From: Letters Never Sent, Stories Never Told

By James Baird

Is False Logic no Logic at all?

I received a comment on an article called "Debunking Rush Limbaugh" that I copied from the Environmental Defense Fund and placed, along with other statements, within an Internet Concept Test for my second semester, first year chemistry course, Chem 22, at Brown University during 1996. Mark Ebersole, whom I do not know, no doubt using a search engine, found this on the World Wide Web and sent an email.

The question posed by me is "how do we explain science, or perhaps anything else, that is based on a set of facts, theories and therefore knowledge of the time, to people who have a limited understanding of the whole set of things? I would guess that this would be called education and mostly is supposed to take place in schools. What about those who missed out, or did not go deeply enough?

Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 05:07:04 -0500
From: Mark Ebersole <markeby@home.com>
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0

To: James Baird <James_Baird@brown.edu> Subject: Nice article

You have a well written and thought out article on Debunking Rush Limbaugh on the Environment.

You have, however, omitted the most import Rushism on the environment of all. This is real simple and is posed as two questions:

1. How many years have men been scientifically recording weather information, the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect?

2. How many years old is the earth itself? This amounts to simple math. Even if man recorded this information for 1000 years, we still only have less than 0.000005% of the life of the earth recorded and therefore any conclusion made has that same percentage of a chance of being accurate.

Mark Ebersole
Rent A Geek
http://members.home.net/markeby/
(817)283-1182

I replied by the email below

Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 12:10:45 -0500
To: markeby@home.com
From: James Baird <James_Baird@Brown.edu>
Subject: Re: Nice article
Cc:
Bcc: X-Attachments:

This is false logic.
jcb

and received the following reply:

Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 11:02:11 -0600
From: Mark Ebersole <markeby@home.com>
Reply-To: markeby@home.com
X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0
To: James Baird <James_Baird@brown.edu>
Subject: Re: Nice article

You have supplied an incomplete argument to the logic. How is this logic false? If if six blind men only feels only an elephants trunk (less than one percent of the elephant) you will get six different description of what it was and all six will probable be wrong. If all six feel the all of the elephant you will get six correct descriptions.

Mark Ebersole
Rent A Geek
http://members.home.net/markeby/
(817)283-1182

My reply to these blind men and the elephant parable was:

Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 12:10:45 -0500
To: markeby@home.com
From: James Baird <James_Baird@Brown.edu>
Subject: Re: Nice article
Cc:
Bcc: X-Attachments:

This supposes total ignorance about elephants, physics, and so on.

JCB

Mr. Ebersole was greatly offended by this reply and sent a vitriolic answer.

Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 15:41:11 -0600
From: Mark Ebersole <markeby@home.com>
Reply-To: markeby@home.com
X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0
To: James Baird <James_Baird@Brown.edu>
Subject: Re: Nice article

This is a typical argument of liberal environmental wackos! Instead of explaining the flaws in my logic, you have reverted to to name calling and insults. I asked a legitimate question based on simple mathematics and instead of sticking to intelligent discourse you choose insults. I would bet that you could also insult me just as badly if I told you that the laws of physics totally disproves Darwin's theory of evolution. --

Mark Ebersole
Rent A Geek
http://members.home.net/markeby
(817)283-1182

To which I replied:

Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 20:35:46 -0500
To: markeby@home.com
From: James Baird <James_Baird@Brown.edu>
Subject: Re: Nice article
Cc:
Bcc: X-Attachments:

Well, you have thin skin. I simply said that the "blind" would have to know nothing to have such inconsistent observations. In anycase, I am finished with this discussion.

JCB

I considered sending the following email, but thought better of it having spent more than enough time with Mr. Ebersole.

Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 12:24:16 -0500
To: markeby@home.com
From: James Baird <James_Baird@Brown.edu>
Subject: Re: Nice article
Cc:
Bcc: X-Attachments:

Man (our kind) has only been observing the sun rising for 50,000 years at best. I will bet you $1,000 the sun will come up tomorrow.

