EXAMINING EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS & PROMOTING SCIENCE SINCE 1992. VOL 28 NO 2 2023 $7.95 US & CANADA SKEPTIC.

COM

An in-depth look at the

ENERGY past & future of energy.
MATTERS fossil fuels • fracking •
nuclear • renewables • EVs

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE The Case for Nuclear • Behind the Scenes at the U.S. Department of Energy •
The Untold Story of “Gender-Affirming” Clinics • Amanda Knox on How a Wrongful Conviction Helped
Her Become a Better Thinker • Do We Have Free Will? • Ranking Presidents: Does It Make Any Sense? •
Chinese Surveillance Balloons and Space Aliens • Could Dragons from Game of Thrones Exist?
MAY 12–25, 2024 THE SKEPTICS SOCIETY PRESENTS

SPRINGTIME VOYAGE
TO CLASSIC JAPAN
Aboard Swan Hellenic’s New 152-Guest State of the Art
Expedition Cruise Ship Minerva, with special guest lecturers:
Admiral Harry Harris, Brunhilde Bradley, and Arthur Golden.

As a nation of sprawling islands, Japan

is best explored by sea, and we have the Himeji Castle

ideal vessel for the task, the Swan Hellenic

Minerva, a state-of-the-art expedition
cruise ship built in Finland and launched
in 2021. Accommodating only 152 guests
in superb staterooms and balcony suites,
Minerva features elegant common areas
and the most modern mechanical and
environmentally conscious technology.

Japan is a land of contrasts. It is one of the largest economies of the world,

ultramodern and technologically advanced. And yet, it cherishes and preserves its
ancient traditions, customs and architecture. Modern, glittering, dynamic cities
coexist with centuries-old Buddhist temples, sublime Shinto shrines, feudal castles,
and samurai estates. Throughout this comprehensive voyage to Japan, we will
Ritsurin Garden, Takamatsu City, Kagawa Prefecture, one of
experience these contradictory aspects of the country as they are reflected in the
Japan’s most famous historical gardens
art, architecture, and culture of its towns, cities, and gardens.

The traditional aspect is seen in the architecture and adornments of the Buddhist
and Shinto shrines we visit in Miyajima and Nagasaki, in the castles of Himeji,
Hagi, Matsue, and Uwajima, and in the open-air museum of Shikoku Mur. And this
ancient aesthetic literally comes alive in the exquisitely designed and maintained
gardens of Koraku-en and Sengan-en. The modernist impulse is evident not only in
the great cities we visit, but also in the works of avant-garde artists on display in the
Adachi Museum in Sakaiminato and in Isamu Noguchi’s studio in Takamatsu.

A pivotal ally of the West, Japan plays a most important role in the geopolitics of
East Asia. With deep knowledge of the region, we are pleased that Admiral Harry
Harris and his wife Brunhilde (Bruni) Bradley will join us as guest lecturers. UNESCO Heritage Site, Anapji Pond at dusk, Gyeongju, Korea
We are privileged to also have author of the best-selling Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur
Golden, as a guest lecturer. Mr. Golden lived and worked in Japan, and studied
Japanese art and culture.

FOR RESERVATIONS, PLEASE CALL For daily itinerary, cabin rates, inclusions, and cruise
ship description, please download the brochure at:
THALASSA JOURNEYS AT 866–633–3611 skeptic.com/Japan2024
Co-Founder, Skeptics Society
Pat Linse, 1947–2021 Reality-based.
Executive Director, Skeptics Society
Michael Shermer
Really.
SINCE 1992
Editor-in-Chief
Michael Shermer

Strategy Director
Alexander Reiman

Art Director & Webmaster

Skeptic Magazine, Available in Print & Digital Formats
William Bull Skeptic features long form, data-driven articles and well-reasoned
opinion pieces. Whatever the topic, we want to see how science
Senior Editor
and reason intersect with it to get us a little bit closer to what the
Frank Miele
truth might be. We call this approach Reality-based. Really.
Senior Scientists
Claudio Maccone Crafted through an extensive editorial process, each article is written
Liam McDaid
by experts in their fields. When the time comes for you to read it,
Thomas McDonough
David Naiditch you can bet that every word counts. Not unlike a book, each issue
of Skeptic stays relevant and readable for years to come.
Contributing Editors
Tim Callahan
Featuring custom, full-color illustrations by award-winning artists, Skeptic
Donald Prothero
Carol Tavris magazine is a beautifully produced collector’s item that will find a permanent
place on your bookshelf. Whether at home or the office, the magazine
Editorial Assistants proves to be a great conversation starter for those who choose not to see
Diane Fisher
the world in black and white. Subscribe online at skeptic.com/subscribe
Sara Meric

Photographer About the Skeptics Society

David Patton The Skeptics Society is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) scientific and educational
Audiovisual Services
organization whose mission is to engage leading experts in investigating the
Brian Dalton paranormal, fringe science, pseudoscience, and extraordinary claims of all
Brad Davies kinds, promote critical thinking, and present the best available evidence to help
people decide what is the likeliest explanation. Our contributors include a range
Database Circulation
Jerry Friedman, J.D. of scientists, philosophers, historians, and scholars, as well as journalists and
writers who are experts in their fields. It is our hope that our efforts go a long
The Skeptics Society way in promoting critical thinking and lifelong inquisitiveness in all individuals.
3938 State St., Suite # 101
Santa Barbara, CA, 93105-3114
Subscription Address Changes
Skeptic (ISSN 1063-9330) is published Send changes in an email to subscriptions@skeptic.com or call 1-805-576-9396.
quarterly by Millennium Press, Inc., and
is a benefit of membership to anyone
who joins the Skeptics Society, a 501(c)
Listen to Michael Shermer’s Podcast
(3) nonprofit scientific and educational The Michael Shermer Show is a series of conversations between Dr. Michael
corporation. Copyright © 2022 by Shermer and leading scientists, philosophers, historians, scholars, writers and
Millennium Press, Inc. All rights are thinkers about the most important issues of our time. Watch or listen to more
reserved. Reproduction or use of the
than 350 episodes at skeptic.com/michael-shermer-show or listen on Spotify, Apple
contents in whole or in part without
permission of the publisher is prohibited. Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, and TuneIn.
The following are registered trademarks,
and use of them without permission is Get eSkeptic
prohibited: Millennium Press, Millennium
Books, Skeptics Society, Skeptic, and
Subscribe to eSkeptic: our free email newsletter in your inbox twice a week. It’s
the Skeptic logo. Statements on any free. We never share your address. Subscribe at skeptic.com/eskeptic/signup
subject, institution, or person made by Unsubscribe any time.
authors may not reflect the opinions
of and are not the responsibility of the
staff or editorial board members of
Skeptic, or the Skeptics Society. Cover
art and interior illustrations may not
be reproduced without permission. facebook.com/skepticmagazine youtube.com/skepticmagazine
Printed and bound in the USA.

skepticssociety@skeptic.com twitter.com/michaelshermer
EDITORIAL / ADVISORY BOARD

Arthur Benjamin
Professor of Mathematics,
Harvey Mudd College, Magician
CONTENTS
Roger Bingham

ENERGY MATTERS
Science Author & Television Essayist

K.C. Cole
Science Writer, Los Angeles Times
4 It’s Always Sunny In Space
Richard Dawkins
Emeritus Professor, University of Oxford
Why Space-Based Solar Power
Is a Viable Source of Energy
Jared Diamond
BY ROB MAHAN
Professor of Geography &
Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA

Clayton J. Drees
Professor of History, VWU

Mark Edward
Professional Magician & Mentalist

Gregory Forbes
Professor of Biology, Grand
Rapids Community College

John Gribbin
Astrophysicist & Science Writer
10 Fossil Fuels
Christof Koch
Professor of Cognitive & Behavioral The Past and the Future
Biology, California Institute of Technology BY DONALD R. PROTHERO

William McComas
Director, project to advance Science
Education, University of Arkansas

Leonard Mlodinow
Physicist, California Institute of Technology

Bill Nye
Executive Director, The Planetary Society

Steven Pinker
Cognitive Psychologist, Harvard University

Donald Prothero
Professor of Geology, Cal Poly, Pomona 17 The Future of Energy
Nancy Segal
and Our Climate
Professor of Psychology, CSU, Fullerton Fracking, Renewables, or Nuclear?
BY MARC J. DEFANT
Eugenie Scott
(Retired) Executive Director,
National Center for Science Education
25 Skeptic Interviews
Frank Sulloway Dr. Steven Koonin
Research Scholar, MIT

Julia Sweeney
Writer, Actor, Comedian

Carol Tavris
Social Psychologist, Author

Stuart Vyse
Behavioral Scientist, Author
 ENERGY MATTERS

30 The Case for 50 Visits to and From

Nuclear Power Extraterrestrials
BY ROBERT ZUBRIN Why They Never Occurred,
and Probably Never Will
BY MORTON TAVEL

A CLOSER LOOK

38 Behind the Rhetoric 55 Free Will is Real

The Untold Story of BY STUART T. DOYLE

“Gender-Affirming” Clinics
BY CAROL TAVRIS 62 Ranking American
Presidents
Does It Make Any Sense?
ARTICLES BY JOHN D. VAN DYKE

44 The Gift of Bias 70 Not So Hopeful Monsters

How My Wrongful BY DOUGLAS R. WARRICK

Conviction Helped Me
Become a Better Thinker
BY AMANDA KNOX

75 Look! Up in the Sky

Chinese Balloon Scare Rekindles
On the Cover Memories of Similar Panics and
Art by Platinum Studio, an internationally-recognized, Feeds Excitement About Aliens
award-winning agency located in Rio de Janeiro. BY ROBERT E. BARTHOLOMEW
 ENERGY MATTERS
IT’S ALWAYS
SUNNY IN
SPACE
Why Space-Based Solar Power
Is a Viable Source of Energy
BY ROB MAHAN
Advances in human civilization have always been
fueled by the availability of excess energy in various
forms. For the vast span of human history, energy
from the Sun was converted to food and biomass
by photosynthesis and expended in the forms
of muscle power and fire. Energy from the Sun
produced weather, and as a result, wind and water
power were eventually harnessed and converted
into increased levels of societal organization.
When humans began to extract massive amounts
of energy from plant-based fossil fuels—which
originated millions of years ago, through photo-
synthesis driven by energy from the Sun—further
technological complexity, economic surplus that
freed increasing numbers from manual labor,
and human population all exploded. Gasoline-
powered, mass-produced automobiles represented
freedom in the form of personal transportation.
4 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
Electricity became an efficient way to deliver
energy to homes and businesses, and eventually
to power a global information network. Growth
was good, and seemed unstoppable, at least to
those with easy access to abundant energy.
More recently, science and rationality have led us to
a stark realization. Year-over-year economic growth,
driven by the ever-increasing consumption of finite
natural resources to produce abundant energy and
other goods, has proven unsustainable. Coupled
with concerns about climate change resulting from
the release of excessive carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere, three broad future scenarios emerge:
• Continue the current, unsustainable trend of
natural resource extraction, energy consumption,
and economic growth, and let natural processes
dictate the next era in human history.
 Earth to scale

This is the highest resolution image of the Sun’s full disc and outer atmosphere (the corona) ever taken, as seen by Solar Orbiter in extreme
ultraviolet light from a distance of nearly 47 million miles. This stellar image is a mosaic of 25 photographs taken on March 7, 2022 by the high
resolution telescope of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument. A tremendous thermonuclear furnace, our Sun radiates about 134,000
terawatts (TW) of continuous power to Earth’s surface, about 7000 times more than the entire population consumes from all current sources.
An image of Earth is included for scale, in the upper right corner of this page.

Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI team; Data processing: E. Kraaikamp (ROB)

VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 5

 • Based on current and past technologies, voluntarily
and drastically reduce global energy consumption
and revert much of humankind to the previous
era of muscle, wind, and water power.
• Develop new technologies and find cleaner,
renewable, or unlimited forms of abundant
energy, while becoming better stewards of
the finite natural resources that remain.
If the third scenario is the most appealing to you—as it
is to me—and almost all forms of energy harnessed by
humankind throughout history originated with energy
from the Sun, doesn’t it make sense to look directly
to the source in our quest to find a clean, unlimited
source of energy for all of humanity going forward?
What does “space-based
solar power” mean?
Space-based solar power (SBSP) refers to the
concept of collecting the Sun’s energy in space
and then transmitting it to Earth for use as a
baseload renewable energy source. This involves
putting solar panels in orbit around the Earth
to continuously collect energy from the Sun.
The energy is transferred to receiving antennas
(rectennas) on Earth as microwave or laser beams,
converted to electrical energy, and then sent to
consumers through the existing power distribution
grid. The goal of SBSP is to provide practically
unlimited clean energy that is not subject to
weather conditions or night-day cycles; energy that
is available 24/7/365, anywhere on the planet.
Before we delve into the details and challenges around
space-based solar power, let’s take a brief step back
in time to see how humanity got where we are today,
and how we may soon be consuming the equivalent
amount of energy in 150 billion barrels of oil every year.
How much energy is globally
consumed by humankind?
It took the first three million years of evolution
for the world population to reach one billion of
us. Over the past 220 years, fueled by advances in
medicine, nutrition, and a massive glut of cheap
energy from the worldwide fossil fuel industry, the
6 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
world population has exploded to over eight billion
humans. The United Nations estimates that the
world population will expand to over ten billion
by the year 2100.1 In the developing economies of
emerging nations, particularly in Asia, per capita
energy consumption is increasing as people seek
better lives for themselves and their families.
Driving—or driven by—economic and population
growth, worldwide energy consumption also exploded
over the past two centuries, and with it, energy-related
carbon dioxide emissions. The Enerdata World Energy
& Climate Statistics lists the 2021 global total energy
consumption as 14,555 million tons of oil equivalent
(Mtoe), or for comparison purposes, the equivalent
of about 169,277 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electrical
energy. For 2021, the global electricity generation is
listed as 28,433 TWh of electrical energy, or about 16.8
percent of the global total energy consumption.2
A mid-range scenario presented in The Enerdata
Global Energy & Climate Outlook 2050 assumes policies
that will lead to a global temperature rise between
2.0°C and 2.5°C and projects the 2050 global total
energy consumption at 14,194 Mtoe. For comparison
purposes, that is the equivalent of about 165,216
TWh of electrical energy. The 2050 projection for
global electrical generation is listed as 51,891 TWh of
electrical energy, or about 31.4 percent of the global
total energy consumption. The increasing percentage
of global total energy consumption represented
by global electrical generation is driven by the
continuing trend to convert more and more end-uses
of energy away from fossil fuels and to electricity.3
In 2021, the U.S. Energy Information Administration
(EIA) released the International Energy Outlook, which
projects global energy consumption, electricity
usage, and energy production trends through 2050.4
Some of the key takeaways from this report include:
• By 2050, global energy consumption and energy-
related carbon dioxide emissions will increase
by nearly 50 percent compared to 2020, mostly
as a result of population and economic growth
in developing countries, particularly in Asia.
• Renewables will be the primary source for new
electricity generation, but coal-fired generation will
continue to be a significant part of the worldwide
generation mix. Natural gas, coal, and, increasingly,
 batteries will be used to complement intermit-
tent renewable energy sources, helping to meet
load demand and supporting grid reliability.
• Oil and natural gas production will continue
to grow, mainly to support increasing energy
consumption in developing Asian economies.
By any account, the total amount of energy
consumed by humankind every year is staggering
and difficult to comprehend. If the U.S. EIA
projection of a 50 percent increase in global
energy consumption by 2050 proves correct, the
approximate number of barrels of oil equivalent
(boe) consumed by humankind every year will be:
14,555 Mtoe × 150% × 6.849e + 6 boe / Mtoe =
149,537,669,738 barrels of oil equivalent per year
It is beyond the scope of this article to
illustrate how much CO2 would be released
by burning 150 billion barrels of oil every
year. Suffice it to say—it would be a lot.
How much energy is available
to us from the Sun?
The Sun radiates about 174,000 terawatts (TW)
of power to the Earth’s cross-sectional area, of
which about 134,000 TW reach the surface, the
rest being absorbed or reflected by the Earth’s
atmosphere. Therefore, over the course of a year,
the Earth receives 1,173,840,000 TWh of energy
from the Sun.5 As mentioned above, in 2021, the
total global energy consumption was the equivalent
of about 169,277 TWh of electrical energy, so there
is about 7,000 times more energy available from
the Sun than humankind currently consumes.
Since the Sun is only about halfway through its
estimated ten-billion-year lifespan, in practical terms,
we can say that energy from the Sun is unlimited.
Ironically, we can also say that since energy from
the Sun has always powered photosynthesis, the
chemical energy that is released when burning
calories, biomass, and fossil fuels came from the
Sun. And finally, since wind is created by uneven
heating of the Earth’s atmosphere by solar radiation
and by the planet’s revolution around the Sun, wind
energy originated as energy from the Sun, as well.
So why not just use enough
solar panels on Earth?
A little-known fact about all electricity distribution
systems, i.e., “the grid,” is that 100 percent of the
time, the electricity supply (generation) has to
be balanced with the electricity demand (load),
because electrical energy cannot be stored in power
lines or other parts of the grid. In other words,
all electricity that is generated must be used by a
load (a light bulb, an air conditioning condenser,
an electric vehicle charging station, etc.) almost
instantaneously. If total generation exceeds total
load at any given time, automatic safety controls
either shut down the overloaded grid or divert
the excess electrical energy to other grids.
Distribution grid operators know that the electricity
demand, or load, varies with the time of day and
with the seasons of the year. When the load begins to
exceed the supply, if additional supply is not brought
online, either partial (brownouts) or complete (black-
out) shutdowns occur; conversely, when the load
diminishes, the amount of supply must be reduced
to keep the grid in balance. Grid operators also
know that the load on their grid never drops below a
certain baseline level, also known as the “base load.”
Electrical power generation falls into two
broad categories:
• Intermittent Power: generation levels
change quickly and uncontrollably with
varying conditions, such as night/day cycles,
weather, and atmospheric variability by
season and by region. Most renewable energy
sources, such as terrestrial solar power
and wind power, fall into this category.
• Baseload Power: generation is slower to come
online but can be maintained at a constant
level with the consumption of a fuel. Coal-fired
power plants, natural gas-fired power plants, and
nuclear power plants fall into this category.
Without massive, expensive storage capacity
(pumped hydro, compressed gas, mechanical,
chemical, thermal, etc.), intermittent generation
must be supplemented with baseload generation
to assure that demand can be met and grid
balance can be maintained at all times.
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 7
 Terrestrial Solar Power
It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn
Output varies from zero to peak with the night/day cycle.
Output varies uncontrollably with weather and
other changing atmospheric conditions.
Total output varies with global location, e.g.,
latitude, and annual weather conditions vary greatly
between Scandinavia and the Saharan Desert.
Ideal terrestrial locations are not always near population
(demand) centers, and transmission losses limit the
practical distance power can be moved over power lines.
Intermittent terrestrial solar power without energy
storage requires supplemental fossil fuel or nuclear power
generation. Subject to debate as to the time frame,
both fossil and nuclear fuels are finite, non-renewable
natural resources with environmental impacts.
Land use and local plants and animals are impacted
by the installation of vast solar farms.
The Bottom Line
Terrestrial solar power, without supplemental fossil fuel
or nuclear power generation or hugely expensive and
potentially harmful energy storage technologies, must
remain the intermittent electrical power generation source.
This brings us back to the question: Why not just
use enough solar panels on Earth? The answer lies in
the differences between terrestrial (Earth-based)
solar power and space-based solar power.
Should we abandon terrestrial
solar power altogether?
Heavens, no! An all-of-the-above approach to
meeting global energy needs is a rational course
of action, as long as it is coupled with ongoing
research, development, and deployment of
8 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
Space-Based Solar Power
It’s Always Sunny in Space
In geosynchronous orbit, solar panels are in full sun nearly
100 percent of the time, so there is no output variability.6
Peak output is continuous 24/7/365.
Total output is constant, independent of
location in geosynchronous orbit, and can be as
much as eight times more than an equivalent
installation of terrestrial solar photovoltaics.
Power can be transmitted to receiving antennas
nearly anywhere on the surface of the planet
for final distribution over local grids.
Available, clean energy from the Sun is also non-
renewable. But, for all practical intents, it is unlimited.
In space, land use has no meaning, and the available
area of the geosynchronous orbit sphere is vast.
Space-based solar power is, by definition, a baseload
power source that does not require fossil fuel
supplementation or energy storage, and it does not
emit CO2 or other potentially harmful byproducts.
superior solutions. The cost of terrestrial solar has
come down over the past couple of decades, solar
photovoltaic efficiencies continue to improve,
and the U.S. government recently increased the
federal tax credit for homeowner-owned solar
generation back up to 30 percent of the total
installed system cost, extending the tax credit
for the next decade. Although the mix will
continue to be adjusted, all existing forms of
energy generation represent a bridge solution,
until a truly clean, unlimited baseload power
source can be brought online and scaled up to
meet the global energy consumption demand.
 What are the key components
of space-based solar power, and
what are the challenges?
The key components of space-based solar power are:
• Collectors in geosynchronous orbit, about
22,000 miles away from Earth.
• Wireless power transmission in the
form of microwaves at a frequency not
impeded by clouds, storms, etc.
• Stations with large receiving antennas
that convert the microwave power to
alternating current (AC) electricity.
• Connections to the existing electrical grid
for distribution to regional consumers.
Unlike other proposed energy generation solutions,
SBSP does not require any fundamental scientific
breakthroughs to make it a reality. However, major
challenges do exist in the technical, financial, and
political realms. The U.S. four-year election cycle is
a major challenge to implementing any long-term
project that requires critical thinking and consistent
commitment. Space law must be established to define
the rules for staking claims to orbital slots, as well
as harvesting resources on the Moon or in space.
Space is a hostile environment to humans.
Advancements in the areas of robotics and automa-
tion can increase safety and reliability, as robots can
operate in hazardous environments and perform
repetitive tasks with high precision. Once developed,
these new technologies could play a critical role in the
development, deployment, and ongoing maintenance
and repair of space-based solar power systems.
Are there currently any active
space-based solar power projects?
Virtually unknown to the public at large, several
countries7, 8, 9 have recognized the potential of
space-based solar power and are currently under-
taking research, development, and demonstration
projects. Some of the ongoing SBSP projects from
around the world that major news channels have
not yet reported on include the U.S. Naval Research
Laboratory Photovoltaic Radio-frequency Antenna
Module (PRAM)10 as well as Solar Space Technologies
Pty Ltd (SST),11, 12 which aims to deliver a solar power
satellite into geostationary orbit to supply energy
to the Australian grid by 2027. China aims for a
space-based solar power test by 2028, with advanced
planning in phases from 2030 through 2050.13
Will a rational analysis of the existing model of
never-ending economic growth based on the ever-in-
creasing extraction of finite natural resources lead us
to corresponding ways of thinking? Will the environ-
mental impacts of burning billions of tons of fossil
fuels every year lead us to new, clean, and unlimited
sources of abundant energy? For the sake of the
generations of humankind to come, I truly hope so.
Rob Mahan is a retired mechanical engineer who spent most
of his career in the automotive and aerospace industries. The
2007 National Security Space Office Interim Assessment,
“Space-Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for Strategic
Security” rekindled his interest in space-based solar power and
its long-term potential to become the unlimited clean energy
source for the planet. He maintains the website Citizens for
Space Based Solar Power with the goal of bringing information
about this potentially game-changing technology.

REFERENCES

1 https://bit.ly/2MWvNzP 6 https://bit.ly/3LKkM5i 11 https://bit.ly/3JL9Dyi

2 https://bit.ly/40Cst1L 7 https://bit.ly/3z0XEbc 12 https://bit.ly/3z3wL6n
3 https://bit.ly/3z3XcsB 8 https://bit.ly/409AVWe 13 https://bit.ly/42Ah18p
4 https://bit.ly/3K4ZON4 9 https://bit.ly/3z2RF5t
5 https://bit.ly/3K5pCc0 10 https://bit.ly/42AQl7B

VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 9

 ENERGY MATTERS
FOSSIL
FUELS
THE PAST AND THE FUTURE
BY DONALD R. PROTHERO
The oil crises of 1973 and 1979 shocked us into
realizing that oil is a scarce commodity, its supply
can be manipulated, and the price can rise suddenly
and so can inflict “pain at the pump.” However, after
each oil crisis briefly induces people to drive less
and conserve energy for a while, the price eventually
falls, and automakers again offer big gas guzzlers
while smaller, fuel-efficient cars don’t sell as well.
Then, starting in the late 1990s, oil prices increased,
with the price of a barrel of oil rising from $30 in
mid-2003 to $60 by August 2005, which then climbed
steeply to an all-time record of $147 by July 2008.
This real oil crisis has no single, simple cause the
way the 1973 OPEC embargo or the Iran-Iraq turmoil
of 1979 produced temporary disruptions. Rather,
the real effects of declining petroleum reserves are
being felt as China and India demand more oil for
their rapidly growing economies. Short-term events
such as the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, the Iranian
nuclear buildup, Hurricane Katrina’s disruption of oil
production in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005, and other
factors like the 2020 economic slowdown due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, caused spikes or crashes in the
prices, but even after the effects of such events end,
price still keeps climbing. Only a global recession,
triggered by excessive speculation on overpriced real
10 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
estate and too many people being given mortgages
they could not afford on these same overpriced houses,
pushed down oil demand, and the price retreated
(although still nowhere near 1973 or 1979 levels).
The long-term effect is gradual, so we don’t see the
gas station lines in the U.S. now the way we did in
the 1970s (although they do occur in China), yet as
the price at the pump reaches painful levels above
$4 a gallon, people start to conserve again. As of this
writing, gas is selling for over $5 a gallon in California.
To understand what may lie in the future, let’s start
from the beginning.
THE ORIGIN OF OIL
What is oil? How is it found and produced? Contrary
to popular myth, oil is not produced from the bodies of
long-dead dinosaurs. Rather, it is organic material that
is formed by the decomposition of trillions of marine
plankton as they became buried in sediments.1 Oil is
actually a mixture of many different kinds of complex
organic molecules, mostly long chains of carbon atoms
with hydrogen atoms attached, or hydrocarbons.
Chemically, oil is about 85 percent hydrogen and
13 percent carbon, with minor amounts of sulfur,
nitrogen, and oxygen. The simplest of these hydrocar-
bons is methane (CH4), which is the major component
of natural gas, along with longer-chain molecules like
ethane (C2H6), propane (C3H8), and butane (C4H10).
These organic molecules start out as kerogen, a
complex mixture of decayed organic matter in
sedimentary rocks. The most common source of
kerogen is deep-water shales, which often trap lots
of decaying matter and are formed where there
is not much oxygen to break it down. Rocks rich
in kerogen are known as source rocks.
However, most source rocks are highly impermeable
shales, so there is no point in drilling them directly.
In addition, the kerogens in them are not yet oil when
they first form. Instead, the kerogens must be cooked
under pressure to break down into simpler liquid
hydrocarbons we know as petroleum. These restrictive
conditions greatly limit which rocks will produce oil
and which ones will not. Under a normal geothermal
gradient, the source rock must be buried about 2500 m
(8000 feet) in the Earth’s crust, where the tempera-
tures are at least 65°C (150°F) so the kerogen will break
down into liquid petroleum. If they are buried too
deep (greater than 4600 m or 18,000 feet), they will
be heated too much (above 150°C or about 350°F), and
the kerogen will break down into natural gas. We call
this narrow range of suitable depths and pressures the
“oil window.” The vast majority of the organic-rich
rocks of the world have not resided in that range of
ideal conditions long enough to produce oil. Time is
also a critical factor. The kerogens must remain in the
oil window long enough for oil to be produced, but not
too long or they will be overcooked and break down.
If all the conditions are right for the source rock
to remain within the oil window, liquid oil will be
produced and then migrate out of the source rock
to a reservoir rock, which has high porosity. This
means oil can saturate it. Contrary to popular myth,
a “reservoir” is not some big underground cavern full
of oil. Rather, it is a solid rock with a high volume
of porosity between the grains (sometimes up to 40
percent pore space in sandstones), and high perme-
ability (interconnectedness between the pore spaces
that allows the fluid to flow through).2 Typically,
these are well-sorted (i.e., same-sized sand grains)
quartz sandstones. They have lots of pores, with no
fine clay or silt to clog them. Other rocks, such as
limestones or granitic rocks, have no natural pores, but
if they are fractured, they can develop high porosity
and permeability along the fractures. Once the oil
migrates from the source rock to the reservoir rock, a
third condition is essential: an impermeable seal on
top of the reservoir rock to trap the oil and prevent it
from migrating further upward. The trapped oil then
stays in the reservoir rock until drilling releases it.
Thus, the ideal conditions to produce oil—abundant
source rocks cooked for a long time in the narrow oil
window, with a good reservoir above the source with
a seal on top—are really rare. This is one of the many
reasons petroleum is actually quite scarce in most
crustal rocks, and also why it is so difficult to find and
obtain. There are far more rocks below our feet that
might be good for producing oil but didn’t meet all
these conditions: source rocks that never reached the
oil window or were too heated; source rocks with no
reservoir rocks above them; potential reservoir rocks
with no seal above them; and so on. Vast quantities of
oil have been generated in the geologic past, and even
trapped, only to be destroyed by tectonics and erosion.
Oil geology is a risky business. Most promising
prospects turn out not to have economical deposits
of oil in them, and most holes that are drilled come
up dry.3 Yet all that is needed is one really good
producing well out of dozens of dry holes, and the
payoff may be enough to keep them going, even
when it costs over $2 million or more to drill a
typical hole and $15 million for an offshore well.
The Draugen offshore drilling rig in the Norwegian Sea was initially developed with five
subsea wells connected to a central platform. It costs about $15 million for an offshore well.
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 11
 Given that oil is naturally scarce, the problems with
the global oil supply now make a lot more sense.
In addition, petroleum is not found everywhere,
but most of the proven reserves are in just a handful
of countries, most of which are members of the
THE PEAK OF GLOBAL DISCOVERY
OF MAJOR OIL FIELDS OCCURRED
OVER 40 YEARS AGO, AND
THERE HAVE BEEN NO GIANT
OIL FIELDS FOUND SINCE.
Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC).
The major producers are in the Persian Gulf and
Middle East (especially Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Qatar, Iran, and Iraq); followed by certain parts
of the former Soviet Union; the United States and
Canada; and a few other countries around the globe,
such as Venezuela, Libya, Norway, and Nigeria.
THE ORIGIN OF COAL
Coal consists of solid bits and pieces of undecayed
plant material, mainly organic matter. Most often, it
forms when large amounts of dead plants collect in
a swampy setting, and instead of decaying, they are
buried by sands and muds, and eventually compressed
into coal.4 Coal is typically concentrated in individual
layers (coal seams) interbedded with other sedimen-
tary rocks, although it can be widely dispersed as well.
Coal exists in several different forms, called ranks.
Peat (used for heating and to produce the distinct,
smoky flavor in whisky) is not yet coal, even though
it consists largely of unconsolidated, undecayed plant
remains. It contains 60 percent carbon along with
abundant gases and moisture. The lowest rank of coal
is brown coal (lignite), with roughly 70 percent carbon
and a considerable moisture and volatile content. Soft
coal (bituminous coal) contains 80–90 percent carbon,
and much of the moisture and many of the gases have
been removed from the parent organic material by
compaction. Finally, hard coal (anthracite) contains
little moisture or gases and is 90–100 percent carbon.
12 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
Carbon content and combustibility increase with
rank. Higher-ranked coals are more valuable fuels
because they generate more heat per mass consumed.
The economic value of coal is also affected by the
content of potential pollutants. Unfortunately, many
high-carbon anthracite and bituminous
coals of eastern North America are also
rich in sulfur, which produces acid rain.
The main coal-producing regions of the
U.S. are in the northern Appalachians
(especially in Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky).5 These
coal deposits have mostly been turned
into anthracite by the high tempera-
tures and pressures of the mountain
building that created the Appalachians
330 million years ago. Unfortunately,
this coal is also high in sulfur. There
is also significant coal in the Illinois Basin, although
that resource is mostly high-sulfur bituminous coal,
so its mining has ceased. The main coal deposits
currently exploited are the shallow lignites of the
Powder River Basin in northeast Wyoming, which
yield giant coal seams that are many meters thick, and
not buried very deeply, making them relatively cheap
to mine. These are extracted by huge strip mines and
shipped by rail all over the country. Although this
coal is low in sulfur (making it preferable to other
sources), it is only lignite coal, so a lot more of it is
required to produce the same amount of energy.
TRENDS IN OIL AND COAL
CONSUMPTION
How long is the global supply of oil going to last?
This question was best addressed by an oil geologist
named M. King Hubbert back in 1956. A remarkably
brilliant and innovative geologist and geophysicist,
he spent his career in the oil business (Shell Oil),
several government jobs (U.S. Geological Survey),
and also in university professor posts. Hubbert made
many contributions which led to much greater
success in finding oil. Given his track record, geol-
ogists had good reason to take his ideas seriously.
What was Hubbert’s prediction, and why was it so
startling? While working for Shell, Hubbert gave a
presentation at the 1956 American Association of
Petroleum Geologists meeting at which he suggested
that oil production should follow a bell-shaped
 Figure 1. The original Hubbert curve, published in 1956, with its bell shape and its predictions for when the peak would occur in
the U.S. based on different assumptions of total reserves.

