Beware of Penn & Teller
December 21st, 2006Just when I thought the Millennial Files and any number of environmental activists and educators had achieved the goal of proving global warming, and the advantages of energy efficiency and recycling, along comes Penn & Teller with a Showtime special declaring recycling a waste of time and ‘grigri,’ (voodoo amulet) or bulls–t.
Having been a fan of the famed magicians, I expected to find some entertaining satire, maybe even a “mockumentary.” Instead, I found a hackneyed, “documentary” loaded with slight of hand, misleading information, and poorly planned gags (For a team as creative as Penn & Teller, with such a rich history of sardonic, push-the-envelope comedy, this was a real step-down).
Fortunately, there were enough people posting comments at the site who saw through the act to set my mind at ease, but when I clicked on links associated with the site, alarm bells went off. I found more than several using this as evidence to support their long-held belief recycling is a waste of time. For anyone who might have been swayed, here is what I found:
Penn Jillette set the foundation for validating his claim that recycling is a Grigri/BS by quoting the New York Times, saying ”Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America.” What he doesn’t say is the piece from which he quotes,”Recycling is Garbage,” is a column, NOT an article, which is the writer’s opinion. He also does not credit the columnist: conservative/libertarian John Tierney.
John Tierney replaced conservative William Saffire at the New York Times, after the his retirement, for a few years. According to the Columbia Journalism Review , not only does Tierney have a history of “a tendency to support his point of view using sources with a clear ideological or special interest agenda, without properly identifying them,” but he is also known for advancing ”arguments in ways that border on outright intellectual dishonesty.” He is known for willfully ignoring major sides of a debate and ignoring basic journalistic practices which might weaken his case — also known as being free and loose with the facts.
Penn Jillette also neglects to tell his audience that the article quoted, “Recycling Is Garbage,” broke the record for generating hate mail to the New York Times Magazine. It must have slipped his mind to mention Environmental Defense, a legitimate environmental advocay group, issued a significant rebuttal of 10 of Tierney’s major points, and that Dr. Allen Hershkowitz, a National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) scientist, called Tierney’s story “an intellectually dishonest piece of advocacy.” HHmmmmmmm.
The Showtime Special also featured “expert” Daniel K. Benjamin of Clemson University if South Carolina. According to Jillette, Dr. Benjamin wrote a ground-breaking-paper on recycling. Unfortunately, Penn never named it, and when the camera went in for “close-up,” the lettering was illegible. As it turns out, the paper was Political Environmentalism, publlished by conservative think tank, The Hoover Institution in 2000. Hardly groundbreaking.
Dr. Benjamin, as it turns out, is a Senior Fellow at Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), a conservative think tank that promotes “free market environmentalism.” capitalism based on the premise that private property rights encourage stewardship of resources, government subsidies often degrade the environment, market incentives motivate individuals to conserve resources and protect environmental quality, and polluters should be liable for the harm they cause others. The latter seems like a good idea, but considering PERC received $115,000 from ExxonMobil, from 1998 to 2005, I find it hard to believe that principal is heartily developed.
Apparently, Penn Jillette thinks most people recycle only if it’s convenient, and if there are enough obstacles, they won’t do it. So he set up a fake recycling company who are taped informing “recyclers” they will have to recycle using more than the traditional green, blue, or grey containers. They come up with ridiiculous categories that each, require their own bin. I’m guessing the punchline was supposed to be “lightly-soiled toilet tissue” or animal carcasses like dead rats, which should have made them recoil. When the participants do not balk (as expected) at the additional inconvenience, instead of scrapping the bit, an incredulous and irate Penn shouts “These folks should get a medal! —Citizens of the F—ing world!”
This is followed by Dr. Benjamin “explaining” if people were “more informed,” aware their recycling would make “the budget situation for local communities worse off,” they would not be so willing to do so. This is similar to one of Tierney’s arguments in his New York Times column, and was debunked by the Environmental Defense rebuttal mentioned above.
Suffice it to say, I found enough problems within the first ten minutes of this program to be able to sit through the entire 30 minutes. If P&T could not have been informative, they should have at least been funny — or done some tricks that could not be solved with a little research.
Thank goodness Teller kept his mouth shut.
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:47 am
You do realize it’s their show, which is their opinion.They are not claiming to be fact, they are stating they are biased. The idea of the show is to get you to think for yourself, do your own research, make your own judgments. And from your extensive post, it looks like they accomplished that perfectly.
Well done, P&T.
December 22nd, 2006 at 10:47 am
While they do have a reputation for tweaking the public’s nose, I did not get the impression they were just stating their opinion. What motivated me to write this piece, were the people who linked this post, describing it as a ‘documentary’ to support their ‘feeling that recycling has always been a waste of time.’
It still looks like more slight of hand than incentive to think. BTW, when did they admit to being biased?
December 22nd, 2006 at 11:37 am
Oh, they state it every single chance they get - they want people to know that Bullshit is a biased show.