JCB

Mr. Ebersole says that if humans observe the weather for 1,000 years that is only 0.000005% of the time earth has existed. That makes earth 20 billion years old, but let us not quibble over a few billions of years. The point is that not only have we "observed" the weather longer than 1000 years, but also our understanding of things is not dependent on the age of the universe. The graph of data from ice cores shows global ice volume back to 750,000 years before present and atmospheric carbon dioxide back to 150,000 years before present. The relationship, and even the lag, between the two data allow for the probably firm speculation that the atmospheric carbon dioxide follows these fluctuations and that we therefore "know" about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for 750,000 years. We have increased our knowledge to 3/800 percent using Rush Linbaugh's method. Quite an improvement. Another point is that Rush Limbaugh and Mr. Ebersole are willing to accept some "facts" like the age of the earth, or universe even though one or the other of them is a bit mixed up about which is which. Why does someone pick some things to believe and others not? Why the selective knowledge? What is going on here?

Mr. Ebersole has a web page company it would appear and he has a company called MLE Engineering1802 Bent Tree Drive Euless, Texas 76039
Euless, Texas is near Ft. Worth and while I have been to Ft. Worth and Dallas and even Denton and Decatur I somehow missed Euless.

Is Ebersole an engineer of sorts? If so how can he be misled by Rush Limbaugh's " Rushism on the environment" numbers 1 and 2 followed by the assumption that the reliability of conclusions based on observations is somehow proportional to the age of the earth?

I tried to counter this notion by my sun comes up in the morning analogy. I think Ebersole would not accept it. I have this feeling that these Rushism's apply to environmental questions and probably only those dealing with a subset of those questions such as global warming, and the ozone hole.

What are the arguments that refute this notion that validity depends on duration of observation? Let us take the conservation of energy, or indeed, all the conservation "laws." The conservation of energy, as expressed by the First Law of Thermodynamics, makes the connection between heat, work and the "internal" energy of a system. The internal energy is the sum of the heat added to the system and the work done on the system. In history, it was not always known about this connection, and in a situation where there was friction, and where the balance between mechanical work done and heat produced were not very accurately kept this conservation law did not work. But to a skeptical audience it was finally proved and since that time this conservation of heat, work and internal energy has never been found to be violated. This rests on theory and experiment and has had enormous utility for daily life. The observations of thermodynamics have lasted far fewer than 1,000 years-less than 150 and so by the Rushism the chance that the conservation of energy is correct is 150/20,000,000,000 = 0. 000,000,75% And yet against such astounding odds every time we make an energy audit the conservation of energy turns out to be true. So far every time the conservation of energy has seemed to be violated we have found a cause. For example, suppose the system contains a radioactive substance and we find heat spontaneously generated. With further research we discover these radioactive, unstable atoms as the source of this unaccounted heat. Do radioactive nuclei really exist? Well, we have to find out and I think that practically everyone knows that they do and that they fit a pattern in the pattern of atoms. Our knowledge of the existence of radioactivity is only a couple of generations old and according to Rushism is highly unlikely.

But I fear that these arguments, and there can be many, many more, are not to the point. We must concentrate our efforts on specific environmental problems. Let us take the ozone hole, or ozone layer. Now we have only observed the ozone layer for some 50 years I guess and so it is really improbable. Or Rush Limbaugh must mean that it is there, but it does not matter. If we wreck the ozone in the stratophere it will be of little consequence and perhaps even return. I am not sure what Rush Limbaugh's point is excepting I think that he and a few others believe it is a hoax perpetrated by industry and some fuzzy headed academics. At least Lindon Larouche, Dixey Lee Ray, and Rush Limbaugh have propounded such an idea. A while back, Rowland and later Medina came to Brown before receiving their Nobel prizes to give talks about global chlorofluorocarbons (CLF's) and the ozone hole. After the talk Harold Ward, a colleague, asked Rowland what was the origin of the belief among some that the ozone hole was a hoax. His answer was that he thought it was Lindon Larouche and Dixey Lee Ray as publicized by Limbaugh that was the origin of this misinformation. Does the ozone hole exist? Is it caused by CLF's?

