Alex Epstein Did Shill Himself: The Immorality of Climate Skepticism
A demonstration of the use of basic scientific know-how to dissect and debunk prominent climate skeptic Alex Epstein's arguments for the honest climate skeptic
If you’re reading this then it might be because you’re interested in climate change and the science surrounding it. You might feel a little confused about what to think about climate change and the fraught and often divisive politics which surround these issues. You might even classify yourself as a climate skeptic who is unconvinced that climate change is actually happening, that it is human induced or that it is a serious problem and feel the need to know more before taking a firm view on this issue.
I’ve written this article to help people learn a little bit more about science, data analysis, data visualisation and what’s going on in the world surrounding the politics of climate change. And not least of all to help those who might be a little bit skeptical make up their minds about climate change. Even if you’re a strong supporter of climate change policies you still stand to learn a lot from this article and I’ve tried to make it as interesting and educational as possible. I’ve left any messy political discussion till last so that I can more easily concentrate on using clear, reasoned and dispassionate explanations for the points I will make.
But first, a bit of background on myself, as it’s important to understand who the people you receive information from are, their credentials and their motivations. I’m a software developer working for a leading scientific institution in Australia. I have a double degree in Engineering and Science from Monash University, a Masters in Computer Science from Imperial College London and have taught Physics at up to a first year undergraduate level, predominantly in a practical laboratory setting. I also spent a little over a year working for a green energy start up in the UK called Verv Energy. I’m not receiving any incentives, financial or otherwise to write any part of this article and all views expressed are my own.
I’m going to present a figure and text excerpt from The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best selling book promoting climate skepticism and the expanded use of fossil fuels, to see if you’re able to point out the flaws in its argumentation and presentation before very thoroughly dissecting it.
Be warned, this is something which I’d imaging you would need at least a first year university education in a scientific field to figure out. I will offer the problem to you and from there I will offer a number of successive hints to help you along with deducing the answer before taking you through the steps to solve it. I encourage you to try to think critically about the information you’re presented with before looking at each prompt. The most important thing here is not to worry if you’re unable to figure it out or get frustrated after a while. I don’t expect most people to be able to solve it, especially if you don’t have a background in a STEM field or haven’t looked at too many graphs before so if you can figure even part of it out yourself then you deserve a big congratulations! Here is the figure and excerpt:
Figure 1.8: Global Warming Since 1850-the Full Story
Here’s a graph of the last hundred-plus years of temperature compared to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We can see that CO2 emissions rose rapidly, most rapidly in the last fifteen years. But there is not nearly the warming or the pattern of warming that we have been led to expect. We can see a very mild warming trend overall — less than 1 degree Celsius (less than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over a century — which in itself is unremarkable, given that there is always a trend one way or the other, depending on the time scale you select. But notice that there are smaller trends of warming and cooling, signifying that CO2 is not a particularly powerful driver, and especially notice that the current trend is flat when it “should be” skyrocketing.
Sources:
Ambient CO2: Scripps Institution of Oceanography merged ice core data
Temperature Anomaly: UK Met Office Hadley Centre HadCRUT4 data set
It would be a good idea to stop here for a few minutes, reread the text a number of times and take a look at this Figure and the accompanying explanation to try to find some fault with what is being presented to you. What grabs your attention? What points are the two graphs trying to elucidate? As a first clue I will say that the data, represented by the full black lines in the top and bottom graph are reliable so nothing is wrong with those (though the data for the atmospheric CO2 source seems to be missing) and nothing in the links needs to be checked, they’re simply there for reference! It isn’t given in the description but the temperature range in Degrees Celsius is the global temperature difference when compared to the average global temperature from 1961 to 1990 as noted in the source.
Hint #1:
The Axes and the scales of the graph are perfectly fine, as are the headings and axes labels. Some people I have presented this graph to are confused as to why the top graphs y-axis starts at 275 ppm as they think it makes the scale of the top graph seem larger and thus is misleading and think that the graph should start at 0. But adjusting the axis starting position to fit the data neatly into the graph area is standard practice when presenting information in a graphical format. What are the other salient features of these plots?
Hint #2:
There is something not quite right about the dotted line in the bottom graph. What is this line trying to show? How does this relate to what is stated in the text? Is this an honest representation of a general trend in the data? (i.e. does it follow the black line very well and reveal something important about the underlying data)? Look closely. Now would be the time to stop and review all of this information and see what you can determine about the qualities of this line. With a little luck you should be able to determine what is wrong at this point so don’t read the next hint till you’ve exhausted all other options!
