Portland’s public transit system is held up as a model for the country. Per capita carbon emissions are down 26 percent since 1990. Portland consistently tops lists for most bike-friendly city. The city even has an eco-pub.

So how is it possible that the citizens of a city lauded for its ecological values, a place “where every day feels like Earth Day,” as one magazine has written, can be so irrational about something that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calls one of the ten greatest public health achievements of the 20th century? I’m referring to the latest voter rejection by Portlanders of a measure to fluoridate the city’s water.

Just so we’re clear: the scientific consensus on the benefits and safety of fluoridated water is well established, as Slate recently laid out:

Almost every credible national, state, and local health and science organization—private and public—gives its blessing to optimal levels of water fluoridation: The American Medical Association, the American Dental Association, the Environmental Protection Agency, the World Health Organization, American Academy of Family Physicians, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention..They all agree that fluoridated water is perfectly safe and extremely effective at preventing tooth decay.

Portland’s anti-fluoridation history is a curious thing. Much of the United States accepts fluoridated water, though pockets of resistance have sprouted up in the last decade (helped by the internet, it seems).The Slate piece gets at the reasons underlying Portland’s holdout:

You can stop laughing now.

Image by solarseven/Shutterstock

A recent Washington Post op-ed by Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, feigned to sound reasonable about climate change, the way Vice Presidential candidate Dick Cheney pretended to be reasonable in 2000 during his debate with Joe Lieberman. It didn’t take long for many to be disabused of that facade and similarly, winking conservatives today know that on the issue of climate change, there isn’t much space between Lamar Smith and his fellow Republican James Inhofe, the author of a new book called, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your future.

Smith is just more artful in the way he mischaracterizes climate science and downplays the threat of greenhouse gases. That said, Smith was dead-on about one thing in his op-ed, when he wrote that “unscientific and often hyperbolic claims” mar the climate dialogue.

As if on cue, one prominent Democratic senator has just served up a classic example of exploitive hyperbole. Politico reports:

Sen. Barbara Boxer took to the Senate floor and invoked the Oklahoma tornadoes in her speech on global warming. “This is climate change,” she said. “This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather. Not just hot weather. But extreme weather.

This is simply not so, at least with respect to tornadoes, as even the normally climate shouty Grist acknowledges in this piece. Of course, in typically tortured fashion, others are discussing the difficult to nail down but still maybe/isn’t it possible climate change link to the terrible Oklahoma tragedy. As I’ve said repeatedly, the “new normal” in climate journalism is to explore a possible tangential connection between global warming and every weather related catastrophe.

And so our climate soap opera continues, with alternating episodes of climate denial and climate doom. If you’re in the mood for nuanced discussion that puts the Oklahoma tornado/climate issue into valuable context, read this Dot Earth post by Andy Revkin, who says that the relationship between greenhouse gases and tornadoes is “an important research question,” but one that “has no bearing at all on the situation in the Midwest and South — whether there’s a tornado outbreak or drought.” He goes on to write:

The forces putting people in harm’s way are demographic, economic, behavioral and architectural. Any influence of climate change on dangerous tornadoes (so far the data point to a moderating influence) is, at best, marginally relevant and, at worst, a distraction.

So true. Let’s also not let the forces that narrow the climate debate hijack a discussion of those important demographic and socio-economic factors.

His 2006 TED talk, in which he animated statistics to tell the story of socio-economic development, has been viewed over 3.8 million times and translated into dozens of languages. His subsequent talks have moved millions of people worldwide to see themselves and our planet in new ways by showing how our actions affect our health and wealth and one another across space and time.

How does he do it? Well, here is is showing 200 years of progress in four minutes. 

Here he uses green boxes to explain socio-economic demographic trends.

Watch this and you’ll have a newfound appreciation for the washing machine.

The Guardian recently published a piece on Rosling, including a new video of his fact-driven artistry. Here’s the description:

Laying out toy bricks and a handful of counters on the table, he shows in 3-D how the dynamics of global population, child mortality and carbon emissions have changed over the past 50 years – and how the world might look by the end of the century.

After watching that Guardian video and several of the others, you’ll notice that Rosling speaks offhandedly about the importance of “green energy.” This piqued my curiosity. What else has he said about energy? I googled around and found this interesting interview, in which he said:

We need to be able to see the energy supply for human activity from each source and how it changes over time. The people who are now involved in producing solar and wind produce very nice reports on how production increase each year. Many get the impression that we have 10, 20, 30% of our energy from solar and wind. But even with fast growth from almost zero solar and wind it is nothing yet. The news reports mostly neglect to explain the difference in percentage growth of solar and wind energy and their percent of total energy supply.

