If the world's top climatologists are all convinced that the burning of fossil fuels is causing dangerous global warming, why do the media keep giving equal time to deniers? No matter how strong the scientific consensus becomes, the campaign to discount climate change -- financed by the fossil-fuel industries and conservative foundations -- continues. Fortunately, so does the effort to set the record straight and tell people the truth. The past year has brought three superb books documenting the paid political attack on climatology, which is nothing less than a paid political attack on science itself.
Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming (Greystone Books) was written by James Hoggan, owner of a successful Vancouver, B.C., public-relations firm, and his colleague Richard Littlemore. They are not radical environmentalists. They are businesspeople appalled at what other businesspeople have done to discredit global warming and help give the practice of public relations a bad name. With insider knowledge of PR tactics, the authors explain how deniers, funded directly or indirectly by industry, use their powers of persuasion in advertising and in factoids and viewpoints planted in the media. Hoggan and Littlemore reach a stark conclusion: "Reputable newspapers and magazines are today acting in a confused and confusing manner because a great number of people have worked very hard and spent a great deal of money in an effort to establish and spread that confusion . . . We have lost two decades -- two critical decades -- during which we could have taken action on climate change but didn't."
The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth (Hyperion) is the work of Eric Pooley, a deputy editor at Bloomberg Businessweek and a former colleague of mine when I was an editor at Time magazine. A truly fair and balanced look at troops on both sides of the climate battle, Pooley's book focuses on the so-far-futile effort to get tough climate legislation through Congress. We see how senators and representatives no longer represent the people. They represent the industries in their districts. That's how the coal industry or giant utilities get a veto over particular provisions in a climate bill -- sort of like Al Capone getting to help shape anti-racketeering laws. Pooley spent time with two of the deniers' main lobbying groups, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. The author didn't need to pass much judgment, since the fallacies of the denier arguments are self-evident to any thoughtful reader. Clean coal? That's as believable as safe deep-sea oil drilling.
The most scholarly of the three climate books is Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (Bloomsbury Press) by Naomi Oreskes, professor of history and science studies at the University of California, San Diego, and Erik M. Conway, who previously wrote a history of NASA's atmospheric-science program. Spanning the past half-century, the book shows how a group of maverick scientists aided and abetted the assault on their own profession. Fred Seitz and Fred Singer, for example, were accomplished physicists prominent in the scientific establishment in post-war America. They were also Cold Warriors who were fervently anti-Communist, an ideology that expressed itself in suspicion of anything that interfered with free markets. Later in their careers, they began to move out of their areas of expertise to challenge all types of government regulation. Seitz, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, worked for the tobacco industry -- distributing money for research that cast doubt on the scientific consensus that cigarettes were killing smokers. Singer, with many financial backers in the conservative corporate community, challenged evidence of the dangers of second-hand smoke, acid rain, and the ozone hole. Both Seitz and Singer became leading deniers of global warming. They were, in essence, scientists for hire.
It's not surprising that business executives would muddy scientific issues to protect their livelihoods. What's harder to explain, though, is why the supposedly savvy media keep devoting print and airtime to the deniers.
Journalism, of course, has always been a business, subject to the whims of the people who own the presses. But never before have the mainstream media been so concentrated in the hands of giant global conglomerates. Increasing competition from the Internet and from hundreds of cable-TV networks has put severe pressure on the profits of traditional news media. And that has led to a marked decline in the quality of journalism.
The heart of the problem is that the media have cut their staffs -- especially correspondents in the field who do actual reporting. Science reporters are among the most expendable. Time, for example, has encouraged most of its veteran science reporters and writers to take early retirement. Paradoxically, even as the amount of digital space and airtime available for news has ballooned, the number of reporters has shrunk.
With so much space to fill, the remaining journalists are overwhelmed and have little time for in-depth reporting. The easiest way to fill space or airtime is to give it over to advocates on particular issues -- to substitute opinion for reporting. Journalists simply present the opinions of advocates on both sides of an issue, regardless of their relative validity. Unsure whom to trust and afraid of getting things wrong or being accused of bias, unenterprising journalists go for "balance," even if one side is the entire scientific community and the other side is a bunch of lobbyists.
Debates between advocates are perfectly appropriate for issues that involve value judgments, such as abortion. But science is not about opinion or ideology or values. It is a process in which the truth is gradually discovered and agreed upon. The world is not flat. It is round. Journalists will always say that they seek "balance" to maintain "objectivity," but in reality "balance" is a poor substitute for careful investigation and presentation of the facts.
Striving for "balance" also serves the media's increasingly desperate quest for readers and ratings. Contrarian views and loud arguments make stories more entertaining. "Just the facts, ma'am" may have worked for Detective Joe Friday in Dragnet, but it doesn't work for Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann.
