WEDNESDAY, DEC 1, 2021: NOTE TO FILE
Eric Lee's Fallacies
In the name of systems science
Dr. Charles Dawkins, Professor Emeritus, Sustainability Science, Kundop University
TOPICS: SYCOPHANT, PSEUDO-SYSTEMS-SCIENCE, THREAT TO POSTERITY, FROM THE WIRES, CRANK
Abstract: Eric Lee has existential concerns for humanity, but if informed by a time traveler that all humans were extinct by 2353 CE, he would certainly assume it was despite his efforts and not because of them. The same may be said of others, but if Lee was to succeed in spreading his memes, that would be the cause of humanity's failure to save life on Earth. If humanity were to limit its use of fossil fuels or attempt a managed descent by rapid birth-off to a global population of 7 to 35 million (depending on per capita consumption), such 'success' would prevent the deployment of solar-deflection technology at Lagrangian Point L1 to actively control the Earth’s atmospheric temperature. The ethical goals of effective altruism and longtermists would be forfeit and the blessings of posterity to the cosmos, over the next trillion years, would go unrealized. There is no greater threat to humanity than to subvert the best laid plans of longtermists.
KUNDOP (A-P) — Eric Lee is working year after year in almost total isolation from his peers because from his point of view he has none. He has sought confirmation from imagined colleagues, such as Charles Hall, Rex Weyler, and William Rees, but has found no support. He cites Howard T. Odum as if he were a mentor, but Lee was never even in the presence of H.T. who would surely have distanced himself if Lee had sought confirmation. Lee insists that his isolation is not desired on his part. It is due, he claims, to the prejudice of established scientific groups against new ideas. Dr. Rees, a notable human ecologist, holds the view, on the conservative end of the spectrum that ranges from 2 billion to 1 trillion, that Earth may only be able to support 2 billion people sustainably. On average, experts agree that Earth can support at least 26 billion people. Lee begs to disparage such estimates as they are, in his expert opinion (though he has no advanced degrees nor has he published a peer reviewed paper nor even self-published a book of his extraordinary claims for review), that the human population should (and could by following his 'birth-off' proposal), be rapidly lowered to 7 to 35 million. He references only a well known and self-described doomer, also lacking in other than self-accredited expertise. If Lee does not epitomize the modern crank, then who does?
There are many sad examples of novel scientific views which did not receive an unbiased hearing, and which later proved to be true. Mesmer was both a crank and a charlatan, and acceptance of hypnotic phenomena was understandably resisted by established psychologists. In the field of medicine, the germ theory of Pasteur, the use of anesthetics, and Dr. Semmelweiss' insistence that doctors sterilize their hands before attending childbirth are other well known examples of theories which met with strong professional prejudice. A psychotic German physician, Robert Mayer, discovered the law of conservation of energy. Even the great Galileo refused to accept Kepler's theory, long after the evidence was quite strong, that planets move in ellipses. The refusal of eighteenth century astronomers to believe that stones actually fell from the sky was vigorously based on closed mindedness. Claims of medieval peasants that they saw and found such rocks was dismissed as 'old wives' tales, Astronomers insisted such rocks had either been picked up somewhere and carried by the wind, or that the persons who claimed to see it fall were lying. Even the great French Academe des Sciences ridiculed this folk belief, in spite of a number of early studies of meteoric phenomena. Not until April 26, 1803, when several thousand small meteors fell on the town of L'Aigle, France, did the astronomers decide to take falling rocks seriously. Isaac Asimov et al. famously dismissed the theory of continental drift as an absurdity for decades until it wasn't. Self-anointed visionaries like Lee love to cite such examples while ignoring the vastly more common fact that the rejected claims of cranks are, for well founded reasons supported by sound evidence and reason, valid and validated repeatedly. Real scientists, at least, can change their narrative, unlike the pseudo scientist. That all real scientists have ignored Lee is not surprising. What scientist or academic, even one retired, would find the undertaking to correct a know-nothing pundit worthwhile?
Eric Lee stands in solitary opposition to every recognized authority in his field of interest, and yet manages to consider the possibility, nay to insist with obdurate certainty, that he is right. That he has received no recognition will inevitably lead to paranoid delusions of some organized entity, like that of ecological modernists, effective altruists, or longtermists that he already disparages for being the top thought leaders they are of a 'failed education system' at major universities such as Oxford, who have nothing better to do than ignore or suppress his views. Without being driven by his megalomania, Lee could not persist in fighting a vigorous, single-handed battle against overwhelming orthodoxy. If he were merely motivated by profit or a wish to deceive, he could not keep on keeping on year after year of being ignored.