Hint #3:
How evenly spaced out in terms of years are the line segments in the dotted line? Is there a reason for them to be spaced out the way they are or are the lengths chosen at random? What method was used to produce this dotted line if there was one at all? What general trends does the dotted line show that can be linked to the text explanation? Is this an honest representation of the trends in the underlying data?
Answer:
The answer is, as I will explain, that the dotted line is there to intentionally mislead you into believing that, in the words of the given explanation: “there are smaller trends of warming and cooling” over a large time period and that “the current trend is flat when it “should be” skyrocketing” as shown in the dotted line from about 1998 to 2014.
Data Analysis
Let’s look at this figure without the dotted line:
In either a first year university or high school science course, one of the first things you are taught is how to draw a “line of best fit”. The aim of a line of best fit is to draw a straight line so that the data points are as close to the line as possible. As shown below:
This gives an indication of the general trends in the data and can give us a measure of the rate at which the temperature is changing over time by taking the slope of the line. If you have the data available on a computer, you can use an algorithm to create a line of best fit using what is called a linear regression. It is the first thing any scientist would do to get information about a trend in the data. How well this line fits the data is denoted by what is called the coefficient of determination (often referred to as the r-squared value). Here the data points are close to the line of best fit so the coefficient of determination would be relatively high, showing a good fit.
If there are valid reasons for multiple trends over different periods then you can break that data down into parts and create a linear regression for each section. But you should have a valid reason for creating these periods. Creating arbitrary time segments as the dotted line does in Figure 1.8 doesn’t make any sense and there is no reasoning given for it.
As a valid example of how this is done you may notice that there is a distinct change in the rate of CO2 emissions starting around 1960 (the accompanying text suggests this as well, though it states this rate of change occurred 15 years ago) so you might perform a linear regression on the temperature graphs data points starting from around 1960. Indeed this rate of change can be linked to increased fossil fuel usage as renowned energy expert Daniel Yergin notes in his Pulitzer prize winning book The Prize:
From the early 1950s to the end of the 1960s, the world oil market was dominated by extraordinarily rapid growth, a tremendous surge that, like a powerful and somewhat frightening undertow, swept everyone in the industry forward with its seemingly irresistible force. Consumption grew at a pace that simply would not have been conceivable at the beginning of the postwar era.
You might think that the dotted line segments in the graph are trying to perform a linear regression on each individual segment but this most certainly isn’t the case. If it were, there would be no reason for the lines to be connected to the data points at the end of these sections as they would act independently. Take a look at the first section of the dotted line, between the years 1850–1887, many of the points here are very far away from this line showing a very poor “best fit”. This line most certainly wasn’t created using linear regression. Other lines appear to fit quite well but there is no analysis given to this or any proper methodology given as to how the dotted line was created.
Let’s take a more critical look at this dotted line. We’ve already shown that it doesn’t work as a line of best fit but it also looks like the points on the line have been meticulously selected at points of local maximum and minimum values to create this zig-zagging effect in an attempt to corroborate the explanation that: “there are smaller trends of warming and cooling” and “there is always a trend one way or the other, depending on the time scale you select”. On first glance you might think that the lines are equally spaced apart in time but taking a close look at this we can see how these sections are spaced:
Stop and have a look at this for yourself. While some of these lines are close to being the same length, if you look at the graph and shift the start or the end points of the lines backwards or forwards by just one year you’ll find that these lines become a lot flatter and the dotted line can look very different. Try it yourself! The last lines starting and ending positions have been selected so that it appears to be flat as well. Making it seem like over the past few years the temperature has been stagnating.
Everything explained above is basic science and data analysis knowledge which would be acquired throughout the first year of a university degree in most scientific disciplines. The dotted line and its explanation doesn’t conform to any of these basic principles.
Data Visualisation
There are also a number of things about the way in which the graph is presented which can be visually misleading. Data visualisation is an important area of study in and of itself so this is an important aspect to consider. The way you present data can be used to more easily communicate your intended points or as we shall see in this example, obscure ones you don’t want to elucidate.
The scale of the temperature graph in Figure 1.8 has been altered so that there is a large amount of empty white space above and below the lines being presented, this in turn makes the graph appear flatter. Compare this to the white space above and below the graph showing Ambient CO2. One might be misled to think that since the slope of the temperature plot looks flatter than the slope of the CO2 emissions that they have less of a correlation, that is that CO2 emissions only make the temperature rise very little. This is also misleadingly implied in the explanation: “We can see a very mild warming trend overall”. This is a visual trick which is being employed by changing the aspect ratio of the two plots. If we alter this aspect ratio and overlay the plots on top of one another this is what we get:
Overlaying the two plots and reducing the aspect ratio makes it look like the Ambient CO2 plot follows the increase in Degrees Celsius quite perfectly. This however is also a visual trick. I use this to demonstrate how data visualisation can be used to make a point. Another subtler visual trick is that the grids on both plots have a different aspect ratio which helps aid in the illusion that the temperature plot is flat compared to the CO2 plot. The dotted line overlaid on the temperature plot also helps to obscure the general trend of the data.
Summary
I hope that you are now convinced that Figure 1.8 and its analysis has been produced in a very uneducated, unscientific manner or has perhaps has been deliberately crafted in a malicious attempt to dissuade you from the idea that carbon dioxide emissions are linked to an increase in global temperature. If I were presented with this level of work as part of an assignment in a high school or university setting the person producing it would most definitely not receive a passing grade.
In order to have scientific results and claims like the ones made in this example received by an accredited scientific journal the results must be submitted in the form of a paper which contains detailed descriptions of the methodology used to get these results. The paper is then reviewed by a number of other scientists who are considered experts in their fields. Any erroneous claims or poor analyses are pointed out and the paper is either rejected or sent back for adjustments a number of times before finally being accepted into the journal. Once a journal issue is published, a whole number of experts read these findings so as to remain up to date with the current state of their respective fields and to cite them as evidence of claims in their own papers.
As a final point the Figure presented tries to push the following idea: “especially notice that the current trend is flat when it “should be” skyrocketing”. The plot given only reaches the year 2014. 6 years have passed since then so I want to present a graph showing the data up to 2018 as well as the current global average temperature for 2020. The graph below uses the exact same data which was used in the bottom part of Figure 1.8. This figure looks a little different as it doesn’t employ the same simplistic visual tricks employed in Figure 1.8 and uses an annual rolling average to show the general trend in temperature increase which is a sound analytical instrument to use in this situation as well as giving a 95% confidence range to show the level of uncertainty in these readings. The average global temperature since 2014 has most definitely skyrocketed from the final value given in Figure 1.8 of 0.579C to 0.948C in 2020. That’s nearly half of a degree in just 6 years.
Source: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/diagnostics.html
Climate Change
Were you able to dissect Figure 1.8 and understand what was incorrect and misleading about it? If so then congratulations! You may have a very small part of the skills required of a first year university science student, but you’re still a far way off from being an expert in any of the many various scientific specializations involving climate science. Until then I suggest you stay away from the sorts of people who try to make claims like the ones in the example I’ve given.
The person who wrote this doesn’t have a degree in science and is attempting to trick you for some profoundly immoral reasons which I’ll explore later. I want to ask everyone reading this, especially those who couldn’t identify or might have agreed with this person’s subtle lies: Do you think that you, as an individual, have the capability to even help to make decisions as to whether climate change is occurring and is a danger in any way? Do you think you know enough to refute what the vast majority of scientists who are experts in fields involving climate science are predicting? Unless you are a well established climate scientist (and I most certainly don’t include myself in this category) who is part of an organised panel of experts whose job it is to determine the answer to such questions the answer should be a humble and resolute no.
It is the expert consensus of 97% of climate scientists, many belonging to bodies such as the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies that climate change is causing global warming and is induced by human activity. For more on this consensus you can view this link:
It is the view of the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that we have until 2030 to implement radical, sweeping changes in order to stop the average global temperature from rising above 1.5C, beyond which millions people, predominantly in the global south and island nations are expected to face famine, war and large scale displacement leading to a massive immigration crisis:
The Immorality of Climate Change Denial
As stated earlier, the source of this material is from The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best selling book, published in 2014 by Alex Epstein. It has endorsements from the likes of billionaire Peter Theil, co-founder of PayPal and global big data analysis firm Palantir. A revised edition is planned for release in February 2021. Alex holds a BA in Philosophy from Duke University and styles himself as an “energy expert”. He has given talks at Google about climate change, has held public debates at Duke University to proliferate unscientific propaganda and has the disarming appearance of a refined intellectual who is up for spirited debate on climate change. Alex has worked at prestigious sounding organisations such as the Cato and Ayn Rand Institutes. He also went on to found his own for-profit think tank called the Center for Industrial Progress and has started a facebook group called “I Love Fossil Fuels”.
The example I gave is just one of the more insidious and misleading fallacies that demonstrate how this book attempts to refute, totally ignore or purposefully misrepresent well established climate science and the affordability and current state of development of renewable energy technologies. To attempt to point out all of the arguments against his claims, his shoddy inferences of correlation linking causation, the bizarre lies he makes to attempt to smear the current climate change movements proposed plans to reduce fossil fuel use or to debate Alex’s poorly founded ideas would be a very tiring and fruitless exercise which might inadvertently promote his ideas to a less critical and more susceptible audience. It seems that renowned environmentalist Bill KcKibben has already made the mistake of giving him his attention.
So how did such a book come into being and why is it so popular?
The organisations Alex has worked for as well as his think tank have established links to billionaire Charles Koch who uses his enormous wealth to secretly fund misinformation campaigns by funneling ‘Dark Money’ through 501(c) groups in an attempt to sow doubt among the public as to the validity of climate change predictions. The reason this is being done is because Charles Koch owns Koch Industries, the subsidiaries of which are predominantly involved in manufacturing, refining and distributing petroleum. It is the 2nd largest privately owned company in the US and it reached an annual revenue of $110 billion US in 2014. Renewable energy technologies and the need to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels to avert catastrophic climate change are a serious threat to Charles’ business interests and personal wealth. To go into how this system works is beyond the scope of this article but you can learn more about Charles Koch and his late brother David Koch in the documentary Citizen Koch or the book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jayne Mayer.
This is not the only example of attempts to distort climate science and manipulate public opinion taking place. There are a number of fossil fuel funded organisations attempting to sway public opinion on climate change right now. One of these examples is PragerU which received much of its early funding by fracking billionaires Dan and Faris Wilkes. Alex has worked with PragerU to create videos promoting his ideas.
The same simplistic arguments that he expounds in his book are paraded in this video:
It’s painful to watch as he pedals out quotes from individuals dating back to 1986 and tries to give them relevance and displays part of the same Figure we looked at to confuse the viewer. While PragerU makes attempts to seem like a reputable establishment it is not a university or academic institution, does not hold classes, does not grant certifications or diplomas, and is not accredited by any recognized body. It does however consistently produce pseudo-intellectual right wing propaganda on a massive scale.
In the PragerU video Alex implies that without access to the energy fossil fuels provide, people in the developing world will lack access to basic necessities like clean water. In another PragerU video he also states that “A scientific researcher has a sacred obligation to accurately report his findings” (note the not so subtle sexism). In The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Alex quotes a truly heart wrenching story about a woman in The Gambia needing to undergo an emergency cesarean. Sadly the baby suffocated in utero. The woman laments that the baby could not be saved because of the lack of available power to provide basic things like lighting and ultrasounds to help prevent such needless deaths. I’ll come back to this in a second but first a few statistics.
The fossil fuel usage of the developing world is negligible compared to the developed world. For example the US currently produces 15 times as much CO2 per capita as Africa does, historically this ratio has been higher than 50. For an interactive graph showing per capita carbon emissions for each country based on current borders from 1850 till now see here:
Half of global emissions are attributed to the wealthiest 10% of the world’s population. A lot of Africa’s CO2 emissions are also due to neo-colonial extractivist mining operations which bleed the country of its mineral wealth. No one is advocating that the developing world not use whatever means necessary to provide for necessities like running water and proper healthcare. In fact advocates of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions focus on trying to reduce developed countries emissions as they have contributed to and benefited the most from these emissions and have already far expended whatever imagined emissions quotas they might have had. Reducing developed countries emissions by curbing frivolous consumerism allows developing nations to use more fossil fuels to provide things they truly need like running water, lighting and health care without further damaging the planet.
