Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future
by Orrin H. Pilkey, Linda Pilkey-Jarvis
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Book Summary Information
Author: Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, Orrin H. PilkeyEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-12-08
ISBN: 0231132123
Number of pages: 248
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Book Reviews of Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future
Book Review: Well argued critique of a "priesthood" of quantitative modellers who "consider non-believers to be neo-Luddites"
Summary: 5 Stars
Pilkey and Pilkey-Jarvis (whom I assume are a father and daughter team, and will generally refer to as "the Pilkeys") deliver a multi-faceted attack on quantitative modelling for earth science.
Their analysis starts with a critique of the quantitative modelling that provided a "fig leaf" to the Canadian fisheries policy makers who allowed the Grand Banks cod fishery to be overfished to the point of destruction in 1992. It then ranges over the modelling of factors affecting nuclear waste repositories, abandoned mines, invasive plant species, the application of quantitative modelling to human matters, including investments, (which they argue are even less valid), various aspects of sea level rise (and indirectly, therefore, global warming) and coastal erosion.
The latter is the biggest section of the book, reflecting the fact that Orrin Pilkey is a renowned coastal geologist. It becomes clear that this background is not coincidental, as he explains at some length the limitation of the Bruun model for coastal erosion which suggests that extent of shoreline retreat in response to sea-level rise can be determined by just two factors, sand grain size and the extent of the shoreface (being the distance the sand continues under shallow water before falling off to the continental shelf), on the assumption that the shoreface is made up entirely of sand of uniform grain size and that there is no net gain or loss of sand by longshore currents, wind action or storm overwash. (The science is not as bad as it sounds - a few formulae are presented in an appendix, but the main flow of the argument is presented in words alone. This is a book written for the layman.) Pilkey presents a compelling argument that the assumptions of the Bruun model are unsound for all but a very few sections of coastline.
He also explains why the model is so popular - it is the only one we have, it can be used to justify action, and because the "grunt-engineers", as the Pilkeys put it, expect mathematical precision. The problem is that while they can have that precision in the world of steel and concrete, they cannot have it in the vastly more complex world of the interaction of natural and geological forces. The Pilkeys take the opportunity for a side-swipe against physicists (as exemplified by Lord Rutherford, who famously said that there were two types of science, physics and stamp collecting) who, they say, are dealing with fundamentally simple systems which are amenable to quantitative modelling. The Pilkeys may not have been thinking of the leading edge of physics - quantum mechanics, unified field theory, etc - but their point, on a global if not galactic scale, is well made.
Having been lent this book by a friend who is very sceptical about man made global warming and knowing that quantitative modelling is very much a mainstay of the IPCC and the global warming lobby, I was quite surprised to find that the Pilkeys seemed very much to side with the latter. They are very critical of those who stridently deny man made global warming, repeat the standard attack on the Cato Institute and Patrick Michaels that they are in the pay of the fossil fuel lobby, and seem to be of the view that man is affecting the climate (but that the extent to which that is happening is, and will always be, impossible to predict). They commended the IPCC on its analysis of the many limitations of quantitative modelling, but critical of the fact that these criticisms were then forgotten and highly quantitative conclusions reached. They do point out the difficult contradiction in role of the scientist as researcher and theorist - sceptical, reserved and qualified - and the scientist as an advisor to, or even actor in, government - who must decide on a basis for action on a balance of probabilities.
I was actually slightly disappointed that the Pilkeys did not make any detailed analysis of the global atmospheric climate models themselves. This may be explained that Orrin Pilkey, as a geologist - and "earth scientist" - felt that those largely atmospheric models were outside his area of expertise.
The Pilkeys recommend the abandonment of attempts to create quantitative modelling of such complex systems as those of Earth Science, and in its place to use less ambitious qualitative modelling. While the former, they say, is about trying to predict the future - to come up with a single answer for a set of known quantitative inputs - the latter is consistent with "contingency scenario" planning, that is to work out answers for a whole series of possible events. More controversially, they propose adopting "normative scenarios", which seemed to mean that society should work out what it wants to happen, and then work in that direction. I did not entirely follow that line of thinking; it did suggest a requirement for a somewhat centrist, government-driven approach to all future development. They may have expressed the same idea more simply, however, by quoting the words of a Danish Physicist, Per Bak: "Don't predict, adapt".
This is a book that is very much worth reading if you are interested in the interfaces between scientific method (and in particular, types of modelling), the practical application of science, and government policy, or, for that matter, if you are particularly interested in any of the areas the Pilkeys explore in detail.
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