DISCOVERY PRODUCTION
PEAK 1930 PEAK 1970
ANNUAL DISCOVERIES, BILLIONS OF BARRELS

ANNUAL PRODUCTION, BILLIONS OF BARRELS

8
3.5

3.0

6
2.5

2.0
4
1.5

1.0
2

0.5

0 0
1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
YEAR

Figure 2. The actual history of oil production in the U.S., which followed Hubbert’s prediction with remarkable consistency.
This plot also shows the peak in U.S. discoveries in the 1930s, and how the peak of production occurred about 40 years later.

curve, from slow growth at the beginning, to (Figure 2). Although his ideas were rejected in oil
exponential growth to a peak, then a steady decline company circles, they have long been accepted
afterwards (Figure 1). He made the prediction by academic geologists with no commercial
that U.S. oil resources would peak between 1965 interest to defend, and are now considered more
and 1971, depending upon which figure you used and more realistic, even by oil companies.
for oil reserves.6 Hubbert lived long enough to
see that U.S. oil production had clearly peaked in How did Hubbert get the idea that oil production
1970, and has been steadily declining since then should follow a bell-shaped curve? Economic

VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 13

 geologists had long known that this is the normal
pattern seen in about any non-renewable mineral
resource, such as oil, gas, coal, uranium, or any
of the metals. Early in its history, a resource is
consumed slowly, since it does not have a lot of
established markets. Then a market develops,
THE END OF “CHEAP OIL” WILL
HAPPEN SOON BUT WE WILL
PROBABLY NOT REALIZE IT UNTIL
OIL-PRODUCING COUNTRIES
CAN NO LONGER KEEP UP
WITH DEMAND, NO MATTER
HOW HIGH PRICE RISES.
and suddenly the resource is produced and
consumed at an exponentially increasing rate as
the easiest-to-reach deposits are quickly mined or
drilled. This exponential growth curve cannot last
forever, and the production slows down as most
of the easily reached deposits become exhausted.
The market for the resource, however, continues
to put high demand and even higher prices on the
resource, even though only low-quality deposits
remain. Exploration for less and less desirable
deposits occurs in an attempt to extract even the
most expensively obtained, lowest-grade resources
that are left. Sooner or later, even these poor low-
grade deposits cannot keep up with demand, and
production declines rapidly as there are no more
new discoveries. The supply eventually runs out, no
matter how much prices rise and demand increases.
Then there is an abrupt economic adjustment as
the mineral resource can no longer be found at
any price, and people learn to do without it.
We can see this with the production history of
anthracite coal from Pennsylvania (Figure 3) or many
other resources.7 The demand for coal increased
rapidly in the late nineteenth century as the
Industrial Revolution and the development of steel
created demand for coal-fired furnaces in western
Pennsylvania. However, the dangerous job of mining
14 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
these coal deposits in deep, easily collapsed shafts
hundreds of feet below mountains meant that the good
deposits were exhausted by the 1920s, and production
has been declining ever since. There hasn’t been any
significant coal production in Pennsylvania in over 35
years, even though the legends of Pennsylvania coal-
fields are still part of our culture. Mining
companies shifted to other states with
more abundant and easily mined coal.
Some people ask: what about supply and
demand? It is true that over the short term,
you see price fluctuations due to small
changes in the supply-demand balance.
In the case of coal, there were major
downward spikes during World Wars I
and II and the Great Depression, as wars
and economic slowdown decreased or
disrupted demand and production. There
were also peaks during the post-war boom
times of the 1920s and 1940s–1950s.
However, these were just short-term blips
on a long-term trend. Supply and demand
only works when the supply is elastic; that
is, you can always make or grow more of it if the price
is high enough. Non-renewable mineral resources are
inelastic: they cannot, over the long term, increase their
supply. There was only a limited amount of them in the
Earth’s crust to begin with, the minerals are no longer
being generated at any significant rate by the Earth, and
when they are exhausted, you just can’t make more.8
100
SHORT TONS × 10-6
80
60
40
20
1825 1850 1875 1900 1925 1950 1975
Figure 3. The history of production of anthracite coal
in Pennsylvania, a classic example of the bell-shaped
production of a non-renewable resource that goes from
rapid mining to peak production to total exhaustion.
THE FUTURE OF FOSSIL FUELS
It is now well established that the long-term use of
fossil fuels is the major source of rising atmospheric
carbon dioxide, the major driver of human-induced
climate change and global warming. All scientific
organizations that deal with the subject agree9 that
we must scale back our use of carbon-based fuels and
eventually eliminate them almost completely if we have
any chance of saving the planet from the negative effects
of climate change. The debate and discussion are now
about how to go about this, which green energy sources
should play a major role in the future, and how we wean
ourselves off carbon-based fuels in the meanwhile.
By far the worst polluter among fossil fuels is coal,
which releases more carbon dioxide per ton than oil
or natural gas (coal alone makes up over 40 percent of
carbon dioxide from all sources), and also releases meth-
ane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon
dioxide.10 It also has other extremely negative environ-
mental effects, from strip mining of whole mountains, to
the pollution of waterways with mine waste and the air
with coal fly ash, to the long-term health of coal miners.
Fortunately, coal mining is rapidly vanishing from the
global economy, not due to excessive government regu-
lation, but due to capitalism and free market forces: nat-
ural gas and solar have become much cheaper than coal.
As described, Hubbert’s “peak oil,” the global peak of
coal consumption worldwide, already happened in 2013.
The global peak in coal’s contribution to the energy
mix was in 2008, when it accounted for 30 percent of
global energy production. Both demand and production
have been declining rapidly ever since. Coal mining is
now virtually extinct in Great Britain, the birthplace
of the coal industry. A clear sign of the times is the
bankruptcy of many big American coal mining firms
such as Peabody Energy, Murray Energy, Cloud Peak,
and 11 other companies in recent years as coal cannot
compete with the low prices of solar and natural gas.
The only countries that still mine significant coal are
China (46 percent of the world’s production), India
(9.5 percent of the world’s production), with minor
amounts (less than 10 percent) from Indonesia, Turkey,
Australia, followed by the remnants of the U.S. coal
industry. However, both China and India are committed
to scaling back and effectively phasing out their coal
consumption, so coal is on the way out worldwide as a
fuel source—and also as a polluter. Phasing out coal was
one of the primary goals of the Paris Climate Accords in
2016, and of the COP26 agreement in Glasgow in 2021.
Although China built a few new coal-fired power plants
in 2020, globally, more coal power was retired than
built. The U.N. Secretary General said that countries
should stop generating electricity from coal by 2030,
and many countries are on target to meet that goal.
The end of using coal as a source of energy is in sight.
The situation for phasing out oil and natural gas is
much more complicated. Many of us forget (or do not
realize) that we use oil in many other ways besides
energy. Nearly every synthetic substance we use, from
the huge array of plastics to all the fabrics (nylon, rayon,
Dacron, polyester, and many others) are produced
from cheap oil. Many of your clothes are likely made
from these synthetic fabrics, and nearly every object in
a typical room has plastic in it. When oil becomes too
expensive for these things, what will we do? Suddenly,
we will no longer be able to import thousands of cheap
plastic toys for our kids, or wear polyester or spandex
clothes, or use products made largely of plastic, like
the computer parts I’m using to write this article,
or drink water and soda from plastic water bottles.
When cheap oil becomes expensive, plastics will
have to be recycled and rationed, and become much
too precious for most of the ways we use and waste
them today. And you can’t make plastics cheaply from
anything but oil. Not from coal or anything else.
Then there’s another huge consumer of oil—agriculture,
especially fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. All these
products are derived from oil. An acre of corn consumes
80 gallons of oil in the form of pesticides, fertilizers,
herbicides, and fuel for the tractors. We’ve replaced
the human and animal labor of a century ago with
machinery that requires lots of cheap oil. Our entire
modern agricultural system of monoculture crops that
have no resistance to pests, and which deplete the soil
rapidly, can only be sustained by throwing oil at it in the
form of herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers. Without
it, our food supply would collapse, and the world would
be looking at a global famine. The end of cheap oil will
force everyone to re-examine agricultural practices.
So, when is the global oil peak of Hubbert’s curve
going to happen? Various authorities have pegged it
at different times, from the early 2000s (so it might
have already happened) to the 2020s and later (so it’s
happening or is about to happen).11 It will be extremely
hard to detect because the short-term “noise” and
fluctuations in oil price and production make it difficult
to see the overall trend until it is long past us. The
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 15
 “noise” of the short-term cycles of boom and bust in
the price of oil makes it difficult for anyone to see a
long-term trend that takes decades to fully develop
and peak. At any given time, the price might become
high and the oil become scarce, thanks to the power
that Saudi Arabia, with the largest reserves in the
world, can wield. From 2010–2014, Saudi Arabia cut
their exports to drive up the price. Then in 2014, they
rapidly increased production12 to drive down the price
and punish Russia, and drive small U.S. companies out
of business. However, during the global recession of
2008, the price of oil dropped due to the economic
slowdown and again, during the COVID-19 economic
slowdown of 2020–2021, the price of oil plummeted
due to lack of demand. Most people only sense these
short-term fluctuations due to specific events, but
cannot see the bigger “signal” of the overall trend in
oil production through all the short-term “noise.”
exactly predicted the U.S. oil peak (Figure 2),13 and
seems to be predicting the global peak, should be
strong enough evidence in and of itself. There is also
the fact that the peak of global discovery of major oil
fields occurred over 40 years ago, and there have been
no giant oil fields found since then (nor do most oil
geologists think there are more to be found). Most of
the world’s older oil fields are nearing exhaustion.
The end of “cheap oil” will happen soon but we will
probably not realize it until oil-producing countries
can no longer keep up with demand, no matter how
high the price rises. Hopefully, the world will have
already begun to phase out the use of oil and natural
gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If we don’t,
the climate effects will be even more severe, and oil
itself will start to get very expensive and too precious
to waste on any but the most essential uses.

A more reliable measure of when the peak has Donald Prothero taught college geology and paleontology for 35
occurred is obtained by plotting when the peak of years, at Caltech, Columbia, and Occidental, Knox, Vassar, Glendale,
oil discoveries occurred globally and noting that the Mt. San Antonio, and Pierce Colleges. He earned his PhD (1982) in
peak of production will follow about 30–40 years geological sciences from Columbia University. He is the author of over
later. This is vividly demonstrated by the history of 40 books (including six leading geology textbooks, and several trade
U.S. oil discovery and production (Figure 2), when books), and over 300 scientific papers, mostly on the evolution of
the peak of discovery occurred in the 1930s and the fossil mammals (especially rhinos, camels, and horses) and on using
peak of production occurred in the 1970s, about 40 the Earth’s magnetic field changes to date fossil-bearing strata.
years later. The bad news is that global oil discoveries
peaked in the early 1960s, and have been declining
since, even while the price and demand for oil is near
record highs. The idea that cheap, abundant oil will
soon become scarce is well-documented and supported
by existing data. The fact that Hubbert’s hypothesis

REFERENCES

1 Prothero, D. R., & Schwab, F. Drilling and Production Practice, 9 https://go.nasa.gov/3GVy382

(2013). Sedimentary Geology
(3rd ed.). W.H. Freeman. p. 286.
2 Ibid., p. 288.
3 Ibid., p. 293.
4 Ibid., p. 283.
5 Ibid., p. 286.
6 Hubbert, M.K. (1956). Nuclear
Energy and Fossil Fuels. In
American Petroleum Institute 10
& Shell Development Co. 11
Publication No. 95, 9–22.
7 https://bit.ly/3MI6H90
8 Prothero, D.R. (2013). Reality 12
Check: How Science Deniers 13
Threaten Our Future. Indiana
University Press. p. 227.
https://bit.ly/3Ld2Pf5
Deffeyes, K. (2001). Hubbert’s Peak:
The Impending World Oil Shortage.
Princeton University Press. p. 285.
https://bit.ly/3AgboPG
Deffeyes, K. (2001)

16 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023

ENERGY MATTERS
The
FUTURE of
ENERGY and
OUR CLIMATE
Fracking, Renewables, or Nuclear?
BY MARC J. DEFANT
The Paris Accords are arguably the most important
initiative ever undertaken to globally address the future
of our environment and the future of energy in the 21st
century, and beyond. What are the Accords? In short,
196 countries signed on to reduce their anthropogenic
gas output “as soon as possible” in order to limit global
warming to “well below 2 degrees C” (3.6°F) above
pre-industrial levels. That is, by 2030 emissions would
need to be cut by about 50 percent.1 However, it’s
not as clear-cut as it may seem. First, the agreement
does not include international aviation or shipping,
which require massive use of fossil fuels. Perhaps
more importantly, many environmentalists have noted
that the Accords do not bind any of the signatories to
the reduction of greenhouse gasses. The eye-opening
section of the Accords states that countries must
make an “ambitious effort” towards “achieving the
purpose of the Agreement.” And every five years,
each country must put forth a more ambitious
strategy than the previous five years. However,
there is absolutely no process to force signatories
to mitigate their release of anthropogenic gases.
While some countries, such as the U.S., made
unconditional pledges to reduce anthropogenic gases,
many others, e.g., India, refused to sign the Accords
unless they obtained technical and financial aid. As a
result, industrialized countries agreed to contribute
$100 billion per year by 2020 to the Green Climate Fund
(GCF) and other ventures to help less developed coun-
tries. Each industrialized country determines how much
money it should contribute to the fund.2 Paradoxically,
however, the GCF refused to ban the use of the funds to
support fossil fuel projects such as coal power plants.
As of July 31, 2020, the fund raised just over ten billion
dollars. The United States has given twice as much as
any other country (three billion dollars). Interestingly,
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 17
 China, the second richest nation in the world, was
designated as a developing country with no obligation
to commit funds, leaving mainly the United States
and Europe, along with a few rich Asian countries,
to fund the GCF. It should be noted that China has a
market share in the solar panel supply chain of more
than 80 percent,3 so the Paris Accords have proven
a financial bonanza for that nation. Other countries,
such as Iran, refused to ratify the Accords; Russia
and North Korea have also not contributed based on
their developing country status. Many researchers
have emphasized that large increases in contributions
will be needed if the Paris Accords are to achieve the
decrease in anthropogenic gases that the body seeks.
Perhaps the only meaningful way to assess the impact
of the Paris Accords is to look at the carbon dioxide
emissions of various countries. The COVID-19 pandemic
had an impact on all countries except China and Saudi
Arabia (even COVID did not slow China’s high level of
emissions). The United States has been decreasing
emissions since 2007–2008. On the other hand, China’s
increase has skyrocketed since the Paris Accords were
signed in 2015. As many economists note, America is
WITHOUT FRACKING, THE U.S.
WOULD STILL BE THE LARGEST
WORLD IMPORTER OF OIL & GAS.
adversely impacting its economy while trying to tran-
sition to clean energy. China, however, and to a lesser
extent India, have experienced no significant impact
on their emissions, particularly in the last six years.
In game theory, the results from the Paris
Accords exemplify what is called the tragedy of
the commons. Participants (in this case, national
leaders) will act in rational ways that serve their
own best interests. Not surprisingly, most of the
world’s ordinary people do not want to degrade
their standard of living by rejecting cheap energy.
As Matt Ridley succinctly stated the dilemma:
…so humankind faces a stark dilemma in the
coming century between continuing a carbon-fueled
prosperity until global warming brings it to a
calamitous halt, or restricting the use of carbon and
18 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
risking a steep decline in living standards because
of the lack of alternative sources of energy that are
cheap enough. Either prospect might be catastrophic.
So, what, realistically, can be done?
Fracking: An Interim Solution
There are three major fossil fuel contributors to the
production of anthropogenic gases such as CO2: coal,
natural gas (primarily methane), and petroleum. Of the
three, coal is, by far, the worst polluter, followed by
petroleum. Both contain various potentially serious
pollutants, such as sulfur which can cause acid rain
through sulfuric acid that forms in the atmosphere.
Natural gas has some impurities, but they can be
easily removed before it is burned. Natural gas also
has a higher energy density—that is, it turns out more
energy relative to an equivalent weight of coal or
petroleum products, or ethanol (derived from corn.
Since the beginning of fracking and the progressive
replacement of other fossil fuels by natural gas,
the United States has become the
world leader in reducing its output
of anthropogenic gas. The decrease
in CO2 contamination since 1990 has
been eight percent. Methane, also an
anthropogenic gas, has been reduced
by 17 percent over the same interval.
As Gary Sernovitz concluded: “the
United States has led the world in carbon
dioxide emissions reduction because of
shale gas [use of natural gas instead of coal and oil].”4
Note that, in addition to reducing emissions, the United
States—not Saudi Arabia or Russia—has become the
world’s largest producer of oil and gas by a large margin.
That dominance came with the technology that enabled
the United States’ producers to frack horizontally.
The halcyon days of the 1960s, when the United States
led production worldwide, gave way to the lean decades
when the U.S. became dependent on oil imports to meet
its energy needs. By the early 1980s, even secondary
recovery processes in declining oil fields could not
increase American production. That decline in oil
production continued until about 2007, when fracking
increased. By 2019, the U.S. was fully meeting all
domestic oil and natural gas needs and even exporting,
thus cutting dependence on the troubled Middle East
and an increasingly hostile Russia. Without fracking,
the U.S. would still be the largest world importer
of oil and gas. Further, that increase in production
has extensively replaced the need to burn coal.
How does fracking work?
Drilling for oil has long been a financially risky
business. Most wells never produce a drop of oil.
However, that changed to a great extent with the
advent of gas and oil production through fracking.
The new targets—usually oil shales—were discovered
decades ago by previous drilling. They were ignored
at that time because even though shales have an
immense amount of void space between the tiny clay
particles (highly porous), most of the void spaces are
not interconnected (thus having poor permeability).
Production companies need permeable rocks to
produce oil and/or gas, or so it was thought.
Fracking sounds ominous and sinister and conjures
up visions of rock being fractured all the way to
potable water zones. Yet it is nothing of the sort.
The technique took decades of testing and experimen-
tation in wells to develop. The drill holes typically
go down for thousands of feet below the surface and
are protected with a cemented casing that has only
been perforated in small sections, usually located at
the bottom of the hole where the target rock exists.
The secret is hydraulic pressure from fluids that
are injected into the well that cause the shale to
fracture. The fracturing is usually limited to about
300 feet in an outward radius around the drill hole
where the cemented casing has been perforated.
Yet, one cannot emphasize enough the critical
importance of protecting the water table when
drilling. State and Federal regulations require a well
to be sealed off at least 50 feet below where potable
groundwater can be produced, and those laws have
been in place as far back as anyone can remember.
The drill pipe is tripped (pulled completely out of the
hole) when regulators deem the surface casing should
be set to protect the water table (usually, something
on the order of 500 feet). The casing is cemented in
place, and if that is done correctly, we know from the
drilling of hundreds of thousands of wells over many
decades that the water table is protected. After the
surface casing is set, drilling is continued until the tar-
get zone is reached. The pipe is tripped again, and the
entire well is generally set with cemented production
casing. The hole is plugged at the bottom, usually up
to 50 feet below the horizon of interest. The casing is
then perforated by tools that blow holes in it precisely
where the rock containing oil and/or gas exists.
To take advantage of fracking, horizontal drilling,
another technological advance, was added to the
arsenal of new production techniques. With the ability
to target a bit within inches of a desired location,
drillers learned how to gradually arc a pipe into
the horizontal. The technology turned out to be a
bonanza when combined with fracking. Companies
drilled and set casing directly within and parallel to
the oil shales enabling them to frack large sections of
the rock that sent production through the ceiling.
The Risks
The chemicals used in fracking were originally a
trade secret, but eventually companies published the
composition of their fracking liquids. It turns out
that 90 percent of the frack is made up of water, 9.5
percent consists of a proppant which is usually sand,
and 0.5 percent consists of “scary” chemicals such as
chloride, polyacrylamide, ethylene glycol, glutaralde-
hyde, etc., which have been the focus of arguments
against the process. The target oil shales are typically
thousands of feet below the surface—sometimes
even miles—and if the casing is cemented properly,
those chemicals stay completely out of harm’s way.
The sand serves as a support to keep the fractures
(caused by the pressurized fluid) propped open so
gas and/or oil will flow, creating permeability. It
takes a lot of water to frack a well. Estimates are that
a typical frack uses between four and eight million
gallons of water and about six million pounds of sand.
Unfortunately, not all the fracking fluid stays in the
hole. Some resurfaces. The water that comes back
is reused or disposed of by pumping it into former
producing fields in a concerted effort to make sure
the chemicals within the water—even if they are only
0.5 percent—are sealed deep below the surface.
It has been widely reported that fracking causes
earthquakes. However, fracking in itself is not
responsible for the earthquakes. Rather, the disposal
of water (usually from fracking) being pumped into
the ground causes the seismic activity by reducing
friction along faults. The typical increase in seismic
activity in a state such as Oklahoma is usually mitigated
effectively by diverting the injection of water from
fields responsible for the activity or by requiring
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 19
 the water to be disposed of through other methods.
In fact, the water has become so valuable that many
companies reuse the water after it has been “cleaned.”
In the early days of fracking some rogue drillers set
poorly cemented casing that allowed gas to seep into the
water table. The infamous water taps that caught fire in
Dimock, Pennsylvania, were the result of poor casing in
THE MANUFACTURING OF ONE
ELECTRIC VEHICLE PRODUCES
ABOUT 16 TONS OF CO2 COMPARED
TO THE 5 TONS GENERATED TO
MAKE A GAS-POWERED CAR.
27 holes. In 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) produced a summary paper entitled Assessment
of the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil
and Gas on Drinking Water Resources5 and concluded,
“Assessment shows hydraulic fracturing activities have
not led to widespread, systemic impacts to drinking
water resources.” While the gas industry has made
mistakes, subsequent regulations have abated those
problems. It is reprehensible that some companies
would not protect the water table at all costs; they
should incur the penalties they received and be forced
to make full restitution to those people they injured.
CLEAN ENERGY
Are solar and wind truly the next step?
After governments and private entities have spent
hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidize clean energy,
the experiment in the transition from fossil fuels has
provided us with evidence that clean energy is not
exactly the panacea many hoped for. Perhaps the most
significant issue is that, because sunlight and wind are
intermittent, their ability to supply clean electricity is
not as reliable as other forms of energy. Those sources
provide energy only 10–30 percent of the time during
most of the year,6 leading to rolling blackouts in states
such as California that are heavily dependent on clean
20 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
energy. This makes storing energy one of the biggest
clean energy dilemmas. The sun and the winds don’t
always cooperate with our high-energy demands.
One suggestion has been to pump water uphill into
reservoirs so that it can later be released over turbines
when energy is needed. However, that solution is
problematic, particularly in areas where water is scarce
and land expensive. In addition,
the energy required to pump water
uphill along with the building of the
infrastructure make that solution
costly. Barring any better solutions,
solar and wind farms have defaulted
to using batteries to store energy
during peak production. That,
however, is not a realistic solution
either: if we take the amount of
energy Europe typically stores in
fossil fuels for use in the winter,
it would cost about 100 trillion
dollars to store the same amount
of energy in batteries. There
is no doubt that, over time, batteries will become
more efficient at storing energy, but batteries can’t
violate the basic laws of physics, which render
them wanting as a method of mass storage.7
Now that solar and wind have become important
to the economy over the last two decades, replacing
aging solar panels and turbines is becoming a serious
problem in the form of electronic waste (e-waste). The
International Renewable Energy Agency reports that
by 2050 something on the order of 78 million metric
tons of solar panels will need to be replaced and we
will be dealing with six million metric tons of solar
e-waste each year. Solar panels, depending on their
type, contain valuable elements such as silver, alumi-
num, gallium, phosphorus, boron, palladium, copper,
titanium, cadmium, tellurium, iridium, selenium, and
of course, silica. Europe has recycling requirements, but
the United States has no such nationwide laws, though
some states require recycling. Unfortunately, many of
the valuable rare elements are diluted when mixed with
other compounds and separation is not economically
efficient. Normally only copper, aluminum, and glass are
recovered and valued at about $3 per solar panel. That
sounds like a fair amount until you consider transpor-
tation costs to the refineries, which fall somewhere
between $12 and $25 whereas sending a panel to a
local landfill costs about a dollar. Fortunately, there are
organizations such as the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory that are assessing ways to recover all the ele-
ments in high purity.8 Only time will tell if any process
will be economically feasible. Meanwhile, we face the
loss of potentially valuable metal resources to landfills.
Solar and wind farms occupy immense areas that
adversely impact wildlife habitats—wind turbines
are killing millions of birds and bats,9 and when
building the Ivanpah solar farm in California, the
endangered desert tortoise population had to be
relocated, killing some in the process. Wind farms
also have environmental problems. A great deal of
cement and iron go into the building of the turbine
structures. The manufacturing of cement is one of
the major contributors to greenhouse gasses, and iron
has to be mined through gas-guzzling equipment.
Electric Vehicles
A major goal of the green revolution is to replace gas and
diesel cars and trucks with electric vehicles. Because
gas-powered cars do not require expensive rare metals
and avoid the cost of mining those rare metals, manufac-
turing them is much cheaper than EVs. It is estimated
to take about 25 barrels of oil or the equivalent in coal
or natural gas to make one electric vehicle (much more
than two times what it takes to make a gas-powered
car). Put another way, the manufacturing of one electric
vehicle produces about 16 tons of CO2 compared to the
five tons generated to make a gas-powered car. Estimates
suggest one would need to drive a new electric vehicle
for 60,000 to 100,000 miles, depending on the size of
the battery, before the EV overcomes the carbon dioxide
output used to make the vehicle and the electricity
still being generated from fossil fuels. As Mark Mills,
a physicist with the Manhattan Institute, reminds us,
the world has about 15–18 million electric vehicles. If
that number rose to the aspirational level of, say, 500
million (approximately the number of cars in the U.S.
and Europe), it would reduce oil production by about
10 percent. That is not insignificant, but it does not
sound like a meaningful transition away from fossil
fuels. Cheap fossil fuels are still the major source for the
generation of the electricity that supplies electric cars.
Efforts are currently being made to demand the
removal of all fossil fuel-driven cars by 2035. In
California alone, the estimated 12.5 million electric
vehicles added to the grid by 2035 will require two to
three times more energy generated to keep up with
the demand. California has made no plans to expand
their grid by anything near this amount. Thus, it is
highly unlikely California (or any other state) will be
able to ramp up grids for electrical energy with solar
and wind energy to meet the coming EV demand.10
Batteries, not only in electric cars but those used to store
energy from solar and wind farms, present a number of
additional, indirect problems. First, an electric vehicle
needs 12–15 percent more energy than what is added to
a recharged battery. Batteries are notoriously inefficient
means of conserving energy because some of the energy
leaks away (called transmission loss), some is converted
to heat, and some keeps the battery from overheating.11
Second, the battery in an EV weighs about 1,000 pounds
and can weigh as much as 3,000 pounds. Compare that
to the 80-pound full gas tank it replaces, and it becomes
clear that a lot more energy is required to drive an EV
than a gas-powered car.12 The lithium-ion cells that are
the mainstay of most battery use not only contain that
element but also cobalt and various rare earth elements.
One battery requires the mining of approximately
500,000 pounds of ore and rock. (Again, these are
often located in hostile or unstable nations). Ironically,
the environmental movement has pushed hard for
decades to restrict mining through regulations. The
resulting mining laws have made it virtually impossible
to begin mining projects and make them economical
in the U.S., even though high-grade ores are available.
Consequently, those necessary metals are mined in
countries with minimal environmental regulation and
protection for their people. Cobalt is a good example.
Cobalt is especially unfriendly to the environment:
Mining cobalt produces hazardous tailings and slags
that can leach into the environment, and studies
have found high exposure in nearby communities,
especially among children, to cobalt and other
metals. Extracting the metals from their ores also
requires a process called smelting, which can emit
sulfur oxide and other harmful air pollution.13
Something on the order of 70 percent of our cobalt
comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo,
where unregulated mining is often performed by
subsistence miners and their children using archaic
hand tools. As you might imagine, health and safety
risks are afterthoughts under these conditions.
Lithium is mined primarily within the so-called
“lithium triangle,” which covers sections of Argentina,
Chile, and Bolivia. The salts are dissolved and pumped
to the surface into huge evaporating ponds that
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 21
 600