In a talk last year, Rosling said that the world needs a “data driven discussion of energy and resources.”  That would be nice, but we humans aren’t exactly a data-driven species.

*Headline inspired by this blog post.

[Image from 2010 TED talk]

The picture is as clear as it is disturbing: the carbon intensity of the global energy supply has barely changed in 20 years, despite successful efforts in deploying renewable energy.

Another fact, noted in the IEA’s report, will disturb anyone concerned about climate change:

The unremitting rise in global coal demand for power generation continued in 2012. Global coal-fired power generation is estimated to have increased by around 6% between 2010 and 2012, building on strong growth over the past few years…China and, to a lesser extent, India continue to play a key role in driving demand growth. China’s coal consumption represented 46.2% of global coal demand in 2011; India’s share was 10.8%, up 7% and 9% respectively on 2010 levels.

Worldwide, coal accounts for 43% of CO2 emissions. Reducing that number is key to reducing the severity of global warming. Yet global demand for coal shows no sign of slowing in the near-term future, as this IEA graph makes clear.

What could potentially head off this disaster is China switching from coal to natural gas, Elizabeth Muller argued last month in a New York Times op-ed. As she wrote:

A modern natural gas plant emits between one-third and one-half of the carbon dioxide released by coal for the same amount of electric energy produced. China has the potential to unearth large amounts of shale gas through hydraulic fracturing. In 2011, the United States Energy Information Administration estimated that China had “technically recoverable” reserves of 1.3 quadrillion cubic feet, nearly 50 percent more than the United States.

So China could potentially do what the United States has done with respect to its carbon emissions.  That would obviously be good for the air in China and the world’s climate. It would also be good for the United States (geopolitically speaking), Steve LeVine recently said:

It is indisputably in the interest of the US—the possessor of the world’s most cutting-edge hydraulic fracturing technology—for China to successfully and rapidly develop its shale gas, and to turn down the coal furnaces.

But as Muller observed in her NYT piece, China lacks the expertise to drill safely:

The risk is that what is now a nascent Chinese shale gas industry may take off in a way that leads to ecological disaster. Many of the purchasers of drilling rights in recent Chinese auctions are inexperienced.

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, in a weekend commentary, echoed these concerns, while also promoting the climate benefits of a China transition from coal to gas:

Beijing is going to try and mine these [shale gas] reserves in every way it can.  But many experts worry that China lacks the experience and technology to frack effectively. As important, it really has no understanding of how to frack safely. Here in the United States, we have environmentalists and a free press to push authorities to regulate and monitor this very new industry. China, on the other hand, may not have the same checks and balances.

This is why the United States needs to share its expertise, not keep it secret.

This is all starting to sound like another call for a bridge to a low-carbon future. Will that resonate within the environmental community? Possibly. Or not.

Regardless, the shale gas revolution has scrambled the climate and energy equation in ways that anti-fracking greens have yet to grasp, much less accept.

*This post has been revised to add additional information and for clarity purposes.

Things are bad enough in the food world that we don’t need to resort to hyperbole to be worried or even alarmed.

This is some chutzpah. Here’s Bittman from September 15, 2012:

It’s not an exaggeration to say that almost everyone wants to see the labeling of genetically engineered materials contained in their food products.

Almost everyone? Same column:

G.M.O.’s, to date, have neither become a panacea — far from it — nor created Frankenfoods, though by most estimates the evidence is far more damning than it is supportive.

This is completely untrue. If Bittman had wanted to be factual he would have referred NYT readers to credible sources on the state of the science on biotech crops and foods, such as here or here. Instead, he links to a website called the Organic Authority and a post that explains why

GMOs are bad for your body, bad for the community, bad for farmers and bad for the environment.

This is what is known as laundering untruths. 

A bit further down in his current column chock full of unintentional ironies, Bittman muses,”to whom should we be listening? Who speaks with authority?” Please. Bittman knows well that his perch at the NYT is influential and that foodies revere and trust him. Still, he pushes the theme and says that on whom we should be listening to,

When it comes to big issues, the answer is “actual experts,” and it’s almost always “not ourselves.”

Amazingly, he goes on to discuss Dan Kahneman’s widely acclaimed 2011 book, “Thinking Fast and Slow,” which is about how our decisions and behavior are influenced by “cognitive biases.” Yet Bittman gives no indication that he is aware of how utterly biased he is on the issue of genetically modified foods, and how this leads him to scaremonger and communicate false information.

