During the 1980s, evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould famously agreed to abstain from engaging creationists in public debates. They did so because the scientific community had much more to lose than to gain from such spectacles. As Dawkins wrote, “Winning is not what the creationists realistically aspire to.  For them, it is sufficient that the debate happens at all. They need the publicity. We don’t.”

The community of climate scientists would do well to adopt the same policy toward public debates with climate change deniers. Climate change deniers share more in common with creationists than an ideologically driven rejection of well established science. Like creationists, they benefit from the valuable publicity and the patina of respectability that surround public clashes with knowledgeable experts. 

Several days ago I had the sorry experience of attending a debate on the science of global warming at the Cornell Club of New York City. The event did not feature any scientists with specific expertise in the science of climate change. Instead, the debate featured two lawyers representing the Federalist Society, a society of conservative attorneys with a strong pro-business slant, and its left-leaning counterpart, the American Constitution Society.

The resultant spectacle almost made me embarrassed to be a member of the legal profession. It also demonstrated the dangers inherent in jettisoning science’s careful, deliberative pursuit of objective fact in favor of courtroom-style, adversarial combat. This account should serve as an object lesson for any scientist who is invited to debate a global warming denier before an audience of novices.

The moderator of the event, Lois Bloom, a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of New York, began by introducing the two debaters. Francis J. Menton Jr., a partner in the litigation department of the law firm of Willkie, Farr, and Gallagher, argued on behalf of the Federalist Society. Representing the community of climate scientists was Michael B. Gerrard, who is a partner at the New York office of Arnold and Porter, a professor, the director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Climate Change Law, and the author or editor of many books on environmental law.

In terms of actual knowledge and experience relevant to climate science and environmental law, Menton was no match for Gerrard. By Menton’s admission, he has no background or experience remotely related climate science. Rather, he came to the subject as “a newcomer.” In a serious discussion of climate science among knowledgeable parties, this would have put Menton at a severe disadvantage or might have made an in-depth discussion almost useless. His handicap served as no impediment, however, at a courtroom-style contest where rhetorical flair can trump careful and dispassionate reasoning.

Indeed, this is the entire point of debates such as the one sponsored by the Federalist Society. Global warming deniers don’t stand a ghost of a chance when forced to defend their views before knowledgeable experts. With the science against them, their best hope is to change the terms of the debate by subjecting climate science to an adversarial trial before an unknowledgeable public with the frequent nastiness and misdirection that ensues. Menton himself openly advocated rejecting the dispassionate pursuit of objective fact among well-informed experts in favor of a courtroom circus show, with witty cross-examining attorneys acting as ringleaders. In Menton’s words, “laymen can cross examine the scientists, and they don’t have answers to a lot of questions.” The result is to exchange the motto “let the evidence speak for itself” for “may the glibbest man win.”

Menton made all too clear his desire to strip climate scientists of their rightful claim to valuable and specialized knowledge. As he would have it, attorneys, jurors, and laymen without a shred scientific training have perfectly equal claims to determining the cause and likely effects of humanity’s ever-increasing emission of greenhouse gases. As Menton put it to a room full of law students, aged attorneys, and interested members of the public: “Anyone in this room is as qualified to predict the future effects” of global warming as are climate scientists. No PhD? No problem! Let the soccer moms and dads decide.

Once scientists are subjected to the spectacle of a courtroom drama, the mountains of evidence for global warming and against climate change deniers no longer look formidable. Menton’s performance exhibited an impressive array of courtroom theatrics and rhetorical antics, each designed to persuade jurors that they may happily disregard the near-unanimous consensus of tens of thousands of experts who might know something about climate science. To judge by the response of his audience, his assortment of rhetorical ploys answered admirably.

Menton began by summarily dismissing all calculations of the increased temperatures that will result from humanity’s continued consumption of fossil fuels. “That’s not evidence,” Menton explained. “They’re only projections.” Only past measurements are “real.”