World Energy Consumption renewables 6%

(Exajoules)
500

hydro 6.8%

400

nuclear 4.3% coal 26.9%

300

natural gas 24.4%

200

100
oil 31%

0
93
95
97
99
01
03
05
07
09
11
13
15
17
19
21
65

67
69

71

73
75
77

79
81
83
85

87
89
91
19
19
19
19
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
19

19
19

19

19
19
19

19
19
19
19

19
19
19

Year

Figure 1. World energy consumption in exajoules of various commodities (BP Statisitical View of World Energy, https://bit.ly/3AqaRuB).
The percent of world consumption is based on 2021 usage. Renewable energy includes solar, wind, flowing water (excluding hydroelectric),
geothermal, etc.

concentrate the metal. To produce one ton of lithium,
the process uses approximately 2.2 million liters of
water, which can negatively affect local farming.
According to the Institute for Energy Research,
the United States imports about 80 percent of its
rare earth elements from China,14 which makes
the U.S. highly dependent on what is increasingly
becoming an adversary nation. Unfortunately, the
recycling of batteries is still in its infant stages.
The Economics of Clean Energy
At present, the world acquires about six percent of
its total energy from renewable energy (see Figure 1).
All current trends suggest that the major transition
away from fossil fuels will be accomplished through
the use of wind and solar along with battery storage.
Yet, six percent can only mark the beginning of a
true transition. Even in the United States, wind and
solar only make up four percent of energy needs.
What we have learned from renewables so far is that
a real transition will be slow, difficult, and immensely
expensive. The world has spent a staggering direct cost
of approximately five trillion dollars over the past 15
years to reach the current renewable production. And
another five trillion has probably been spent through
indirect spending.15 Renewables have become cheaper
(although prices are now increasing), but amping
up to the stated goal of 70 percent renewables in
the next 15–25 years is but an aspirational goal. The
limited metal resources alone make that goal highly
improbable. The International Energy Agency data
demonstrate that replacing fossil fuel combustion
would require a 2,000 to 7,000 percent increase in
the tonnage of metals mined per unit of energy. The
variation derives from the source of the clean energy.
Offshore wind requires the highest percentage, while
solar, onshore wind, and electric vehicles require less.

22 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023

 FRANCE
renewables 7.9%
hydro 5.8%
hydro 1.4%
oil
30.9%
nuclear
renewables
36.5%
+ hydro
natural gas
16.5%
+ nuclear
50.2% CLEAN
coal 2.4%
Electrical energy cost = 0.1946 Euro/kWh
Figure 2. Comparison of energy consumption between France and Germany in percent (BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2022,
https://bit.ly/43X4dtI). Note the difference in electrical energy costs at the bottom of the diagram (kWh = kilowatt-hour; Eurostat database).
Nuclear is considered clean energy in the diagram.
Put another way, it would be the biggest increase in
the supply of metals in all of human history, assuming
it could be accomplished in the next two decades.
With the increase in demand for metals and the inability
to supply the demand, prices will increase precipitously
for the requisite metals and that, in turn, will greatly
impact the cost of clean energy. Perhaps even more dis-
turbing from a geopolitical perspective is that an increas-
ingly confrontational China controls the refining of
these metals and the mining of the rare earth elements.
California and Germany have been quite aggressive in
the implementation of solar and wind energy and so
serve as a testing ground for the economic feasibility
of those sources. Californians paid almost 20 cents
per kWh compared with about 11 cents per kWh
country-wide in 2022. During the period, even though
the price of solar and wind energy fell, Californians saw
and felt energy prices explode. The land requirements
and the unreliable nature of solar and wind required
huge new costs related to storage and transmission that
must be addressed by those advocating for two trillion
dollars in government spending (which must result
in an increase in either taxes or, more likely, debt) to
GERMANY
renewables
18%
oil
33.1%
nuclear
4.9%
coal renewables
16.8%
+ hydro
natural gas
+ nuclear
25.8%
24.3% CLEAN
Electrical energy cost = 0.3193 Euro/kWh
increase renewables, particularly wind and solar.16
Thus, the conundrum… How can we transition away
from fossil fuels without destroying our economies?
Nuclear Energy
Wind, solar, and battery storage have had only a
small impact on reducing our dependence on fossil
fuels, even though we have spent massive sums
of money to augment their use. As demonstrated,
they are also detrimental to the environment,
deplete valuable commodities of metals, and their
potential as a major source of energy is limited.
Compare 2022 energy usage in Germany and France
(see Figure 2). Germany decided to move toward
renewables, while France turned more toward nuclear
energy. Coal usage in Germany has increased consider-
ably due to the Ukraine War, but Germany still depends
on a large amount of renewable energy for electricity
(18 percent)—more than two times as much as France,
which has only 7.9 percent renewables. Yet Germans
pay twice as much for electricity as do the French.
The difference is in the amount of nuclear energy
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 23
 IT REQUIRES THREE MILLION SOLAR PANELS TO
REPLACE ONE NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, YET WE
CONTINUE TO SHUT DOWN OUR NUCLEAR POWER
PLANTS AND CONSTRUCT WIND AND SOLAR FARMS.

(36.5 percent) that France uses to produce electricity.
Nuclear makes France’s clean energy almost two times
cheaper, primarily because, unlike wind and solar, it
can be generated consistently. In April 2023, Germany
shut down its last three remaining nuclear reactors.17
The World Nuclear Association has taken a hard look
at the cost of nuclear energy and concluded: “system
costs for nuclear power (as well as coal and gas-fired
generation) are very much lower than for intermittent
renewables.”18 Yet the world’s energy consumption
of wind and solar has exploded compared to that
of nuclear energy. Even Solar Reviews concludes:
Although building nuclear power plants has a high
initial cost, it’s relatively cheap to produce energy
from them and they have low operating costs. Also,
nuclear power doesn’t experience the same kind of
price fluctuations that traditional fossil fuel energy
sources like coal and natural gas do [and solar
and wind]. Because of that, the price of nuclear
energy can be predicted well into the future.19
It requires three million solar panels to replace one
nuclear power plant, yet we continue to shut down
our nuclear power plants and construct wind and
solar farms. At least 163 nuclear power plants were
planned or under construction but canceled in the U.S.20
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) data, nuclear energy generation produces
four times less carbon pollution than solar farms.
Consider also that wind and solar use more land and
require more materials such as cement and steel and, of
course, more mining of materials such as the rare metals
compared to nuclear. Perhaps the most important advan-
tage of nuclear power is its production of consistent
energy. Nuclear power, according to the Department
of Energy, is 92 percent efficient, whereas solar and
wind are 26 and 37 percent efficient, respectively.21
Perhaps the key to an energy abundant future has been
there before us all along. We just don’t seem to have
chosen wisely.
Marc J. Defant is a professor of geology at the University of South
Florida. He specializes in the study of volcanoes, specifically
the geochemistry of volcanic rocks. He has been funded by
the NSF, National Geographic, the American Chemical Society,
and the National Academy of Sciences and has published in
many international journals, including Nature. He is the author
of Voyage of Discovery: From the Big Bang to the Ice Age.
Disclosure: The author worked for Schlumberger Well
Services and Shell Oil Company between 1977–1980.

REFERENCES

1 https://go.nature.com/3KS7Acl and the Black: The Complete Story 12 https://bit.ly/41HEjrL

2 Secretariat, United Nations
(2021). Nationally determined
contributions under the Paris
Agreement-Synthesis report by the
secretariat. In Proceedings of the
Conference of the Parties Serving as
the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris
Agreement Third Session (Vol. 31).
3 https://bit.ly/3UOrWI2
4 Sernovitz, G. (2016). The Green
of the Shale Revolution, the Fight 13 https://nyti.ms/3Aa2qDR
Over Fracking, and the Future of 14 https://bit.ly/3ovKlxd
Energy. St. Martin’s Press. 15 https://bit.ly/3KS9Gcd
5 https://bit.ly/3AfXywZ 16 https://bit.ly/3Aba2Wv
6 https://bit.ly/2WCFk2R 17 https://bit.ly/3LeKsX9
7 https://bit.ly/3ot41lD 18 https://bit.ly/3GSWToX
8 https://bit.ly/3GYP4hz 19 https://bit.ly/41E1gvY
9 https://bit.ly/3KOTyrZ 20 https://bit.ly/3LeJDNU
10 https://bit.ly/40nq7TF 21 https://bit.ly/3LdJv0Z
11 https://bit.ly/41ES9ez

24 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023

ENERGY MATTERS

Dr. Steven Koonin served as Undersecretary for Science in the U.S. Department of
Energy under President Obama from 2009 to 2011, where his portfolio included the
climate research program and energy technology strategy. He was the lead author of
the U.S. Department of Energy’s Strategic Plan (2011) and the inaugural Department of
Energy Quadrennial Technology Review (2011). Before joining the government, Koonin
spent five years as Chief Scientist for BP (British Petroleum), researching renewable
energy options to move the company “beyond petroleum.” For almost 30 years, he was
a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech. He also served for nine years as Caltech’s
Vice President and Provost, facilitating the research of more than 300 scientists and
engineers and catalyzing the development of the world’s largest optical telescope.
In addition to the National Academy of Sciences, Koonin’s memberships include the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and JASON, the group of scientists who solve
technical problems for the U.S. government; he served as JASON’s chair for six years.
He is currently a professor at New York University, with appointments in the Stern
School of Business, the Tandon School of Engineering, and the Department of Physics.

SKEPTIC
INTERVIEWS
Dr. Steven Koonin
Skeptic: How did you get interested in energy?
Koonin: I was educated in New York City public schools
and grew up in a middle-class household. I went to
Caltech as an undergrad, MIT for my PhD, and then
returned to Caltech as faculty for 30 years. I was the
Provost for the last nine. I am trained in nuclear physics
and quantum mechanics, and did a lot of wonderful
research. In the late 80s, I joined JASON, which is a
group of scientists and engineers who work on the most
important problems for the U.S. government, many
of them classified. I got exposed to climate science
because the Department of Energy came to JASON and
inquired about the application of (then new) multiple
processor computers to climate modeling and using
small satellites to conduct climate observations. I got
intrigued by that and learned about climate science
and energy. And then, in 2004, John Brown, who was
the CEO of British Petroleum, called me up and said,
“Steve, come join us as Chief Scientist.” Suffice to say,
they didn’t need me to find oil and gas… They were
pretty good at that! They needed help figuring out what
beyond petroleum really means. I accepted, packed
up the family, and moved to London, shifting from
academia to the private sector. I helped BP quite a bit
with their initial foray into renewables, particularly
biofuels, but also wind and solar. After living in London
for five years, my wife and I were ready for a new
experience. And then my friend Steven Chu, a Nobel
Prize-winning physicist now at Stanford, became
the Secretary of Energy. He asked me to help out.
Skeptic: That was in the Obama administration?
Koonin: Yes. I spent two-and-a-half years working for
Obama in the Department of Energy. And I wound
up doing pretty much what I did for BP, namely,
figuring out technology strategies. What technology
should the government be investing in, in order to
reduce emissions and to improve energy security?

VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 25

 Is nuclear fusion going to save the day? Koonin doesn’t think it’s going to be a very big part of a near-to-mid-term energy solution.
This striking cutaway illustration depicts the massive complex that houses ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor),
a large tokamak [a toroidal apparatus for producing controlled fusion reactions in hot plasma] and its ancillary systems. It is one of the
world’s most complex projects, currently under construction in France in partnership of a number of countries, including the U.S., the
U.K., China, Japan, and Russia. (Illustration by Lauris Honoré; ITER)

How should it go about the process from basic research
to development to demonstration to deployment?
Which technologies really matter and could make
a difference?
Skeptic: Can you give us a sense of what it’s like to
think about these problems in different environments,
from inside Caltech versus BP, and then inside a
government agency?
Koonin: In the academic environment, it used to
be—and I’m not sure it is now—that you could discuss,
debate, and raise questions, and all of that was in the
process of refining the science. In the private sector, it’s
much more goal-oriented, and the goal, ultimately, is to
make money. In my case, it was how do we make BP into
a company that is more respectful of the environment
and the climate. They weren’t so much interested in the
science. It was more about what technologies should
be developed or which businesses they could invest
in to try to make money—and there weren’t many.
In the government, I was dealing with energy security
and the economic side of things, particularly the
interplay of demographics and economics. The data
showed that there would be massive growth in energy
consumption in the next 40 to 50 years and that
fossil fuels were and remained the primary source
of the world’s energy. These days, approximately
80 percent of energy still comes from fossil fuels.
Skeptic: You used the term energy security. What
does that mean from a government’s perspective?
Is it the government’s job to make sure that people
have enough energy to lead a decent life?
Koonin: Not only to have enough energy but also
that it is delivered reliably. Let me make a distinction
between security and reliability. Security is about the
physical provision of energy, fossil fuels, uranium,
or even some of the fancy hardware that goes into
the electrical grid, which is manufactured abroad.
We saw a dramatic example of disrupted energy
security in the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s,
when it was very difficult to get enough oil.
Up until recently, the U.S. has been producing more
oil than it actually consumes, and so we’ve become,
in that sense, energy self-sufficient. These days
this is certainly true for natural gas, which is also

26 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023

a current example of energy insecurity in terms
of what’s going on in Europe, where natural gas is
needed for heating, for industry, and for electricity
generation. The problem is that availability of this
fuel in Europe relies on imports, which used to
come predominantly from Russia. Geopolitically,
that’s not a very comfortable place to be. In a
nutshell, that’s what we mean by energy security.
Energy reliability is a different story. It’s mostly whether
the fuel is capable of being delivered continuously.
For example, is the refining supply chain stable? But
more importantly, is the electrical grid able to deliver
energy 99.9 percent of the time? We have recently
seen dramatic instances of when the electricity
supply fails, which leads to all kinds of chaos.
Then there’s another aspect of the electrical utility
business: these are regulated utilities, which means
they cannot freely tend to the problems that they see.
Skeptic: Many people nowadays drive an electric car
and hope that someday, there’ll be no more fossil
fuel-driven cars. That seems like a good thing. But
can it happen without nuclear energy? What is the
current status of solar, wind, and other renewables?
Koonin: Let me give you a bigger picture of the grid
first. We’d like the electrical grid to have three things:
(1) We would like it to be affordable, (2) we would like
it to be reliable, (3) and we would like it to produce
low emissions. The only problem is, practically
speaking, we are forced to choose two out of three.
If you want a grid that is affordable and low-emissions,
wind and solar are the way to go. The problem is that
they’re not very reliable. If you want it to be affordable
and reliable, then you’ve got gas, coal, and nuclear.
But if you want to make that clean, you need to get
rid of the fossil fuels. In other words, you need to have
wind and solar, but then you also need some form of
dispatchable power, that is, ways in which you can fill in
the shortfall when the wind and solar don’t generate.
Batteries are certainly one possibility. Pumped hydro,
where you pump water up the hill and then release
it to come down when you need the electricity, is
another. Converting electricity into some chemical,
such as hydrogen, by electrolyzing water, and then
burning that chemical when you need the electricity
again is yet another option. So, there are a number
of ways to address the reliability of renewables,
but I would say the only realistic way of dealing
with this dilemma today is nuclear power.
Nuclear produces a little over 18 percent of the United
States’ electricity. We know how to do it. But one
of the main problems is that it’s capital-intensive.
When I worked in the Department of Energy, the
government tried—and continues to try—to build
much smaller nuclear reactors in a standardized way.
Currently, our reactors are custom-built and typically
produce 1.1 gigawatts of electricity. If we could build
50- or 100-megawatt reactors in a factory, truck
them over wherever they’re needed, and install them
successively onsite, it could solve a lot of problems.
We’ll see whether we can get it cheap enough.
Not many people realize that what costs the most is not
the generation. Wind and solar are the cheapest ways
of generating electricity. Ensuring reliability—not just
producing electricity—is the most expensive aspect.
Skeptic: Isn’t the problem with nuclear also part
psychological, in the sense that people fear it?
Chernobyl was certainly a devastating disaster. At the
same time, the major cause of deaths in Fukushima
was not the nuclear power plant itself, it was the tidal
waves, right? And many people conflate the Three Mile
Island accident with the movie The China Syndrome,
which premiered 12 days before the meltdown. Still,
because the perceived consequences are so high, many
governments feel compelled to restrict nuclear.
Koonin: Yes, I think it is largely a perception issue. I
would add to this list of reasons why people don’t like
nuclear power its association with nuclear weapons,
which, of course, are terrible. And then there’s the
waste issue. All of that is technically solvable, but the
perception issue certainly dominates. Spencer Weart,
who’s a great historian of science, wrote a book titled
Nuclear Fear, in which he documents all the psycholog-
ical reasons why people are not fans of nuclear power.
I think nuclear power is going to be absolutely essential
if the world is going to get to zero emissions on the
time scale most governments and NGOs say we
need to. If you look at the statistics, nuclear is by far
the lowest in deaths per megawatt hour produced.
With coal, you’ve got local pollution and the mining
issues, and so on. So, even with Chernobyl or Three
Mile Island, nuclear is the safest based on experience.
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 27
 Skeptic: What about nuclear fusion?
Note: Current nuclear power stations rely on nuclear fission
with the nucleus of an atom being split to release energy.
Nuclear fusion takes multiple nuclei and uses intense heat
to fuse them together, a process that also releases energy.
Koonin: You know, if you believe we need to solve
our energy problems in the next 30 years… Given
this time scale to develop, demonstrate, and then
deploy, I don’t think nuclear fusion is going to be a
very big part of the near-to-mid-term solution. But
let me describe what the advances have been.
The world’s mainline approach has been ITER
(International Thermonuclear Experimental
Reactor). It’s a large tokamak reactor [a toroidal
apparatus for producing controlled fusion
40% OF THE WORLD’S
POPULATION RIGHT
NOW—OVER 3 BILLION
PEOPLE—DON’T HAVE
ADEQUATE ENERGY.
reactions in hot plasma] that allows you to
confine the plasma with magnetic fields. It’s being
constructed in the south of France through a
partnership of a number of countries, including
the U.S., the U.K., China, Japan, and Russia. It’s
two to three times over budget and delayed by
more than a decade. The reactor was expected to
take 10 years to build, and ITER had planned to
test its first plasma in 2020 and then achieve full
fusion by 2023, but the schedule is now to test
first plasma in 2025, with first introduction of
fusible material—full fusion—in 2035. All energy
produced will be vented. And only then do we get
to build a plant that actually generates electricity.
28 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
There have been other developments that suggest
maybe there are other ways of doing this. One is the
rise of private sector magnetic efforts. A company
I have been consulting with, TAE Technologies,
has been making good progress on demonstrat-
ing a different kind of magnetic confinement,
basically in a tube shape rather than a doughnut.
In the next few years, they’re going to build their
next machine. These types of advancements
will get us closer to conditions where you could
start to believe in making energy this way.
Skeptic: It sounds like the idea of a world operating
on complete renewables, which includes the whole
basket of everything you just said, is probably
not going to happen till the 22nd century.
Koonin: I think that’s a fair statement.
Skeptic: In the meantime, you have all these
developing countries that want to come online
and join the developed world, and they need
energy. At the moment, fossil fuels are still the
means to do it. It seems hardly fair for the U.S.,
Europe, or Japan to say, “no, you can’t do that.”
To which they would respond, “Well, what are
we supposed to do then? Can we go nuclear?”
To then only be told, “No, you can’t go nuclear
either.” It seems like a big political issue.
Koonin: Yes! People have used the term
eco-colonialism or eco-imperialism to describe
the developed world telling the developing
world to use more expensive sources of energy.
But even more so, I would say it’s a moral issue.
To put some numbers on these statements,
40 percent of the world’s population right
now—that’s over 3 billion people—don’t have
adequate energy. And as they improve their
lives and develop their countries, they will need
energy. 80 percent of the world’s energy right
now comes from fossil fuels. It is the most
widely available and reliable source of energy.
So the question is, who is going to pay the
developing world not to emit? I don’t have an
answer to that, and I haven’t heard a convincing
answer from anyone. If we dream of an emis-
sions-free world by 2050, this is a problem.
Another aspect of that is the risk calculus. How
do you rate the climate risk compared to all
the other things you’ve got to worry about?
It’s very different for those of us in the devel-
oped world versus someone in Bangladesh or
sub-Saharan Africa. Or even India. I think they
would say, “Well, you know, the climate risk
is a couple of generations away and it’s pretty
vague, while my immediate needs are energy for
a refrigerator or for lighting so I can study…”
Skeptic: This 40 percent of the world experiencing
energy insecurity, where are they getting their
energy from? Are they still burning cow pies
and wood, and other similar crude sources?
Koonin: About 10 percent of world energy comes
from traditional biomass, as it’s called, so yes,
for example, cow pies and wood. It accounts for
up to 90 percent of energy in some developing
regions. Traditional biomass is used mainly for
heating and cooking, and the local air pollution
associated with that is just terrible. If you’ve ever
been to a city where that is the case, you smell the
dung and wood burning in the air, you can feel it
on your tongue just walking around…and it kills
millions of people through local air pollution.
You know, even though propane or LPG emit
carbon, if you bring these types of clean-burning
fuels to people living in such poverty, then you’ve
improved their health situation dramatically.
Skeptic: Right. But it’s gradual enough that those
deaths don’t make the news. Similarly, you don’t
hear that much about fossil fuel-related deaths, but
a nuclear disaster like Chernobyl is a massive story.
Koonin: Of course. Some people would say it
sounds heartless. Every death matters. But in fact,
what we’re really talking about is the large trends
and the statistics in trying to deal with the prob-
lems of climate change one the one hand and that
of how to provide adequate energy on the other.
Skeptic: So, how should we deal with all this?
Very few people give an actual causal sequence
of events of how you would get from where we
are now to producing enough energy for everyone
in a responsible way. Thomas Sowell insightfully
noted that: “There are no solutions, there are
only trade-offs; and you try to get the best trade-
off you can get, that’s all you can hope for.”
Koonin: I won’t give a precise number for how it’s
going to affect the economy, but a couple of general
principles are useful to think about this. One comes
from William Nordhaus, who won the Nobel Prize
in economics in 2018 for the following: if you try
to decarbonize the economy too rapidly, you will
incur increasing costs. Energy is so interwoven into
everyday life and into the economy that making big
changes in it is going to be disruptive, unless you do
it with some deliberation. On the other hand, if you
decarbonize too slowly, you load up the atmosphere
with more CO2, and the climate risk goes up. And
so, there’s an optimal pace of decarbonization,
which lets the temperature rise to some value, let’s
say, in the year 2100, and then starts to bring it
down. If you do it too fast, you’re disruptive and you
also deploy mature technologies, and that incurs
a cost. When you look at what Nordhaus wrote in
his Nobel Lecture, he would say that the economic
optimum is to let the temperature go up to 3 degrees
by 2100 or even 3.5, while political leaders are
talking about reining things in at 1.5 or 2 degrees.
If we push too much, too fast, there’s going to be
popular pushback because energy will become
more expensive. It will also become unreliable.
Consumer choice will be reduced, energy insecurity
will be increased… and we’re seeing that already.
So, if you’re going to decarbonize, it needs to be
done thoughtfully and taking into account all of
the relevant aspects, not only the energy supply
itself, but the economics, the technology, people’s
perceptions of what’s going on, and so on.
Nobody has written down a comprehensive plan like
that. And I would think that that’s the first thing
anybody would want to see if they truly wanted to
solve this problem.
This print interview has been edited from a longer
conversation with Koonin on The Michael Shermer Show,
which you can watch here: https://bit.ly/41t7LSC
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 29
 ENERGY MATTERS
The Case for
NUCLEAR
POWER
BY ROBERT ZUBRIN
The world currently faces two energy crises:
We have too little energy, and we have too much.
We have too little energy because the main problem
that the bulk of humanity faces today, every day, is
poverty. To provide a decent standard of living for
all, humanity is going to have to generate and put
to use many times more energy than it does today.
We have too much energy, because at the rate
we are currently using it, we are measurably
changing the Earth’s climate and chemistry,
and if we keep increasing our use—which we
must and will—we could change it in ways
that prove catastrophic on a global scale.
Fossil Fuel and its Effects
Many have chosen to focus on the second problem,
proposing to reduce the use of fossil fuels by taxing
it, thereby making basic necessities less affordable.
I believe that such approaches to the problem are
30 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
unethical, and while people may debate their ethics,
there is no debating the fact that they have not worked.
Indeed, they have failed spectacularly. Between 1990,
when world leaders first mobilized to try to suppress
CO2 emissions, to today, total global annual carbon
use doubled from 5 billion tons to 10 billion tons.
This followed a pattern of doubling our carbon use
every thirty years for more than a century. In 1900,
humanity burned 0.6 billion tons of carbon per
year. This doubled to 1.2 billion in 1930, doubling
again to 2.5 billion tons in 1960, then yet again to
5 billion tons in 1990, to 10 billion tons now.1
The reason for this increase is simple. Energy
is fundamental to the production and delivery
of all goods and services. If you have access to
energy, and the things made by energy, you are
rich. If not, you are poor. People don’t like being
poor, and they will do what it takes to remedy
that condition. Despite the Depression, two
world wars, and all sorts of other natural and
human-caused catastrophes over the recent past,
people have, on the whole, been very successful at
finding such remedies. In 1930, the average global
GDP per capita, in today’s money, was $1500/year.
Today it is about $12,000/year, an increase closely
mirroring the climb in energy consumption.
This rise in energy use has enabled a miraculous
uplifting of the human condition, dramatically
increasing health, life expectancy, personal safety,
literacy, mobility, liberty, and every other positive
metric of human existence nearly everywhere. But
$12,000/year is still too low. In the U.S., we average
$60,000/year, and there is still plenty of poverty
here. To raise the whole world to current American
standards will require multiplying global energy use
at least fivefold—and probably more like tenfold
once population growth is taken into account.
There is every reason to expect human energy
production and use to double again by 2050, and
yet again by 2080. Every person of goodwill should
earnestly hope for such an outcome because it implies
a radical and necessary improvement in the quality
of life for billions of people. That, in fact, is why it is
going to happen, whether ivory tower theorists wish
it or not. Humanity is not going to settle for less.
It is the equivalent to the warming that a New Yorker
(NYC, that is) would experience if he or she moved to
central New Jersey. So there is no climate catastrophe
now. However, the climatic effects of continued CO2
emissions at a level an order of magnitude higher
than today would be an entirely different matter.
Moreover, while climate change will still take some
time before it becomes an acute matter (in reality, as
opposed to agitation), other effects of the emissions
of fossil power plants are already quite serious. First
among these is air pollution—not CO2—but particu-
lates, carbon monoxide, nitric oxides, and sulfur diox-
ide. Worldwide, these emissions are currently killing
people at a rate of over 8 million per year,3 and causing
many billions of dollars of increased health care costs.
Then there is the CO2 itself. While CO2-induced
warming has only raised global temperatures by about
one percent of the 100-degree Centigrade range
inhabited by terrestrial surface life from the equator to
the poles (or 0.35 percent of the 287 K average absolute
temperature of the Earth’s surface) since 1870, the

Human energy production today is overwhelm-

ingly based on fossil fuels. Were it to remain so,
while we double and redouble our energy use, the
effects on the planet would become serious.

