William Happer is a distinguished emeritus professor of physics. His specialty is optics and spectroscopy, but he’s got Physicist Syndrome bad — he thinks he’s an expert in everything to the point that he can disagree with distinguished professors in other fields, on their specialty. Yes, he’s that kind of idiot.
And he’s being considered for the position of Science Advisor to Donald Trump. Are you surprised? Trump’s chief skill seems to be in ferreting out the worst people and elevating them to positions where they can do the most damage. If you’re wondering why Trump is at all interested in this crank professor, it’s because he’s already been bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry.
William Happer has accepted funding from the fossil fuel industry in the past. In a Minnesota state hearing on the impacts of carbon dioxide, Peabody Energy paid him $8,000 which was routed through the CO2 Coalition.
In 2015 undercover investigation by Greenpeace, Happer told Greenpeace reporters that he would be willing to produce research promoting the benefits of carbon dioxide for $250 per hour, while the funding sources could be similarly concealed by routing them through the CO2 Coalition.
But make up your own mind. Here’s an interview with the sublimely confident Dr Happer. Let’s start with something I can agree with.
Well, I guess where I see the big problem in our country is science illiteracy in the general population. If I were King, I would figure out some way to get better science teaching into the schools, you know, K through 12, and especially middle school and high school. It’s a disgrace that people get out with high school degrees knowing as little as they do. And I think it’s getting worse. I think it was much better in the ‘30s than it is today. And teaching makes a difference.
I often tell the people this anecdote — I once asked Edward Teller [a key architect of the hydrogen bomb] how it was possible that there were all these Hungarians, you know, there was him and Eugene Wigner and Szilard, von Neumann — a real constellation. They were all about the same age, and made enormous contributions to science. It was easy, he said. We all had the same high school teacher in the Fasori Gimnázium in Budapest. So there’s an example. Whoever this teacher was deserves a medal, you know. Nobody pays any attention to him. But at least in Hungarian society, teaching was an honorable profession, so that this really good guy — probably better than most university professors — produced this galaxy of stars. So I think we should seriously think about improving general education.
Oh man, yes. There was one teacher I’d name as extremely influential in getting me to pursue a career in science — thanks, Mr Thompson, and that chemistry class my junior year in high school. I think we all know of strong teachers who confirmed our commitment to do this thing…we here at the college level are mainly dealing with young men and women who’ve already made up their minds. We should pay public school teachers more, don’t you think?
But then he mounts his high horse.
I don’t know. First of all, just the term denier to someone like me is extremely offensive because it’s carefully chosen to make me look like a Nazi sympathizer. And you know, I dodged Nazi submarines when I was a kid [on a ship carrying immigrants to the United States] and my father fought against them and my mother worked on the Manhattan Project, and I found it profoundly offensive, you know, and many other people feel the same.
I think toning down the rhetoric would help a lot. And it has been very uneven — for example under the previous eight years the President and secretary of state kept talking about the deniers, you know, about the baskets of deplorables, the knuckle draggers, the Neanderthals. That was me they’re talking about.
I don’t think it was the anti-Nazi science kook they are talking about. It’s the, you know, Nazis. Literal Nazis. The people who do Nazi salutes, talk about white supremacy, and voted for Trump — the guy considering you for science advisor. I’m more than a little tired of indignant people who profess their contempt for Nazis while embracing the political party that counts on Nazi/racist support to get elected.
But also it’s impossible to take his concerns about toning down the rhetoric seriously when he just said this:
“There’s a whole area of climate so-called science that is really more like a cult,” Happer told the Guardian. “It’s like Hare Krishna or something like that. They’re glassy-eyed and they chant. It will potentially harm the image of all science.”
But even worse is the simplistic crackpot science he is peddling.
I see the CO2 as good, you know. Let me be clear. I don’t think it’s a problem at all, I think it’s a good thing. It’s just incredible when people keep talking about carbon pollution when you and I are sitting here breathing out, you know, 40,000 parts per million of CO2 with every exhalation. So I mean it’s shameful to do all of this propaganda on what’s a beneficial natural part of the atmosphere that has never been stable but most of the time much higher than now.
You know what else I’m pumping out as I sit here? Water. It’s just oozing out of my pores, evaporating out of my breath. Water is good, right? So more of it would be better. Let’s dump Happer in a big vat of water and let him paddle there, bathing in the life-giving fluid.