This next passage, which betrays his convoluted thinking, is classic:

In matters where you’ve become a true expert, you should trust your intuition. Otherwise, it pays to literally stop and think. When I read a news story like this one, which claims that G.M.O.s are linked to leukemia, I might be scared out of my wits — Americans can’t avoid genetically modified food without a huge effort, and even then there are no guarantees. So are we doomed to years of chemo? Perhaps not: If I sit down and do my homework all I can really say with intelligence is that it’s premature to conclude that ingesting food with genetically engineered ingredients is safe.

I happen to have an expert bullshit detector, so my intuition tells me that Bittman here is either being idiotic or utterly disingenuous. Because if he was intelligent and/or did his homework, he would know that he’s as likely to develop leukemia from GMOs as he is from overhead power lines. Secondly, that’s not a news story he cites, but a blog post written by the “founder” of a “natural medicine database.” If you can find an actual news story written  about this latest dubious study on GMOs in a pay-to-play journal, let me know. That Bittman is laundering such a slanted piece of propaganda (that also cites a widely discredited study) under the false banner of news should tell you everything you need to know about his expert sources.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out again that Bittman started off his column by saying, “we don’t need to resort to hyperbole to be worried or even alarmed.”

It’s a shame he doesn’t take his own advice, for near the end, he writes (my emphasis):

As I wrote a few weeks ago, barely a day goes by that someone doesn’t say to me, “There’s nothing I can safely eat.” Many of us are afraid of our food and of the way it’s produced, and to some extent that fear is well founded.

To a great extent, Bittman is irresponsibly spreading that fear (which is not well founded), particularly with respect to genetically modified foods. He also is, as one media biotech watchdog recently put it, “a scourge on science.”

The main finding, which was just published in the journal Environmental Research Letters:

A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing global warming.

This strikes me as T-shirt worthy. Oh wait…

In a short post at his blog, Appell says these kinds of survey numbers

are made for lazy journalists who don’t want to examine the complexity of the science, reporters who just want a number that quickly and easily supports their position.

He’s right. In a minute, I’ll get to the kinds of complexities that would be good to examine, but first let’s look at the premise for the survey, as stated: 

An accurate perception of the degree of scientific consensus is an essential element to public support for climate policy (Ding et al 2011). Communicating the scientific consensus also increases people’s acceptance that climate change (CC) is happening (Lewandowsky et al 2012). Despite numerous indicators of a consensus, there is wide public perception that climate scientists disagree over the fundamental cause of global warming (GW; Leiserowitz et al 2012, Pew 2012).

To start, Cook willfully ignores the “salience” issue that cognitive researchers have pointed out in recent years. That’s the main obstacle to greater public support for action from the large majority of people who already agree that global warming is real and worrisome. Then there is the deep partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats on the climate issue (with Republicans much less likely to believe the scientific consensus than Democrats), though there is evidence that denial is not a tenable position for the Republican party.

As for an overall snapshot of trending public attitudes on climate change, let’s look at this latest Gallup report, as distilled by the National Center for Science Education:

“U.S. worry about global warming is heading back up after several years of expanded public skepticism,”according (PDF) to a new poll from Gallup. Also heading back up are the rate of understanding that most scientists accept global warming and the rate of accepting that increases in the global temperature over the last century are mostly due to human activity. But those who think that global warming’s effects will affect them in their lifetime are still in a minority.

Note that last sentence, which I bolded. For a longer view, let’s go to Gallup’s wrap-up:

Gallup trends throughout the past decade — and some stretching back to 1989 — have shown generally consistent majority support for the idea that global warming is real, that human activities cause it, and that news reports on it are correct, if not underestimated.

That said, it is indisputable that there remains “considerable confusion within the American public about the level of scientific agreement” on the causes of global warming, as discussed in the latest report by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Would it be better if there was less confusion? Of course. But If 75 percent of the general public, instead of say, 50 percent, attributed global warming to industrial society and its greenhouse gases, would that make people more concerned about climate change? Probably not, because in the same Yale report, there’s this:

Over many years of research, we have consistently found that, on average, Americans view climate change as a threat distant in space and time–a risk that will affect far away places, other species, or future generations more than people here and now.

That. Is. The. Stumbling. Block.