The ozone hole has been measured. The concentration of ozone in the stratosphere is known and its changes are recorded. It is very definitely true that the concentration above Antarctica has seriously diminished. Is this depletion caused by CLF's? Yes, the smoking gun in the destruction reaction, ClO, was found on direct observation from balloons and later using a U2 type aircraft by Jim Anderson of Harvard. Does Rush Limbaugh and M. Ebersole believe this? Probably not, but governments worldwide do and are taking action to eliminate ClF's. I guess Larouche, Ray and Limbaugh believe all these governments have been taken in by a hoax of monumental proportions and including the Nobel prize committee. I would guess that Ebersole, et. al would have to shift the argument from "does it exist" to "does it matter?" "Does it matter?" is a very different question. This is now a question of values, of public health, economics and of environmental health. I do not want to discuss values at the moment, but stick with this idea of believability of science and how to educate the public in the form of Rush Limbaugh and M. Ebersole.

Part of the problem is a lack of understanding of what science is. Science applied to simple, let us say, model systems can be absolute. Science applied to complexity is subject to some lack of resoluteness. The public wants definite answers from science. Science cannot always give definite answers. Science can come close, but it must be allowed the opportunity for a change of position as more experiments are done and as a greater understanding occurs.

Another part of the problem has to so with knowledge itself. In order to understand a scientific conclusion about some topic one has to know the background of the science. Perhaps one has to understand the laws of thermodynamics and perhaps there are practical experiences that must be understood as well. For the scientist to explain something to someone not educated in science it may be necessary to complete his or her education. Unfortunately, this takes time and most of the time people are not willing to go this distance. This is my problem with Mr. Ebersole and Rush Limbaugh for that matter. It is far easier for them to "shoot from the hip" based on some incomplete knowledge, or some flawed principle. If Mr. Ebersole has an open mind it may be possible to complete his scientific education. Mr. Limbaugh, I am not so sure since I believe he "has another agenda."

In the spirit of all this, let us consider Global Warming. The question is "Does Global Warming Exist?" The answer to this question is most definitely yes since if it did not the globe would be a frozen mass warmed only by its internal heat source. Life would be tough if it existed. What is meant by this question anyway? In the context of the news, this question means that things are going to get "hot" in the next few decades. We know from the geologic record, as indicated in the first illustration, that global warming and global cooling (an ice age) occurs periodically and the smallest period is about 12,000 years. So what is the big deal? Part of the big deal is the fact that the global concentration of carbon dioxide is greater than any time during the past 750,000 years. Another part of the big deal has to do with complexity. Carbon dioxide is not the most important green house gas, water is. So if water is 20,000 units in the atmosphere and carbon dioxide a mear 300 units why the worry about burning fossil fuels? Can science tell us now if global warming is going to be a problem for us in the next 100 years? The answer, as usual, is both yes and no.

My feeling is that indeed water is the green house gas of choice, but that small changes in carbon dioxide can influence the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere and thus have a multiplying effect on global warming. An increase in carbon dioxide raising the ambient temperature a few tenths of a degree can change the vapor pressure of water adding a significant greenhouse gas as may be infered by the following curve for water vapor. Of course the problem is far more complicated than this involving as it does global geological processes.

Also, when one looks at that record in the first illustration we have the appearance of some kind of oscillation in temperature, as seen through inferred carbon dioxide, and as with any unstable oscillator we may trip it into a warming mode. That is the worry. Can science prove this at this time? No. We have to operate on possibilities and strategies, both economic and social. That is what environmentalist, geologists and other scientists are attempting to do.