Another natural product of my metabolism is urea. I’m going to be even more generous and suggest that he be immersed in a vat of urine. More is better, always, right? So water plus urine has to be an improvement. Also, plants love water, and they love nitrogen. Therefore, it’s even more beneficial and natural.
OK, I forgot. He also likes gasses. We’ll top off the vat with pure, natural, healthful CO2. It’s a win:win!
I would like to remind Dr Happer of an old familiar (and true) phrase: the dose makes the poison. No one is going to deny that CO2 (and water, and nitrogen) are necessary components of a healthy atmosphere for life as it exists on earth. But we need balance in all things: just the right amount of carbon and nitrogen and water, balanced dynamically in cycles of renewal and reuse. That’s how we maximize growth in a sustainable way. Happer thinks throwing the balance out of wack is just as good as a balanced cycle. That ain’t gonna work.
Furthermore, he denies all the chaos and disruption as we roll our atmosphere back to the state it was in during the Carboniferous — which was admittedly a very nice environment for the plants and animals adapted to the Carboniferous, but probably isn’t as favorable to a species that evolved out of the ice ages.
He also ignores the possibility that we have no check on a runaway greenhouse effect — there is no guarantee climate change will stop at a swampy, hot, carbon-rich Carboniferous. I don’t think we’re predicting a roll-back to the Hadean, but it doesn’t take much change to make human life uncomfortable and possibly untenable.
Ultimately, though, his problem is that he’s not as bright as he thinks he is, and that he has a limited, one-dimensional view of geophysics, ecology, biology, and climate…yet, as a victim of Physicist Syndrome, he still thinks his narrow perspective trumps that of geophysicists, ecologists, biologists, and climatologists. That makes him a perfect Trump advisor, although it may chafe when he discovers that Trump thinks he’s even smarter than physicists.
Could be even worse.
According to Wignall, in The Worst of Times: How Life on Earth Survived Eighty Million Years of Extinctions, there were times in the Triassic that the temperature was so high that photosynthesis was not possible. And the ocean temperature could hit 40 degrees. That’s 40C, not F. It’s scary what those (geologically) sudden increases in CO2 did to the ecosystem.
Ah, well, I guess he figures he’ll be dead before the worst of it so why not get lots of money now and enjoy life?
OK then. Just hold your breath. Enjoy the benefits of hypercapnia.
That’s an important point: plants face a serious trade-off between absorbing light and losing water; photosynthesis loves the sun, but carbon fixation hates the heat that cooks out water. Get it warm enough, and respiration becomes deadly.
But then Happer is one of those people who is only capable of contemplating one parameter at a time.
The strength of a physics education is that it teaches you how to make simple models of the world. Its weakness is that it teaches you how to make simplistic models. If you can’t tell the difference, there’s not much anyone can do for you.
No, I think I you’ve missed his point on that one. He and many others believe that using the term global warming denier for those that are sceptical of AGW is a deliberate ploy designed to evoke the much more famous term, Holocaust denier, and thereby imply that they are to be similarly reviled. And so the anecdote about his childhood is to drive home the resentment about the supposed association with holocaust denial.
I used to spend time keeping tabs on anti-climate science arguments, this is one of the common ones.
Ethan @4: If you can’t tell the difference, you’re a crappy physicist.
I admit that we physicists are certainly vulnerable to Derangement Syndrome, but surely engineers have a worse track record? And surely there are plenty of us who remain un-deranged? Hubristic, maybe, but not insane?
Holms@5,
You’re right, but the usual term is “climate change/AGW denialist“, not “denier” – and I think the latter is generally used for Holocaust deniers. And it concedes far too much rhetorical ground to use alternative terms like “AGW sceptics” without qualification*. AGW “scepticism” is only possible – and has been for at least a couple of decades – for those who are either dishonest, delusional, or both. That is why it is correctly referred to as denialism, and that is where the primary parallel to Holocaust denialism lies – along with the parallel tactics: quote-mining, cherry-picking, accusations of conspiracy or sheeplike conformism, martyrbation, etc. Although since both Holocaust deniers and AGW denialists will bring about suffering and premature death on a horrendous scale if their views are allowed to triumph, there are parallels there as well.
*I accept that you needed to do so to make your point.
@PZ: The final paragraph quoted is a duplicate of the previous paragraph quoted. Was the first instance supposed to be something else?
Also, if you agree with the first paragraphs, should the text be gumbified? I mean, that usually means you think the text is dumb.