Future projections, you see, do not count—that is, unless those projections caution against regulating greenhouse gas emissions. No sooner had Menton utterly discounted climate scientists’ projections than he urged his audience to think carefully about the projected costs of gas and electricity. A twenty percent cut in carbon emissions by 2050, Menton argued, might lead these bills to “double,” “triple,” or increase to “four, or even five times” their current averages. And shouldn’t the public consider this when considering whether to regulate gas emissions?

To Menton’s credit, he rightly admitted that scientists with the relevant expertise have reached a near-unanimous consensus that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are the major driving force behind global warming. Alas, this forced him to do what any skilled courtroom attorney might do in similar circumstances: he smeared climate scientists and impugned the integrity of their data.

Menton would have us believe that the climatologists collect data on global warming much the way the Three Stooges might. As Menton portrayed them, climate scientists are bumbling fools who have enormous difficulty detecting sources of measurement error that are obvious to attorneys and laymen with zero scientific training. Menton recounted stories of climate data measurement stations situated amidst urban areas, where temperatures can be significantly higher than in cooler, rural locals. One photo he displayed showed a cooking grill sitting next to a purported temperature monitoring station. He spoke of regional temperature variations—for example, that between New York City’s Central Park and West Point’s rural New York State campus—that are as large as the recent average global temperature increases measured by climate scientists. He pointed to the widespread use of proxy methods of measuring temperatures before the late nineteenth century, when regular, direct measurement of climate data began.

As one might imagine, climate scientists have long known about the issues Menton highlighted. They have performed their measurements and their analyses very carefully to take into account the obvious variables Menton identified. Even after accounting for these variables, average global temperatures show an unmistakable upward trend. Moreover, it is dead wrong to argue that local variations in temperature make it impossible to accurately measure average global temperature increases. It is as if Menton objected to economists’ declaring a nationwide recession because a few local businesses increased their profits.

Much of Menton’s presentation focused on the famous “hockey stick” graph, a chart from a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showing generally stable average global temperatures during the past thousand years, an alarmingly sharp spike in recent decades, and a projection of future temperatures that rockets far above any temperatures we have known.

Menton amused his audience by shrinking the scale on the graph’s vertical axis (i.e., the axis on which temperature is displayed). “Notice that the scale is in tenths of a degree,” he emphasized. He presented a version of the graph with its axis vastly expanded. The data appeared as a tiny line at the bottom of the new graph, its ominous spike reduced to a barely perceptible pimple. Presto! The global warming menace had seemingly disappeared. “Suddenly it doesn’t look so frightening anymore,” Menton joked, as several audience members chortled and nodded approvingly.

No mention, of course, was made of the disastrous effects that would likely follow a long-term increase of global temperatures of only a few degrees Celsius—an increase the science community’s data still predicts, no matter how one stretches the graph’s vertical axis. No matter. These small details were inessential to the thrust of Menton’s presentation.

Menton’s most audacious performance involved his comparison of three graphs showing measured temperature increases since the late nineteenth century. The three graphs were taken from three papers published by the noted climate scientist James Hansen in 1980, 1987, and 2007. All three displayed the same disquieting trend, with average global temperatures rising steadily over the long term despite short-term variations that occasionally dip.

Menton carefully cherry picked and color highlighted two segments of data on a PowerPoint slide, such that the two segments exchanged relative positions in the 2007 graph; where the second segment was higher than the first in the earlier graphs, it appeared underneath the first segment in the last graph. One could imagine him following by asking, “Would you trust a scientist whose data flip-flops like this?”

Such cherry picking is stock-in-trade among global warming deniers’ bag of tricks. Scientists’ measurements of past temperatures have improved significantly over the last thirty years, and it was inevitable that some old data would be cast aside in favor of more accurate figures.

Worse than that, however, was Menton’s comparison of the first two graphs. “Those two segments look a lot closer together in the second graph,” he noted with a flourish. Yet he failed to mention that the vertical scales on the two graphs were different; the second graph’s compressed scale naturally led the two data segments to appear closer. Menton flashed his slide so quickly that few in the audience—including Gerrard—seemed to notice.