From Wikipedia: “In the episode “Family Values” Penn said, “. . . we’re fair and we never take people out of context. We’re biased as all fuck. But, we try to be honest.”
December 22nd, 2006 at 12:32 pm
That comment came from Family Values, not “Girigi.” They may or may not have taken people out of context, but citing a column out of context, as if it were an article that had been cleared by the editors at the NYT, is just plain dishonest(editors give a LOT of leeway to its columnists), and citing a ground-breaking paper without naming it, and blurring its title is deceptive. Nice try.
February 24th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Wakeup yourself!
Penn & Teller hit the nail on the head with their “Recycling is Garbage” ½ hour episode.
I sit on the board of a Lions Recycling firm. I am for recycling ALL products that are non-biodegradable but I am against environmentally wasteful recycling of biodegradable products.
The bulk (70+%) of ALL “recycled items” are paper and cardboard. These are biodegradable products and they consume far more environmental damaging resources to recycle them than to turn them back into dirt. The current recycling mechanism is flawed.
We all should only be recycling: plastics, glass, oil paints, oil, batteries, other chemicals that need proper handling. These products DO NOT break down into dirt.
February 25th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
So are you saying it is better to consume trees to produce paper and cardboard than it is to recycle existing products? I was never aware the objective of recycling was to turn things back into dirt — I thought it was about preserving and conserving finite resources like trees and fossil fuels.
Apparently the National Resources Defense Council agrees with me. According to their website “The pulp and paper industry may contribute to more global and local environmental problems than any other industry in the world. Paper manufacturers reach deep into species-rich forests for virgin timber, razing trees, polluting waterways and destroying precious wildlife habitat. Pulp and paper mills that use virgin timber are major generators of hazardous air pollutants, including dioxins and other cancer-causing chemicals. And the industry is the third largest industrial emitter of global warming pollution.”
Do you have any data or studies that disprove this?
July 16th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
You can dance about all you like, citing all of your “conclusive evidence” which supports an “unequivocal conclusion” that global warming is everything which you claim it to be, but until you can lay your hands on the information collected from satellites and other technologies that recorded exacting data, and that had been deployed during the 19th century and before, you’re spitballing.
Oh. My bad. You can’t. There weren’t satellites in the 19th century. There weren’t measuring tools which were capable of collecting data accurately enough to satisfy current scientific tolerances.
Ooops. What was I thinking?
Boy, is my face red.
Oh sure, you can induce conclusions based on what little data you’ve acquired in the past 35 years or so, but when applying those suppositions to environmental cycles of a planet which is millions of years old, your paltry 35 years of verifiable, accurate information doesn’t really mean squat.
You’re guessing.
At it’s best, it’s sloppy, unreliable science. At it’s worst, it’s fear-mongering rhetoric, thus morally and ethically no better or worse than what Penn and Teller do on “B_llsh_t” (although, at the very least, they’re entertaining, and without all the posturing of, say, Live Earth).
Even if the conclusions and statistics which are constantly being served up in that big mug of condescending smugness are correct (this includes all the boo-hoo-hooing about violating the rights of trees and their inhabitants), the revelation is considerably more sinister than a little more heat.
I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you geniuses that all of the environmental problems, not to mention diseases and pandemics, are indicative of an ecosystem which is, even now, overpopulated by human beings and is trying to self-correct the problem?
Ever occurred to you that there’s too many people? Ever occurred to you that at some time, better sooner than later, someone’s got to figure a way to throttle the exponential growth of our species before we’ve got nothing left?
Or is that just some heavy lifting that you don’t want to do?
July 16th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Thanks for taking the time to comment on an issue that is clearly as important to you as me.
Unfortunately, I had a hard time getting past all your anger to get a clear understanding of what your main argument against the existence of global climate change is.
Nevertheless, I appreciate your time and effort.
July 17th, 2007 at 6:46 am
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post regarding an issue that is clearly as important to you as me.
As expected, your reply was non-responsive, not because you “had a hard time getting past all my anger”, but because my argument highlights fundamental flaws in the interpretation and collection of your data which impeaches the “global climate change” hypothesis as it has been offered by you and high profile folks like Al “can you tell that I’m awake” Gore and George “lookie, I just bought me a hybrid” Clooney.
Nevertheless, I appreciate your time and effort.
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:45 am
Okay Peter, I normally do not get involved in adversarial discussions, but your arrogance has impuned my integrity. So : The data from the satellites is listed at our parent site www.mmmfiles.com.
http://www.mmmfiles.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23&Itemid=29
Your argument did not highlight fundamental flaws but rather your own lack of research. Saying you have a valid argument does not make it so.
If you click on any of the Archives links, or Global Climate Change links at mmmfiles.com, you will see the reams of research I have done, with links to the original studies. To make it interesting, I have also included photos and charts (I am not being sarcastic), which was easier to so in our old set-up.
I hope you enjoy the tour, and thanks again for your comments.