It is unfortunate that the debate over global warming

has been politicized to the point where opposing
partisans have chosen to either deny it or grossly
exaggerate it. Neither approach is helpful. So, I’m not
going to indulge in the customary hysteria and tell you
that we have only 18 months or 18 years to decarbonize
the economy or face doom by fires and floods, cata-
strophic rainfalls and droughts, evaporating poles, or
glaciers advancing rapidly together with unstoppable
armies of ravenous wolves, or similar biblical plagues
held by some to be responsible for the Great Silence
of the millions of extraterrestrial civilizations driven
to their extinction by their inability to pass success-
fully through the Great Filter of global warming.2

Nevertheless, global warming is certainly real.

According to solid measurements, average temperatures
have increased by about one degree centigrade since
1870. That, admittedly, does not sound like a big deal.

VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 31

 combustion of fossil fuels has raised the atmosphere’s
CO2 content by 50 percent (from 280 ppm to 420 ppm).
That sounds like a lot and it is. A 50 percent increase in
CO2 represents a truly significant change in the Earth’s
atmospheric chemistry, with readily observable effects.
In some respects, these effects have actually been
beneficial. For example, as a result of CO2 enrichment
of the atmosphere, the rate of plant growth on land has
increased significantly. There is no doubt about this.
NASA photographs taken from orbit show an increase in
the average rate of plant growth of 15 percent worldwide
since 1985.4 That’s great, but there is a problem: we have
seen no comparable improvement in the oceans. Quite
the contrary. Evidence is mounting that increased acid-
ification of the ocean caused by take-up of CO2 is killing
coral reefs and other important types of marine life.
There are things we can do to counteract this, for
example farming the oceans, to put some of this excess
CO2 to work to increase the abundance of the marine
biosphere. However, there are limits to the capacity of
marine and even terrestrial biomes to take advantage of
increased CO2 fertilization of the atmosphere. If fossil
fuel use continues to rise exponentially to support
world development, this capacity will be overrun. All
fertilizers—such as nitrates, or even water—become
harmful when present in too great abundance. This
could well become the case should our current river
of CO2 emissions become a flood. It is not certain
at what point the biosphere’s defenses will fail, but
that is not an experiment we should wish to run.
In saying all this, I do not wish to make a case against
fossil fuels. The emissions resulting from burning such
fuels may be killing 8 million people every year, but the
energy they produce is enriching the lives of billions.
The positive transformation of human life that has been
accomplished by the massive increase in power enabled
by fossil fuel use is beyond reckoning, and far from aban-
doning it, we must—and will—take it much further.
So, the bottom line is this—we are going to need
to produce a lot more energy, and it will need to be
carbon-free. The only way to do that is through nuclear
power. In my book, I go into great detail on how nuclear
power is generated, which new technologies are coming
online, and what all this will mean for the future of
humanity, including space exploration. For present
purposes, let me address the deepest concerns many
people have about nuclear power plants. Some say
they emit cancer-causing radiation, that there is
32 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
no way to dispose of the waste they produce, that they
are prone to catastrophic accidents, and that they
could even be made to explode like nuclear bombs!
These are serious charges. Let’s investigate them.
Routine Nuclear Power Plant
Radiological Emissions
Americans measure radiation doses in units called
rems, or, more often, millirems (abbreviated mrem),
which are thousandths of a rem. While high doses
of radiation delivered over short periods of time can
cause radiation poisoning or cancer, there is, accord-
ing to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, “no
data to establish unequivocally the occurrence of can-
cer following exposure to low doses and dose rates—
below 10,000 mrem.”5 Despite this scientific fact, the
NRC and other international regulatory authorities
insist on using what is known as the “Linear No
Threshold” (LNT) method for assessing risk.
According to LNT methodology, a low dose of radi-
ation carries a proportional fraction of the risk of a
larger dose. So, according to LNT theory, since a 1000
rem dose represents a 100 percent risk of a death,
then a 100 mrem does should carry a 0.01 percent
risk. If this were true, then one person would die for
every 10,000 people exposed to 100 mrem. Since
there are 330 million Americans and they already
receive an average of 270 mrem per year, this would
work out to 90,000 Americans dying every year from
background radiation, a result with no relationship
to reality. The fallacy of the LNT theory is the same
as concluding that since drinking 100 glasses of
wine in an hour would kill you, drinking one glass
represents a one percent risk of death. It’s absurd,
and the regulators know it. Let’s look at the data.
The annual radiation doses that each American
can expect to receive from both natural and arti-
ficial radiation sources are given in Table 1.6
Examining Table 1, we see that the amount of
radiation dose that the public receives from nuclear
power plants is insignificant compared to what
they receive from their own blood (which contains
radioactive potassium-40), from the homes they
live in, from the food they eat (watch out for
bananas), from the medical care and air travel they
enjoy, from the planet on which they reside, and
from the universe in which the planet exists.
Table 1. Radiation Doses from Natural and Artificial Sources
Blood
Building Materials
Food
Soil
Cosmic Rays (sea level)
Cosmic Rays (Denver altitude)
Dental X-Ray
CT Scan (head & body)
Air travel (New York to LA round trip)
Nuclear power plant (limit, at property line)
Nuclear power plants (dose to general public)
Average annual dose (general public)
Nuclear Waste Disposal
One of the strangest arguments against nuclear power
is the claim that there is nothing that can be done
with the waste. In fact, it is the compact nature of
the limited waste produced by nuclear energy that
makes it uniquely attractive. A single 1000 MWe
(Megawatts electric, the electricity output capability
of the plant; as opposed to MWt, megawatts thermal,
the input energy required) from a coal-fired power
plant produces about 600 tons of highly toxic waste
daily, which is more than the entire American nuclear
industry produces in a year. Despite the clear, non-hy-
pothetical consequences of this large-scale toxic
pollution, no one is even talking about establishing a
waste isolation facility for this material, because it is
not remotely possible. In contrast to such an intracta-
ble problem, the disposal of nuclear waste is trivial.
There are two excellent places to store nuclear
waste: either under the ocean bottom or under the
desert. The U.S. Department of Energy has opted
for the desert, but the ocean solution is much
simpler and cheaper. Let’s talk about that first.
The way to dispose of nuclear waste at sea works as
follows: first, you glassify the waste (that is, turn it
into a glass-like form) into a water-insoluble form.
Then you put it in stainless steel cans, take it out
20 mrem/year
35 mrem/year
25 mrem/year
11 mrem/year
35 mrem/year
70 mrem/year
10 mrem
1100 mrem
5 mrem
5 mrem/year
0.01 mrem/year
270 mrem/year
in a ship, and drop it into the mid-ocean, directly
above sub-seabed sediments that have been, and will
be, geologically stable for tens of millions of years.
Falling down through several thousand meters of
water, your canisters will reach velocities that will
allow them to bury themselves deep under the mud.
After that, your waste is not going anywhere, and
no one will ever be able to get their hands on it.
This solution has been well-known for years.7
Unfortunately, it has been shunned by Energy
Department bureaucrats who seemingly prefer a large
land-based facility because that involves a much bigger
budget, as well as by environmentalists who wish to pre-
vent the problem of nuclear waste disposal from being
solved. Thus, in the 1980s, the DOE looked the other
way and allowed Greenpeace to pressure the London
Dumping Convention into banning sub-seabed disposal
of nuclear waste. That ban expires in 2025. If world
leaders are in any way serious about finding an alterna-
tive to fossil fuels to meet the energy needs of modern
society, they will see that the ban is not renewed.
If, however, the ban is renewed, the Department
of Energy’s plan to put the waste under Yucca
Mountain in the Nevada desert remains an alter-
native. While wildly over-priced, the plan has been
exhaustively and thoroughly vetted, and it meets
even the most stringent standards of public safety.
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 33
 The public dosage would be required to stay below
15 millirems of radiation per year for at least
10,000 years.8 The best estimates, though, show
that the average public dosage would be far, far
less: under 0.0001 mrem/year for 10,000 years.9
In 1972 when the Sierra Club announced its oppo-
sition to nuclear power, it identified preventing the
safe disposal of nuclear waste as a key tactic to use
to wreck the nuclear industry. As a result of that
campaign, nuclear waste reprocessing, sub-seabed
disposal, and land-based disposal have all been
blocked, forcing utilities to store their radioactive
waste onsite. This has added costs to the utilities
operations, which have been passed on to the public
both through higher rates and through higher taxes to
compensate utilities for these costs, as required by law.
Storing nuclear waste on sites near major metropolitan
areas could, under worst-case scenarios—such as
Fukushima—expose the public to dangers of radio-
logical release that would be quite impossible if the
waste was stored in remote areas. There is no technical
CHERNOBYL-LIKE CATASTROPHES
WOULD HAVE TO OCCUR EVERY
DAY TO APPROACH THE TOLL
ON HUMANITY CURRENTLY
INFLICTED BY COAL.
obstacle to either nuclear waste processing (the French
do it) or land-based disposal (the U.S. military has been
storing its waste since 1999 in salt formations in the
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico.)
Nuclear Accidents
Nuclear accidents are certainly possible, but rare.
Over the course of its entire history, the world’s
commercial nuclear industry has had three major
accidents: one at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania
in 1979; one in Fukushima, Japan, in March 2011;
and the other at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986.
34 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
The Three Mile Island event was the only
nuclear disaster in U.S. history. It is also unique
in another sense—it was the only major disaster
in world history in which not a single person
was killed, or even injured in any way.
There were two 843 MWe Pressurized Water Reactors
(PWRs) at Three Mile Island, labeled TMI-1 and TMI-2.
On March 28, 1979, the date of the accident, TMI-1 was
shut down, but TMI-2 was operating at full power when
its turbine tripped. This shut off the secondary loop
water flow to the steam generator. That, in turn, meant
that nothing was taking heat away from the primary
loop responsible for cooling the reactor. As a result,
the control rods dropped into place, shutting down the
chain reaction instantly. However, because the reactor
had been operating for some time, a large inventory
of highly radioactive fission products had built up in
the core, and they continued to generate heat through
radioactive decay at several percent the reactor-rated
power after shut down. So, instead of the thermal
power of the reactor dropping from 2500 MWt (the
thermal power of a nuclear reactor is about three times
its electrical power, because PWRs operate
with an efficiency of 33 percent) to zero, it
dropped instantly to 175 MWt, decreasing
to 50 MWt an hour after shutdown,
declining further to 20 MWt after 3 hours.
The fact that a reactor would continue
to generate decay heat even after
the chain reaction was shut down is
(and was) well known. According to
antinuclear activists, it meant that while
loss of coolant would cause nuclear
fission to cease, the uncooled reactor
would melt itself down, with a mass
of highly radioactive fission products unstoppably
melting their way through the 20 cm (8 inch) thick
steel pressure vessel, then through the 2.6 meter
(8.6 foot) thick containment building floor, then
right on down through the Earth, all the way to
China. This is the source of the 1979 film title The
China Syndrome, which was released just 12 days
before the Three Mile Island incident, forever
conflating the two in the public’s mind, further
fueling hysterical fear regarding nuclear power.
At TMI-2 this theory was put to the test, because
while an emergency cooling system was in place
to keep cooling water flowing into the reactor
under such conditions, and it turned on auto-
matically, the confused reactor operators turned
it off. As a result, the reactor did melt down.
Instead of the hot fission products melting their
way through the pressure vessel, the containment
building, and the Earth, all the way to China, they
actually melted their way a couple of centimeters
(about an inch) into the pressure vessel and stopped
there. That was it. A billion-dollar reactor was lost,
but the containment system was never even seriously
challenged. A few Curies of radioactive Iodine 131 gas
(half-life 11 days) were vented, exposing the public
in the area to about 1 mrem of radiation, equivalent
to the extra dose they would have received on a
five-day ski trip to Colorado. The environmental
impact was zero. If anyone was harmed, it was because
the very antinuclear lawyers running the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission decided that the accident
warranted keeping the untouched TMI-1 unit shut
down for the next six years, and it is estimated that
the pollution emissions over that time released by
the coal-fired power plants used to replace its output
were probably responsible for about 300 deaths.10
The 2011 Japanese accident was much more serious.
Caused by a powerful undersea earthquake and
resulting tsunami that buffeted the facility with waves
nearly fifty feet high, the power plant flooded, and
both grid power and the onsite backup diesel gener-
ators were knocked out, eliminating the emergency
core cooling system. This eventually led to a full
meltdown of three of the six reactors. Nevertheless,
if anything, the Fukushima event proved the safety of
nuclear power. In the midst of a devastating disaster
that killed some 28,000 people by drowning, falling
buildings, fire, suffocation, exposure, disease, and
many other causes, not a single person was killed
by radiation. Nor was anyone outside the plant
gate exposed to any significant radiological dose.
From the point of view of radiation release, Chernobyl
was the most serious nuclear plant disaster of all time.
At Chernobyl, the reactor actually had a runaway chain
reaction and disassembled, breaching all containment.
Approximately 50 people were killed during the event
itself and the fire-fighting efforts that followed imme-
diately thereafter. Furthermore, radioactive material
comparable to that produced by an atomic bomb was
released into the environment. According to a study
by the International Atomic Energy Agency and World
Health Organization using LNT methodology, over
time, this fallout could theoretically cause up to four
thousand deaths among the surrounding population.
Chernobyl was really about as bad as a nuclear accident
can be. Yet, even if we accept the grossly exaggerated
casualties predicted by LNT theory as being correct,
in comparison to all the deaths caused every year
as a result of the pollution emitted from coal-fired
power plants, its impact was minor. Chernobyl-like
catastrophes would have to occur every day to approach
the toll on humanity currently inflicted by coal. By
replacing a substantial fraction of the electricity that
would otherwise have to be generated by fossil fuels,
the nuclear industry has actually saved countless lives.11
Still, Chernobyl events need to be prevented, and
they can be, by proper reactor engineering. First, the
Chernobyl reactor had no containment building. If
it had, there would have been no radiological release
into the environment. Second, had the reactor been
designed to lose reactivity beyond its design tem-
perature—as all water-moderated reactors are—the
runaway reaction would never have occurred at all.
The key is to design the reactor in such a way that
as its temperature increases, its power level will go
down. In technical parlance, this is known as having
a “negative temperature coefficient of reactivity.”
Water is necessary for a sustained nuclear reaction in
a pressurized water reactor because it serves to slow
down, or “moderate,” the fast neutrons born of fission
events enough for them to interact with surrounding
nuclei to continue the reaction. (Like an asteroid
passing by the Earth, a neutron is more likely to be
pulled in to collide with a nucleus if it is going slow
than if it is going fast.) It is physically impossible for
such a water-moderated reactor to have a runaway
chain reaction, because as soon as the reactor heats
beyond a certain point, the water starts to boil. This
reduces the water’s effectiveness as a moderator, and
without moderation, fewer and fewer neutrons strike
their target, causing the reactor’s power level to drop.
The system is thus intrinsically stable, and there is no
way to make it unstable. No matter how incompetent,
crazy, or malicious the operators of a water-moderated
reactor might be, they can’t make it go Chernobyl.
In contrast, the reactor that exploded at Chernobyl
was moderated not by water, but by graphite,
which does not boil. It, therefore, did not have the
strong negative temperature reactivity feedback of a
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 35
 water-moderated system, and, because water absorbs
neutrons while graphite does not, it actually had a
positive temperature coefficient of reactivity, which
caused power to soar once the water coolant was
lost. It was thus an unstable system, vulnerable to a
runaway reaction. With a huge amount of hot graphite
freely exposed to the environment once the reactor
was breached, fuel was available for a giant bonfire to
send the whole accumulated stockpile of radioactive
fission products right up into the sky. The Chernobyl
reactor wasn’t simply unstable—it was flammable!
No such system could ever get permitted in the United
States or other Western countries that use nuclear reac-
tors. Those who died at Chernobyl weren’t victims of
nuclear power. They were victims of the Soviet Union.
Can reactors explode like bombs?
Chernobyl was a runaway fission reaction, but it was
not an atomic bomb. The strength of the explosion
was enough to blow the roof off the building and
break the reactor apart into burning graphite frag-
ments, but the total explosive yield was less than that
provided by a medium-sized conventional bomb.
Of course, the reactor operators weren’t trying to
achieve a Hiroshima. But what if they had tried?
They still could not have done it. A bomb explosion
needs to be done using fast neutrons. Slow neutrons
take much too long to multiply, because each gener-
ation must go through dozens of collisions to bring
them down to thermal energies where the uranium
nuclei have big fission cross sections. Once the chain
reaction power has reached a level where the system
starts to disassemble, however, time is something
you don’t have. As soon as the bomb breaks apart, the
chain reaction will stop. So the best you can do with
slow reactions is a Chernobyl-like fizzle. To make a
bomb, you need to use fast neutrons, because only
they can multiply fast enough. Since PWR fuel is only
three percent enriched, it can’t sustain a critical chain
reaction using fast neutrons. So it just won’t work.
Nuclear Proliferation
Couldn’t the industrial infrastructure used to produce
three percent enriched fuel for nuclear reactors also be
used to make 90 percent enriched material for bombs?
36 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
Yes. Natural uranium contains 0.7 percent uranium-235
(235U), which is capable of fission, and 99.3 percent ura-
nium-238 (238U), which is not. In order to be useful in
a commercial nuclear reactor, the uranium is typically
enriched to a three percent concentration of 235U. The
same enrichment facilities could indeed be used, with
some difficulty, to further concentrate the uranium
to 93 percent 235U, which would make it bomb-grade.
Additionally, once the controlled reaction begins, some
of the 238U will absorb neutrons, transforming it into
plutonium-239 (239Pu), which is fissile. Such plutonium
can be reprocessed out of the spent fuel and mixed
with natural uranium to turn it into reactor-grade
material. Under some circumstances, it could also be
used to make bombs instead. Thus, the technical infra-
structure required to support an end-to-end nuclear
industry fuel cycle could also be used to make weapons.
It is also true, however, that such facilities could be
used to make bomb-grade material without supporting
any nuclear reactors. In fact, until Eisenhower’s Atoms
for Peace policy was set forth, the AEC opposed nuclear
reactors precisely because they represented a diversion
of fissionable material from bomb making. If plutonium
is desired, much better material for weapons purposes
can be made in standalone atomic piles than can
be made in commercial power stations. This is so
because when Pu-239 is left in a reactor too long, it
can absorb a neutron and become Pu-240, which is not
fissile, and extremely difficult to separate from P-239.
Further, while not fissile from reaction with neutrons,
Pu-240 undergoes spontaneous fissions as a form of
decay. Inserted into bomb material, it could set the
bomb off prematurely. Commercial power operators
don’t want to constantly be shutting down in order
to remove lightly used fuel from their reactors.
In consequence, the Pu-240 content of used civilian
reactor fuel builds up to about 26 percent of the
Pu-239. If it’s more than 7 percent, however, it makes
the plutonium useless in a bomb (and in fact the U.S.
military spec requires it to be less than 1 percent.)
Both the United States and the Soviet Union had
thousands of atomic weapons before either had a single
nuclear power plant, using either highly enriched
uranium or plutonium made in special military fuel
production reactors that allow constant removal of
fuel. Others desirous of obtaining atomic bombs
could and would proceed the same way today.12
***
 Due to advances in biology, it is now possible to make
biological weapons that are far more dangerous than
nuclear devices, at many orders of magnitude lower
cost. During the recent COVID-19 epidemic, there
were allegations that the virus was made by altering a
native strain found in bats in the biological research
facility in Wuhan, China. These claims are unproven
and sharply disputed. What is not disputed, however, is
that it could have been made there. Think about that: a
facility costing less than 1/1000th of the infrastructure
needed to produce a critical mass of bomb-grade
material can be used to create a virus that kills millions.
vying with Russia for hundreds of more nuclear projects
that will be built in the developing sector. About 60
reactors are currently under construction worldwide.
Nuclear is the energy source that will power the human
future, although, unfortunately, America and Europe
might not be part of it. While it may take 16 years to
build an LWR in the U.S., it still takes only 4 years to
build one in South Korea. So maybe the South Koreans,
or the Indians, will offer some free world competition
to the global nuclear renaissance. We could too, but it
will take a societal change of heart to make it so.

That is the reality of the modern age. Scientific
knowledge has given us extraordinary powers of
creation, and, therefore, destruction as well, and
there is no way to un-know that knowledge. If
we wish to avoid catastrophe, we need to build
a world that offers plenty for everyone.
That’s why we need nuclear power.
And whether we decide to capitalize on it or not,
nuclear power is coming, big time. While Americans
and Europeans may think that nuclear is a declining
industry, this is far from true. There are about 450
nuclear reactors in the world today. By 2050, China
intends to build 450 more, domestically, and is actively
Adapted by the author from The Case for Nukes: How We Can Beat
Global Warming and Create a Free, Open, and Magnificent Future
(Polaris Books, 2023). Copyright © 2023 by Robert Zubrin.
Reprinted with permission.
Robert Zubrin is a nuclear and aerospace engineer who has
worked in areas of radiation protection, nuclear power plant
safety, and thermonuclear fusion research. Since 1996, he has
been President of Pioneer Astronautics, an aerospace research and
development company, where he led over 70 highly successful
technology development projects for NASA, the U.S. military, and
the Department of Energy. He is the author of 13 books, over 200
technical and non-technical papers in areas relating to aerospace and
energy engineering, and is the inventor of over 20 U.S. patents.

REFERENCES

1 https://bit.ly/3GrDJGe
2 Frank, A. (2018). Light of the
Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate
of the Earth. W.W. Norton.
3 https://bit.ly/406plKV See also
Beckmann, P. (1976) The Health
Hazards of Not Going Nuclear. Golem
Press and Cravens, G. (2007). Power
to Save the World: The Truth About
Nuclear Energy. Vintage Books.
4 https://go.nasa.gov/3KHCoO8
5 https://bit.ly/3o0AjUy. See also,
National Council on Radiation
Protection and Measurements
(1997). Uncertainties in Fatal Cancer
Risk Estimates Used in Radiation
Protection. (NCRP Report, no. 126).
6 https://bit.ly/43d5Xyq, see also
https://bit.ly/439LY3L. The
Environmental Protection Agency
offers a calculator that lets you
estimate your annual radiation
dosage: https://bit.ly/2wvj3Zw
7 https://bit.ly/3MnjFZt
8 https://bit.ly/3nXNMfP
9 https://bit.ly/43d6PmK
10 https://bit.ly/439M4s9
11 This is because commercial reactors
keep their fuel in place for a long
time, during which some of the
239
Pu created in the reactor absorbs
a further neutron to become 240Pu.
The 240Pu seriously degrades
the value of the plutonium for
weapons purposes. However, in
standalone atomic piles, such as
those developed at the Hanford
Site during the Manhattan Project,
the fuel is not left in the system for
long, so the plutonium produced
is not spoiled. In the case of
thorium reactors, which breed
232
Th to 233U, the use of reactor
fuel for bomb-making becomes
even more difficult, making such
systems ideal for use in situations
where proliferation is of concern.
12 https://go.nature.com/418RqSp

VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 37

 A CLOSER LOOK
BEHIND the
RHETORIC
The Untold Story of
“Gender-Affirming” Clinics
BY CAROL TAVRIS
What is gender identity? Why do some
people feel an inconsistency between
their natal sex and the gender they
consider themselves to be, and when
and why does that “dysphoria” begin?
A few very young children, mostly
boys, prefer the clothes, names, and
activities of girls before they even
have a concept of “boy” and “girl.”
But do the reasons for their gender
incongruence apply to the adolescents,
mostly girls, who show no interest in
transitioning until puberty or later?
How shall we determine which proce-
dures are safest and most effective for
treating children and young teenagers
with gender dysphoria, without
assuming they all are the same as the
countless others who are nonbinary,
“questioning,” and experimenting?
Many Republican politicians and
pundits are focusing on the ground-
zero battlefield: gender-affirming
clinics. In these clinics, children
38 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
and young teenagers who come in
presenting with gender dysphoria
are often given puberty-blocking
medication; later they may move on
to cross-sex hormones and eventually
to breast and genital surgery. Scores
of Republican-led bills across the
country aim to limit or prohibit
these procedures for anyone under
the age of 18 or 19. And while they
are at it, Republicans in states such
as Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma,
and Kentucky hope to ban or restrict
drag queen performances and any
discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools.
It’s no wonder that anyone who
opposes these hate-fueled attitudes
and political measures is uncom-
fortable raising concerns about the
gender clinics. Who wants to give
ammunition to bigots? Don’t I have
an obligation to defend the clinics if
states are passing laws to close them?
Besides, what’s wrong with helping
children transition? Who wants to
prohibit medical interventions for
these children and youths if, as parents
are assured, puberty blockers will
keep their anxious 12-year-old from
committing suicide? What parent,
when asked “Would you rather have
a live son, or a dead daughter?” (yes,
this is a common question), would not
approve any intervention proposed?
An increasing number of professionals,
detransitioners, and transgender adults
themselves, that’s who,1 arguing for
complexity and evidence, nuance and
patience. But, inevitably in our nation’s
current hyper-polarized political
climate, it’s getting harder for “gender
critics” to make themselves heard
over the din of hate-mongers on one
side and righteous “gender-affirming”
warriors on the other.
That is why Hannah Barnes’s Time to
Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse
of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for
Children is particularly relevant today.
Barnes, an investigative journalist for
BBC’s Newsnight, delineates each step
in the rise and fall of the Tavistock’s
Gender Identity Development
Service (GIDS). Her book deserves
widespread attention, when so many
liberal media outlets are censoring
dissenting voices and when very few
books that question gender-affirming
assumptions can even be published.
(Barnes has yet to find an American
publisher.) Readers may wonder what
a book about a London clinic, albeit
a prestigious one, in a country with
a National Health Service that is as
different from the American health
care as possible, can have to say about
the situation here, but it can, and it
does. To be sure, the story Barnes tells
is measured, contained; the life and
death of one clinic is an important
chapter, but only one, in a larger
book that remains to be written.
Barnes interviewed dozens of
clinicians who worked at GIDS—some
with years of experience in cases
of gender dysphoria and others
practically drafted right out of school
to keep up with the tidal wave of
referrals; staff and directors; staunch
defenders of the GIDS program and
their doubting colleagues. She also
interviewed several patients, some
who transitioned and others who did
not, to give a flavor of their experi-
ences, satisfactions, anger, and regrets.
At the start, Barnes reports her
conversation with Anna Hutchinson,
a senior clinical psychologist who,
in 2017, wondered aloud: “Are we
hurting children?” In the four years
she had been there, the number of
children referred to GIDS had jumped
from 324 to 2,016. (In 2022, there
were more than 7,500 children on
the waiting list.) Hutchinson dared
wonder, says Barnes, whether medical
interventions were “the best and only
approach for all the young children philosophy of “watchful waiting” to
in her care.” A large number of the see whether these issues continued
children had psychological problems; through the changes of adolescence
many had been in foster care or or abated. The service saw 12 patients
endured parental divorce, death, that year; 24 two years later.
abuse, or trauma. The elephant in the
waiting room was that many were gay 2000: The “Dutch protocol,”
or bisexual, yet all were thrown into developed by a gender clinic in the
the same transgender hopper. The gay Netherlands, was gaining attention
patients told of their self-hatred and in medical circles. Its developers
being bullied in school, resulting in maintained that youths who had
their wish to be transgender rather shown gender dysphoria since early
than gay—a wish shared by more childhood and who were psycho-
than a few of their parents. “Better logically stable should be offered
a straight son than a gay daughter” puberty blockers as early as age 12,
would be an accurate mantra for them. followed, if they wished, by cross-
sex hormones at 16 and breast and
“How could such different lives genital surgery at 18. (The protocol
and presentations lead to the claimed—incorrectly, it would later
same answer—puberty blockers?” turn out—that puberty blockers’
Hutchinson mused to Barnes. Precisely effects on bones, muscles, and brains
the central question, and Barnes were completely reversible if the
gives us the answer in a timeline of child later wanted to detransition.)
GIDS’s history. Timelines can
help us go forward by looking
backward. How did we get
from then to now? Who are the
players? Who got the money?
Where did it come from?
Who set the policies? How
and why did the central issue
ignite, how did it become a
wildfire, and who got burned?
Barnes provides a timeline to
highlight a central narrative in a
cacophony of voices and events.
1989: The Gender Identity
Development Service
opened at a small hospital
in south London.
1994: GIDS moved to the pres-
tigious Tavistock and Portman
Trust in north London. The
Tavistock was psychoanalytically
oriented, and its treatments for
gender dysphoria were standard
at the time: psychotherapy,
exploration of the child’s gender
distress or confusion, and a
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 39
 Such early intervention with puberty
blockers would allegedly aid diagnosis
and treatment by giving transgender
children time to explore their gender
identity without the potentially dis-
tressing physical changes of puberty.
In practice, none of the 54 children ini-
tially selected stopped taking blockers;
all went on to cross-sex hormones.2
The Dutch were so…Dutch. So sane,
so committed to gender equality; what
could go wrong with their protocol?
Pressures were therefore mounting
on GIDS to make its gender treatment
less conservative—that is, less
psychotherapeutic and “talky”—and
replace it with the Dutch protocol,
WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR THE
UNITED STATES TO LEARN FROM
GIDS’S FALL AND FROM THE
ABILITY OF SWEDEN, FINLAND,
NORWAY, AND NOW ENGLAND
TO CHANGE THEIR GUIDELINES?
shifting from its early “watchful
waiting” approach to intervention with
puberty blockers. One GIDS clinician
told Barnes that “the political pressure
from activist groups was astonishing.”
By 2000, GIDS, having treated 150
children and adolescents, decided it
would be a good idea to assess how
they were doing with a “retrospective
audit.” Two-thirds were boys. Fully
97.5 percent had one or more of
the associated problems that would
concern Hutchinson 17 years later:
many had been in foster care, had lost
a parent through death or divorce,
and reported sexual or physical abuse.
40 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
Many were depressed or anxious, and
25 percent had histories of self-harm.
Some were autistic. Fully 70 percent
had five or more of these difficulties.
Of course, this unscientific study could
not determine the causal relation, if
any, between a child’s emotional prob-
lems and gender dysphoria; the goal
was simply to identify the patients’
needs and plan future research.
This was GIDS’s “first clinical audit,”
Barnes writes. “It was also its last.”
2000–2005: The tension among
the staff at GIDS was mounting:
on one side, those who wanted to
conduct therapy with the children
and help them explore gender issues;
on the other, a younger cohort of
newly-minted activist clinicians who
accepted children’s self-identification
more readily and were less inclined
to value extensive therapy. As Barnes
shows, this fundamental schism
revealed itself in arguments about
how many assessment sessions a new
patient needed before being prescribed
puberty blockers or hormones:
from six to four to three to…
2005: A report by the medical direc-
tor, psychiatrist David Taylor, triggered
by staff concerns that some children
were being referred for puberty block-
ers after only two or three assessment
sessions, described “a pressure [from
patient and parent groups] that was
‘quite onerous’ and one that ‘made
it very difficult for people to have
freedom of thought.’” The central
problem, he noted, was that the
clinicians “fundamentally disagreed”
about what they were treating and thus
how to treat it: children distressed
because they were trans, or children
who identified as trans because they
were distressed? Or both? Taylor
advised the board that GIDS be turned
into “an assessment and treatment
service of the highest standard,” with
research being “an essential compo-
nent.” His report was suppressed and
remained unavailable to the GIDS
staff and the public for 15 years.
2011: GIDS and University College
London Hospitals began an Early
Intervention observational study to
test the Dutch protocol. The impact
of suppressing puberty in 44 children
ages 12–15 would be assessed. An
interim report would be produced
in three years, a final report in six.
Another lost opportunity: nothing
was published for ten years.
2014–2015: GIDS rolled out its Early
Intervention plan, removing the lower
age limit of 12 for puberty blockers.
By now, GIDS was largely a medical
referral service, with little if any psy-
chotherapy provided. As the volume of
patients increased, the number of ther-
apeutic assessments declined. And just
as with the Dutch protocol, most of
the children put on blockers went on
to cross-sex hormones, with little time
and space for reflective “exploration.”
2015: The number of teenage girls
with gender dysphoria had risen by
5,000 percent (!) in seven years,
now making up 70 percent of new
referrals.3 Pressed once again by
concerned staff, the GIDS leadership
commissioned an external consultant
to advise on working practices.
The consultant recommended that
GIDS “take the courageous and realistic
action of capping the number of
referrals immediately.” They did not.
2018: Another opportunity to
change course arose when psy-
chiatrist David Bell presented the
concerns of ten experienced GIDS
clinicians to the Tavistock board.
His staff was worried that children
were being harmed with irreversible
procedures and lack of follow-up
evidence to assure their safety. His
own conclusion was that GIDS was
“not fit for purpose.” The Trust
overruled his report, finding no
evidence of “any immediate issues in
relation to patient safety or failings
in the overall approach taken by
the Service.” Nothing changed.
2020: About 25 percent of the
Tavistock’s income was now coming
from referrals to GIDS, up from six
percent in only five years. Money
from GIDS was “propping us up,” one
senior Tavistock clinician told Barnes.
2021: The results of the Early
Intervention Study, begun in
2011, were finally published. The
researchers “identified no changes
in psychological function, quality of
life or degree of gender dysphoria” in
the youngest patients put on puberty
blockers. No changes meant no
improvement. An assessment of GIDS
by the Care Quality Commission,
which regulates all health and social
care services in England, gave GIDS
its lowest rating, “inadequate.”
2022: England’s National Health
Service announced that GIDS would
be closed in 2023, replaced by smaller
regional centers that will offer a
greater focus on mental health.
***
Why did GIDS persist so long, in the
face of repeated objections from
its own staff and in the absence of
research and clinical follow-up on
the thousands of young patients in its
care? A perfect combustion of money
and institutional rigidity. No one in
authority wanted to jeopardize the
budget that came from the enormous
number of referrals. Ultimately, GIDS
succumbed to the rigidity of institu-
tions that, once certain practices are in
place, cannot readily turn themselves
around. A truly adequate response to
the problems at GIDS, as David Bell
told Barnes, would have required “a
complete structural rethink.” The
Tavistock had become so committed
to GIDS, he said, that it could not
allow itself to see the evidence that
threw the whole enterprise into
question. GIDS had such power “that
no doubt could be allowed in.”
Rethinking? Doubting? Not
abilities that most institutions
welcome or reward.
Still, GIDS would likely have stumbled
along if it were not for the major
“rethink” of the risks of the Dutch
protocol. The NHS commissioned
Dr. Hilary Cass, a highly respected
pediatrician and former president
of the Royal College of Pediatrics
and Child Health, to review GIDS’s
service for patients under the age of
18, and in 2022 she issued an interim
report. There was simply insufficient
evidence, the report concluded, to
advise about the value of hormone
treatments. Because GIDS evolved so
rapidly in response to demand, it was
not subjected to “the normal quality
controls that are typically applied
when new or innovative treatments
are introduced.”4 Accordingly, the
Cass report recommended signif-
icant changes in treating children
and young teenagers with gender
dysphoria: clinicians should begin
with psychosocial therapy and
psychological support, not medical
treatments. They should keep in mind
that gender incongruence can be “a
transient phase” for prepubescent
children and adolescents, so caution is
warranted before beginning transition
procedures. To avoid the dominance of
any one clinical or medical perspec-
tive, young people would henceforth
be treated by a team of experts in
pediatric medicine, autism, neuro-
disability, and mental health; puberty
blockers would be permitted only as
part of a formal research program.
The Cass report is not an outlier.
Sweden, Norway, and Finland have all
revised their guidelines for transgen-
der treatment. They too have severely
curtailed the use of puberty blockers
for youths under 18, concluding that
the evidence to support puberty
blockers and cross-sex hormones is
weak and that the risks currently
outweigh the benefits.5 Even the Dutch
are rethinking the Dutch protocol.6
Barnes’ chronology is deeply infor-
mative as a case study of how an
organization lives, thrives, and dies.
That is its strength and its limitation.
She does not place the GIDS story
in the larger context of what has
been happening in the worlds of
sexology and gender medicine over
the last twenty years, let alone of the
politically and ideologically motivated
groups fighting for trans rights. We
learn only obliquely how powerful
lobbies came to shape and control the
conversation, ostracizing dissenters
and doubters as being “transphobic”
and ignoring the role of homophobia
seething under the surface.7 Although
Barnes’s interviewees spoke often of
the “pressures” they were under from
activist groups, and although we hear
from the GIDS whistleblowers and
dissenters who were shunned and
ignored, Barnes offers no examples
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 41
 of the human costs of those pressures
elsewhere, in lives uprooted, careers
destroyed, and, to this day, eminent
professionals in the field silenced
and disrespected. Stephen Levine,
a noted psychiatrist who won the
Society for Sex Research and Therapy’s
highest award in 2005 and had been
its president, was rejected in 2022
and 2023 from presenting his critical
analysis of the Dutch protocol.8
***
What will it take for the United States
to learn from GIDS’s fall and from the
ability of Sweden, Finland, Norway,
and now England to change their
HOW DO YOU ASSURE A YOUNG PERSON
OF A PROCEDURE’S SAFETY AND LONG-
TERM EFFECTIVENESS WHEN THERE ARE
NO RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED STUDIES
THAT DEMONSTRATE THE SUPERIORITY
OF ONE INTERVENTION OVER ANOTHER?
guidelines? It’s hard to imagine our
ever having a single, highly respected
scientist, such as Dr. Hilary Cass,
whose conclusions would be accepted
by both sides on this politically
bifurcated issue. Here, “following
the money” in the transgender
marketplace leads not to one leading
institution but to a vast web of clinic
locations, state politics, and vested
interests: hospitals, which offer menus
of hormonal and surgical options;
plastic surgeons, ever on the lookout
for a new market; the pharmaceutical
company that manufactures puberty
blockers, once a niche market that
exploded; “cowboy surgeons” (a term
42 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
popularized by the non-cowboy
surgeon Atul Gawande) who blur
boundaries, ignore guidelines, and
are at the ready to provide operations
for the growing market; and of
course the independent clinics,
including Planned Parenthood, that
have expanded their health services
to include (and to be compensated
for) transgender medication.
To be sure, there are signs of change.
Genspect, an international group
of professionals, trans people,
detransitioners, and parents who are
gender critical, hosts webinars and
provides services for detransitioning
individuals. Whistleblowers are
coming forward: Jamie Reed, a former
case manager at the Transgender
Center at Washington University’s
Children’s Hospital, finally felt
compelled to file a report with the
Missouri Attorney General’s office
complaining—just as the GIDS
dissenters did—of inadequate evalu-
ations, lack of a consensus protocol,
and the numbers of young patients
inappropriately rushed to treatment.9
Dissenting members of the American
Academy of Pediatrics have publicly
accused their own professional body
of pushing a harmful drugs-first
approach on teenagers based on “scant
and shoddy” evidence, bowing to
pressure from young activist doctors,
and suppressing dissenting voices.10
The May 2023 issue of The Economist
made its cover story: “The evidence to
support medicalised gender transitions
in adolescents is worryingly weak.”11
And a growing number of gender-criti-
cal physicians, including midwives and
OB-GYNs, are reporting their own cases
of unanticipated harms suffered by the
detransitioners they treat. A February
2023 paper in Frontiers of Global
Women’s Health contains the first pub-
lished account of a young woman who
had transitioned early; had her breasts
removed, leaving her with extensive,
painful scarring that required more
surgery; detransitioned;
and later, after having a
baby, “grieved her inability
to breastfeed.” The authors
observe that breastfeeding
is “undervalued” in
transgender medicine;
the common attitude is
that removing breasts is
no big deal, breast milk
is nothing special, and a
detransitioned woman can
always have a “reversal.”
To read this article is to
feel heartsick at this wom-
an’s original reasons for
transitioning—she developed breasts
at 10 that made her uncomfortable
with her changing body; the other kids
teased her and boys and men sexually
harassed her—and after hearing
about gender identity she “became
persuaded that her bodily discomfort
was because she was transgender.”12
But what it will take—what it almost
always takes—are lawsuits. Chloe and
Layla are suing Kaiser Permanente and
the medical providers who facilitated
their hormonal and surgical transitions
as young teenagers, including a double
mastectomy for Chloe at age 15 and
for Layla at 13. These lawsuits will
 bring the issue of “informed consent”
front and center, because all clinics
say they take no action without it.
Unfortunately, as Stephen Levine has
shown, the statements that pass for
informed consent today are inconsis-
tent and unsatisfactory.13 How do you
assure a young person of a procedure’s
safety and long-term effectiveness
when there are no randomized
controlled studies that demonstrate
the superiority of one intervention
over another? What outcomes are even
considered ideal? Will you inform
your patient, Levine writes, about
“rates of later desistance, increased
mental suffering, increased incidence
of physical illness, educational failure,
vocational inconstancy, and social
isolation”? Parents give consent
because they believe they are saving
their children’s lives and guaranteeing
their children’s future satisfaction with
their bodies, but are they told of the
higher risk of severe lifelong medical
complications, depression, and, yes,
suicide among transgender adults?
REFERENCES
1 Dr. Erica Anderson, a clinical
psychologist who is a transgender
woman, is one outspoken advocate
of the need for more light and less
heat: https://bit.ly/3mehL2C
2 Biggs, M. (2022) The Dutch
Protocol for Juvenile Transsexuals:
Origins and Evidence. Journal of
Sex & Marital Therapy, doi:10.10
80/0092623X.2022.2121238
3 In a previous column, I tried to bring
a social-psychological perspective
to bear on this astonishing rise of
gender dysphoria among teenage
girls (“I didn’t know there was
another side,” Skeptic vol. 27 no.1).
Moreover, what does having “informed
consent” from a 12-year-old or a
14-year-old mean? Teenagers, by
definition, want what they want now,
consequences be damned—especially
if they are autistic, depressed, and/or
anxious. How many of them can imag-
ine how they will feel in five years,
let alone 10 or 30? Does a 13-year-old
understand the physical complications
of having her breasts removed, or
that he will lose his fertility, or that
they may never be able to have an
orgasm? Barnes quotes one therapist
who spoke of the “worrying lack
of understanding” among patients,
such as a young trans man, a natal
female, who asked if he would start
producing sperm once on testosterone.
The final footnote to Barnes’s story:
This year, prompted by the Cass
report, an English law firm is expected
to file a class-action criminal-negli-
gence suit against the Tavistock and
Portman Trust. More than 1,000
clients are expected to join the suit.
4 See https://bit.ly/3m9kDy0
5 See the assessment by the Society
for Evidence-Based Gender
Medicine, https://bit.ly/3Gc3GtC
6 https://bit.ly/3GbQqFh
7 Trans activists were not pleased
when psychologist Ken Zucker’s
longitudinal research found that
most of the young boys with gender
dysphoria grew out of their desire
to be female and became gay men.
See Singh D., Bradley S.J. & Zucker
K.J. (2021). A Follow-Up Study of
Boys With Gender Identity Disorder.
Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12:632784.
doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2021.632784.
I suspect that clinics in the United
States will be paying close attention.
The lawyers certainly are.
Suggested Resources
• Lisa Selin Davis’s Substack:
https://bit.ly/3MsH5N4
• Society for Evidence-Based Gender
Medicine: https://bit.ly/43ltCwu
• Genspect: https://bit.ly/3MCp1jA
Carol Tavris, PhD, is a social psychologist and
writer. She has written hundreds of articles,
book reviews, and op-eds on many topics
in psychological science. Her books include
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), with Elliot
Aronson; Estrogen Matters; and The Mismeasure
of Woman. A Fellow of the Association for
Psychological Science, she has received
numerous awards for her efforts to promote
science and skepticism, including an award
from the Center for Inquiry’s Independent
Investigations Group; and an honorary
doctorate from Simmons College for her work in
promoting critical thinking and gender equity.
8 Stephen Levine’s clear,
straightforward testimony,
“13 Untruths Behind Gender
Affirmative Therapies for Kids,”
is available at: https://bit.ly/3GgJ3fK
See also his paper on reconsidering the
Dutch studies: https://bit.ly/40GfBb0
9 https://bit.ly/3GkCloX
10 https://bit.ly/3ztKJyP
11 https://archive.ph/laCvu
12 https://bit.ly/43wpf1N
13 See Levine’s discussion on
reconsidering informed consent:
https://bit.ly/3KbXra3
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 43
 ARTICLE
THE GIFT
OF BIAS
How My Wrongful Conviction Helped
Me Become a Better Thinker
BY AMANDA KNOX
In 2007, I was studying abroad in Perugia,
Italy. I had been there for five weeks, my
eyes wide with the excitement of navigating
a foreign culture, my heart aflutter over a
nerdy boy I’d met at a classical music recital.
It all seemed like a glorious dream, until it
became a nightmare. On November 1, a local
burglar named Rudy Guede broke into the
apartment I shared with three other young
women, two Italian law interns and a British
exchange student named Meredith Kercher.
Meredith was the only one home that night.
Rudy Guede raped her, stabbed her to death,
and then fled the country to Germany.
Before the forensic evidence came back,
showing unequivocally that Rudy Guede was
responsible for this crime, the police and pros-
ecution focused their attention on me. It was
a logical place to start. Of all the roommates, I
knew Meredith the best. I was the one who dis-
covered that our house was a crime scene and
44 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
notified the police. They told me I was their
most important witness, that any small detail I
might remember could be the clue they needed
to find out who had done this to poor Meredith.
A week later, I was in jail, charged with
Meredith’s murder. Two years later, I was
convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison.
I went on to win my appeal and in 2011 I
was acquitted, after four years incarcerated.
Even after this vindication, however, so
convinced were the Italian authorities that I
was guilty, they overturned my acquittal, put
me on trial in absentia for the same crime,
convicted me again, and sentenced me to
28.5 years in prison. It wasn’t until 2015
that my legal nightmare ended when I was
definitively acquitted by Italy’s highest court
per non aver commesso il fatto—for not having
committed the act. How and why did this
happen? A big part of the answer has to do
with cognitive bias and motivated reasoning.
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 45
 Over the five days after Meredith was murdered, the
police questioned me for a total of 53 hours, without
a lawyer and almost entirely without a translator,
and all in a language I spoke about as well as a
ten-year-old. I was young (20), scared, and naïve
to the ways of the criminal justice system. My final
round of questioning went long into the night as
they deprived me of sleep, of food, and of bathroom
access. When I told them over and over again that I
didn’t know what happened to Meredith and that I
was at my boyfriend’s house that night, they refused
to accept my answers. They slapped me, and they
told me that I had amnesia, that I was so traumatized
by what I’d witnessed that I had blocked it out.
Instead of listening to what I was telling them,
they pushed me to “remember” something I didn’t
remember, namely meeting my boss, Patrick
PEOPLE WRONGLY ASSUME THAT THERE
CAN ONLY BE ONE TRUE VICTIM, AND
THAT IF WE ARE TO HONOR THE VICTIM
OF THE ORIGINAL CRIME, WE MUST DENY
THAT ANYTHING WRONG HAPPENED
TO THE PERSON WRONGFULLY
CONVICTED. IN TRUTH, WRONGFUL
CONVICTIONS MULTIPLY VICTIMHOOD.
Lumumba, at my house that night. Why? They’d found
a text message on my phone. I worked at a local cafe,
and Patrick had given me the evening off on the night
Meredith was killed. I had thanked him, and I texted
him back in my broken Italian, “Ci vediamo più tardi,”
my best attempt at “See you later.” But to the Perugian
authorities, this English idiom didn’t translate as a
casual, “I’ll see you when I see you.” To them, it meant
I had made an appointment to meet Patrick later that
night. You met Patrick, they told me. We know you
brought him to the house. I told them that was wrong
countless times, but they wouldn’t believe me.
46 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
Motivated reasoning was already in full effect among
the investigators. Some early lost-in-translation
moments outside the house once the police arrived
had given them suspicions about my candor. There was
confusion over whether Meredith regularly locked her
door or merely closed her door (in Italian, the word
for “to lock” is “to close with a key”). And as there was
nothing obviously stolen from the apartment, they
leapt to the conclusion that the break-in—the rock,
the smashed window—was staged. The prosecutor,
Giuliano Mignini, even assumed, as he said much
later in a documentary about the case, that only a
woman would cover the body of a murder victim with
a blanket. Oh really? And how does he know this?
My behavior was also grossly misinterpreted. With a
flurry of panicked Italian whipping past me, I often
didn’t understand what was happening. When my
other roommate looked
into Meredith’s room
once they kicked the
door down, she started
screaming about what
she saw. But I never
saw into Meredith’s
room, and I didn’t quite
understand what she
was so upset about. The
idea that Meredith had
been killed was just
so far out of my world
of possibilities that I
couldn’t even imagine
it. So when I stood
outside the crime scene,
looking dazed but not
obviously hysterical,
this was interpreted
as me looking cold
and unemotional in the face of my roommate’s
murder, a fact I had yet to fully comprehend.
It didn’t help that I did lie to them early in my
questioning. My Italian roommates, who were both big
pot smokers, begged me not to tell the police about the
marijuana, to deny that anyone in the house smoked
it, because they’d lose their law internships if anyone
found out. Coming from pot-friendly Seattle, and
thinking this was small potatoes and quite irrelevant to
what had happened to Meredith, I did what they asked
me. But the police had found evidence of marijuana
in the house, and they knew I wasn’t being honest. I
came clean immediately, but it was too late. That small
lie, coupled with the other misunderstandings, were
anchoring biases that shaped how the investigators
interpreted everything afterward and led them to
believe that I was withholding something, that I wasn’t
telling them the whole truth about that night. Hence
their erroneous certainty that the benign text message
to Patrick was evidence of something nefarious.
My own biases led me to trust them. I was nearly 6,000
miles from home, my friend had just been murdered,
the killer was on the loose, and I was scared. I thought
if anyone would keep me safe, if anyone had my best
interests and wellbeing in mind, it was the authorities.
This was my fundamental prior belief, shaped by my
own privileged upbringing: the cops are the good guys.
I’d never had a bad interaction with the police. I had no
reason to think they would lie to me. So when they did
lie, when they told me that Raffaele, my boyfriend of a
week, had turned on me and denied my alibi (he hadn’t),
when they lied that they had evidence that I was home
that night (they didn’t), I tried to make sense of it. If they
weren’t lying, then what other explanation was there?
After hours and hours of this intense pressure, I started
to believe them that I did have amnesia, and I honestly
tried to remember what might have happened. I tried to
imagine meeting Patrick like they said I did. They typed
up a statement from these blurry incoherent ramblings,
and, utterly exhausted, well past the edge of my sanity,
I signed it. I was simply naïve to the fact that police
lie to suspects to get a confession, even a false one.
It didn’t matter that I recanted that statement almost
immediately once I was out of the pressure cooker
of the interrogation room and had recovered my
senses and reasoning. That false admission sealed
my fate. And it became the biggest anchoring
bias that would shape the case for the next eight
years and my own reputation to this day.
We know how unreliable such interrogation methods
are from DNA exonerations. According to the Innocence
Project, nearly one in four proven wrongful convictions
involves a false confession.1 And yet, it’s so hard for
anyone who hasn’t been through a coercive interrogation
to understand how a person could sign false statements
implicating themselves or others. Even the police on the
other side of the table don’t understand it. They truly
think they’re just cracking a suspect and getting them to
admit the truth. But they are suffering from a cognitive
bias that we are all susceptible to, the idea that our own
experience of the world is a reasonable reference. They’ve
never signed false statements, so why would a suspect?
Once you see how the false confession I signed
became a fundamental prior for the investigators
and prosecution, everything else starts to make
sense. When the forensic evidence came back weeks
later implicating a sole perpetrator, Rudy Guede,
they had to find a way to fit this new evidence with
their prior belief. This is just what humans do.
A recent study2 argues that nearly all the cognitive biases
we are susceptible to—confirmation bias, the anchoring
bias, the framing effect, and so on—can be reduced
to “the combination of a fundamental prior belief and
humans’ tendency toward belief-consistent information
processing.” The prosecution, holding my coerced
statements as a fundamental prior belief, tried to force
the new forensic information implicating Rudy Guede to
be consistent with the idea that I was present that night.
And thus, with no evidence, and contrary to my own
character and history, they invented a motive and wove a
story out of whole cloth about a sex game gone awry and
a three-way murder plot involving Rudy, a man whose
name I didn’t even know, and my boyfriend of a week.
It was never a satisfying answer to me that the people
responsible for my wrongful conviction were evil,
or uniquely incompetent. And once I learned about
how common wrongful convictions are even in the
U.S., this was even more obvious to me. I wanted to
know why this had happened to me, and how mostly
well-intentioned people who wanted to repair the rend
in the fabric of their community, to bring a perpetrator
to justice, and to bring closure to Meredith’s grieving
family, could have gotten it so, so wrong. Nothing has
been more illuminating for me on this question than
diving deeply into the research on cognitive bias.
Most of the specific biases I’m about to discuss are
reducible to a general pattern of a fundamental
belief and belief-consistent information processing,
but I find the added specificity useful to help me
see these types of errors in my own thinking.
The anchoring bias is the tendency to rely on the first
piece of information, regardless of its validity, when
interpreting later information. Thus, early suspicion
against me shaped how all later evidence was inter-
preted. This has also impacted my reputation, and
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 47
 explains why I still receive so much vitriol. Despite
my definitive acquittal, the first thing most people
heard about me was that I was a suspected killer, and
that colors everything else they ever hear about me.
And if they persist in believing conspiracy theories
about my guilt, they are helped along by the base rate
fallacy, the tendency to ignore general information
and focus only on the specifics of one case. Those who
think I’m guilty rarely look at general information
regarding murders and wrongful convictions. If they
did, they’d see how vanishingly rare it is for women
to commit knife killings against other women, and
how common the errors in my case were. It features
all the hallmarks of wrongful convictions, many of
which result from cognitive biases themselves.
The most general form of this is often called confirmation
bias, the tendency to seek out information that confirms
a hypothesis and ignore information that disconfirms
it. With wrongful convictions, this is known as tunnel
vision. The anchoring bias of an initial hunch shapes the
investigators’ search for more information. They magnify
the significance of any tiny thing that confirms the
anchor and write off large things that don’t. Thus, much
weight was put on a kiss between Raffaele and me, while
the fact that my DNA was not present in the room where
the murder happened and that it was impossible to have
participated in such a violent struggle without leaving
any traces of oneself, was ignored. This is sometimes
called the conservatism bias, the tendency to insuffi-
ciently revise one’s prior beliefs in light of new evidence.
Then there’s the salience bias: the tendency to ignore
unremarkable items and focus on striking ones. The
prosecution did this to me, and many people continue to
succumb to this bias still. Malcolm Gladwell makes this
mistake in his analysis3 of my case. Like the prose-
cution and tabloid media, he overlooked the copious
moments of unremarkable behavior and highlighted
the few moments of so-called “odd” behavior, putting
great explanatory weight on them and framing me
as someone who acts guilty despite my innocence.
That bias is tied in with the fundamental attribution
error: the tendency to overemphasize personality-based
explanations for others’ behavior and to de-emphasize
the role of context. Thus, in judging my behavior in
those early days, people ignored the fact that I was alone,
far from home, my roommate had just been murdered,
and the killer was on the loose. It was a scary and
48 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
traumatizing experience, and people react in many ways
to trauma. Instead, people often strip my behavior from
this context and conclude that I must be weird, “off,” or
suspicious. This same bias often comes into play when
people reflect upon the false statements I signed. Instead
of explaining those false statements by the brutal and
coercive context I was in, they leap to a conclusion about
my character, that I must be an untrustworthy liar.
Selection bias magnifies all these initial biases by
shaping what gets reported. There are no news articles
from 2007 about all the moments that I looked sad, or
scared, or exhausted. There are no deep-dive articles
about my perfectly benign upbringing, complete lack
of a history of violence or mental illness, about my
strong community and loving family. But one small
moment caught on camera of me seeking comfort
from the young man I’d met five days previous, sharing
a chaste kiss while confused and scared, gets end-
lessly republished, repeated, and played on loop.
At trial, a host of other cognitive biases came into play.
Stereotyping was used to paint me as an American “girl
gone wild,” though I was in fact a nerdy poetry and
language student. The rhyme as reason effect, in which
something that rhymes is seen as more truthful, was
used against me. Thus, the moniker “Foxy Knoxy”
shaped opinion of me as sly and devious. In Italian,
they translated this as Volpe Cattiva, the wicked fox.
The framing effect was used repeatedly at trial to present
benign behaviors as suspicious. She ate pizza after her
friend had been murdered? Why wasn’t she wasting
away, sobbing? Literally, the fact that I ate pizza was used
against me as evidence that I was not sufficiently morose,
as if a grieving and scared person can’t also be hungry.
All of that framing was repeated for eight years of trial,
and it affects me to this day through the continued
influence effect, the tendency to believe previously
learned misinformation even after it has been corrected.
My reputation has not been fully restored. Many
people still think that, even if I’m not guilty of murder,
I must have had something to do with the crime, or I
must have somehow brought suspicion upon myself.
The proportionality bias is our tendency to assume
that big events have big causes, when often they are
caused by many small things. The massive decade-long
series of trials with global media coverage doesn’t
need an underlying conspiracy as a cause. It doesn’t
require that I was grandly suspicious, nor does it
require that the authorities were grandly corrupt.
The conjunction of many small cognitive biases by the
authorities and media is enough to explain the massive
debacle the case became, but the proportionality bias
leads us to think there must be a bigger reason.
As far as my continued reputational damage, I can
thank the illusory truth effect, the tendency to believe
a statement is true if it’s easier to process or has been
repeated many times. “Amanda Knox is Bad” is a lot
simpler than explaining the miscarriage of justice.
This is related to the availability cascade, in which a
collective belief is seen as more plausible through rep-
etition in public discourse. The hundreds (thousands?)
of media articles painting me as a killer have shaped
this perception that many people still have of me.
I try to counter that perception by acting honorably
and putting thoughtful work into the world. However,
the structures of social media and psychological factors
create further selection bias. If I tweet about criminal
justice reform, I get maybe a dozen retweets. If I make
a joke about my wrongful imprisonment, the tweet
spreads far and wide,4 and I pop onto others’ radar
in that context. They don’t see the vast amount of
serious work I do, and only see the highly retweeted
joke, and conclude that I’m purely flippant.
And then they judge me for making light of a tragedy,
but fail to distinguish between the tragedy that befell
Meredith and the one that befell me. This is the zero
sum bias, assuming incorrectly that if one person
gains, another must lose. In this case, they assume that
respecting my victimhood by the Italian justice system
is tantamount to disrespecting Meredith’s victimhood
for being murdered by Rudy Guede. I’ve coined my own
term for this specific situation: the single victim fallacy.
You see it often in wrongful conviction cases. People
wrongly assume that there can only be one true
victim, and that if we are to honor the victim of the
original crime, we must deny that anything wrong
happened to the person wrongfully convicted. In
truth, wrongful convictions multiply victimhood.
Meredith is a victim of murder. I am a victim of
a miscarriage of justice. Both our families are
also victims of this miscarriage of justice, which
has denied them closure and put our families
through hell. Because of this single victim fallacy,
I am told I should never joke about the injustice I
suffered, because it is conflated with the injustice
done to Meredith by someone else. Because of
this fallacy, I am told to shut up and disappear.
These cognitive biases have caused a lot of pain in my
life, and in the lives of others touched by this case. And
they have also gotten in the way of potential healing.
I still hope one day to be able to come together with
Meredith’s surviving family in recognition of our shared
and overlapping victimhood from the actions of Rudy
Guede and the Italian authorities. But as far as I know,
they remain in thrall to the single victim fallacy.
I don’t know if that day will ever come, but in the
meantime, I take solace in the fact that I have such
a great opportunity to see these cognitive errors
up close. I was able to see how poorly many people
judge this complicated case that took over my life,
particularly the facts and the individuals involved in
it. To see how wrongly they judge me. This makes me
a better thinker. It helps me to better avoid all the
cognitive biases that caused my wrongful conviction,
that led to slanderous media coverage, and that are
still responsible for the hate I regularly receive.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the bias
blind spot, the tendency to see yourself as less biased
than others. Knowing these biases exist doesn’t
make me immune to them. I know I can fall prey
to them just as much as the people who imprisoned
me. So if you have to have a fundamental prior
belief that shapes your reasoning, let it be a belief
in your own susceptibility to cognitive bias.
Amanda Knox is an exoneree, journalist, public speaker, author of
the New York Times best-selling memoir, Waiting to Be Heard, and
co-host, with her partner Christopher Robinson, of the podcast
Labyrinths. She has since become an advocate for criminal justice
reform and media ethics. She sits on the board of the Frederick
Douglass Project for Justice and is an Innocence Network
Ambassador. You can find her on Twitter @amandaknox and
Instagram @amamaknox. Photo of Amanda Knox by Patrik Andersson.
REFERENCES
1 https://bit.ly/3FOlXN7
2 https://bit.ly/40sJgE4
3 https://apple.co/42B3oWB
4 https://bit.ly/3nhLhVz
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 49
 ARTICLE
VISITS to and
FROM EXTRA-
TERRESTRIALS
Why They Never Occurred,
and Probably Never Will
BY MORTON TAVEL
We have recently been flooded with much excitement
about the possibility of aliens traveling in UFOs (now
labeled UAPs, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena),
that may be visiting us from distant worlds. Much
of skeptical attention, however, has focused on how
we form beliefs and evaluate possible conspiracies
rather than on considering the basic physical and
biological requirements that may prevent us from
believing such events are even possible. There are
good reasons why alien visits from distant worlds
are not—and likely never will be—a real possibility.
Such myths seem more designed to titillate us
for mundane, rather than celestial, reasons.
50 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
The public has long been, largely since religious
visitations have seemed less believable, enamored by
outer space as exemplified by the popularity of science
fiction programs such as Star Trek, Star Wars, E.T., and
the like. The recent unmanned excursions to Earth’s
Moon and nearby planets have further whetted the
public’s appetite. That may also explain the recent
increased interest in the possibility of aliens from dis-
tant worlds traveling in UAPs. Much of our attention,
however, has focused on our chasing “weird” aerial
phenomena rather than exploring the basic physical
and biological limitations that prevent either aliens
or us from meeting each other or reaching distant
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 51
 home. Although we have sought diligently over most
of the past century to identify aerial phenomena and
link them to distant worlds, all these attempts have
resulted in abject failure. Such alleged “discoveries”
can be explained by earth-bound phenomena1, 2
such as mylar balloons, drones, foreign aircraft,
space trash, distorted photos of flying insects and
other objects, e.g., artillery shells. Although some
of these phenomena remain unexplained, no
substantive evidence of alien life or extraterrestrial
vehicles has been uncovered. Because of facts to be
noted, I contend that they never will. Why? Let’s
explore this issue from a purely scientific, biological
perspective and begin by posing two questions:
1. Given our current or probable future
technology, what is the possibility that we
could reach (either with manned or unmanned
spacecraft) planets in this or other galaxies?
2. What possible circumstances would allow
those from other planets to reach us?
Us
A product of over three billion years of evolution,
we have reached a level of intelligence that enabled
us to build machines that can reach beyond our
atmosphere, and into space. However, distance is a
major barrier, and according to present information,
the distance to Proxima Centauri b, the closest exo-
planet to Earth, is 40,208,000,000,000 kilometers,
or 4.2 light-years from our Sun. The maximum
speed of our spacecraft (currently approximately 6.5
percent of the speed of light) is a related limitation.
Although we cannot predict the maximum velocity
of future spacecraft, according to Einstein’s theory,
the speed of light is a cosmic speed limit that
cannot be surpassed, and radio waves are similarly
limited. So, practically speaking, we should accept
that faster-than-light travel is impossible, especially
for any object with mass, such as a spacecraft.
If we assume there are no intelligent occupants
on planets in our solar system, i.e., we need to
search for intelligent life elsewhere, and given our
present rocket technology, NASA estimates it would
take approximately 73,000 years for a present
spacecraft to reach Proxima Centauri b. We could
postulate higher velocities, but thus far, humans
52 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
haven’t figured out how to even approach such
rates, further raising the question of whether we, or
any other advanced culture, could accomplish this
task. Can we hope to overcome these limitations
in the future? Possibly, but at present, humans can
conceivably only travel to any of the known planets
or moons within our own solar system, and not
to any destinations beyond. Just to reach Neptune
(the most distant planet in the solar system) would
require 12 years one-way. Manned space travel to
another star system, at least with the technology we
have today, is still only a dream. Given our limited
lifespan, it would be virtually impossible to send a
manned spacecraft to any such destination, let alone
to expect a return voyage. Even with a craft that
could achieve the unlikely speed of about 50 percent
of the speed of light, this would require at least
nine years one-way, to reach the nearest galaxy…
Other potentially hospitable planets would likely
be far more, and prohibitively, distant. In short, any
voyage from Earth to distant, habitable planets, is
clearly beyond our reach, both now and, very likely,
in the foreseeable future. Sending unmanned craft
would require radio waves to control or at least track
them, requiring impractically large time delays.
We could conceivably take human beings only to
any of the known planets or moons within our
Solar System, but not to any objects beyond this
gravitational sphere. If we extend our present laws
of physics to their limits, travel might extend further
into the universe, but even if we were to reach such
unlikely huge distances, our current lifespan would
preclude occupied travel. This means that distant
planets outside our solar system would continue to
be physically unreachable. Any attempt at long-dis-
tance human space travel would create another
major problem: humans are evolutionarily adapted
to gravity, which means that prolonged weightless-
ness is harmful in many ways, among which are
atrophy of muscle (including the heart!) and bone
tissue. Under the influence of gravity, fluid—which
makes up about 60 percent of the human body
weight—tends to accumulate in the lower part
of the body. Through the course of evolution, we
have developed systems balancing blood flow to
the heart and the brain. In the absence of gravity,
these systems cause fluid to accumulate in the
upper body. This change in fluid distribution is also
reflected in problems with keeping balance, as well
as upper body swelling and a loss of sense of taste
and smell. Such adaptations may result in dangerous
consequences following return to Earth. One of them
is “orthostatic intolerance,” which is the inability
to stand for 10 or more minutes without fainting.
To overcome such problems, bodily exercises with
artificially created gravity have been proposed, but the
long-term effects of this measure cannot be predicted.
In short, these, and other unknown factors, render us
physically unequipped for prolonged space travel.
Them
The question of whether Earth could be reached
by occupants from different galaxies is more
speculative. It would require the presence of
intelligent life elsewhere, combined with the need
to overcome the barriers just depicted for us.
It seems likely that intelligence and advanced culture
would stem from evolution on a planet able to support
some form of life. Such life could be constructed
from carbon atoms and possess DNA, but this may
not be the case. Out of the thousands of exoplanets
in other galaxies, a few possess conditions that
are favorable for life as we know it, i.e., moderate
temperatures, water, sunlight, etc. However, meeting
such requirements is extremely daunting.3 From
our experience on Earth, the progression from the
earliest life forms, such as microorganisms, to the
presence of humans required approximately three
to four billion years, but the component required
for space travel only appeared in the last 100 years.
While it is possible that this process has occurred on
one or more of the many distant planets, evolution
requires multiple and successive life cycles in which
mutations or physical changes allow for successive
adaptations, each more favorable for survival. As
this dynamic process proceeds, new generations
replace prior ones, with the latter dying off. Although
our telescopes have identified thousands of planets
around neighboring stars, some of which might be
capable of supporting life, and by implication many
astronomers extrapolate this to conclude that there
are very likely trillions of planets in the cosmos,
which means that no matter how improbable it is
that any one of them could support life, the law of
large numbers suggests that some will. After all,
relatively intelligent beings, represented by dinosaurs,
existed on Earth for about 200 million years, but
none had intelligence that approached our own.
But let’s assume intelligent aliens did exist and had
spacecraft that could achieve a very high velocity. If an
alien entity were to attain even 30–50 percent of the
speed of light, reaching the necessary distances would
still require a prohibitively long time, as exemplified
by our reaching a neighboring galaxy, cited above.
Given our current state of knowledge, it’s likely that
no living forms, however advanced, could reach even
a fraction of this speed with an occupied vehicle.
If superior technology were developed to allow for
travel closer to light speed, travel of any kind might
extend further into the universe, but any biological
organism would be limited by a finite lifespan. This
also means that any living alien beings are likely
subject to similar laws of evolution, and this fact
alone would render any such visits highly unlikely.
Could occupants of a distant planet even reach us
with an unoccupied spacecraft or one carrying robots?
That is a possibility, but that effort would be subject
to the same limitations we would encounter in our
attempt to reach distant worlds. There is little reason
to believe that a distant life form would correctly
identify the presence of life on this planet, and from
the huge distances separating us, they would have
little incentive to capitalize on this knowledge,
other than merely satisfying curiosity. And even
informative radio signals would require inordinate
return times to provide useful data or even to direct
the control of such distant vehicles or robots.
If there were highly intelligent life on distant planets,
we might postulate that they might attempt to contact
us through radio signals, also sometimes called “Fast
Radio Bursts” (FRBs). Prior to 2020, weak signals,
billions of light years away, had been observed outside
our galaxy. Interestingly, on April 28, 2020, two
ground-based radio telescopes detected an intense
pulse of radio waves.4 It only lasted a mere millisecond
but, for astonished astronomers, it was a major
discovery, representing the first time such a radio burst
had ever been detected from Earth. It was believed
to have originated an estimated 30,000 light-years
from a planet within the Milky Way. Rather than
originating from life forms, however, observational
evidence suggests that the origin of such signals is
very likely a magnetar, a type of young neutron star
born from the embers of supernovas with a magnetic
field 5,000 trillion times more powerful than Earth’s,
thereby making them the universe’s most powerful
magnets. By no means is this evidence of alien life!
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 53
 Us and Them
Exploring the flip side, what efforts are we expend-
ing to help alien cultures detect our presence and
composition? At present, we are sending out both radio
signals and spacecraft into space. A strenuous effort
was made in 1974, when a team of scientists, including
astronomers Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, transmitted
a radio message from the Arecibo Observatory in
Puerto Rico toward Messier 13, a cluster of stars about
25,000 light-years away.5 This image, sent in binary
code, depicted a human stick figure, a double-helix DNA
structure, a model of a carbon atom, and a diagram of a
telescope. The message attempts to provide a snapshot
of who we are as human beings in the language of
math and science. Yet it is, quite literally, a shot in the
dark. It will take around 25,000 light-years to reach
Messier 13. Hypothetical aliens might still be able to
detect the signal as it whizzes past—it has 10 million
times the intensity of radio signals from our sun.
But who around here in subsequent centuries would
even be able to recognize such an achievement?
We have also launched two rockets, Voyagers 1 and
2, into deep space, each carrying 12-inch (30cm)
golden phonograph records that contain pictures and
sounds of Earth, symbolic directions on the cover for
playing the record, and data detailing the location
of Earth. The record is intended as a combination
time capsule and an interstellar message to any
civilization, alien, or future human, that may recover
either of the Voyagers. Here too, the likelihood
of any recognizable response seems very slim.
The idea that aliens could reach us—with or without
occupied vehicles—is based upon several speculative
assumptions, none of which are presently realistic.
Given our current technology, there is no real
likelihood that we could reach distant worlds outside
the solar system, even with unoccupied spacecraft. If
we were able to employ highly advanced robots, the
time required to reach distant galaxies employing radio
guidance and similar responses would be impracti-
cally excessive, given our present limited lifespan.
Theoretically, a civilization lasting for tens of millions
of years might have spread throughout the galaxy, but
no confirmed signs of civilizations or intelligent life
elsewhere have been found, either in our galaxy or in
the observable universe of two trillion galaxies.6, 7, 8
All that said, our tendency to explore any and all
available territory seems to be a universal trait of
humans, and one must applaud all efforts aimed at
such discoveries, even if only to satisfy our curiosity.
Such knowledge, e.g., by analogy to electricity, could
lead to things of practical value here on Earth. In the
meantime, our preoccupation with UFOs or UAPs
simply represents science fiction. Or are we metaphor-
ically chasing “the stuff that dreams are made of”?
Morton Tavel is a retired physician specializing in internal medicine
and cardiovascular diseases. He was a Clinical Professor at Indiana
University School of Medicine and the president of the Indiana
division of the American Heart Association. He authored over
140 research publications, editorials, and a medical textbook.
His previous article for Skeptic appeared in vol. 23 no. 4.