The remainder of Menton’s presentation focused on the many specious and long-discredited arguments we have come to expect from global warming deniers: that a period of regional warming during the Medieval era supposedly shows that today’s increase in global temperatures isn’t unusual; that a recent, short-term increase in arctic ice thickness somehow negates the clear, opposing long-term trend; that a handful of stolen e-mails showing scientists discounting unreliable data undermines the data and analysis of tens of thousands of climate researchers corroborating global warming; and that a report by a statistician hired by a Republican Congressman invalidates the IPCC’s “hockey stick” graph despite the graph’s vindication by the National Academy of Sciences and other independent experts.

Mr. Gerrard did a creditable job of answering Menton’s criticisms. He effectively exposed the fallacies of employing short-term trends to discount data on long-term trends and of seizing on regional temperature variations to discredit measurements of overall average temperatures. He laid forth the massive evidence from disparate sources pointing unmistakably to a long-term increase in global temperatures, driven by human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. He pointed out rising sea levels, increases in ocean acidity, and shrinking glacial and polar ice. He explained that even the Pentagon now recognizes global warming, and he recounted the human disasters that will likely follow it that are as serious threats to national security.

Whether Gerrard convinced any audience members to rethink their position is doubtful, however. Many met his presentation with exasperated sighs, apparently having made up their minds about the evidence before setting foot in the room.

During a question and answer period following the debate, a question from the audience nearly left Menton stammering. What plausible alternative explanations, he was asked, account for the obvious warming trend shown in actual temperature measurements since the nineteenth century? Menton’s initial response was ridiculous, consisting of but one word: “Clouds.” After an uncomfortable silence ensued, Menton continued: “Cosmic rays. Nobody knows what’s causing it.”

Lois Bloom, the moderator, asked a very insightful question of Menton. Perhaps a few scientists might be skewing their data; but how is it that independent scientists, employed in different countries and by different agencies, have reached an almost universal consensus that global warming is real? Menton responded feebly that government climate scientists—and in particular, those working for the EPA—have “a monetary stake” in perpetuating alarmist myths about climate change. Menton would have us believe that tens of thousands of scientists from across the globe have perpetrated a near-perfect conspiracy in exchange for pittances often rivaled by public school teachers’ salaries. That most government scientists could earn several times their pay working in industry does not appear to have occurred to him.

Sadly, there was little point to Gerard’s exceptional presentation of the massive evidence pointing to global warming and his patient dissection of Menton’s blunders in reasoning. The great majority of audience members came to the event with foregone conclusions about the global warming “controversy.” The gentlemen seated to my left and right eagerly lapped up Menton’s presentation, guffawing heartily at his humorous jabs at the near-unanimous consensus of knowledgeable experts on climate change.

The evening’s event left me feeling sorry for humanity and increasingly worried for its future. In the end, the two lawyers’ debate was successful only in producing heat—as if the world needed any more of that.

We have exchanged e-mail before on a different subject, one in which I disagreed with your opinion. So I would like to preface my thoughts by saying I know your job is difficult and I don’t have a fundamental problem with your work as a whole.

That said, I would like to voice my dissent for your ”The Phantom Menace of Superstition in Film and Television” in the SI Digest of May 27, 1999. I take issue with several aspects of your remarks and outline them below.

1. Beginning at the end. In the final sentence of your article you say, in part, “...our democracy will be tested if we continue to live in fantasy, and lack an appreciation for science and reason.” Is there a compelling reason to suppose we can not enjoy a rich fantasy life and still appreciate science and reason? I believe there is a middle ground, where movie fantasy entertainments are starting points for lessons in science, where suspension of reality leads to in roads to reality. I saw “Star Wars” before becoming a skeptic and even then various friends, teenagers like myself, talked about “the Force” as though it were real, while I argued that it was simply a plot device in a movie. In these discussions many of my future skeptical views were shaped. The dialogue would not have been open for me without the movie.