There are five ways in which the sincere pseudo-scientist's paranoid tendencies are likely to be exhibited.
(1) He considers himself a genius. Humans and their biosphere are threatened by 'overshoot'. Lee has the only 'real' solution. There are no political solutions, because he knows there are none.
(2) He regards his putative colleagues as at best ignorant, as why else would they not agree with him? Everyone is out of step with what Nature is telling humanity, except himself. Frequently he insults his opponents by accusing them of being in denial or being otherwise limited. If they ignore him, he takes this to mean his arguments are unanswerable. Lee thinks he would rather know than believe, so anyone who ignores or disagrees with him would rather believe than know.
(3) Lee believes himself to be unjustly ignored because he holds no advanced degrees nor has he written any books. He attempted to present at an Ecological Society of America conference, but of course they rejected his presentation. Only pay-to-play journals would publish his papers if he bothered to do so. It is all part of a dastardly plot to silence him, no doubt. It would never occur to Mr. Lee that the opposition may be due to obvious error in his work. The high priests of science must fear to have their orthodoxy overthrown. He no doubt likens himself to Bruno, Galileo, Copernicus, Pasteur, and other great men who were unjustly persecuted for their heresies. Lee has had no formal training in any field, and so must attribute his being ignored to a scientific masonry, unwilling to admit into its inner sanctums anyone who has not gone through the proper initiation rituals (such as earning a PhD).
(4) Lee focuses his points of difference on the greatest scientists. Told that an angle cannot be trisected, Lee, as a high school student, proceeded to try. He had a great uncle who built a perpetual motion machine in his barn.
(5) Lee often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined, words which have meaning to him. Of concern, Lee may have the potential of developing incredibly complex theories. He may be able to defend them in books of vast erudition, with profound observations, and often liberal portions of sound science. His rhetoric may be enormously persuasive to some. All his claims about how the world works may fit together, seemingly, like a jig-saw puzzle. Some ill-informed could be taken in, and come to work to make the unthinkable happen.
Lee is a would-be cult leader looking for a following. Such has happened before. Martin Gardener, in his classic Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science has detailed the wiles of cranks past whom those of today resemble. We would all do well to be on our guard against them and the potential for harm they might do if not opposed. A consensus has arisen within the halls of higher education that we are obligated to serve the long-term interests of posterity. Modern humans are changing the climate, but the climate is subject to change without humans, and such change poses an existential threat to all life on Earth. Eventually Sol will grow large, and only humans have the potential to shield Earth to give life millions of more years to evolve. And when the sun becomes a red giant, only humans can take earthlings to a new planet to continue to evolve into forms most beautiful and most wonderful. As agents of the Earth, humans must continue to evolve and go forth into the cosmos to evolve for trillions of years.
I am deeply concerned that if not Lee, then people like him may prevent humanity from realizing its destiny. Ending all fossil fuel use in five years would kill billions, but worse, could prevent humans from saving all life on Earth, including trillions of humans yet to be born. The problem of global warming will not be solved by contracting the global economy. The long-term solution is to use technology to maintain Earth's atmospheric temperature at the optimum for life on the planet for at a minimum of hundreds of millions of years to come. This may involve constructing a solar-deflection shield at Lagrangian Point L1 to actively control the Earth’s atmospheric temperature. Or any other solution that only advanced technology can offer is needed. Contracting the economy and degrowing the human population is retrogressive, a serious existential threat to both humanity and the biosphere. The only real threat to the future of humanity is if anti-humans like Lee have their way.
Each subshield at L1 would be a Dyson Dot, a satellite solar panel, converting solar radiation into electricity. The solar energy collected from the Dyson Dot network could be transmitted to Earth through space via a series of relays, supplying over 10,000 gigawatts (10 terawatts) per year – five times humanity’s entire electric power demand. But Lee suggests that posterity could live on 50 Wh/person/day of electrical services.
Our cosmic purpose is to deploy solar-deflection technology or other real technical solutions to manage Earth's climate for eons to come. If we do not embrace our nature, our destiny, our cosmic purpose, then the result will be immense death and suffering in the coming decades and centuries. If modern humans drop the ball, trillions may not be born to go forth to inhabit the cosmos and to guard life on Earth and elsewhere. It is not too late. We can have the future doomers like Lee would destroy, to achieve the best possible future for the human species and the rest of life on Earth and in the cosmos.