REFERENCES

1 https://bit.ly/3G1MYwH S. R., & McKenna, D. L. (2020). for Extraterrestrial Intelligence:

2 https://bit.ly/3U12NJV
3 Tyson, N.D.G. (2021). Cosmic
Queries: Star Talk’s Guide
to Who We Are, How We
Got Here, and Where We’re
Going. National Geographic
4 Bochenek, C. D., Ravi, V., Belov, K.
V., Hallinan, G., Kocz, J., Kulkarni,
A fast radio burst associated
with a Galactic magnetar.
Nature, 587(7832), 59–62.
5 https://bit.ly/3Kfe4mH
6 Tarter, J. (2006). The Cosmic
Haystack Is Large. Skeptical
Inquirer, 30(3), 31.
7 Alexander, A. (2002). The Search
A Short History, Part 7: The
Birth of the Drake Equation.
The Planetary Society.
8 Conselice, C. J., Wilkinson, A.,
Duncan, K., & Mortlock, A. (2016).
The evolution of galaxy number
density at z< 8 and its implications.
The Astrophysical Journal, 830(2), 83.

54 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023

ARTICLE
FREE WILL
IS REAL
BY STUART T. DOYLE
The question of whether or not we have free will
has been pondered by philosophers, psychologists,
theologians, neuroscientists, and by many of us in
our own conversations and thoughts. Nearly two
thousand years ago, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus
declared, “You may fetter my leg; but not Zeus
himself can get the better of my free will.”1 But
Epictetus also believed in a deterministic world
where each event is determined by preceding causes.
How can this apparent contradiction be resolved?
In the 1940s, Bertrand Russel saw no reason that
human volitions would not also be determined in
the same way that inanimate processes are deter-
mined. Further, he saw the determined nature of
volitions as incompatible with a person being the
true source of his own actions. Russell supposed
that an evil scientist could, by use of psychoactive
drugs, manipulate a person to perform certain
actions. And this hypothetical manipulation did
not seem to Russell so different from normal life,
where people are manipulated to do what they do
by natural causes outside their own control.2
Fifty years after Russell published his critique
of the Stoic notion of free will, several other
philosophers made the same argument.3, 4, 5
Today, the continued quandary contributes to a
sustained lack of consensus on free will. According to
surveys, most people—including most philosophers—
believe in some form of free will, most under the rubric
of compatibilism.6, 7 Novelist and Nobel Laureate
Isaac Bashevis Singer summed up the dilemma,
“We must believe in free will, we have no choice.”
However, the debate still rages in the world of
academic philosophy, in a broader audience reached
by podcasts and popular books written by scientists,
and among readers of SkEPTIC. Here I will try to
convince you that free will is real and not an illusion.
I’ll argue that far from being exemplars of rationality
and skepticism, the main arguments against free
will make unjustifiable logical leaps and are naïve
in the light of cutting-edge scientific findings.
Throughout the philosophical literature,8 resolving
the question of whether or not we have free will has
often revolved around two criteria for free will:
1. We must be the true sources of our own actions.
2. We must have the ability to do otherwise.
I argue that humans meet both criteria through
two concepts: scale and undecidability.
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 55
 Scale and the True Sources
of Our Actions
In an article in The Journal of Mind and Behavior,9
I argued that many of our actions are caused by
our wills; that is, by our conscious desires and
intentions. This is not disputed by most (what I’ll
term) free will deniers. They more often dispute
that our wills are free, not that we have wills and
that our actions often follow from our wills. Sam
Harris, one such determinist with a large general
audience, has said that the subjectively felt intention
to act is the proximate cause of acting. Harris makes
the same basic claim as renowned scientist Francis
Crick,10 philosophers such as Bertrand Russell2
and Derk Pereboom,4 and many others. They claim
that in addition to the proximate cause (the will),
our actions have ultimate causes lurking behind
them that are the relevant causes to consider when
judging whether or not our wills are free. The
ultimate causes beyond and beneath the surface of
our wills, they argue, make them unfree. What are
these ultimate causes? Harris identifies genetics and
environmental influences as “the only things that
MY MIND DOES NOT EXIST
AS A MOLECULE NOR AS A
HISTORICAL EPOCH, NOR AS
A SOCIOECONOMIC CLASS.
YET MY MIND DOES EXIST.
contrive to produce” his particular will.11 Molecules
beyond DNA have also been offered as ultimate causes
of our decisions. Biologist Jerry Coyne argued that,
“Our brains are made of molecules; those molecules
must obey the laws of physics; our decisions derive
from brain activity.”12 Robert Sapolsky, a prominent
neuroendocrinologist, is publishing a book this
year, detailing many such mechanisms that, it is
claimed, obviate the role of willed choices.13
56 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
What’s wrong with this line of reasoning? Consider
the following question as an analogy: Are apples
red? Suppose we all agree that apples have color. The
question is whether the color is red or non-red. To
answer the question, determinists would look beyond
the proximate color of the apple. Realizing that the
apple is nothing but atoms, they would examine many
of the carbon atoms on the surface of the apple. They
find that not a single carbon atom is red. Since none of
the atoms are red, and the apple is nothing but atoms,
they would conclude that the apple can’t be red. The
error is that though they agree the apple has a color,
they try to examine the nature of the color at a scale
(a carbon atom is smaller than the wavelength of red
light) where color is incoherent. The fact that they
found no redness at that scale shouldn’t lead them
to conclude anything about the color of the apple.
Likewise, the fact that determinists find no personal
authorship or freedom in the actions of molecules
shouldn’t lead them to conclude anything about the
nature of the will. We agree that we have wills, that we
have subjectively experienced intentions that influence
our actions. The question is whether our will is free or
unfree. To look at molecules for the answer
is a scale mistake. DNA and neurotransmitters
observed at the molecular scale exhibit no
will whatsoever. With that knowledge, is it
compelling that they exhibit no free will? No.
That should tell us that determinists are look-
ing at the wrong scale to find answers about
the will, just as looking for answers about red-
ness at a scale where color is not meaningful.
The right scale for finding answers to the
question of apple redness is the apple
scale, not the atom scale. The right scale
for finding answers to the question of
freedom of the will is the agent scale, not
the molecule scale. Searching the molecule
scale is just one example of this error. There are many
other wrong scales where a confused determinist
might look for answers about the will. He or she may
zoom out temporally into an irrelevant timescale,
including the time before the will in question
existed. In the above analogy, this would be like
conceptualizing the apple as merely a step in a process
of agricultural industry. Since agricultural industry
is not red, should we conclude that the apple is not
red? The question about the will can only find its
answers from a scale where the will exists as a will.
Expanding the timescale to include the time before
the person was born renders the question incoherent.
If we keep our analysis in the scale where the indi-
vidual agent exists, not zooming too far in nor too
far out in space, time, or level of organization, then
the primary and ultimate cause of my actions is me.
The will emerges from the complex interactions
of many small parts. It’s literally not true to say
that it’s caused by any particular small part. It is
caused by many small parts, but only when taken
together all at once. And that’s the same thing as
the whole person. So my thoughts and actions are
deterministically caused by me. The molecules of
which my brain is made are simply irrelevant to
this fact. So I am the true source of my own actions,
and there are no other “ultimate” causes. My mind
does not exist as a molecule nor as a historical
epoch, nor as a socioeconomic class. Yet my mind
does exist. René Descartes’ “I think therefore I
am” convinces me of this.14 In order to claim that
my choices are really caused by a molecule or a
historical epoch, one must refer to the dynamics of
a scale where I (that is, my mind) cannot be found.
Eliminating the mind from the analysis is not a
valid way to answer a question about the mind.
The Ability to Do Otherwise
There is a temporal asymmetry in the question
of whether I could have done otherwise. In the
question’s typical form, it is backward-looking. It
asks about what could have been in the past, and,
at first, it seems like a coherent question. I did one
thing yesterday, and we wonder if I could have done
something else. But what if we wanted to figure out
whether or not I’ll have free will tomorrow? From
that temporal angle, the question of the ability to do
otherwise stops making sense. In a forward-looking
sense, the question becomes manifestly nonsensical.
Can I do otherwise in the future? Otherwise? Other
than what? Other than the thing I will do? The
question stipulates that I will do a certain thing,
and simultaneously asks whether or not I can
avoid doing that thing. The stipulation contained
within the question makes the answer trivial. No,
of course I can not do something other than the
thing I will do. In order for the question to have any
significance in the forward-looking tense, it must
be modified. The question can not directly stipulate
that I will do a certain thing. The question must ask
whether or not I can do something other than what
I’m expected to do, not other than what I will do.
Human choice is temporally asymmetric and must be
analyzed as such. This point could be missed without
properly situating our analysis at the correct scale. An
inappropriate focus on the dynamics of little particles
could obscure the truth. The laws of physics that
describe or govern the interactions of particles do not
specify a direction of time. If we could watch a video
of two protons colliding, we would have no way to
know whether the video was being played forward
or in reverse. This is called time reversal symmetry.
This symmetry holds true in a wide variety of particle
interactions.15 Time appears asymmetric only at
scales where emergent phenomena transpire. Large
collections of particles obey the second law of ther-
modynamics, which is not time reversal invariant. As
astrophysicist Matt O’Dowd put it, “Zoom in to individ-
ual particle interactions and you see the perfect revers-
ibility of the laws of physics. But zoom out, and time’s
arrow emerges.”16 A consideration of scale leads to a
recognition of temporal asymmetry in human choice.
In analyzing the ability to do otherwise, we should
consider only a forward-looking ability because
choices, by their nature, are forward-looking. We don’t
deliberate or make choices about the past. Choices
are always about something, and those objects of
choice always lie in the future, thus choices are always
forward-looking. At the time when a choice is actually
made, there is as of yet no “what” as in “Could have
done other than what?” I have not already made the
choice, so there is no established action to have done
otherwise. There can only be expectation of what I will
do. If my actions are in principle perfectly predictable,
then I do not have the ability to do otherwise in a
forward-looking sense. If my choices are in principle
not predictable, given total knowledge of the present
world, then I do have the ability to do otherwise in a
forward-looking sense, which is the only sense that
makes any sense. Given the different dynamics found
at different scales, the ability to do otherwise needs to
be understood as temporally asymmetric; that is, as
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 57
 always forward-looking; as the ability to do something
which is in principle not predictable. We do have that
ability, and it derives from our self-referential nature.
Self-Reference and Undecidability
The fact that I am the relevant cause of my own
actions comes with another important implica-
tion: I am a causally self-referencing entity. If a
molecule were the relevant cause of my action,
this would not be true in the same way. The
molecule has no capacity for self-reflection, but
I do. I can ask myself, “What will I do? What
could I do? What should I do? What do I want
to do? What would I do if I wanted to do X and
should do Y?” Self-referential questions like these
affect the choices that I make; and those choices
change the self-referential questions that I ask.
At the relevant scale, self-reference is causally
important. I am a system which analyzes its own
inputs, character, and potential outputs; generates
new outputs based on those analyses; and feeds those
new outputs back into itself as inputs which affect
the outputs, which affect the system’s character. I am
an output of and an input for my own processing.
Framing the human self-referential nature in this
way brings us to the concept of undecidability.
A system that exhibits undecidable dynamics
cannot be predicted, given complete knowledge
of its present state. Computer scientists and
mathematicians have proven that this fundamental
unpredictability shows up in some algorithmic
computations, mathematical systems, and dynamical
systems (including physical systems).17 Though an
unpredictable dynamical system may evoke the
concept of chaos, undecidability is not chaos; it is a
different sort of unpredictability. IBM research scien-
tist Charles H. Bennett makes the difference clear:
For a dynamical system to be chaotic means that
it exponentially amplifies ignorance of its initial
condition; for it to be undecidable means that
essential aspects of its long-term behaviour—such
as whether a trajectory ever enters a certain
region—though determined, are unpredictable even
from total knowledge of the initial condition.18
58 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
If a system exhibits undecidability, then it is
unpredictable even given total knowledge of all
of its constituent parts. Undecidability makes
deterministic systems fundamentally unpredictable
in principle, not as a result of merely lacking
precise measurements. If humans can exhibit
undecidability, then we meet the second main
criterion for free will: the forward-looking ability
to do otherwise. Scientists recently made such an
argument feasible by explicating what features of a
system give rise to undecidable dynamics. In 2019,
Mikhail Prokopenko and his colleagues conducted
a comparative formal analysis of recursive math-
ematical systems, Turing machines, and cellular
automata. They come to a clear conclusion:
As we have shown, the capacity to generate
undecidable dynamics is based upon three
underlying factors: (1) the program-data duality;
(2) the potential to access an infinite computational
medium; and (3) the ability to implement negation.19
If humans do have these three properties, then we meet
the criteria for undecidable dynamics, which means we
can take actions that are fundamentally unpredictable,
which means we have the ability to do otherwise in a
forward-looking sense, which means we have free will.
First, consider program-data duality, which in this con-
text is the ability for self-reference. The word “duality”
simply refers to the typical distinction between pro-
gram and data with which we are all familiar. A human
at time 1 has a certain overall state of mind, coinciding
with a certain overall physical state. The state at time
1 is a program, in that it entails implicit rules about
what the system would do, given certain types of data.
The streams of perceptions taken in at time 2 are data,
which get processed according to the implicit rules.
In addition to processing basic sense data, this duality
allows for a program (or implicit set of rules encoded
in the state of a human) to process other programs
as data. For example, a human can process ideas,
hypothetical scenarios, mathematical operations, and
representations of the self as data (thus self-reference).
The next requirement for undecidability is the
potential to access an infinite computational medium.
The computational medium is the substrate on
which the state of the system is represented. In a
computer, the computational medium would be
the memory and storage. The set of all possible
states of the system is called the state-space. For
example, the state space of a computer would be
the set of all possible configurations of its memory
and storage. If we knew that a certain system had an
infinite state-space, we could infer that the system
has access to an infinite computational medium.
It can be informally proven that humans have an
infinite state-space. How many different thoughts is it
possible for a human to have? That question includes
sub-questions, such as how many things is it possible
for a human to see? The state of your visual perception
is one small part of your overall state. Think of the
number 74. Now think of the number 74 with your
eyes closed. Those two occasions of thinking of 74
occupied two very different points in your state-space
because of the difference in visual perception.
To roughly estimate how many overall states are
possible while thinking of 74, we would need to
do something like multiply the number of possible
visual perceptions by the number of possible auditory
perceptions by the number of possible sensations of
heat and cold by the number of possible gradations
of feeling sadness or happiness, and so on. Also, you
may think of 74 while remembering, for example, the
time you thought of 106 or 107. And the next time
you think of 74, that will be yet another point in your
state-space, since you’ll recall that you’ve thought
of 74 before. There may be an infinite number of
possible states in which you might think of 74. And
there are many conceivable numbers other than 74,
and many things to think about other than numbers.
An obvious objection might be that a human and his
brain are physically finite. In what sense can an organ
that fits inside a skull be infinite? As a starting point,
consider the 100 billion neurons that make up the
brain. As a simplification, a neuron can be considered
to be “firing” or “not firing.” So a simplified brain has
100 billion binary cells. Such an array of cells could
instantiate 2100,000,000,000 distinct patterns of on-or-off
activation. That’s a big number. For comparison,
there are estimated to be roughly 1080 atoms in the
observable universe.20 The number of atoms in the
universe is an infinitesimally small number compared
to the number of activation patterns possible in a
simplified brain. And what about a real brain? A
real brain is made of neurons which are not simply
on or off. Some neurons show gradations in voltage
and neurotransmitter release, meaning that they
have many possible states between “on” and “off.”21
Besides neurons, there are many other variables in the
brain that are not captured by the simplified on/off
variable. Each neuron can vary in the amount of neu-
rotransmitter in its vesicles ready for release, and the
state of the receptors on its soma and dendrites (that
is, to what degree they’re blocked by other molecules).
There can also be variation in the amount of neu-
rotransmitter that is floating free at any moment in the
space between any two neurons. There are minute vari-
ables that will likely never be measured yet do, theoret-
ically, make a causal difference. For example, in what
spatial direction is each neurotransmitter molecule
oriented? A neurotransmitter molecule must fit into a
receptor in order to carry on a signal. For the molecule
to fit, it must be facing a certain direction relative to
the receptor. So the spatial orientation of the molecule
before binding must have some nonzero effect on the
binding affinity. How many different patterns of analog
spatial orientation might trillions of neurotransmitter
molecules be capable of? That alone may be infinite.
The variable of “firing” or “not firing” does not
capture any of these variables. So the actual number
of possible overall brain states is some large exponent
greater than 2100,000,000,000 which is a large exponent
greater than the number of atoms in the universe.
Whether the human state-space is technically
infinite or merely practically infinite (larger than
any other number computed for any purpose in all
of science), it will not be exhausted in the meager
100 years of a human lifespan. This means that
the self-referential loops of processing do not need
to stop at any predetermined iteration or level of
abstraction. So for the purpose of analyzing the
choices of a human, the state-space and com-
putational medium are functionally infinite.
The last element required for undecidability is the
ability to implement negation. Negation in this
context refers to the ability of a logical system to
produce an output which is exactly contrary to the
processing which led to the output. It is equivalent to
the liar paradox, which is exemplified in a statement
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 59
 Human Agent Scale
Infinite
Self-Reference
Computational Medium
Undecidable
Sourcehood
Dynamics
Free Will
Figure 1. Relational map of concepts. The truth of each concept supports the truth of the concepts downstream from it.
This diagram illustrates how the concepts described throughout this article contribute to the overall reality of free will.
such as “everything I say is a lie,” or more formally,
“this statement is unprovable.” The liar paradox is a
self-referential statement, which can not be judged to
be true or false without a contradiction. Self-reference
is fundamental to this paradox because the statement
refers to its own validity. If humans can implement
this paradoxical logic into their thinking, then humans
meet this requirement for producing undecidability.
The fact that humans came up with the liar paradox
thousands of years ago is evidence that humans
can perform the logical operation of negation.
Conclusion
All three factors underlying the capacity to generate
undecidable dynamics are present in humans.
First, we exhibit program-data duality when we
process ideas, hypothetical scenarios, mathematical
60 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
Ability for Negation Temporal Asymmetry
Forward-Looking Ability
to Do Otherwise
operations, and representations of ourselves as objects
of thought. Next, we have the potential to access
an infinite computational medium. This is demon-
strated by the fact that we can think of any one of an
infinite number of objects of thought, which implies
an infinite state-space, which implies an infinite
computational medium. Finally, we have the ability to
implement negation, demonstrated by the inception
of the liar paradox in the minds of humans. If these
three elements are sufficient to generate undecidable
dynamics, then humans are capable of generating
undecidable dynamics, which means we cannot be
accurately predicted. And that means we have the
ability to do otherwise in the forward-looking sense.
Figure 1 shows the relationships between the concepts
discussed in this article. An understanding of the
human agent at the scale where conscious humans
actually exist leads to recognition of the self as the
 source of one’s actions, recognition of the relevance
of temporal asymmetry to human choice, and
recognition of self-reference as causally relevant
to human actions. Self-reference, in combination
with access to an infinite computational medium
and the ability to implement negation results in
undecidable dynamics. This entails the ability to do
otherwise in the forward-looking sense, which is
the only sense that makes any sense when temporal
asymmetry is taken into account. The resulting
total picture is that we (humans) meet two criteria
for real free will: the forward-looking ability to do
otherwise and being the source of one’s own actions.
Viewing human agents as whole humans instead
of as molecules makes it clear that humans are the
cause of their own actions, and also leads to a focus
on the human features such as self-reference, that
generate undecidable dynamics. The Stoic philosopher
Epictetus was right. Neither Zeus, Bertrand Russell,
nor the scientists recapitulating the latter’s argument
77 years later can diminish our free wills.
Stuart Doyle is a Force Recon Marine who has deployed to the
Middle East, East Asia, and Central America. He has written
philosophy and psychology papers published in The Journal of
Mind and Behavior and The Journal of Libertarian Studies. He has
also written for Quillette and Merion West. Stuart has degrees
in neuroscience and behavior from Columbia University and in
criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. Besides contending
in the world of ideas, Stuart also contends in the physical world as
an MMA fighter. Some of his fights can be found on YouTube.

