinforced by the novelty of technological innovation.
I've strayed way off course here but I think it's worth noting that the fundamental schism between libertarian and traditionalist conservatives I initially discussed is very apropos here. The manner in which each observes the nature of authority leads to very different perspectives on the use of science and technology.
September 6, 2006 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to mention that the population bomb is proving to be a dud and with birth rates falling everywhere (including Third World countries) we need to start trying out the phrase "population implosion".
September 6, 2006 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink