Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist Read Online Free PDF Page B

negative human health and environmental impacts by the highest authorities, unless you listen to the chemical-fear activists.
    We will discuss this fear mongering in more detail in Chapter 18, which focuses on chemicals, but suffice it to say that there is a tidal wave of scary stories about phthalates in activist media releases and in the lifestyle sections of newspapers and magazines. Just search the Internet for “phthalates linked” and you will find they are linked to childhood obesity, autism, asthma, heart disease, and, of course, abnormal genitalia. So far they have not been linked to climate change!
    I make this tongue-in-cheek reference to the term linked to introduce a discussion of the degree to which we know things. If we knew the answer, the above headline would have read, “Phthalates cause abnormal genitalia in boys.” This highlights the difference between causation and correlation , one of the most important distinctions in science.
    Causation is fairly straightforward. The moon causes the tides, lack of food causes hunger, and a combination of geography and rainfall causes rivers to run to the sea. Correlation is much more elusive. While correlation is a necessary property of causation, it does not prove causation by itself. For example, shark attacks and ice-cream consumption are highly correlated. In other words when shark attacks are highest, so is ice-cream consumption. And vice versa, when shark attacks are lowest, hardly any ice-cream is eaten. Can one conclude from this that ice-cream consumption causes shark attacks? Or that shark attacks cause ice-cream consumption? Of course not, they are each caused in part by a common factor, warm weather.
    Correlation means two things appear to be related, possibly in a cause and effect relationship, even when they may not be. You walk under a ladder or a black cat crosses your path and then you have a bit of bad luck. That is a correlation, even if it is far-fetched. Correlation lies at the root of superstition and much of popular environmentalism. Some correlations are eventually proven to be causations. When they lack proof of causation, it becomes convenient for activists and journalists to imply that correlation equals causation. When they wish to make such implications, they fall back on the word linked. The use of this word seems to be justified by sparse evidence. Let’s say that a certain chemical causes a statistically higher level of some abnormality in rats when administered at a very high dose rate. Activists and journalists will then imply that the chemical is linked to this same abnormality in humans, even though no human is ever exposed to such high levels of the chemical.
    So when you read a headline or an introductory sentence that says one thing is linked to another, put on your thinking cap and question the assumption that one is actually caused by the other. Which brings usto facts .
    We know facts are true. The earth revolves around the sun, one of the most important facts shown to be true, as demonstrated by Copernicus. Humans evolved from the apes, gravity pulls you toward the earth, sugar triggers the sweet receptors on the tongue, people fall in love: these are all facts. More mundanely, facts are observable phenomena that recur without failure. If, one day, gravity were not to work, its factualness would be in question. I’m not holding my breath.
    It is fashionable in the politically correct world of postmodernist deconstructionism to claim objective facts do not exist. I reject this assumption. I agree that many things that were taken as facts in the past were actually cultural biases and had more to do with racial, sexual, and class discrimination than with scientifically verifiable truths. But in the realm of objective science there are facts, and I am one of them, as are you.
    Then there are the problems of misinformation and disinformation . The former does not imply dishonest intentions whereas the latter does. Both