The Sixty Minutes report 'Crunch Time', included this sound bite from Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT:
PROF. RICHARD LINDZEN: We need CO-2. It's not a poison, it's not a pollutant. It's essential for life on earth. I mean how much are we going to depend on people's ignorance in order to produce panic?Lindzen's position, stated as a logical syllogism is:
Nothing that is necessary for life can be a pollutant.Or, more generally:
CO2 is necessary for life. ergo:
CO2 cannot be a pollutant.
Nothing that is necessary for life can be an environmental problem.Is this reasoning correct? Let's try applying it to some other chemical compounds and elements that are necessary to life and see:
CO2 is necessary for life. ergo:
CO2 cannot be an environmental problem.
Nothing that is necessary for life can be a pollutant.So, even though an excess of phosporus in freshwater occasionally causes algal blooms, it's wrong to call phosphorus a pollutant. And distinctly unAustralian if the source of the phosphorus is agricultural run-off.
Phosphorus is necessary for life. ergo:
Phosphorus cannot be a pollutant.
Now let's take the general case:
Nothing that is necessary for life can be an environmental problem.
Sodium and chlorine are necessary for life. ergo:
Sodium and chlorine cannot be an environmental problem.
And that about wraps it up for salinisation of soils - it just can't be a problem.
There's something obviously wrong with Lindzen's reasoning: his major premise - that necessities of life can't be pollutants. What has me puzzled is how an environmental scientist could overlook his error and lavish praise on Sixty Minutes for including him in their report.
2 comments:
PROF. RICHARD LINDZEN: We need CO-2. It's not a poison, it's not a pollutant. It's essential for life on earth.
Tell me which one of the four statements you think is not true.
Lindzen's error is an error of logical deduction, as I outlined in the post: his unstated major premise that anything needed for life cannot be a poison or pollutant. Now to your question:
"We need CO-2"
Paradoxically, true (if by we you mean humans): without a minimum level of CO2 in the blood, the breathing reflex is inhibited. This is why hyperventilation creates distress and discomfort.
"It's not a poison..."
False. Breathing in pure carbon dioxide will kill you stone dead; in excess CO2 is a poison.
"... it's not a pollutant."
False, as the argument in the post makes quite clear. Excess CO2 in the environment can be, and is a pollutant.
"It's essential for life on earth."
Almost, but not quite true - it's essential for plant photosynthesis and our kind of life on earth and the environment we're used to. It does not follow from that, however, that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will have no adverse consequences for life on earth.
Now go away.
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