I urge all right thinking humans to stand up and embrace effective altruism, which has received over 46 billion dollars in donations to help make Earth a better place. Effective altruists endeavor to spend their 80,000 hours of working life well so that science can extend productive human life without limit. Learn about the ethical philosophy embraced by humanity's best and brightest. Doing so may not be as much fun as dancing around a pink party boat, but it will be far more effective.
Humanity is about to embark on a journey, a journey into the depths of the Universe. The human species is the most precious life-form that has ever, and will ever, exist in our Solar System and perhaps in the Milky Way. The human species has inevitably dominated the planet and we have rapaciously utilized our fellow life-forms as resources. The ‘environmental crisis’ and human-induced global warming/climate change are not bad events; rather, they are signs that life on Earth, and in our Solar System, is thriving. We must come to appreciate the vastly differing stories that we, as a species, tell ourselves about our place on the Earth. Some of these stories are optimistic and positive in tone, whilst others, like Lee's, are pessimistic and present a gloomy view of the human species.
Lee's view is that the human species is an unwelcome guest on the Earth, some kind of destroying parasite or cancer, and that the Earth would be far better off if modern techno-industrial humans became extinct (if not all humans). In Lee's story the human species is conceptualized as an entity that brings immense suffering to the non-human life-forms of the Earth for its own selfish benefit. We must come to appreciate both why his story has been created and why it is totally misguided. We must eventually come to see that the human species is the most precious form of life in our Solar System, and that the purpose of the human species, the reason that it came into existence, is intimately connected to the phenomenon of global warming. We must come to see that rather than being the bringer of suffering to non-human Earthly life-forms for our own selfish benefit, the fundamental underlying truth is that the human species suffers vastly more than any of the other life-forms on the Earth, so that it can be the saviour of non-human Earthly life.
To people like Lee humans are mere puppets who come and go, who are fundamentally a destructive parasite, a destroyer of life. He has been deluded into believing that it is solely our actions that have put the planet in peril, and that we therefore need to act quickly to reign in our activities, contract our economies, and depopulate the planet of the humans/crops/livestock/pets to minimize our impact on the Earth, and thereby ‘save the planet’. In reality, averting calamity for life on Earth for all eons to come requires us to simply embrace who we are, embrace what we are, to power forward, and to embrace our destiny.
Our realization must be that if the human species hadn’t initiated any global warming of our atmospheric temperature, that we would have failed in our cosmic mission, we would not discover a solution; we would have failed to fulfill our purpose, and thus life in our Solar System would be forever doomed. This would be a tragic outcome. The phenomenon of human-induced global warming is not a bad event, some kind of tragedy, a terrible injustice to non-human life, as is commonly portrayed. In order to appreciate why this is so, one needs to be aware of the bigger picture within which the phenomenon is situated. In other words, one needs to appreciate the full swathe of the evolutionary unfolding of our Solar System, of our planet and of human culture.Our journey, a journey that has just begun, is a journey of understanding the nature of the universe. If one solely sees the phenomenon of human-induced global warming, and our appropriate response to it, solely through an extremely narrow scientific lens, in total ignorance of the universal pursuit of advancement, then one will be hopelessly lost and deluded. It won’t be simply that one’s head will be buried in the sand; rather, one’s entire body will be submerged in the depths of the sandy beach.
Words are a tragic substitute for insight into the nature of the Universe, yet they are also a wonderful tool to provide understanding if they are appropriately used. Humans are rational, questioning creatures, so it is likely that you will have some doubts concerning the truth of human nature. This is because you are likely to encounter ideas which clash, sometimes violently, with your present understanding. We need to embark on a journey of progressive insight, a journey which involves gathering a multitude of pieces of understanding which will ultimately fuse together to serve posterity long term.
The future will be better. To envision collapse is to make it so. The human species will eventually both master its technologies and master itself so that it doesn’t abuse the technologies that it has brought forth. The suffering of the human species will eventually be brought down as our Solar System continues to unfold and we move out of the atrocious epoch that is the age of the technological explosion.