   One of my top ten movies of all time is Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Not that I buy the conspiracy of the government, the visitation of the aliens, or even the reality of the space ships. I enjoy it so much because it is a consummate work of movie making, story telling, and exciting narrative. Outside the viewing experience I don’t buy a single precept of the movie. If I thought of it as a documentary it wouldn’t be because of the movie, but because of a desire to confirm my beliefs. Both of us know that confirmation of this kind is pointless, but those who don’t have beliefs so deeply imbedded the movie is not going to make a difference one way or the other. Should we deny this entertainment to the rest of us based on the fact that a few may misconstrue it?

2. Alienation. Education is the answer, not overt or covert censorship. Skeptics have a hard time persuading people we are just ordinary people with methods for assessing the world around us. Too often those who run in skeptic circles don’t do trench work with the real day-to-day believers. One of the biggest complaints about skeptics is that we lack soul, that we are humorless, lifeless, science drones. In all my discussions with UFOlogy supporters (and I have them everyday) not once have I heard the “X-FILES” referred to as anything more than a television show. The impact is merely one of entertainment that speaks to their concerns, but does not raise their concerns. Should we then embark on an alienating campaign that verifies the worst suspicions about skeptics? Are the results equal or greater than the price?

3. Hypocrisy. So far as I know the extraordinary claim that movies and television fiction elicit direct philosophical and intellectual responses is unproved. I know there are some studies that suggest that paranormal documentary and news shows influence thinking, but do we have any reason to belittle the reasoning of vast movie audiences enough to suggest they don’t know the difference between documentary-style shows and entertainment?

4. Mythology. I have been involved with skeptics of and adherents to work by Sitchen, Hancock, van Daniken and other “lost civilizations and lost history” type authors. The skeptical view is that mythology is metaphor not history. Why then should movie mythology become greater other mythology in the popular mind? Certainly we can look at the abuses of these authors and say, “See? There’s the danger,” but even then we have to confront the idea that it is a movie, not some old mythological story and faces carved in stone.

5. Elitism. It is all well and good to speak of concern for the common man and to fight for science literacy. But in the end, the discussion breaks down to, “I understand it’s just a movie, but THEY obviously must be protected.” In order for anyone to become science literate certain basic criteria must be understood. One may well be that they know the difference between an entertainment and a text book. Will deconstructing the work of George Lucas further the understanding of science further, or is this a case of eliminating the opposition with rhetoric then providing the one true alternative? This is, in the field of philosophy and world view, the equal to political mudslinging. And worse, another example of elite skeptical snobbery. How would you feel, as a human being, if someone hinted that you don’t know the difference between movies and reality? Then sneered, “I do”.

Rather than making the case AGAINST the ideas we combat, we should make the case FOR our side. Pointing out insignifigant areas of concern doesn't further the skeptical cause, it hinders it. While I have always enjoyed your writing style, I have often been at odds with your message. If you want to reach the general public (and by you I mean the organization you represent), stop approaching them like they are fellow professors or scientists, and start writing TO them. The last thing you need to do is preach to the choir about pitfalls and possible dangers in popular culture. Use popular culture to reach the audience of popular culture.

Two days ago my daughter came home from school complaining that her class had read a story about manta rays, and the pictures of the rays had disturbed her. I used the opportunity to examine the beauty of evolution, making it interesting by supposing that a creature on another planet could look like this ray and fly in the air hunting silicon creatures for food. I got the idea from an article by the same Carl Sagan you quoted. Mr. Sagan had an imagination and understood the inherent power of it to lead to new ideas and lessons about the real world. I urge you and your organization to follow his example.

Regards,
Dave Vaughan

The case against Lucas and Spielberg has its origins a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, where science and reason were celebrated. It was the age of the Enlightenment, a period that dominated Western culture during the eighteenth century. The era praised and expanded the achievements of Bacon, Voltaire, Locke, and Newton while offering rationalism and science as the best means for navigating, shaping, and understanding the world. The great achievements of science and technology we enjoy today owe much to the traditions of the Enlightenment.

The Romantic period was an intellectual rebellion that followed the Enlightenment, stretching through the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. If the Enlightenment was an age dominated by scientists and philosophers, than the Romantic period was the era of poets and artists. Romantic poets Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge disdained science, and in their writing admired transcendental fantasies, emotion, agrarianism over industry, and intuition over reason.