In the humanities we have the same problem with economists…
Sorry, Nathaniel, but yes, a lot of physicists are just plain nuts when it comes to fields outside their domain of expertise. (And, yes, I am also a physicist) And Happer is one of the worst. His misunderstanding of climate science is profoundly, willfully ignorant.
Here’s an evisceration of Happer’s utterly naive arguments by Mike McCracken.
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/The-Real-Truth-About-Greenhouse-Gases-and-Climate-Change_1.pdf
Happer isn’t a skeptic. He’s just selectively gullible.
When someone insists on denying the science, but objects to the term “AGW denialist”, I usually offer them some acceptable alternatives:
1) gullible fool
2) willfully ignorant food tube
3) coward
4) ignoramus suffering from delusions of adequacy.
I let them pick. We wouldn’t want to offend the poor, little snowflakes, would we?
Arguing that carbon dioxide must be beneficial because our bodies constantly vent it to avoid how toxic it is to us isn’t even simplistic, because that implies it ignores complexity instead of being backwards at its core. It would disappoint any great teacher I’ve ever known.
#8
Bear in mind that neither group actually uses those terms for themselves (denier/denialist); they both complain about people saying they are in denial of ______. The AGW simply have an extra complaint on top of that: “we aren’t denying climate science, we’re realists! Also, stop making us sound like those guys!”
@12
I would add
5) paid stooge for the energy industry
uncle frogy
Also, this kook — and I used that term deliberately — is all in favor of censoring open discussion of science (not just AGW, but all of “government” science). From Trump’s likely science adviser calls climate scientists :
What the fucking fuck? My knowledge of science in general is, at best, a little above the average non-scientist (thanks mainly to what I can glean from things like this here blog), but even I know that carbon dioxide, in high enough concentrations, is not ‘good’, it’s bad – as in, fucking lethal. Assuming he’s right about the levels of it in the average exhalation, if he wasn’t just exhaling it at that concentration, but sitting in a room with that concentration, I’m pretty sure he’d be risking being put into a coma, resulting in brain damage or death. I have no idea what his physics knowledge is, but, going by what he’s said here, his knowledge of other areas of science doesn’t even reach high-school level.
(Further to my previous comment) The link just before the first instance of the paragraph beginning with: “I see the CO2 as good, you know” goes to the Guardian article on Happer, which does not contain that text. The paragraph is actually from the ProPublica interview linked to previously.
Global warming denial and holocaust denial both operate largely the same rhetorical devices: deny they’re a denier, act outraged that you would accuse them of being a denier, follow that up by denying that the thing is true, then declare that the thing they just said didn’t happen was in fact a good thing.
One lies about fossil fuel pollution, which kills millions; the other lies about a particular genocide, which killed millions.
Ah yes, the Happerition. The man who expected his students to solve QM problems using techniques we would learn 3 weeks later. Give him a break, everyone. I mean, if you can’t even figure out a syllabus for a class you’ve already taught at least once, how can you be expected to understand things like basic spectroscopy?
Someone needs to introduce him to ocean acidification. Increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere also increases the acidity of the ocean, and that is not good.
Acidic oceans will dissolve the bodies of the leakers and journalists thrown out of helicopters faster.
On the term “denier”, climate change, because of those who have been denying and obfuscating the science for decades, is now likely to kill more people in this century than the Nazis did in the last century.
Holms @14
realists eh – like race realists?
BLF @16
I can’t help but notice that Happer is one letter away from Harper, our former science suppressing Trump light prime minister.
The Grauniad’s Ben Jennings on Donald Trump, intelligence and Russia (cartoon).
The worst case of “physicist-syndrome” has to be William Schockley, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the first transistor, and then thought he was qualified to opine on race and eugenics.
Oops, my @25 is in the wrong thread. Sorry!
Obligatory xkcd cartoon
You may say whatever you want, but I don’t believe in that spectroscopy stuff. I mean: who has ever seen light? You can’t see light, right? One time they tell you it’s waves, the other they tell you it’s particles. Have you ever seen either particles or waves, other than in water? That’s not science, that’s religion! You know, like Jesus being God and man at the same time. Which is true, of course, unlike this spectroscopy stuff. Anyway, we should not be funding spectroscopic research. It’s all a hoax from these evil Chinese athiests, that’s what I say!
Sarah @25
Perhaps this will cure those physicists.
militantagnostic: Harper was Canada’s Bush, not Trump.
O’Leary is our Trump. Hopefully someone less awful like Bernier gets in instead. Not that Bernier is good; he’s flipped to being against naming transgender as a protected class after talking to the idiot U.Toronto prof who is waging a war against pronouns. But a normally awful conservative is way less destructive than being a loudmouth incompetent white nationalist.