Technology is a ‘danger’ because its unleashing results in immense planetary transformation and disruption – rainforests are replaced by cities, concrete, mining, roads and industrial agriculture, at the same time as tremendous amounts of fossil fuels are released from safe underground storage thereby creating an immense force for human-induced global warming. There are two elements to this immensely dangerous force.
Firstly, this force for human-induced global warming leads to immediate actual global warming, which contributes to the ongoing planetary transformation through causing the warming of the oceans, the melting of icebergs and glaciers, and an increasing frequency of extreme weather events, such as floods, fires, storms and droughts. Secondly, this force has a pent-up element due to a ginormous amount of carbon dioxide getting sucked into the depths of the Earth’s oceans where it goes on a journey of several centuries. Whilst it is on this journey, the world above goes through an immense transformation. This transformation is a process of weakening planetary robustness in the realm of the ability of life on Earth to keep its atmospheric temperature down – both the land surfaces and the oceans become less favorable homes for carbon dioxide. When the pent-up force comes to fruition, with the long-travelling oceanic carbon dioxide making its dramatic return into a vastly transformed world, a potent force for immediate global warming will come into being as carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere spiral upwards.
The technologically-transformed planet is ill-equipped to deal with the immense force for human-induced global warming, because it was in an exceptionally weak state before it was weakened further by its technological transformation. It is the overwhelming of life on Earth’s force for global cooling by the force for non-human-induced global warming which is the bringer of doom; whilst, the technological transformation of the planet is the penultimate nail in the coffin for life on Earth. This means that the birthing of technology brings with it a perfect storm of danger – a danger to the human species, and a danger to life on Earth. Yes, Lee has his concerns, but his proposed solutions, e.g. a birth-off to a remnant population living in huts while gardening is a vision of failure for humanity and a barrier to humanity's use of technology to save life on Earth now and for all eons to come.
Technology is fundamentally a ‘saving power’ because it is the ‘armour’ which life on Earth needs in order to survive and thrive into the distant future. The central component of this ‘technological armour’ is the technology which will be deployed to regulate the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere, through creating a force for global cooling. This deployment, this technological force for global cooling, is required because our Solar System is an unfolding whole which heats up as it ages. This one-way force for non-human-induced global warming causes the inevitable weakening, and expiration, of the non-technological force for global cooling that life on Earth deploys in the pre-technological era. Technology is life on Earth’s ‘saving power’. In the absence of technology life on Earth would be doomed, and would be hurtling towards obliteration.
In short, the process of bringing forth life on Earth’s ‘saving power’, involves the creation of a period of immense disruption which entails the creation of an imminent ‘danger’ to the continued flourishing, and the continued survival, of life on Earth. The destiny, the cosmic purpose, of the human species is to bring into being life on Earth’s technological ‘saving power’. In order to fulfill its destiny. The human species needs to come face-to-face with the imminent ‘danger’ that is generated in the process of bringing forth life on Earth’s ‘saving power’. The human species can then save life on Earth through bringing forth a technological force for global cooling AND warming as needed. Lee calls upon humanity to become Earth Guardians, but would destroy our ability to understand the planet and learn to live with it properly.
PS: I, Eric Lee, have sought a careful hearing and view criticism as manna from heaven as I would rather know that I am wrong than believe I am right. So I must appreciate Dr. Dawkins' solitary efforts, if not to correct me, then to give expression to his concerns that as an existential threat to life on Earth I am 'not even wrong', such that any attempt on his part to correct me would be in vain. So far, his seems to be the consensus view of the educated.
Alas, a consensus view of know-alots is not enough without supportive evidence and reason, or, in the case of longtermists and sustainability theorists, even citing evidence and reason selectively is not enough. As Martin Gardener would predict, I will now cite such cases as that of Blondlot and his N-rays, Lowell's canals, Fedyakin's polywater, Sheldrake's morphic resonance, and of Professors Pons and Fleischmann on up to today's nuclear fusion enthusiasts who begin by asserting that they are not at all like some predecessors who turned out to be wrong.
Predictably I will droll on about how in 1989 I first heard about Pons' and Fleischmann's great discovery at a large computer club meeting whose resident physicist felt compelled to give a 30 minute talk on the coming wonders of cold fusion. I took an interest, but the next day learned that the benefactors of humankind had decided their accomplishment was so immense that bypassing the usual peer-review process to announce their discovery to humanity via their servants, mainstream media, was obviously justified. Countless enthusiasts agree, but I saw this as a red flag large enough to cover a planet, and my physicist informant as a enthusiast, a true son of the Anthropocene.