Getting past that is going to require a frank debate about future uncertainties, risks, and scenarios, and the reconciliation of competing values. Meanwhile, in a recent talk, climate researcher Mike Hulme asks if is wise to even continue emphasizing scientific consensus in the climate debate– “as an end to argument?”  It is a thought provoking piece that quotes from a 2011 essay in Nature by Arizona State University’s Daniel Sarewitz, who said:

Science would provide better value to politics if it articulated the broadest set of plausible interpretations, options and perspectives, imagined by the best experts, rather than forcing convergence to an allegedly unified voice.

I bet this is something that 97 percent of climate scientists would agree on.

UPDATE: Yale’s Dan Kahan says it best.

His self-published books Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette have built for him an online profile that has made Smith one of the most widely quoted opponents of biotech ag —despite his evident lack of scientific credentials or other formal training on the subject.

It appears that the education he gained at Maharishi university has been put to good use. Here he is demonstrating “yogic flying” in 1996.

This passage from Smith’s Wikipedia bio seems a fair representation of him:

A variety of American organic food companies see Smith “as a champion for their interests”, and Smith’s supporters describe him as “arguably the world’s foremost expert on the topic of genetically modified foods”. Michael Specter, writing in The New Yorker, reported that Smith was presented as a “scientist” on The Dr. Oz Show although he lacks any scientific experience or relevant qualifications. Bruce Chassy, a molecular biologist and food scientist, wrote to the show arguing that Smith’s “only professional experience prior to taking up his crusade against biotechnology is as a ballroom-dance teacher, yogic flying instructor, and political candidate for the Maharishi cult’s natural-law party.” The director of the Organic Consumers Association says Smith is “respected as a public educator on GMOs” while “supporters of biotechnology” have described him as “misinformed and misleading” and as “an activist with no scientific or medical background” who is known for his “near-hysterical criticism of biotech foods.”

As Jon Entine wrote at Forbes, what galls scientists the most is that Smith has been presented as a GMO expert to millions of TV viewers. Liberals and environmentalists who put a premium on science should be equally galled that Smith is treated as a credible source.

When it comes to GMOs, though, many seem to take even the most outlandish claims at face value, including some journalists, as I recently pointed out. It amazes me when otherwise smart people are quick to trump a story or supposed finding that, for example, links an herbicide to “a great number of the diseases and conditions that are prevalent in the modern industrialized world.” Such a recent paper, as one person hilariously said on Twitter, “reads like it was scribbled on Glenn Beck’s chalkboard.”

Perhaps you’re wondering what those scribblings might sound like when explained on a video? Lucky you, the co-author of the aforementioned paper recently sat down with none other than Jeffrey Smith to discuss how GMOs and  a “Darth Vader chemical” are poisoning humanity.

I hereby give you a one-stop shop of crazy talk.

GMOs and the autism connection:

GMOs and alzheimers:

GMOs and leaky gut:

Connecting the dots on GMOs and obesity:

GMOs and Parkinson’s disease:

There are also clips discussing how GMOs are causing heart disease and diabetes. These are the kind of people that fuel the worst kind of fear-mongering about biotechnology, and unfortunately, what they say is taken seriously by foodies, environmentalists, popular talk show hosts and some mainstream journalists.

So long as Jeffrey Smith is treated by the media and influentials as a go-to source on biotechnology, the public debate on genetically modified foods will remain mired in loony land.

1) The “Right to Know” people, who say they just want to know what’s in their food. This is a specious argument. The truth is they think there is something harmful about GMOs. Why else would they feel so strongly about labeling genetically modified foods? Yes, the Just Label it Campaign is couched as a consumer rights issue, but really it’s based on fear. Everybody knows this, so pretending otherwise is silly.

2) The other pro-label camp is comprised of a small minority of pro-biotech people who recognize that the battle for public opinion is lost. The GMO fear-mongers have won–they have successfully framed the argument as a consumer choice issue. So the only sensible thing to do at this point  is to play along and join the labeling bandwagon. As Ramez Naam argued effectively in a recent guest post,

We should label them [GM foods] because that is the very best thing we can do for public acceptance of agricultural biotech. And we should label them because there’s absolutely nothing to hide.

From a political and pragmatic standpoint, this makes sense. After all, winning an argument at all costs can be counterproductive, whatever the cause. (The climate concerned who insist on playing whack-a-mole with climate skeptics–instead of picking their battles carefully–have yet to learn this lesson.)  Still, I suspect that many pro-biotech people stand on principle and object to GMO labeling because it implicitly concedes victory to the fear-mongers, which is what one commenter on Naam’s post said: 

[Just label it] is a disingenuous campaign and everybody knows it. How can we entertain that?! Capitulating on this misses the whole point and reinforces their framing of the issue. It sets a bad precedent.