By the twentieth-century, the traditions of both Romanticism and the Enlightenment co-existed, but in irreconcilable conflict. In 1959, English scientist and novelist C.P. Snow described the development as “The Two Cultures.” One culture was comprised of the arts and humanities while the other was comprised of science. Between the two, Snow described ” a gulf of mutual incomprehension.”

The most dominant art form of the century, however, came about through a combination of the Two Cultures. The scientific invention of cinema and television merged music, drama, visual setting, and narrative into an assault on the senses and emotions of mass audiences worldwide. Culture and society were forever changed.

As communication researcher George Gerbner points out, the privilege of storytelling in our society has been given to the producers, writers, directors, and owners of film and television. The role of storytelling is critical to a culture as it shapes our conceptions of self and society, and influences our aspirations, behavior, and knowledge.

During the Enlightenment, storytelling was dominated by the philosophes, journalistic popularizers and great public orators who propagandized the achievements of science and reason. The result was an educated public that championed rationalism and personal freedom.

One of history’s great ironies then is that although science created the medium, the dominant storytellers in film and television champion in their stories the medieval, the romantic, the transcendental, and the anti-scientific. The influence of the electronic media has contributed to a society of twenty-first century science and technology that is plagued by twelfth century superstition and belief. According to Gallup polls, more than half of Americans believe in the Devil, a third believe that houses can be haunted, three quarters believe in angels, and nearly a third believe in crashed alien saucers.

Enter filmmakers Lucas and Spielberg. Lucas captivated a generation of Americans with the release of Star Wars followed by Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. This summer hordes journey to view Phantom Menace, the prequel to the Star Wars trilogy dubbed “the most anticipated film of the century.” Steven Spielberg emerged in the seventies with Jaws, followed by Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Poltergeist, E.T., and his most successful box office hit of the nineties, Jurassic Park. Combined, Lucas and Spielberg have grossed billions worldwide with billions more in merchandising sales. They have inspired nearly three decades of blockbuster extravaganza films that play on Lucas/Spielberg themes, along with television series, novels, fan clubs, conventions, web sites, action figures, college courses, wall paper, bed spreads, lunch boxes, and children’s swimming pools.

Take a moment to deconstruct Lucas with me. The linkages to the Romantic period in Star Wars are obvious. The Force is a pantheistic energy that offers a dark and light path. Certain individuals are born with a special connection to the Force, and are trained as Jedi Knights. Through monkish servitude and meditation, the superhero Jedi Knights are able to harness the Force, and develop supernatural powers that include incredible reflexes, mind control, telekinesis, remote viewing, and divination. After their death, Jedi Knights appear as smiling and wise guardian angels to aid the protagonists. In order to “use the force,” Jedi Knights remind others to “trust your feelings,” “let yourself go,” and “use your intuition.” In an interview in TIME magazine, Lucas described the phrase “use the force” as a leap of faith. “There are mysteries and powers larger than we are,” George Lucas tells Bill Moyers. “And you have to trust your feelings in order to access them.”

Though the subjects of Spielberg’s films are varied, the Romantic themes remain consistent. Jaws is premised on the irrational fear of a sea monster that lurks concealed in the great unknown. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, aliens are angels basked in brilliant white light that shepherd humans to the heavens. In E.T., the alien is a fallen angel seeking to return home. Ancient buried spirits of Native Americans are awakened in Poltergeist when suburban sprawl threatens to dig up their sacred graves to make way for swimming pools and basements. In Jurassic Park, greedy scientists recreate dinosaurs, but are unable to control them, thereby unleashing chaos and disaster.

Spielberg is far from through with the paranormal. He recently announced plans for a twenty-hour Sci Fi Channel series on alien abduction. Not to be outdone, fellow filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola is producing a sixty-six part series featuring alien invasion and the prophecies of Nostradamus.

Americans under the age of thirty have been the subjects of a great experiment. Transcendental and supernatural stories have always been part of world culture, but never before in history has a generation been inundated by mythology through such a powerful medium as film and television. If we use this technology to tell our children medieval stories, what can we expect in return?