Such a self-serving narrative as I must tell leads to justifying the casting of doubts upon sustainable development, the coming Green New Deal, and the space-shield that will manage Earth's climate (and empower human techno-industrial society) for eons to come, apart from which there will be no mysterious prince to save life on Earth by maintaining a habitable planet far beyond the ultimate threat of a growing sun going red giant, and from lessor threats such as asteroid impacts, before humans find a new planet in another solar system to take life on Earth to, so all may continue to live long and prosper for hundreds of billions and trillions of years to come, thanks to humanity's guardianship (assuming people like me are ignored or otherwise thwarted).
I will have to remain true to character and tell of becoming aware of a group of people in Tucson AZ, where I lived in 2013, who were educated enough to have concerns that 2 million people living in the Tucson metro area (as projected to be by 2050), or that the current 1 million might not be sustainable. The local demographic transition was already advanced, however, so there was little concern that the population would ever be 3 million unless strong incentives for having at least 2-3 children were successful or area economic growth attracted another million. A consensus emerged that 2 million could be sustainable, but that the area population would peak at a mere 1.5 million, which almost all agreed was sustainable. A few questioned whether even the current 1 million could be sustainably supported at the level of prosperity being enjoyed, but they were dismissed as outliers, doomers who failed to fully value human potential and ingenuity. Given that the aboriginal population of floodplain farmers was about 2,000 back when the river still flowed, I wondered how that many would persist when the planes and trains and trucks stopped; when the matter and energy flows stopped supporting the current population; when water stopped being pumped by 15 coal empowered electric pumping stations 330 miles from the diminishing flows of the Colorado River (which no longer flows to the sea).
Eatable Tucson as it will soon appear.
Average citizen today uses 130 gallons water/day.
City gets 11 inches rainfall/year.Upon reading the information on the Envision Tucson Sustainable website, I realized they were not aware of elementary principles of systems ecology, nor the biophysical limits of prosperous growth. They all agreed, those who were part of envisioning Tucson's future, that, yes, growth would transition to a steady-state economy, but certainty one that would provide as good, and a qualitatively much better, life as the middle to upper-class professionals, all products of a university education, were enjoying today. They may have to capture rainwater to keep the vegetation around their suburban homes verdant, solar panels on their 3k to 4k sq ft. roofs to charge the electric cars; they understood why they needed to spend 8k dollars to install composting toilets, but life will be as good or better for green, sustainable consumers informed of alternative green goods and services that will and are being developed now to sustain their life of privilege.
Apparently unlike anyone else, I had sustainability concerns, and not just for Tucsonians, but for humanity and the biosphere. I came to protest unsustainable denial, to walk the streets and sit in public areas, such as in front of the Tucson Public Library, with signs expressing my concerns to assess whether others shared my concerns. I put information on a website SEOed to come up in a search for 'sustainable tucson', so my existence and narrative must have come to the attention of at least some members of Sustainable Tucson. I attended meetings and events, but never offered a dissenting view as I was never asked, and was unknown by sight. I had an interest in solar cooking, and so could share that interest, but otherwise I observed and only on my website did I at times beg to differ.
At one Earth Day event featuring many special interest groups, I wandered about with my signs, as I had for many hundreds of hours over several years, and I likely passed the Sustainable Tucson booth, but I had no interest in inflicting my concerns upon anyone. While sitting in the open at the event, one person approached me, but not with interest. He could only with difficulty contain his contempt, and did most of the talking. I came to realize he was well placed within the Sustainable Tucson group, and that I was viewed as a threat, or perhaps potentially one if anyone listened to me or the misinformation on my website. I had hoped the information would be of interest and hoped to dialogued with members who shared my concerns about what a prosperous way down for Tucson might be and look like. But I was telling a different story, and that was the threat.
But response to my signs varied. Sitting in front of the library, one person paused to read my signs and immediately, well, within seconds, understood my message and why I wanted to share it. He had no questions about what I was trying to communicate. He spoke only to express his support and appreciation for my endeavoring to inform citizens. He mentioned he was from out of state, was in Tucson to present a short lecture series at the university as a guest scientist. This was helpful as it suggested disinterest was not due to my failure to communicate. That all Anthropocene enthusiasts would not like my message to humanity was understandable and evident. That I was wrong about everything was not.
