Pursuing praxis

A continuation of the previous post: 

As various online news commentators have said, this situation has not been widely reported in the US, and good luck getting these 11 points any airtime. Furthermore, this article quoted the plaintiff’s lawyer as saying,

"Gore has gone on record as saying he believes it is appropriate to over-represent the facts to get his message across," says [John Day, Mr Dimmock’s solicitor].

Boy, I don’t even know where to begin lashing into Gore if this is in fact true. It’d be one thing if "An Inconvenient Truth" was a hyperbolic monologue on Comedy Central. But no, it dons the full regalia of Scientific Fact (complete with powerpoint), and in doing so, the ‘over-representation of the facts’ strides squarely into ‘misrepresentation of the facts.’

Q: What’s the difference between ‘inaccuracy’ and ‘fraud’?

Dictionary.com says:

in·ac·cu·ra·cy  /ɪnˈækyərəsi/ Pronunciation Key - [in-ak-yer-uh-see] 

–noun, plural -cies for 1.

1.	something inaccurate; error.

2.	the quality or state of being inaccurate.

[Origin: 1750–60; in-³ + accuracy]

—Synonyms 1. mistake, blunder, slip, inexactitude. 2. incorrectness, erroneousness, inexactness.

 

And from Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law:

Main Entry: fraud
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin fraud- fraus
1 a : any act, expression, omission, or concealment calculated to deceive another to his or her disadvantage; specifically : a misrepresentation or concealment with reference to some fact material to a transaction that is made with knowledge of its falsity or in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity and with the intent to deceive another and that is reasonably relied on by the other who is injured thereby b : the affirmative defense of having acted in response to a fraud
2 : the crime or tort of committing fraud <convicted of securities fraud> —see also MISREPRESENTATION
NOTE: A tort action based on fraud is also referred to as an action of deceit.

actual fraud
: fraud committed with the actual intent to deceive and thereby injure another called also fraud in fact —compare CONSTRUCTIVE FRAUD in this entry

constructive fraud
: conduct that is considered fraud under the law despite the absence of an intent to deceive because it has the same consequences as an actual fraud would have and it is against public interests (as because of the violation of a public or private trust or confidence, the breach of a fiduciary duty, or the use of undue influence) called also legal fraud —compare ACTUAL FRAUD in this entry

So the main difference between ‘inaccuracy’ and ‘fraud’ is intent. But, when the stakes are higher and the lawyers are called in, you can’t claim sanctuary with professed ignorance. From the definitions above, it looks like omission or error of highly relevant information in a persuasive statement or case that leads or encourages another person to take action based on that assumed, inaccurate or omitted information counts as fraud. If the defrauder consciously intended it, then it is legally ‘actual fraud’ or ‘fraud in fact.’ If he didn’t consciously intend it but should have known better, then it is ‘constructive fraud’ or ‘legal fraud.’

And while I’m all about making profits, I’m very much against it when someone profits at the unwitting or unwillful expense of another. This NewsBusters article steps out the ways that Gore has explicitly positioned himself to profit from the global warming scare. I looked for the original article from The Tennessean, but it doesn’t look like it’s online anymore. This other article works to hear from Gore’s camp on the issue, but I don’t think they quite came clean. Consider:

As I understand it, GIM is an investment company where if you give them your money, they invest in green-friendly projects and industries, and … then what? If it’s an investment, you should get some returns on it. This isn’t a one-way deal, like a purchase. They don’t sell carbon credits (so where’s Gore’s carbon neutrality coming from?), and they don’t sell you anything except the chance to make more money through good investments. So if Gore runs around scaring people into living more greenly by putting a portion of their income towards supporting green-friendly technologies (by consuming their products or investing in the companies), and these companies with green technologies are expected to grow in size and profitability then … one would expect to profit from investing in said companies and technologies. And if you get in on the companies early, when share prices are low, and then suddenly there’s an up-tick in these companies, they get more money, their markets expand from increased public interest, you can make money on the higher share prices. That’s the simple calculus on investments, I think. So, all you need to engineer higher share prices is sufficient public interest and motivation. Enter "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Dr." (Reverend?) Gore.

Ka-ching! While they don’t sell carbon neutrality, they’ll take your money and offer you something even better: moral superiority! Or at least moral neutrality. But, as this doesn’t have any objective standard in reality, your morality and attendant sense of self-worth are securely buckled-in on the duelling roller coasters of popular perception, a market torn between wish and fact, and the latest hijinks of pretentious poseurs on the global stage.

You might have heard, Gore’s film has been distributed to some 3500 UK schools as a resource for science teachers. Whether it was suitable as such was recently challenged in the UK courts. While a final ruling has yet to come in, it currently stands that the film can stay, but teachers must point out 11 inaccuracies in the film.

The Telegraph reports the story, and an article on The New Party website gives the specifics and delineates the 11 points as follows:  

The decision by the government to distribute Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth has been the subject of a legal action by New Party member Stewart Dimmock.  Although a full ruling has yet to be given, the Court found that the film was misleading in 11 respects and that the Guidance Notes drafted by the Education Secretary’s advisors served only to exacerbate the political propaganda in the film.

In order for the film to be shown, the Government must first amend their Guidance Notes to Teachers to make clear that 1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument. 2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination. 3.) Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

The inaccuracies are:

• The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming.  The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
• The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years.  The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
• The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming.  The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
• The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming.  The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
• The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice.  It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
• The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
• The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching.  The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
• The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously.  The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
• The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
• The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
• The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand.  The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

As various online news commentators have said, this situation has not been widely reported in the US, and good luck getting these 11 points any airtime.

It occured to me that although I have blathered on about the awesomeness of bongos, I haven’t actually stopped to talk much about their biology, or even immodestly post a slew of my own pics of them. Well, time to fix that. Bring on the natural history!

The bongo is - big suprise - a spiral-horned antelope in the tribe Tragelaphini. That means they are closely related to things like bushbucks, elands, kudus, nyalas, and the like. Most phylogenies show bongos as closest to bushbuck (Gatesy et al., 1997; Matthee and Robinson, 1999) or sitatunga (Hassanin and Douzery, 1999) with bushbuck next most closely related. The strict consensus family tree compiled by Hernandez Fernandez and Vrba (2005) shows a three-way tie for next-of-kin between bongos, bushbucks, and sitatungas. 

What’s wierd about that is that these three species are best united by being forest-dwellers. After that they don’t seem to have much in common. Bushbuck males weigh 40-75kg; sitatunga males weight about 115kg; bongo males weigh about 300kg (Stuart and Stuart, 2000). Bushbuck are pretty wide-ranging in their habitats so long as its forest of one kind or another. Sitatungas are swamp-adapted, meaning they hang out in or near water pretty much all the time (they’ll comfortably submerge up to their nostrils to quietly flee an uncomfortable scene). Bongos range from lowland rainforests to montane tropical forests and high moorlands, and not much in between. In fact, there are two subspecies of bongos; the western one is the lowland rainforest variety, and the eastern one (very endangered) lives in mountain forests in East Africa. Presently it’s thought to be restricted to the Aberdare Mountains in Kenya, where park rangers see evidence of a bongo about once a year. Very shy, and very very rare. Also a preferred menu item for lions, I’m told.

Of primary interest to me, though, is the fact that bongo females (or more probably their ancestors) have evolved female horns. In fact, bongo females are more similar to bongo males than any other tragelaphine antelope besides the elands. And they evolved it totally independently. Way cool.

Plus they’re just plain strikingly colored, which makes them popular with tourists and scientists alike. Their facial markings make them look a little cross, which I think is cute, especially in the young ones. Without further ado, here are my pics, taken at the Mt. Kenya Wildlife Conservancy Animal Orphanage, outside Nanyuki, Kenya.  

I didn’t see any males there, but here are some good pics online:
http://www.brightszoo.com/images/BongoBoy_Large.JPG
http://www.foundalis.com/bio/zoo/bongo.jpg
http://dinets.travel.ru/bongo.jpg

References 

Gatesy, J., Amato, G., Vrba, E.S., Schaller, G. and DeSalle, R. 1997. A cladistic analysis of mitochondrial ribosomal DNA from the Bovidae. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 7:303-319.

Hassanin, A. and Douzery, J.J. 1999. The tribal radiation of the family Bovidae (Artiodactyla) and the evolution of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 13:227-243. 

Hernandez Fernandez, M., and Vrba, E.S. 2005. A complete estimate of the phylogenetic relationships in Ruminantia: a dated species-level supertree of the extant ruminants. Biological Reviews 80:269-302.

Stuart, C. and Stuart, T. 2000. Field Guide to the Larger Mammals of Africa. Struik Publishers.