Confirmation Bias

Recently, a good pal sent me a link to a video where a woman explains the linear path of mass consumption via some pretty cool, cartoonish, info-graphic animations. And while the video was pretty great overall, there were a few claims that—to quote another pal—tripped my skeptic alarm. One of these claims was that the destruction of the Amazon rainforest by logging is 7 football fields of forest land per minute. Now, I’ve heard claims along these lines since I was a kid, and at this point I’m wondering just how many football fields are there in the amazon rainforest? Can there be any left with these kind of numbers being tossed around? My own instinct told me that, surly, if they’ve been cutting down rain forests at this rate for, lets say, 10 years, how much of the rainforest would actually be left? Is there that much rain forest in the Amazon, let alone the land mass of the entire planet? My bias was telling me to debunk this obvious myth quickly. I figured I could easily post a scathing rebuttal showing that at a rate of 7 football fields a minute we would surely deforest half the galaxy in no time—let a alone the Amazon. So I went to work with the calculator.

At first I decided to use an equation based on square feet. There are 58,000 square feet on a football field. From there I intended to multiply that number by 7 (the claim made by the film) and multiply that by 60 (the number per hour) then multiply that by 24 to get a per-day football field count. That total was already beyond the capacity of my calulator, so I went back to the beginning and started with a bigger base: the acre.

There are about 1.3 acres in a football field. 7 x 1.3 = 9.1. Multiply that by the amount of minutes in a hour (60) you get 546 football fields in a day. 199,290 football fields a year.

1,992,900 football fields in a decade. This divided by 1.3 (acres) give us 1,533,000 acres of land destroyed in the Amazon in a decade.

1,533,000 acres of forest destroyed by logging in a single decade.

This number was quite a bit smaller than I thought it was going to be considering the rate of 7 football fields per minute, but I pressed on.

So let’s see how many football fields comprise the Amazon:

According to wikipedia, the Amazon is 1.7 billion acres. (1,700,000,000) 1,700,000,000 X 1.3 = 2,210,000,000

The Amazon is roughly 2,210,000,000 billion football fields.

A decade of logging will destroy 1,533,000 football fields.

By that logic, it will take 144 years to destroy the Amazon. 2,210,000,000/1,533,000=1440 1440/10 (decade) = 144 years.

This number actually seems completely plausible. That’s a long time. It doesn’t for a minute justify the destruction of the rainforest—but it is a completely realistic number. I thought for sure the number would be greater than the surface area of the earth itself, and that’s the number I was seeking out. But, lucky for me, the scientific method prevailed, and I proved myself wrong. That’s awesome! The truth is so much more satisfying than the assumption. But, we should still save the rainforest anyway, after all, it creates the air we breathe. And breathing is pretty great too.

(Also: In spirit of scientific rigor, I’m more than willing to take corrections on my math. I was coming up with these calculations after several glasses of wine. Mistakes are entirely possible/probable.)

Religulous Starts Now

I’ve been a big fan of Bill Maher for a long time and I’ve been really looking forward to the upcoming release of Religuous since I first heard about it. Maher is pretty straightforward in his disdain for old-timey fairy tails and his quick wit should be a good match for the overly pious. The atheist viewpoint itself (in Bill’s case agnostic) has been gathering steam for some time now and perhaps we are reaching that tipping point Richard Dawkins was hoping for with the release of The God Delusion. The fact that The God Delusion itself appeared on the premier of The Family Guy last Sunday shows that atheism is finding its way in to pop culture, this is good.

But, Maher himself is not perfect. For all of his healthy skepticism about the God of Abraham he has a somewhat twisted view about western medicine: He equates all disease with “toxins” and denies the germ theory. He even follows the dangerous Jenny McCarthy line that vaccines cause more harm than good. But I still think there’s hope for him, and perhaps the right person will come along someday and set him straight. And really, just because he’s whack on science, doesn’t mean we should toss aside all the good skepticism he brings to his show each week. His politics are spot on, his rants on faith pull no punches, and on occasion he’s been known to give those those pesky 911 Truthers what for. Plus, he’s funny as hell. For those reasons I’ll be at the opening of Religulous this weekend supporting a fellow (mostly) skeptic.

Update:
Just saw the film. Fantastic! Really good, much better and slightly different than I expected. It’s almost like an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. But instead of food, Bill serves up religion with a side of hypocrisy and washes it all down with frothy glass of Borat. It’s awkward and troubling and certainly bombastic—actually, literally bombastic towards the end. Even if you can’t be bothered to join in on the prickly faith debate, see it for the politics. The subject matter affects us all.

Best film I’ve seen all year. See it. Tell friend. Spread the word.

Religion, Politics and the End of the World

Fascinating debate over at truthdig.org between Sam Harris and Chris Hedges. Hedges makes some salient points, but in the end he veers from the topic at hand (religion) and focuses more on US foreign policy. Moderator Robert Scheer takes Hedges’ side of the argument and they tag-team Harris most of the way, but Sam stays lucid and on point. Even in the face of “liberal” outrage and fist-slamming by moderator Scheer and the ad hominem race-card pull by Hedges, Harris keeps his cool and makes sound arguments like he often does.

Obviously I’m a Harris fan, but see the debate for yourself at truthdig.org and make your own call. The full audio is best but the abridged video really shows the emotional level of all three debaters. The blog comments following the debate on the truthdig.org site are pretty interesting as well.