Happer is the kind of climate change denier who belongs in jail: paid to lie on behalf of polluters. He’s instead been rewarded by money and notoriety.
He mentions rejection of vaccine science in the Guardian article……. does this not hurt his brains, given that Trump is on record as anti-vax?? How do people live with this kind of cognitive dissonance??
Perhaps “Physicist’s Syndrome” could be treated by showing the afflicted physicist video of Deepak Chopra explaining quantum theory and explaining “that’s how you sound to biologists”.
If he supports muzzling scientists because your ‘average person’ is confused by conflicting recommendations, isn’t the real problem a lack of scientific literacy, including understanding how the process of science works? There are issues, like global warming, where the consensus among scientists is pretty high. In other areas, there lacks this consensus and we’re working with more provisional knowledge.
Government cannot ever be ‘totally reliable’ on facts unless government researchers can only express opinions on a small number of issues. but this isn’t how science works. If someone does an experiment which supports X, even if X isn’t a well accepted hypothesis, knowledge of that experiment will guide other scientists work.
He supports muzzling scientists because he figures science should be produced for the highest bidder, and if scientists get to speak out they might question the highest bidder’s alternate science.
Thanks, PZ! Now if we could only deal with Brave Maverick Doctor Syndrome! – Bob Curtis, MD
You would sort of expect that a spectroscopist would understand the greenhouse effect, wouldn’t ya?
From the “Glassy-eyed Cult” article cited by blf @ # 16:
I read this as showing someone with Princeton-privilege ivory-tower isolation having no clue why climatologists would feel leery of Busheviks – but if anyone has a less charitable interpretation, you’re probably right. (Gotta wonder what he “read up” in, and whether he got it from Koch Industries…)
A physicist is the last person on earth who’d have any excuse for being a Thermodynamics Denier.
@ 37
Wow, did he really not get that those scientists were acting like that because they knew that the Republican government at the time was hostile to their work?
I think that the reason why physicist syndrome is a thing can partially be brought back to the “all other science is stamp collecting” mentality. A lot of physicists have overinflated egos about their field of choice, so they figure they can tell other scientists how to do their jobs. Second, physics is a very foundational, fundamental science. Pretty much every scientific field requires at least some understanding of physics and chemistry, but you just need to understand physics in order to study physics. This combination of arrogance and having far more limited knowledge of science than they realize makes some physicists prone to mouthing off about fields of study outside of their own.
gjpetch @ 32:
“Money, dear boy.”
If Venus may once have been like Earth, does that mean Earth has the potential to become like Venus?
Maybe our biosphere diverted its destruction by pure luck when it stuffed all that carbon underground, and now we are ripping out the firewall.
7. Nathaniel Tragg
Well yes engineers are extremely vulnerable to Degrangement Syndrome but they are not scientists.
People tend to confuse engineers and doctors with scientists but the training, mind sets and types of work are completely different to that of a scientist.
But as the old line goes, “Assume a spherical cow”.
IANAPysicist.
Speaking of Physcist Syndrome, the BBC rounds up every oddball wacko attempt to relate consciousness to quantum physics:
The strange link between the human mind and quantum physics
Oh – they don’t tell just how wacky and disproven these ideas are.
Well, at least he would be at loggerheads with DeVos right from the get go.
Do you know of any evidence that he is “bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry?” In the link you gave it indicates that he has all of the money not given to him but to the CO2 Coalition. It is a nonprofit, and their tax records indicate that he does not receive remuneration from them. Its predecessor, the George Marshall Institute, of which he was part, was also a nonprofit, and has tax records available which indicate the same thing: that he is (and was) not paid for his climate change work.
Where is the evidence of him being bought? He has recently said “I have never taken a dime for any of my activities to educate the public that more CO2 will benefit the world.”
http://www.thebestschools.org/special/karoly-happer-dialogue-global-warming/william-happer-interview/
fr222@46, Happer is a director and president of the CO2 Coalition, according to tax documents (Trump’s potential science adviser William Happer: hanging around with conspiracy theorists):
Yes he is and the tax documents indicate that he does not and has not gotten paid. If he is lying then presumably he lied to Princeton about it for years and the tax documents are in error, both serious charges. The chair of physics there has known him for more than 20 years and last month in Nature called him “a very principled person.” There is no evidence that he is paid for this and good evidence against it.
Nonprofit directors usually? or often don’t get paid.