Personally, I’m ambivalent about GMO labeling. I see right through the naked cynicism of the Right to Know campaign. It is totally disingenuous. On the other hand, as any student of Aikido or Tai Chi knows, redirecting the force of your attacker is an effective tactic. There is a case to be made that a GMO label on foods would neutralize the opposition and eventually pave the way to greater acceptance of biotechnology. Jonathan Gilligan made this argument earlier in the year, saying,

if GM food is labeled as such, I really believe that most consumers will buy it anyway and it will defuse the “what are they trying to hide” line of attack.

I find this to be a compelling argument. And yet, in a Bloomberg column this weekend, Cass Sunstein makes a good case against mandatory GMO labeling. He essentially concludes that science should guide the argument:

In the abstract, it is hard to disagree with the claim that consumers “have a right to know.” But with respect to food, there are countless facts that people might conceivably want to know, and government doesn’t require them to be placed on labels. Unless science can identify a legitimate concern about risks to health or the environment, the argument for compulsory GM labels rests on weak foundations.

I’m curious to hear where people stand on the GMO labeling issue, and whether anyone has changed his or her mind recently (in either direction) and why.

[Image at Label it Yourself website.]

There’s been a lot of debate about the extent to which media coverage does or does not influence public opinion about climate change and society’s willingness to address the problem. Do journalists matter in this regard?

Gillis answered exactly as I (and any journalist) would have:

Well, if I didn’t think it mattered, I wouldn’t be doing it, but how that social dialectic works over the long run, I don’t really know.

What we do know is that the weather, above all, moves the needle on public opinion. So if there’s an unusual heatwave or spate of freakish weather disasters, more people are inclined to believe that climate change is for real, as was the case last summer.

But this cuts both ways. In a new survey, the Yale Project on Climate Change & Communication reports that,

since Fall 2012, the percentage of Americans who believe global warming is happening has dropped 7 points to 63%, likely influenced by the relatively cold winter of 2012-13 in the United States and an unusually cold March just before the survey was conducted.

At Slate, Will Oremus finds this latest pendulum swing to be “very frustrating” and suggests that “we should stop worrying so much about the minority of Americans who don’t believe global warming is happening.” This is good advice. I’ve never understood the angst that many seem to experience over these fluctuating public opinion numbers.

As Andy Revkin has remarked,

there’s abundant evidence that much of public attitude on climate is, as I’ve been saying, the equivalent of water sloshing in a shallow pan — lots of fluctuations, little depth or commitment (particularly when money is involved).

It remains to be seen what will galvanize the public to rise up and demand action on global warming. Meanwhile, if you want to know what the average person is thinking about climate change at any given moment in time, just ask the weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blowing. 

*The headline plays off this famous phrase from James Carville during the 1992 Presidential election.

[A cover story that appeared after Hurricane Sandy.]

Terrible new forms of infectious disease make headlines, but not at the start. Every pandemic begins small. Early indicators can be subtle and ambiguous. When the Next Big One arrives, spreading across oceans and continents like the sweep of nightfall, causing illness and fear, killing thousands or maybe millions of people, it will be signaled first by quiet, puzzling reports from faraway places — reports to which disease scientists and public health officials, but few of the rest of us, pay close attention. Such reports have been coming in recent months from two countries, China and Saudi Arabia.

The worrisome Chinese bird flu strain that has gotten a lot of attention is not, in its present form, going to cause a pandemic, says Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control (CDC). But if you want to learn about the potential for its lethal mutation, and why you should be worried about it, read this piece in Foreign Policy by veteran science journalist Laurie Garrett. As Peter Singer tweeted:

No one reports (possible) pandemics like @laurie_garrett: Is a Pandemic Being Born? foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/…

— Peter Singer (@PeterASinger) April 2, 2013

Meanwhile, if any of the latest scares “fail to explode into a large-scale pandemic,” Tom Paulson wonders, “will the public — and policy makers — be better prepared or somehow inoculated against taking the threat seriously in the future?”

The preparedness concern was recently addressed in an important New York Times column by Tyler Cowen, who wrote about the need to reward medical research (as a “public good”) for new pandemic fighting drugs and vaccines.

Finally, for everything you needed or wanted to know about pandemics, David Dobbs compiled a great one-stop shop at Slate, and Maryn McKenna, Dobbs’ colleague at Wired Science blogs, has a most helpful guide on how to follow pandemic-related news.

Of course, if you just want to kick back for a few hours and watch a pandemic wreak civilizational havoc, there’s always Hollywood.