To get a feeling about the complexity of this global warming issue here is a diagram made by a summer student during 1998. This was communicated through a course conducted using Internet Relay Chat. The student, Abhas Gupta, produced this flow diagram July 28, 1998. There are no magnitudes, no guesses of relative importance, but this is an outline of complexity and interrelatedness. This is a diagram of work to be done-at least as far as Mr. Gupta is concerned.

Not mentioned in Mr. Gupta's diagram is the problem of hydrated methane. Enormous meta-tons of methane in the muck especially in asia that may be released on warming and adding a positive feedback.

Where do we stand on global warming? All the geologic measurments, all the computer programs, all the best guesses by scientists working in this field says that an global warming effect caused by burning carbon will occur and has occurred.The following figure shows data taken by a scientific station on Mauna Loa measureing carbon dioxide from 1958 to the 1991. The graph following this one show these data superimposed on geolgic ice core data for carbon dioxide. The picture is compelling to say the least.

The consequences are not completely known, but they can be dire. What should we do?

I do not think we should listen to Rush Limbaugh. He is particularly ill informed about matters of science and math. He has some kind of agenda it would appear. With Mr. Ebersole we need to attempt to educate him to basic science and to the realities and uncertainties of the greenhouse effect. Can we bring him into a consideration of the science, or is he simply manipulated by the likes of Limbaugh? I do not know.

Now my curiosity is peaked by the notion that Mr. Ebersole gives that the laws of physics disprove Darwin's theory of Evolution. Again we have this problem of a lack of experimental knowledge by Ebersole, but I am willing to bet that he also has another agenda. Probably there are religious ideals held my this man. Now I am beginning to think "Clueless in Euless!" Sorry about the insult, but evolution is something that is proven beyond doubt. I expect that Ebersole is not thinking about evolution in its entirety, but only in terms of humans. Of course he may be one of those who believe that the earth was formed a couple of thousand years ago with everything in place. But Ebersole is willing to accept the age of the earth as 20 billion years so he must be able to get past that fundamentalist problem.

In the case of evolution I think it interesting to consider not humans, but tiny shell creatures, or as pointed out recently, bacteria. Geologist and evolutionary biologists dig cores from deep into the earth. A good place might be the bottom of the Indian Ocean where these tiny shell creatures may be analyzed not only in terms of their evolution, followed by shell features, but also by their chemical composition. Various dating methods give these scientists a time line starting 3.5 million years from the present, a time incidentally when Lucy was active in Africa. There are two features of following evolutionary tendencies in these creatures. First is that there are changes in these creatures in the first place. I guess Darwin's idea is that the evolutionary pressure is to improve the likelihood of the creature surviving into the future. That must occur since the shellfish have made it for 3.5 million years. The other factor is that in the evolutionary process the species never returns to a previous state. There is fundamental reasons for this and it is related to the natural tendency for nature to attempt achieve equilibrium. When people follow the species isolated from cores up through the millennia they observe evolutionary change and it fits the Darwinian idea. How universal is this Darwinian concept? We can apply this to bacteria and virii and, yes, humans too.

Did we come from apes? Let's do some DNA analysis. There can be little question about the basic biology between man and now living apes. The five- percent difference makes all the difference, but the suggestion of common ancestries seems powerful. In fact, the general evolutionary scheme for all species is beginning to make a consistent picture. DNA analysis and other pieces of scientific evidence can buttress all this.

The following figure shows an evolutionary scheme connecting all things.

The relationships in this diagram are from DNA evidence and represents, excepting for my humor about politicians, a definite evolutionary scheme.

Excepting for politicians, how do humans fit into this? I propose we skip humans and simply accept evolution as a fact confirmed by observations of many sorts. How does this interact with religion? I simply do not see that it does unless one is out of the main stream of theology and accepts some interpretations literally. Science says nothing about God, or the rest. In fact most scientists and engineers I know are religious people from all creeds.

It is an ideal, I guess, to seperate science and religion.