Now back to Alex’s quoted story about infant mortality in Africa. If Alex cares so much about healthcare in the Gambia then why would he not advocate donating to a charity which attempts to supply this sorely needed electricity? He has the capacity and capital to set up and run a for-profit think tank and write a book, why would he not set up a charity to supply developing nations with electricity (even if they do use fossil fuels) and the means to use them? The most shocking thing is that the source of this quote is from the website of a charity called Power Up Gambia whose tagline is Transforming Healthcare Through Solar Energy.
At no point in the book does he explicitly mention this or encourage you to donate to this charity, you have to check the references provided. Why would he not simply advocate donating to this charity? Because it goes against his selfish financial interests. Alex doesn’t care about women’s pain or infant mortality in small West African countries, in fact his book is overtly sexist and his proposals stand to hurt the poorest people in the global south. Alex only cares about himself and protecting the interests of the billionaires who fund him and his activities and is willing to abuse stories about women’s pain. So much for science, so much for morality. Alex Epstein is possibly the most vile, underhanded climate denier there is.
As an aside here, if you want to donate to Power Up Gambia please do, it looks like a great charity. If you want to help women in the developing world with their reproductive health, contraception and family planning then one of the most well managed charities I know of is Pathfinder International.
I wish that climate change was a nonpartisan issue which everyone could agree on but sadly this just isn’t the case. Climate change denial has found an accepting home in the crony-capitalism defending arms of right wing politics and must be rooted out of it. This brief expose I have given goes to show that there is no honest or moral “other side” to the argument for our planet rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels. Which means there’s no dialectical, “rational” or “objective” debate to be had. Just sham arguments proliferated by immoral or ignorant people, with enormous amounts of wealth and/or political power, willing to propagate irrational, unscientific arguments for their own personal gain or to allow them to conveniently ignore the fact that many innocent people in foreign countries will either die or be displaced if the world goes about business as usual. The politicians who deny that climate change is an issue are either too immoral or too ignorant to be allowed to hold power.
To be perfectly blunt, while climate denial is more widespread due to enormous financial incentives, to deny the fact that climate change is a very real and impending threat to human and animal life is the equivalent of being an anti-vaxxer, flat earther or a “5G causes corona-virus” type numpty. All of these anti-scientific movements are filled with people failing to do one simple thing which has nothing to do with their intelligence or level of education: Seek out, listen to and trust the robust consensus of qualified experts. To slander people who are not experts but are trying to get people to listen to experts, especially with silly, facile memes (Greta Thurnburg is the leading example of this), is boorish, egotistical and reveals a level of ignorance which will make most educated, decent people you know feel rightly repulsed.
Please do what people like myself and many other people around the world are trying to do which is to encourage more people to become politically active and to get politicians to listen to the experts. You could start by sharing this article with people you think might be in danger of falling into these sorts of traps! You could also join protests, read up on the climate change movement and talk to those around you about climate change.
There is no such thing as a “climate skeptic” only an ill informed climate denier. And now that you have been informed you can either change your mind and use your voice for a good cause or you can feign ignorance, dig in and prepare to find yourself sitting on the wrong side of history.
The people who stand to lose the most due to climate change have contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions, have benefited the least from the medical and technological advancements burning fossil fuels have made possible and stand to lose their homes and quite likely their lives and the lives of the ones they love as increasingly frequent and damaging extreme weather events cause famine, mass displacements of human beings and the wars that this will create over the coming decades. Not to mention that we are currently experiencing the planet’s 6th mass extinction event and the ecosystems that we depend on are failing at an accelerating rate.
Further Reading:
If you want to learn more about the current climate crisis and what is being done about it by people who don’t deny the science of climate change a great place to start would be This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate by Naomi Klein. It’s a seminal work and is considered a bible of sorts to people within the climate change movement.
If you want to learn more about how billionaire fossil fuel magnates such as Charles Koch are disrupting the American democratic process you can read Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jayne Mayer.
If you want to read a politically bipartisan history of fossil fuels detailing some of their benefits to mostly western societies as well as their role in the turbulent history of the 20th and early 21st centuries you can’t go past the Pulitzer winning book The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power and it’s sequel The Quest: Energy, Security and the Making of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin.
If you don’t believe anything I have said you can get access to the first chapter of Alex’s book by signing up to his mailing list (likely to come at the expense of spam emails filled with baseless propaganda). The figure and the text I used are in there, labeled Figure 1.8. You can also access the figure through a link on that same website. According to his website he’s also set to release a revised sequel to his book in February 2021.