REFERENCES

1 Epictetus. Translated by Higginson,
Thomas W. (1865). The Works
of Epictetus Consisting of His
Discourses, in Four Books, the
Enchiridion, and Fragments. Boston:
Little, Brown, and Company
2 Russell, B. (1979). History of
Western Philosophy (3rd ed.).
Book Club Associates.
3 Mele, A. R. (1995). Autonomous
Agents: From Self-Control to
Autonomy. Oxford University Press.
4 Pereboom, D. (1995). Determinism
al dente. Noûs, 29(1), 21–45.
5 Rosen, G. (2002). The Case for
Incompatibilism. Philosophy
and Phenomenological
Research, 64(3), 699–706.
6 Nahmias, E., Morris, S.,
Nadelhoffer, T., & Turner, J.
(2005). Surveying Freedom: Folk
Intuitions About Free Will and
Moral Responsibility. Philosophical
Psychology, 18(5), 561–584.
7 Bourget, D. & Chalmers, D. J.
(2021). Philosophers on Philosophy:
The PhilPapers 2020 Survey.
8 Vihvelin, K. (2018). Arguments
for Incompatibilism. In Zalta, E. N.
(Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition).
9 Doyle, S. T. (2021). Sizing Up Free
Will: The Scale of Compatibilism.
The Journal of Mind and Behavior,
42(3 & 4), 271–289.
10 Crick, F. (1995). Astonishing
Hypothesis: The Scientific
Search for the Soul. Scribner.
11 https://bit.ly/3yelD6J
12 https://bit.ly/3yhBuS6
13 https://bit.ly/3SBNC8A
14 Doyle, S. T. (2022). Cartesian
Dualism Does Not Commit the
Masked Man Fallacy. Preprints,
2022060035 (doi: 10.20944/
preprints202206.0035.v2).
15 Carbone, D., & Rondoni, L.
(2020). Necessary and Sufficient
Conditions for Time Reversal
Symmetry in Presence of Magnetic
Fields. Symmetry, 12(8), 1336.
16 https://bit.ly/3rs0HoX
17 Cubitt, T. S., Perez-Garcia,
D., & Wolf, M. M. (2015).
Undecidability of the Spectral
Gap. Nature, 528, 207–211.
18 Bennett, C. H. (1990). Undecidable
Dynamics. Nature, 346, 606–607.
19 Prokopenko, M., Harré, M., Lizier, J.,
Boschetti, F., Peppas, P., Kauffman,
S. (2019). Self-Referential Basis
of Undecidable Dynamics: From
the Liar Paradox and the Halting
Problem to the Edge of Chaos.
Physics of Life Reviews, 31, 134–156.
20 https://bit.ly/3e92coT
21 Zbili, M., Rama, S., & Debanne,
D. (2016). Dynamic Control of
Neurotransmitter Release by
Presynaptic Potential. Frontiers
in Cellular Neuroscience, 10.

VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 61

George Washington John Adams Thomas Jefferson James Madison

ARTICLE

RANKING
AMERICAN
PRESIDENTS
Does It Make Any Sense?
BY JOHN D. VAN DYKE

Coinciding with Truman’s historic upset over Dewey,
Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger published the
first known ranking of U.S. presidents in Life magazine
in November 1948. Schlesinger’s methodology was sim-
ple: he surveyed an array of historians and political sci-
entists, asking them to rank presidents from “Failure”
to “Great.” Schlesinger repeated his survey in 1962.
Twenty years later, the Siena College Research Institute
(SCRI) took up the mantle of ranking presidents. The
SCRI conducts its survey every second year of the first
term of a new president. Other outlets have benefited
from the presidential-ranking game as well. C-SPAN has
released a poll with every new president since 2000.
These types of rankings are also published by the Wall

62 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023

 James Monroe John Quincy Adams
Street Journal, Newsweek, The History News Network,
The Times, and the United States Presidency Centre in
London. However, the mainstay of the presidential rank-
ing remains the SCRI. As we shall see, there are three
significant problems with this methodology: presentism,
the evolving role of the presidency, and sui generis.
The Problem of Presentism
Presentism is “the tendency to interpret the past in pres-
ent terms,”1 and therein lies the first of the three major
fallacies of ranking presidential performance. Cultural
norms evolve over time, and it is impossible to predict
how these cultural norms will change in the future.
In 2001, only 35 percent of Americans supported same-
sex marriage,2 and George W. Bush was re-elected in
2004 after backing a constitutional amendment banning
it.3 His predecessor, Bill Clinton, signed The Defense of
Marriage Act in 1996, one of the most discriminatory
anti-gay statutes in American history.4 Barack Obama
opposed gay marriage when he first ran for president.5
Yet today, 75 percent of Americans support same-sex
marriage.6 Times change, and so do attitudes.
Our current social norms recognize the importance
of electing an African American to the Executive
Office. The day after Barack Obama became the first
African American U.S. president, the occasion was
so historic, the public clamored for newspapers to
save and the November 5, 2008 issue of the New York
Times hit $400 on eBay.7 Around the world, Obama’s
victory was hailed as nothing short of amazing.8
Will Obama’s historic accomplishment be remembered
as such, though? When Americans reflect on the legacy
of John F. Kennedy, they note his idealism, his ability
Andrew Jackson William Henry Harrison
to inspire, and his untimely death. What is not often
recalled is that JFk was also our first non-Protestant
president and anti-Catholic bigotry was still very
much in the mainstream when he was nominated.
Our attitudes towards tragedies have changed as
well. President Joe Biden’s lowest ranking is “Luck”
(he ranks 34th). This most likely reflects the tragedies
Biden endured prior to assuming the office; in 1972,
then Senator-elect Biden suffered the loss of his first
wife and daughter in a car accident, and would lose his
son Beau to brain cancer in 2015. While Biden’s losses
are indeed tragic, the choice to use this in rating his
unluckiness crystallizes the problem of presentism in
ranking presidents. In fact, more than half (25 of 46)
of our presidents have lost children before, during, or
after their time in office. Surely the loss of a child is
the most painful experience any parent can have, but
Joe Biden is not alone (i.e., “unlucky”) in this respect.
The Evolving Role of The Presidency
In addition to the survey, respondents are asked
simple “yes/no” questions including “Is the
Presidency growing too big?” Nearly half (44 per-
cent) responded, “yes,” 35 percent responded “no,”
and the remaining 21 percent did not respond. The
question itself affirms the second major fallacy in
“ranking” presidents: the job has changed dramat-
ically since President Washington took office.
Consider the subcategory “Executive Appointments.”
Washington appointed a total of four advisors,
including Thomas Jefferson (Secretary of State) and
Alexander Hamilton (Secretary of The Treasury).
There are now 15 executive cabinet positions.
Despite this, respondents today are asked to
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 63
Abraham Lincoln Andrew Johnson
compare and contrast presidents who served in
colonial times with those considering tax breaks for
Americans who buy solar-powered automobiles.9
Sui Generis
The third fallacy of presidential ranking surveys is
the fact that each president faced his own unique
challenges. Sui generis is a Latin term that translates
to “of its own kind,” and refers to anything that is
peculiar to itself: of its own kind or class. And no job
is more of its own kind than the U.S. presidency.
Below, I’ve included an analysis of the three broad
categories used to construct the SCRI rankings:
“attributes,” “abilities,” and “accomplishments,” with
select subcategories included to highlight the most
obvious limitations.
ATTRIBUTES
Family
Presidents should neither be given credit nor
blamed for their ancestry. With a single exception,
all presidents have been White Christian men of
relative affluence. Being the son of a president also
factors heavily into the Siena College ranking: John
Quincy Adams ranks second in this category, and
George W. Bush ranks 22 (his highest ranking).
Interestingly, George H.W. Bush’s father, Prescott
Bush, served as a U.S. Senator, yet Bush Sr. ranks
14 places higher (8) than his son Dubya.
64 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
Ulysses S. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes
Education
Barack Obama, who graduated magna cum laude
from Harvard Law school, ranks 24th in this category.
He is ranked just above Grover Cleveland (26),
who dropped out of school at age 16 but well below
George Washington (7), who dropped out at 11.
Woodrow Wilson (8), who earned a PhD in political
science from Johns Hopkins University, ranks well
above Calvin Coolidge (32), who graduated cum
laude from Amherst, but well below John Adams
(3), who graduated 15th in a class of 24 at Harvard.
Experience
Until Donald Trump (44), every president was either
a military leader, governor, senator, or representa-
tive (state or federal). Perhaps our most qualified
president was James Buchanan (36), who served five
terms in the House of Representatives, a decade in
the Senate, and was Secretary of State under Polk
and Pierce’s Minister to Great Britain. Historians
rightly deem “Old Buck” a failure for thinking
the issue of slavery would be readily accepted by
the country following the Dred Scott decision
of the Supreme Court, which ruled that the U.S.
Constitution did not extend American citizenship to
people of Black African descent, and thus they could
not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution
conferred upon American citizens. He was followed
in office by a man who lost more races than he
won: Lincoln (28) was a failed Whig Representative
from the Illinois frontier who, during his time in
office, abolished slavery and preserved the union.
 James Garfield Chester A. Arthur
Integrity
If nothing else, Grover Cleveland (ranked 26th) was
a man of integrity. The only president to serve two
non-consecutive terms, he was known for his spotless
record. Cleveland paid child support for a son he may
have fathered as a bachelor in 1874. When he ran for
the Presidency, the Republicans discovered this, and
hecklers soon chanted “Ma! Ma! Where’s your pa?”
Cleveland’s supporters asked him how he wanted to
address the issue. Cleveland simply replied, “Above
all, tell the truth.” The sole Gilded Age Democrat
in the White House, he vetoed 584 bills, including
238 pocket vetoes (414 first term, 170 second term),
more than all other presidents before him, combined.
Cleveland’s last words? “I have tried so hard to do right.”
Despite this, historians surveyed at Siena found reasons
to rank Ronald Reagan (24) two places higher than
Cleveland in the “integrity” category. In contrast to the
budget-slashing/reform-minded Cleveland, Reagan’s
defense spending increased while entitlements stayed
roughly equal. Reagan’s budgets tripled the deficit
and grew the national debt from $995 billion to $2.9
trillion, more than was accumulated in the entire prior
history of the United States.10 It is $31 trillion today.
Reagan’s Presidency was also marked by numerous
scandals. In addition to Iran-Contra, the Reagan years
saw HUD rigging, Wedtech, and the EPA Superfund
misallocation. And let’s not forget the Savings &
Loan crisis. As Martin Mayer rightly described in The
Greatest-Ever Bank Robbery: The Collapse of the Savings
and Loan Industry, the S&L scandal dwarfed previous
scandals like Teapot Dome under Harding (42) and
Grover Cleveland Woodrow Wilson
Credit Mobilier under Grant (25). The scandals resulted
in the investigation, indictment, or conviction of over
138 administration officials, the largest number for
any president in American history up until that time.
Imagination
How does one gauge how imaginative a president
was, exactly? Judging from his love of jokes and his
speeches, Lincoln (1) was certainly imaginative.
He even held a patent, for a flotation device for
harboring ships. Musical proficiency may also be
indicative of imagination. At least 11 presidents were
musicians, Jefferson (2), Truman (5), and Nixon
(21) being especially proficient. Nixon appeared on
the Jack Paar Show with a classical piece of his own,
“Concerto #1.” He also invited Ella Fitzgerald to the
White House and backed her up on the piano.
Herbert Hoover, though, ranks 35th in imagination.
Most historians now give Hoover credit11 as a good,
capable administrator who found himself in the wrong
place at the wrong time. In fact, prior to his presidency,
Hoover made a name for himself organizing shipments
of food for starving millions in Central Europe following
World War 1 and then organized massive relief for
victims of the Great Mississippi Flood in 1927. After the
Crash of 1929, Hoover submitted bills to Congress to
create the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to aid
businesses and loan federal money to states to feed the
unemployed while expanding public works.12 Following
his presidency, he spent his days railing against the
New Deal,13 meeting Hitler,14 opposing the atomic
bomb,15 and serving Truman in further expanding
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 65
Warren G. Harding Calvin Coolidge
food relief in war-torn Europe. Hoover was equally
prodigious as an author, writing books ranging from
foreign policy to his own childhood to fly fishing.16
The man was anything but unimaginative.
Intelligence
No intelligence test has ever been administered to any
sitting president, and most died before intelligence
tests were invented. However, some studies have been
conducted that estimate presidential intelligence
with varying findings. The Gough Adjective Check
List (1965) has been applied to presidents through the
years, as has the Historical Figures Assessment (1977).
Simonton (2006) determined “intellectual brilliance”
by the statistical technique of factor analyzing 14
distinct descriptors ranging from “curious” and “wise”
to “inventive” and “artistic.”17 Predictably, he found
Thomas Jefferson’s score (3.1) most “intellectually
brilliant,” nearly three times that of his closest
runner-up, John Quincy Adams (1.2). The Siena poll
ranks John Quincy Adams fifth in intelligence (behind
his father [4]), Madison (3), Lincoln (2), and Jefferson
(1). James Garfield (20) and Chester Arthur (36)
rank near the middle. Both were multilingual, easily
conversing in Greek, Latin, and English. Garfield was
ambidextrous and able to write simultaneously in
both dead languages. He also spoke and campaigned
in German. Garfield and Arthur also somehow
manage to rank lower than Lyndon Johnson (22),
who dropped out of Southwest Texas State Teachers
College, now Texas State University, after one year
to teach elementary school. (Johnson would return
and graduate a year later). Intelligence is among
FDR’s (10) lowest categories, though he ranks higher
than Garfield and Arthur. This is, perhaps, because
66 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
Herbert Hoover Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The Boss” was likewise fluent in German, Latin, and
French before he entered Groton Preparatory School.18
According to the survey, Donald Trump is the
least intelligent president we’ve ever had. The
participants’ decision may have been affected by
Trump’s refusal to reveal his grades from Fordham
and Wharton, the latter from which he earned a
B.S. in economics. This ranks Trump less intelligent
than Andrew Johnson (42) and Zachary Taylor (32),
neither of whom was fully literate until adulthood.
The literature reveals that every sitting president was
regularly derided for their lack of intelligence and/
or lack of fitness for the office during their tenure.
Biden (27) regularly endures being labeled “stupid”
by his detractors,19 and Barack Obama (9) was called
a “retard” by Ann Coulter.20 George W. Bush (41) was
described as a “numbskull,”21 and his predecessor
Bill Clinton (8) was called an “idiot.”22 Even Thomas
Jefferson (2), probably the smartest man ever to hold the
office, was described by none other than John Adams
as “unfit for office (…) a child, a dupe to his party.”23
Interestingly, Warren G. Harding is near the bottom
at 43. The child of doctors, he entered college at
the age of 14. He also famously went camping with
other “unintelligent low achievers” Thomas Edison,
Henry Ford, and Harvey Samuel Firestone.24
Willingness to Take Risks
Risk-taking only ranks favorably if the risk taken
benefits the country. Polk (7) was willing to risk the
lives of American soldiers in the name of Manifest
Destiny. The Mexican American War was, as
 Harry S. Truman John F. Kennedy
described by then-Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant (18),
“one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger
against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a
republic following the bad example of European
monarchies, in not considering justice in their
desire to acquire additional territory.”25 Regardless
of the reasons for the war, The Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo garnered 55 percent of Mexican Territory,
which now includes parts of Arizona, California,
New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah.26
George W. Bush (20) was willing to take risks, certainly.
His preemptive and unnecessary invasion and occupa-
tion of Iraq was disastrous.27 Nixon (12) was willing to
risk taping himself, including the “Watergate cover-up”
conversations that would lead to his resignation.
ABILITIES
Ability to Compromise
A sitting president’s ability to compromise is worthy of
judgment. But here again, context is crucial and every
president faces a different challenge. Franklin Roosevelt
(4) had an easier task before him in getting Congress
to compromise in 1932 and 1936 than presidents
without majorities in both Houses.28 His successor,
Truman (12), famously battled with the “Do Nothing”
Congress, and Bill Clinton (3) governed like a con-
servative after his party lost seats in both Houses.
If there was ever a president known for compromise
though, it would be Rutherford B. Hayes (23). In 1876,
Hayes lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel
Tilden. Worse yet, no clear winner emerged because
the outcomes in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana
Lyndon B. Johnson Richard M. Nixon
were unclear, and both parties claimed victory. A
compromise was reached in the form of the Electoral
Commission Act; the commission decided that Hayes
and the Republicans would take the White House,
and, in return, federal troops would be removed from
the South.29 This “compromise” resulted in the end of
Reconstruction and the rise of the Southern Democratic
Party (and White Supremacy) until the mid-1960s.30
Communication Ability
(Speak, Write)
Donald Trump (43) was the most effective media
manipulator the Executive Office ever held. In
an era in which millions are regularly spent on
political ads, Trump received over $2 billion in
free media coverage, more than all of his primary
and general election opponent(s) combined.31 His
preferred communication channel of social media
amassed nearly 150 million followers by the end of
his presidency. Yet he has ranked 39 places below
Thomas Jefferson, (4) who was such a terrible
public speaker that he refused to deliver a State of
the Union address to Congress. Instead, Jefferson
sent a letter, a tradition that stood until Woodrow
Wilson (7) addressed Congress in person in 1913.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Party Leadership
Jimmy Carter (36) failed to work with his own
party, as evidenced by Ted Kennedy’s challenge
at the 1980 Democratic Convention.32 Carter is
ranked only two spots above Franklin Pierce (38),
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 67
Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan
whose own party ran an “Anyone but Pierce”
campaign at his party’s 1852 convention.33
George Washington (18) was apparently far better at
working with his party than either Carter or Pierce. This
is perplexing, as The Father of our Country not only
didn’t have a political party but warned about them in
his final address and died believing they
were unnecessary.34
Relationship with Congress
James Monroe (5), enjoyed the “Era of Good Feelings”
in 1815, following the U.S.’ loss to Britain in the War
of 1812. However, George W. Bush also enjoyed a
similar “Era of Good Feelings” following the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, when his approval
rating hit 92 percent,35 and his Party easily expanded
their majority in the midterms. Seven days later,
all members of the 107th Congress except Barbara
Lee of California voted to authorize President Bush
to use military force against those responsible.36
In spite of all this, Bush ranked a distant 22nd.
Court Appointments
Easily the worst and most disastrous Supreme
Court decision ever issued was that of Dred Scott v.
Sanford (1857). As noted in a previous section, James
Buchanan (43) expected that the issue of slavery
dividing the country would be settled by the Taney
Court’s ruling. It is perplexing then, that the man who
appointed Taney to SCOTUS twice (Andrew Jackson)
is ranked 30, a full 13 points above Buchanan. Four
presidents—William Henry Harrison (42), Zachary
68 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
George H.W. Bush Bill Clinton
Taylor (37), Andrew Johnson (44), and Jimmy
Carter (19)—made no SCOTUS appointments at all.
Yet only Carter is ranked higher than Jackson.
Domestic Accomplishments
In “Domestic Accomplishments,” Thomas
Jefferson (6) is ranked very highly. In 1803, the
Senate ratified a treaty with France, promoted by
President Jefferson, that doubled the landmass
of the new country, eventually encompassing 15
states. It is puzzling, then, that Franklin Pierce
is ranked near the bottom in this category (41),
even though he signed the Gadsen Purchase
in 1851, in which Mexico sold 29,670 square
miles of land that eventually became southern
Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.37
Foreign Policy Accomplishments
Here Franklin Roosevelt ranks first, followed by
Lincoln, and then Washington. Each led as world-al-
tering wars were being fought. Donald Trump ranks
45th in this category, with historians declaring him
the worst foreign policy president ever. Trump
brokered agreements between Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, Bahrain, and the United Arab
Emirates, and also withdrew from The Trans-Pacific
Partnership, bombed Syria twice, and left the Paris
Climate Agreement. All these decisions pale in
comparison to ignoring secession, a sin committed
by the three presidents who preceded Lincoln.
One could argue that the Civil War shouldn’t fall
under “foreign policy accomplishments.” If this
is the case, then, why rank Lincoln so highly?
 George W. Bush Barack Obama Donald J. Trump Joe Biden

Avoid Crucial Mistakes ***

Easily the most crucial mistake a president can
make is committing troops to an unnecessary war.
Such a mistake is made even worse when the war is
lost. In 2003, George W. Bush (38) committed this
mistake by invading Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom
lasted nine years, cost trillions of dollars, caused
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi military and civilian
deaths and thousands of U.S. military casualties.
Presidents can and should be judged by their
performance in office. But presentism, the
evolving role of the office, and the fact that each
president faces unique challenges, makes ranking
them no more reliable than a parlor game.
John D. Van Dyke is an academic and science educator.
His personal website is www.vandykerevue.org.

Worse still was The War of 1812. James Madison’s

decision to go to war with Great Britain cost 15,000
American lives,38 yet Madison (11) almost cracks
the top 10!

REFERENCES

1 https://bit.ly/3Zsxf0K IQ, Openness, Intellectual 25 https://to.pbs.org/2Mp29oz

2 https://pewrsr.ch/40LfZF2 Brilliance, and Leadership: 26 https://bit.ly/42OsvFy
3 https://bit.ly/3nyjnEI Estimates and Correlations for 27 https://bit.ly/3lOOtrp
4 https://bit.ly/3TPYbGB 42 U.S. Chief Executives. Political 28 https://bit.ly/3Kide8D
5 https://bit.ly/3lKOfS9 Psychology, 27(4), 511–526. 29 https://bit.ly/42RTv6U
6 https://bit.ly/3LX0q92 18 Wink, J. (2015). 1944: FDR 30 Gillette, W. (1982). Retreat from
7 https://reut.rs/3lPKUB4 and the Year That Changed Reconstruction, 1869–1879.
8 https://bit.ly/3zhigfp History. Simon and Schuster. Louisiana State University Press.
9 https://bit.ly/3zcSQzD 19 https://bit.ly/3KkwWRq 31 Sides, J., Tesler, M., & Vavreck,
10 Yergin, D. & Stanislaw, J. (1998). The 20 https://cnn.it/3TVihPF L. (2018). Identity Crisis.
Commanding Heights. The Free Press. 21 https://bit.ly/3lOsb9b Princeton University Press.
11 https://bit.ly/2uK4JeT 22 https://bit.ly/3zfh6AX 32 https://n.pr/3nvHVhO
12 https://bit.ly/2ExgGwp 23 Adams, J. (1981). Diary of John 33 https://n.pr/2xrtHUJ
13 https://bit.ly/3JR4AN7 Quincy Adams, Volume 1 November 34 https://bit.ly/2NlyIWS
14 https://bit.ly/3G12md0 1779–March 1786. D.G. Allen, M. 35 https://bit.ly/3ZlRixD
15 https://bit.ly/3KfHMbe Friedlaender, R.J. Taylor, & C. Walker 36 https://cnn.it/3ZpcYsP
16 https://bit.ly/3TQBpOM (Eds.). Harvard University Press. 37 https://bit.ly/3Zpkm7p
17 Simonton, D. K. (2006). Presidential 24 https://bit.ly/40IifwO 38 https://bit.ly/3G1Ldzw

VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 69

 ARTICLE
NOT SO
HOPEFUL
MONSTERS
BY DOUGLAS R. WARRICK
I’m a Monster Biologist. No—that’s not a self-aggran-
dizing professional description. I actually think about
the biology of monsters.
Twenty years ago, when I first conceived of Biology
485 as a rigorous treatment of “Why Things Aren’t,”
I figured that it was already nearing obsolescence.
Surely the speed of information through this
new-fangled Internet, and the clarity it could
provide, would quickly render such an exercise
irrelevant to our college biology students. After all,
even growing up on the rural plains of Nebraska in
the 60s and 70s there were unmistakable signs that
the age of rational inquiry was here. There was my
erudite cousin Steve, who lived next door, and his
subscription to Skeptical Inquirer (although I’d wager
heavily that his was the only one in the county);
there was Lawrence Kusche’s marvelous debunking
of the Bermuda Triangle; there was Asimov and com-
pany’s dutiful savaging (Scientists Confront Velikovsky)
of Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision. I considered this
and all else with which I found myself surrounded
70 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
as positive signs that the world was soon to be a
more enlightened and reasonable place. I now
find myself chuckling grimly at my own naiveté.
The immediate impetus for creating this course was
relatively benign. I’d just spent ten bucks to watch
the latest Godzilla offering (1998) and was bitterly
disappointed. Some of that was feeling betrayed by
my own inability to suspend disbelief and just enjoy
the movie. But my dissatisfaction lit a fire; I no
longer lament the ten bucks, and despite a nagging
feeling that the time for a more deliberate exam-
ination of monsters had passed, I began plotting.
Soon after, I noticed a copy of SkEPTIC, standing
alone, proud—even defiant—among a forest of
groovy new-age claptrap by the checkout stand at
the local co-op. I confess I was mystified, both by
the magazine’s existence (Really? We’re still not
past this?) and its company, surrounded as it was
by reading best described as empty calories, poorly
spent. Somewhere was an impish outcast co-op
Illustration by Ástor Alexander

employee with a sense of humor, and the power
to stock shelves. That was the final straw. The
battle still rages. Students need this. So, here I am,
teaching Monster Biology for the twentieth time.
Any thorough treatment of the form and function
of living things, real or otherwise, requires a look at
their ontogeny and phylogeny. I suspect I share with
all monster lovers a hard-won intuitive understanding
of how monsters evolve into being. They originate
in everything from our personal fears of loss of both
identity and life to disease—from zombieism to apoca-
lyptic fears of something wading Godzilla-like through
the structure and quality of life humanity has worked
hard to create. These fears are justified, and sometimes
real, but the monsters we’ve created to embody them
are not. Thus, the content of my course, rather than
the more typical science course that describes how
and why things are, is an excursion into why we don’t
see any of this stuff wandering the countryside.
As a biologist, the reason this interests me—given
the evolutionary history of this planet and the long
list of monsters that it has created—is what it tells us
about the fictional monsters that didn’t happen. Was
it just Gouldian* chance? If so, they need not remain
fiction; with a little time and a little push, they could
happen. And as an adrenaline tweaker, I confess I
enjoy such thoughts, and even sometimes wish…
well, I just wish they weren’t relegated to fiction.
We’ve all felt it. We left the theater after Jurassic
Park and re-entered a world that was lacking; the
disappointment that Steven Spielberg tried to assuage

*Staunchly anti-deterministic in his thinking about biological evolution, Stephen J. Gould suggested that a re-do of biological evolution
on this planet would have different results. Stipulating to that—at the level of the individual, or the species—it also seems likely that with
any such replay, the laws of physics, chemistry, and hereditary would produce many immediately recognizable forms and phylogenies.

VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 71

 with this film is particularly pointed because these
monsters were real—and we missed them, by a lot.
Not only that, but their very existence precluded our
own; with dinosaurs occupying the planet, mammals
stayed underground, and underground is no place
for apes to evolve. The dinos’ time on the planet is
at once a cruel tease about the adventure that might
have been, and a cautionary tale about the imperma-
nence of even seemingly dominant life. And while
much of their DNA remains in every living vertebrate
animal—quite a lot of it in birds—the bits that gave
them their identities have been lost to the rock and
won’t be returning. Neither will: Otodus megalodon the
big shark; Dunkleosteus, the big scary fish eons before
O. megalodon; Titanoboa, the enormous snake—the
list is too long and depressing to include here.
Unfortunately—and with this I dare to reveal some
misanthropy—none of the rest of these monsters
will be spicing up the biosphere either. Sure, you
can get vampire and werewolf behavior with a
bit of furious rabies,1 but it’s not as romantic and
immortalizing as it’s cracked up to be. I admit it
might be diverting to dispatch a few mushroom
heads (The Last of Us, HBO), but Cordyceps isn’t
so clever,2 and our physiologies so robust3 that
we’ll have the fungi taking over the planet with
us as the vehicle. Likewise, the gorgeous Game of
Thrones dragons couldn’t walk,4, 5 much less fly,6 and
nature will only approach fire breath in the form
of an academic after too much coffee. And marine
iguanas and gorillas will be neither our mutant
comeuppance for our environmental disregard, nor
tough-love gods bent on urban renewal. Turns out,
gods of that scale have truly debilitating limits.
Of all the monsters I’ve encountered in fiction
and movies, the one I now find already wandering
the Earth is the one I had once found least likely.
This monster—or I should say, this monster at this
scale—was first described in the film Forbidden
Planet (MGM, 1956; a SciFi rendering of the Bard’s
The Tempest). Here the bad critter, marauding
the distant planet Altair IV, was a technological
product—an unintended consequence of a
machine so sophisticated that it obeyed, and could
make real, the Krell of Altair IV’s very thoughts.
Other treatments of this concept followed. In an
episode of the original Star Trek (titled “Shore
Leave”), the crew’s fantasies become reality. But
no real harm was done, and that is the trend; we
treat acquiring such absolute power somewhat
72 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
cavalierly, if not wishfully, secure in the notion that
as our technology evolves, so will our judgment.
As so elegantly described in Forbidden Planet, what can
go wrong is that we’re still human, and even the most
advanced intellects still mingle with the same primitive
impulses we’ve always had. Freud called the latter the
Id, and it was a Monster of the Id that destroyed the
Krell of Altair, as the machine made tangible all the
base predilections of the society. Even as they slept, the
machine turned their REM into bombs and ray guns,
as their subconscious passions ran roughshod over
their higher functions. But come on, it can’t happen.
The Id is just a reification, and none of our technology
is as effective and efficient as the Krell’s. Or is it?
Proof That Monsters Can’t Exist
Imaginations have engineered many volant dragons,
and they’ve gotten better—the Game of Thrones
dragons are among the best. We can get a sense
of their improbability with a simple calculation
regarding a gliding dragon. We’ll superficially
address the flapping dragon a bit later.
The lift generated by air over the wings can be
expressed as L = ½ V2ρSCl, where V is the velocity
of the air, ρ is air density, S is the surface area of the
wings, and Cl is s dimensionless lift coefficient (which
varies with wing presentation and characteristics
from 1.2–2.0). In level flight, lift L = mg, where m is
body mass (in kilograms), and g is the acceleration
due to gravity. Substituting and rearranging, we arrive
at the minimum speed for flight: Vs = (2mg/ρSCl)½.
To solve the equation, we need to know the area of
the wings, and the mass of the dragon, and make
assumptions about the planet. So we’ll assume typical
humans as scale. By this scale, g on Game of Thrones
was a familiar 9.81 m/s2. Also by this scale, with a
wing span of ~30 meters, the wing area is 440 m2.
Our remaining variable, mass, is devilish. It’s easiest
to start empirically; having weighed many birds,
I’d guess the young, 0.5-meter-long dragons would
weigh, at minimum, about 500 grams. Scaling up,
and preserving their geometry (which the animators
did, conveniently for all), mass increases with
volume, and volume increases with the cube of linear
dimension. The biggest dragons are 60 times larger
in this dimension; their mass would be 603 times
 larger, or 10,800 kg. Obviously, the key to these
extrapolations is the estimate of initial mass, but this
still seems conservative; these animals are the size
of airliners, and a cubic meter of tissue is 1,100 kg.
Crunching the numbers says that the minimum
fixed-wing airspeed (Vs) for the big dragons is 51ms-1,
or 110 mph. Were it an airplane (and I admit they
are not; aerodynamically, they’re clunky, drag-ridden
lizards), a typical slow, approach-to-landing speed
would be 1.5 × Vs; and a typical cruising speed
would be triple the fixed-wing airspeed (Vs).
It gets worse. Oscillating a wing of that size would
require considerable strength and structure to
withstand the accelerations, and the added structure
would result in massive increases in the inertia,
which increases with wingspan. This increase
in inertia, and associated decrease in wingbeat
frequency, means that as the power required for
flight increases with mass, the power available from
flapping doesn’t keep pace; for known vertebrates,
the maximum size for sustained, environmentally
unassisted (thermals, etc.) flapping flight is approx.
15–20 kg. For bats—with wings the dragons’ wings
very much resemble—the maximum is even lower.
abilities,7 but will still owe its existence to fallible
minds. AI programs will suffer from the Creator’s
hubris: I will make them in my own image.
Perhaps this “Commander Data” (or Mr. Spock) out-
come is possible. Perhaps the Freudian Id is a real,
parseable quality we can program around, sequester,
or better yet, completely excise. But what if
pathological emotions are an inevitable consequence
of any evolving intelligence? My parsimonious con-
clusion is that they are present in an intelligence as
common as my dog’s: anger, jealousy, possessiveness,
greed…he displays them all. Not often—he’s actually
a great dog—but they’re there. How unlikely could it
be that they would appear, however unintentionally,
in AI? This is to say nothing of the consequences of
a deliberate intrusion; the soul breathed into this
intelligence will have come from a god with an Id.
If you’ve never seen Forbidden Planet, consider it
homework. This is fearful stuff, and I haven’t quite
figured out how to face it.
Douglas R. Warrick is a Professor of Integrative Biology at
Oregon State University. His primary research is in the dynamics
and biomechanics of bird flight. Along with monster biology, he
teaches comparative anatomy and vertebrate physiology.

But The Future Isn’t As Clear

We haven’t yet created a “Forbidden Planet,” but the

foundation has been poured. I’m growing concerned
with the power of artificial intelligence. With the
advent of quantum computing, it now stands at
the threshold of acquiring truly unimaginable

REFERENCES

1 Gómez-Alonso, J. (1998).
Rabies: A Possible Explanation
for the Vampire Legend.
Neurology, 51(3), 856–859.
2 Lovett, B., Macias, A., Stajich,
J. E., Cooley, J., Eilenberg, J., de
Fine Licht, H. H., & Kasson, M.
T. (2020). Behavioral Betrayal:
How Select Fungal Parasites
Enlist Living Insects to Do Their
Bidding. PLoS pathogens, 16(6).
3 Brown, G. D., Denning, D. W., Gow,
N. A., Levitz, S. M., Netea, M. G., &
White, T. C. (2012). Hidden Killers:
Human Fungal Infections. Science
Translational Medicine, 4(165).
4 Biewener, A. A. (1989). Mammalian
Terrestrial Locomotion and Size.
Bioscience, 39(11), 776–783.
5 https://bit.ly/43g0837
6 Norberg, U. M. L., & Norberg, R.
Å. (2012). Scaling of Wingbeat
Frequency With Body Mass in
Bats and Limits to Maximum
Bat Size. Journal of Experimental
Biology, 215(5), 711–722.
7 Li, Y., Tian, M., Liu, G.,
Peng, C., & Jiao, L. (2020).
Quantum Optimization and
Quantum Learning: A Survey.
Ieee Access, 8, 23568–23593.

VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 73

 …under certain conditions
“
men respond as powerfully to
fictions as they do to realities,
and…in many cases they help
to create the very fictions
to which they respond.
—WALTER LIPPMANN

74 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023

ARTICLE
LOOK! UP
IN THE SKY
Chinese Balloon Scare Rekindles
Memories of Similar Panics and
Feeds Excitement About Aliens
BY ROBERT E. BARTHOLOMEW
A string of mysterious balloon sightings generates fear
and excitement as thousands of anxious residents scan
the skies to glimpse floating objects that are believed
to emanate from a hostile foreign power. The recent
Chinese spy balloon scare? No, the balloon panic of
1892 in Russian-occupied Poland. Debris from a bal-
loon crash in the U.S. ignites excitement that it may be
the remains of an alien spacecraft. One of the objects
shot down during the recent spate of North American
balloon reports? No, Roswell, New Mexico, 1947.
When on Saturday morning of February 4, 2023,
the United States military shot down a Chinese
spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina, it
marked the beginning of a rash of balloon sightings
across North America. The objects had previously
gone undetected as NORAD (The North American
Aerospace Defense Command) was focused on
fast-flying objects like planes and ballistic missiles.
After recalibrating their equipment, they quickly
began detecting slow-flying objects like balloons.
The balloon scare has coincided with a surge in
UFO reports in the United States. According to
the Mutual UFO Network, UFO sightings during
the first half of February (558) had already
eclipsed the total number of reports from the
previous month (489).1 An uptick in reports has
also been reported in the United Kingdom.2
While some of these sightings appear to be spy
balloons or have scientific purposes, others are
likely the result of human imagination as people
VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 75
 misidentify the usual suspects—astronomical bodies,
meteorological events, and objects such as birds
and planes. Social psychologists have long known
just how fallible eyewitness testimony is, especially
with the sky as a backdrop. An example of this
occurred on March 3, 1968, when a Russian moon
probe re-entered the atmosphere at 8:45 PM across
the central U.S., creating a series of fiery “meteors.”
EARLY MEDIA REPORTS ON CHINESE
SPY BALLOONS HAVE GIVEN WAY TO
SPECULATION THAT SPACE ALIENS
MAY BE INVOLVED. FUELING THIS
SHIFT IS THE RELEASE OF A NEW
U.S. GOVERNMENT UFO REPORT.
Despite knowing when and where it re-entered,
several people in the area at the time reported seeing
“flying saucers.” One even told investigators that
it had a “riveted-together look, with windows.”3
This would not be the first time that balloons—both
real and imagined—have triggered national scares.
The Russian-German Balloon Panic
During the 19th century, the use of balloons was
limited. Nevertheless, they captivated the popular
imagination both in Europe and North America.
Military espionage balloons that were in use were
crude and perilous affairs that were tethered to
a rope or a cable. The balloons were often said
to be performing impossible maneuvers, such as
traveling against the wind at high altitudes.
In late March 1892, a flurry of balloon sightings
was reported in Russian-occupied Poland along
the German border. In several instances, Russian
soldiers fired at the objects, but they always melted
into the night. The objects were often illuminated,
would sometimes disappear behind clouds, only to
reappear, and were assumed to have been manned
76 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
by German spies who were operating a new steering
apparatus. As aviation historian Bret Holman writes,
“All anybody had were the usual static observation
balloons, which were certainly not capable of the
movement seen over Poland.”4 Many of the sightings
corresponded with known astronomical bodies
such as Venus and may have been triggered by the
autokinetic effect. People are most susceptible to this
effect at night while staring
at the sky. Social psychologist
Muzafer Sherif famously doc-
umented this effect in a series
of experiments in the 1930s.
He found that when people
stare at a pinpoint of light in
a dark environment, the light
will appear to move, often
a great deal. This is because
there is a lack of visual context
as a frame of reference.5, 6
The scare happened at a time
of political tension between
Russia and Germany as fears
of an impending war were
projected onto the sky. Russian psychiatrist Vladimir
Bekhterev viewed the sightings as “collective
hallucinations” triggered by the rumblings of war.7
Similar reports of Russian spy balloons were logged
by the Germans. An investigation by the Russian War
Ministry concluded that the reports were the result of
“errors of observation” and overactive imaginations.8
A Rash of Kindred Scares
The recipe for these episodes includes a backdrop
of political tension with the war in Ukraine, the
close relationship between China and Russia, and
fears over a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
All that was needed was a triggering event—a
single incident that receives sensational media
coverage. This happened when the balloon was
spotted over Montana and tracked for several days
until it was shot down. Suddenly people began to
scrutinize their environment for evidence of the
nefarious agent. Where ordinarily they may glance
up for a few seconds, now they were scanning
the sky for minutes or longer to identify anything
out of the ordinary. This is a similar pattern to
Bigfoot and sea serpent flaps which have similar
ambiguous backdrops: oceans and forests.
On Feb. 1, 2023, a Chinese surveillance balloon was photographed floating over Billings, Montana.
On February 3, 2023, an official statement on the website of the Ministry of Foregin Affairs for
the People’s Republic of China (https://bit.ly/3Auui5z) confirmed: “The airship is from China. It is
a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies
and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course. The
Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure.”

Credit: Chase Doak, [CC BY 4.0] via Wikimedia Commons

VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 77

 History is replete with similar sighting waves which
reflected fears over aerial technology. Just before the
outbreak of World War I, there were mass sightings of
German Zeppelins above Great Britain. These reports
corresponded with the known positions of stars and
planets that were misperceived as a menacing technol-
ogy.9 Similar waves of Zeppelin sightings were reported
in vulnerable Empire outposts as far afield as New
Zealand in 1909.10, 11 In British South Africa, there were
mass sightings of German monoplanes from adjacent
German South West Africa. Records show that the
Germans had only three planes and none could have
remained aloft for several hours at a time or traveled
long distances without refueling. Nocturnal flight
was also treacherous. Later, it turned out that two of
the three planes were disabled, while the third was of
little practical use. Most of the sightings corresponded
with the positions of known astronomical bodies.12
On February 14, 1915, amid rumors that German-
Americans sympathetic to the Kaiser were planning
to launch bombing raids from remote airstrips in
Upstate New York, there were reports of phantom
airplanes across Eastern Canada. The sightings
prompted the Canadian government to declare a
state of emergency. Marksmen were posted around
a blacked-out Parliament. Banner headlines in the
Toronto Globe the following day revealed the intensity
of the scare: “OTTAWA IN DARkNESS AWAITS AEROPLANE
RAID. SEVERAL AEROPLANES MAkE A RAID INTO THE
DOMINION OF CANADA. Entire City of Ottawa in
Darkness, Fearing Bomb-Droppers. Machines Crossed
St. Lawrence River. Seen by many Citizens Heading
for the Capital.”13 Similar enemy airplane scares
fueled by German xenophobia were recorded over
Delaware in 191614 and New Hampshire in 1917.15
In post-World War II Sweden, there were widespread
sightings of ghost rockets, believed to have been fired
by the Soviets who were occupying Peenemunde,
Germany’s former center of rocket technology. This
gave rise to rumors that the observations were of
German V-rockets fired in an effort to intimidate the
Swedes. An investigation by Swedish defense officials
found that of nearly 1,000 sightings and several
“crash” reports, there was no evidence that rockets
were over-flying Sweden, and they attributed most
sightings to meteorological and astronomical causes.16
78 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023
Space Aliens
With the recent interest in Chinese spy balloons, it
is ironic that another balloon scare sparked one of
the greatest myths of the 20th century—that a flying
saucer crashed in the desert of Roswell, New Mexico,
in 1947. This event was prompted by the crash of a
modified weather balloon which was part of the U.S.
government’s top-secret Project Mogul. The incident
happened in early July and further fueled the “flying
saucer” wave that began the previous month. The U.S.
military was happy to entertain ideas that the debris
was from space aliens as it deflected from the real
reason for the balloon’s presence—to detect a Soviet
atomic detonation. A Gallup survey at the time found
that less than one percent of respondents considered
extraterrestrials as a likely explanation, while a
domestic secret weapon rated 15 percent.17 Within a
decade, the outer space hypothesis would quickly gain
traction in the public imagination, spurred on by the
publication of popular books on “flying saucers” and
the release of a series of low-budget movies featuring
space creatures.18 Another factor in the interpretation
of flying saucers as enemy weapons were recent
memories of another balloon scare. During the last two
years of World War II, the Japanese launched thou-
sands of Fu-Go balloons carrying incendiary bombs
in the direction of the Pacific Northwest in hopes
of setting fire to forests and farmland.19 Memories
of these devices were still vivid in 1947 and led to
speculation that the saucers were “an indication of a
similar activity on the part of the Soviet Union.”20
***
Early media reports on Chinese spy balloons have
given way to speculation that space aliens may
be involved. Fueling this shift is the release of a
new U.S. Government UFO report which found
that a relatively small number of sightings are
unexplained.21 Keep in mind that listing sightings
as “unsolved” and “unidentified” doesn’t mean that
they are of extraterrestrial origin, only that there is
insufficient data to make a definitive assessment.
At a time when our planet is facing an existential
crisis from international conflicts and energy
insecurity, it is not surprising that people are
 gravitating toward UFOs—which for many is a
code word for extraterrestrial spacecraft. Swiss
psychiatrist Carl Jung looked upon the appearance
of “flying saucers” as a modern myth in the making
involving the appearance of “technological angels”
that coincided with an increasingly secular age.22
poignant message about the times we live in—where
science and reason have expelled gods and demons
from our world, only to be replaced by saviors from
the sky who perform a similar function. Instead of
turning to aliens, we would be better served by placing
our confidence in science and human ingenuity.

It would be comforting to think that aliens will

someday make contact, share their technology, and
solve all our problems. The UFO narrative contains a

REFERENCES

1 Personal communication with
Steve Hudgeons, Director of
Investigations for MUFON,
February 16, 2023.
2 https://bit.ly/3N9hCbT
3 Bullard, T.E. (1982). Mysteries in the
Eye of the Beholder: UFOs and Their
Correlates as a Folkloric Theme Past
and Present. Indiana University.
4 https://bit.ly/43XHGg8
5 Sherif, M. (1936). The Psychology
of Social Norms. Harper & Row.
6 Sherif, M., & Harvey, O.J. (1952).
A Study in Ego-Functioning:
Elimination of Stable Anchorages
in Individual and Group Situations.
Sociometry, 15, 272–305.
7 Bekhterev, V.M. (1910). La
Suggestion (Translated from Russian
by D.P. Keraval). Boulangé.
8 Evans, H., & Bartholomew, R.E.
(2009). The Russian Poland
Balloon Scare. In J.H.K. Kelley &
K.J.L. Smith (Eds.), Outbreak! The
Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social
Behavior (pp. 546). Anomaly Books.
9 Bartholomew, R.E., & Cole, P.
(1998). Britain’s Zeppelin Hysteria:
A Classic Illustration of the UFO
Myth. The Skeptic (UK), 11(3), 10–15.
10 Bartholomew, R. E. (1998). The
Great New Zealand Zeppelin
Scare of 1909. New Zealand
Skeptic, 47(Autumn), 1, 3–5.
11 Bartholomew, R E., Dawes, G., &
Dickeson, B. (1999). Expanding
the Boundary of Moral Panics:
The Great New Zealand Zeppelin
Scare of 1909. New Zealand
Sociology, 13(1), 29–61.
12 Bartholomew, R. E. (1989). The
South African Monoplane
Hysteria: An Evaluation of the
Usefulness of Smelser’s Theory
of Hysterical Beliefs. Sociological
Inquiry, 59(3), 287–300.
13 Bartholomew, R.E. (1998). Phantom
German Air Raids on Canada: War
Hysteria in Quebec and Ontario
during World War I. Canadian
Military History, 7(4), 29–36.
14 Bartholomew, R.E. (1998). War
Scare Hysteria in the Delaware
Region in 1916. Delaware
History 28(1), 71–76.
15 Bartholomew, R.E. (1999). Die
Deutsche “Invasion” in New
Hampshire 1917: Ein Fall von
Kriegshysterie (The German
“Invasion” of New Hampshire
in 1917: A Study in War Scare
Hysteria) Skeptiker: Zeitschrift
fur Wissenschaft und Kritisches
Denken 12(4), 169–170.
16 Bartholomew, R.E. (1993).
Redefining Epidemic
Hysteria: An Example from
Sweden. Acta Psychiatrica
Scandinavica, 88, 78–182.
17 Gallup, G. (1947). Nine out of
Ten Heard of Flying Saucers.
Public Opinion News Service.
18 Simon, A. (1979). The Zeitgeist
of the UFO Phenomenon. In R.
F. Haines (Ed.), UFO Phenomena
and the Behavioral Scientist (pp.
43–59). Scarecrow Press.
19 Stevenson, H. (1995). Balloon
bombs: Japan to North America
(Free-flying balloons carried
bombs over the western provinces
and western U.S.). British
Columbia History, 28(3), 22.
20 Menzel, D.H., & Taves, E.H. (1977).
The UFO Enigma: The Definitive
Explanation of the UFO Phenomenon.
Doubleday & Company.
21 https://abcn.ws/41Ai0ES
22 Jung, C. (1959). Flying Saucers: A
Modern Myth of Things Seen in the
Sky. Harcourt, Brace & World.

VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023 SKEPTIC.COM 79

SUBSCRIBE to
SKEPTIC MAGAZINE 1­805­576­9396 (OFFICE)
subscriptions@skeptic.com

Subscribe, renew, or buy gift subscriptions to SKEPTIC magazine for friends &
family in our online store, SHOP SKEPTIC at www.skeptic.com/subscribe

Billing Address Shipping Address (if different than Billing Address)

NAME NAME

ADDRESS ADDRESS

CITY STATE/PROVINCE CITY STATE/PROVINCE

COUNTRY ZIP/POST CODE COUNTRY ZIP/POST CODE

PHONE/EMAIL* PHONE/EMAIL*

Subscription Options Moving?

This is a new
Notify us immediately by emailing shipping
subscriptions@skeptic.com
U.S.
address.
$30/1 yr. $50/2 yrs. $70/3 yrs.
Post office will not forward
CANADA/MEXICO magazines and we cannot offer
$40/1 yr. $70/2 yrs. $100/3 yrs. free replacements.

ALL OTHER FOREIGN
$50/1 yr. $90/2 yrs. $130/3 yrs. For mail­in subscriptions, complete this form, cut along the dotted

&
line, and send it to:

This is a renewal subscription.

Skeptics Society
This is a gift subscription. See Shipping Address.
3938 State St., Suite # 101
Santa Barbara, CA
Payment 93105­3114
VISA MC AMEX DISC US CHECK #
USD checks only. No foreign checks please.

*Phone/email address required in case we need to contact you

about your order.

CARD NUMBER CVV

Subscriptions will begin with the next issue released after we
have processed your order. Issues will be mailed mid­March,
mid­June, mid­September, and mid­December.
NAME EXACTLY AS SHOWN ON CARD EXP. MM/YY

80 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 2023

1 2023
 ILLUSTRATORS WHOSE ART
APPEARS IN SKEPTIC 28.2
to
­ ­ ­
Ástor Alexander is a figurative illustrator and
painter. He specializes in portraits and is a big
fan of 1960’s American illustrators. His work
can be seen at behance.net/astoralexander.

Jeff Drew, oddly enough, likes to draw.

Born in 1973 on the east coast of Indiana, www.skeptic.com/subscribe
he became an illustrator who has created
dazzling covers for alt-weekly newspapers

ander
and magazines across the USA. His
work has graced the pages of Playboy,

by Ástor Alex
Boston Globe, Village Voice and been
collected in several volumes of American
Illustration (including the illustration Jeff

.1 cover
created for the cover of Skeptic 27.4).
His retro-inspired artwork seems to

SKEPTIC 24
have time traveled from the 1950s, to
appear here, slightly augmented, in the
21st century. Jeff currently resides in
Albuquerque, New Mexico with his    
wife, who is a teacher, and their three
dogs, who don’t do much of anything.

Platinum Studio is an internationally-

recognized, award-winning agency
located in Rio de Janeiro.

subscriptions@skeptic.com
ffi

SKEP
TIC 27.4
cove
r by J
 

eff D
­
&

rew

­
SCAN THIS QR CODE
USD checks only. No foreign checks please.

ORDER PRINTED
Studio

BACK ISSUES OF
Platinum

­
SKEPTIC MAGAZINE ­ ­ ­
       
.1 cover by

AT SHOP.SKEPTIC.COM
28
SKEPTIC
 PRESENTED BY THE SKEPTICS SOCIETY
WESTERN AND THALASSA JOURNEYS

EUROPEAN
PASSAGE

The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain

Amsterdam to Lisbon
AUG 6–17, 2023
Aboard the New Expedition Cruise Ship Diana
accompanied by retired Ambassador Elisabeth Millard

Swan Hellenic’s Diana is a new-generation

expedition cruise ship. Featuring the latest advances
in technology and engineering, Diana is among the
world’s first environmentally-responsible ships.
Equipped with hybrid engines and a unique water
filtration system, Diana leaves a minimal footprint.

The Atlantic ports of Western Europe have long served to connect the continent
with the wider world, serving as bases for local and global trade, discovery, and
conquest, and producing great wealth in the process. On this voyage, we discover
some of the finest artistic and cultural fruits of that wealth as we sail the length of
the coast from the North Sea to Iberia.

Beginning in Amsterdam, we sail southward to discover a remarkable array of sites

that serve as testaments to the legacy of European civilization, spanning centuries
Honfleur Harbor, Normandy, France
from the American Cemetery and Memorial overlooking the beaches of Normandy
to the medieval castles and cathedrals of Portugal and Spain. Among the places we
visit are three UNESCO World Heritage Sites—the storied abbey/fortress of
Mont-St.-Michel; the great Christian pilgrimage site of Santiago de Compostela;
and Coimbra University in Portugal, one of the oldest in Europe. To these justly
famous monuments, we add extraordinary collections of art in Amsterdam and
Bruges, the picturesque fishing towns of Honfleur and Concarneau, and Frank
Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, almost certainly destined to become
another UNESCO site.

Accompanying us throughout the voyage will be retired Ambassador Elisabeth

Millard, who will share her experience and insights gained through 26 years in the
Foreign Service. During excursions ashore, we will be accompanied by expert local
guides and by members of our onboard team, who will also enrich our
understanding through lectures and discussions aboard. Jerónimos Monastery, Lisbon, Portugal

FOR RESERVATIONS, PLEASE CALL For daily itinerary, cabin rates, inclusions, and cruise ship
description, please download the brochure at:

THALASSA JOURNEYS AT 866–633–3611 skeptic.com/WestEuro2023