Writing in his 1996 book Demon Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark, astronomer Carl Sagan noticed that even the bright students of Cornell University suffer from gaping holes in knowledge. “I can find in my undergraduate classes,” he wrote, “bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.” Sagan’s undergraduates are indicative of a general public whose scientific literacy is at an alarming five percent. The prolific author and scientist also offered an indictment of the media. “An extraterrestrial being newly arrived on Earth, scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books-might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism.”

In an era of unprecedented technological sophistication, younger generations risk growing up the most technologically proficient generation in history, but also the most scientifically illiterate. Fed a steady diet of fantasy, it appears only a matter of time before technology turns into magic for a population characterized by fundamental misunderstandings of science. As we face increasingly complex policy decisions on issues that include the environment, the economy, education, and medicine, our democracy will be tested if we continue to live in fantasy, and lack an appreciation for science and reason.

See Also:

• Salon Magazine: The Medieval Mind of George Lucas

Last Friday’s firing of George Lundberg, the seventeen-year editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), shocked the medical, science and media world. A statement from the American Medical Association (AMA), publisher of JAMA, gave as the reason for the dismissal, Lundberg’s decision to publish research that shows 60 percent of college students surveyed in 1991 did not think that engaging in oral sex was “having sex.” The study appears in this week’s edition of JAMA, apparently timed to coincide with the Senate impeachment hearings and the State of the Union Address. AMA Executive Vice President Ratclife Anderson condemned the editor for “inexcusably interjecting JAMA into a major political debate that has nothing to do with science or medicine. This is unacceptable.”

Media reports, however, speculated that the sex study was just the latest in a series of editorial decisions on topics of current controversy and public debate that caused the AMA to shudder. Lundberg devoted a November JAMA issue to alternative medicine and approved recent controversial articles on euthanasia, and an eleven year-old’s debunking of therapeutic touch.

Under Lundberg’s direction, JAMA not only published research of immediate social importance, but actively engaged the media, providing weekly doses of medical and science news to the public. In an era when media coverage of science is difficult to find, and at a time when scientists have difficulty attracting media attention, JAMA is a rare success story. Surveys of journalists find that they are overwhelmingly more likely to read JAMA than other well-known science publications including Science, Nature or Scientific American.

The decision to release Lundberg turns on the relation of society and science. The AMA’s official justification for the dismissal follows from a century of staid tradition, with science and scientists seeking to maintain the appearance of impartiality in matters of social importance or conflict. Many in the scientific and medical communities cling to science journals as the last bastion of scientific conservatism, striving for a blind impartiality and artificial political naiveté in editorial selection. But as New York University sociologist Dorothy Nelkin told the Los Angeles Times, “You can hardly do a study anymore that doesn't have social ramifications.” Should a medical journal like JAMA “avoid anything that will arouse the anti-abortion movement? Or should it ignore studies that use lab animals so as not to arouse the animal rights movement?”

Absolutely not. Our society has entered an era of unprecedented scientific and technological advancement. In our daily lives and in government decision- making, we cannot escape the impact of science. In fact, science has become our best means for understanding the world around us and, often, the most effective guide for decision-making.

Yet we face an alarming crisis of scientific illiteracy and lack of public appreciation of science. Whether it is the O.J. Simpson jury overlooking DNA and blood evidence in favor of conspiracy scenarios, the $16 billion dollars that Americans spend on unproven alternative medicine therapies, or polls indicating that 31% of the public believes that an alien spacecraft crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, millions of Americans too often disregard science in forming opinions and making personal and collective choices.

Faced with this challenge, the scientific and medical communities, and the journals they publish, have a responsibility to inform and educate the public about scientific information pertinent to current public policy and debate. The Clinton impeachment proceedings may be the most important domestic political development of the century. Regardless of whether or not it is lost in the chorus of political rhetoric, if a scientific study can add light and clearer understanding to the impeachment deliberation, then it should be published. To say otherwise is socially irresponsible.

Related Information

• American Medical Association
• Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
• A Special Message regarding JAMA from the President of the AMA