Here's a recent example of bad "balanced" journalism. One day last May, I happened to catch NBC correspondent Peter Alexander (no relation to me) doing anchor duty at sister network MSNBC. He introduced a segment this way: "Should schoolchildren be taught that man's impact on the climate, on global warming, is in fact a fact -- or should they be presented with both sides of the debate? Mesa County, Colorado, and Grand Junction High School have become ground zero in the teaching of what some say is junk science. Others consider it settled science." A group called Balanced Education for Everyone, Alexander explained, had gathered 700 signatures on a petition urging the school to stop teaching global warming unless it also presented the other side. What followed was a brief debate between a representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists and someone from the Independent Women's Forum, which created Balanced Education for Everyone. The Independent Women's Forum is "independent" of everyone except its conservative funders. One of its directors is Larry Kudlow, the doctrinaire CNBC host who seems to think that free markets can do no wrong. Why should MSNBC give such a group airtime to speak about science education? Why parrot pronouncements that the findings of the National Academy of Sciences are "junk science"?
It's a sad state of affairs when a late-night comedian has a better understanding of science than an NBC correspondent. But that may be our fate. Bill Maher also spotted that MSNBC story and had this to say on his HBO show: "Mainstream media, could you please stop pitting the ignorant versus the educated and framing it as a debate? . . . Devastating worldwide climate change is happening, whether you phone in for it or not."
This post originally appeared in the July-September issue of Conservation magazine:
Scientists aren't spin doctors on climate
2010 Summer is Preview of Future Climate Destruction
Can a video game help us adapt to climate change?
Big powers talk climate, no grand deal sighted
In Era of Climate Change and Water Scarcity, Meeting National Energy Demand ...
EU Energy Head Doesn't See Climate Change Agreement In Cancun
-----------------------------------------
From the Pentagon's Feb. 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review:
Climate-related changes are already being observed in every region of the world, including the United States and its coastal waters. Among these physical changes are increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the oceans and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows.
Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.
While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world. In addition, extreme weather events may lead to increased demands for defense support to civil authorities for humanitarian assistance or disaster response both within the United States and overseas... Proactive engagement with these countries can help build their capability to respond... DoD has undertaken environmental security cooperative initiatives with foreign militaries that represent a nonthreatening way of building trust, sharing best practices on installations management and operations, and developing response capacity.
http://www.defense.gov/qdr/images/QDR_as_of_12Feb10_1000.pdf
It is time for responsible environmentalists to refer to their fellow citizens in language that is respectful to them.
If you still can't admit that scientific fact (amongst others) then you are still a science denier.
Hope this helps.
Of course you are a denier, SecondTime - amongst other things you believe that that the Moon violates the laws of physics. But hey don't let reality get in the way of your science denial, not that you need me to tell you that.
"Stefan-Boltzmann never intended for his numbers to be applied to a three-dimensional rotating planet."
Not only were Stefan and Boltzmann different people but one cannot have been educated in atmospheric physics and not known who they were. That claim is laughable on its face - a scientific equivalent of asserting "Lennon-McCartney never intended for his songs..."
ClimateChangeFraud.com is a joke.
SecondTime: "Second, of course I agree that [the Stefan-Boltzmann] equations were not intended to be applied to ... a 3 dimensional rotating planet, or for that matter, its moon or moons. They invented an abstract construct, the black-body to allow the development of a simple model. But this little old planet is neither simple, nor a black-body."
In physics this little old planet - and also the Moon - are not regarded as ideal black bodies but instead as gray bodies. Thus for many scenarios the Stefan-Boltzmann *grey body* - not black body - equation is applied to them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan-Boltzmann_law
Moreover for boundary calculations the Stefan-Boltzmann black body equation is applicable to planets and moons in any event.
Did I mention that ClimateChangeFraud.com is a joke?
ClimateChangeFraud.com would be even more of a joke if there weren't so many scientifically illiterate and gullible science deniers like SecondTime who take clueless sites like it seriously.
Why people don’t save money by saving energy? If you look-before-you-leap (just had to use one more cliche), you may find saving money doesn’t always save money.
The denier label is unfortunately accurate. Climate science deniers for example deny one or more of the following scientific facts:
* The Earth has warmed significantly over recent decades, to what may be the highest level in two thousand years or more.
* Anthropogenic greenhouse gases including CO2 -- which is generated mostly by fossil fuel burning -- warm the Earth. Without greenhouse gases including CO2 the Earth's average temperature would be below freezing.
* The atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased by more than a third since the dawn of the fossil fuel era, to the highest level in at least 800,000 years.
* The scientific evidence strongly indicates that said increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and there is no other viable scientific explanation for said atmospheric CO2 increase.
* There is a strong correlation between said atmospheric CO2 increase and said recent warming.
* Known natural forcing agents of past global warming - including changes in orbital cycles, increases in solar radiation, and natural increases in atmospheric CO2 - cannot explain said recent warming. Neither has any scientific theory to explain the bulk of said recent warming other than anthropogenic global warming survived scientific scrutiny.
Again those are all scientific facts. Which is to say:
The scientific evidence supporting anthropogenic global warming is overwhelming.
However, there is a relatively narrow temperature band in which human civilization developed, based on:
-water availability
-agriculture everywhere tuned to local conditions and expectations of climate
-sea level
-other resources, like trees not being bothered by bark beetles.
We are on our way out of that band, perhaps far out, and the indirect effects hit faster than the actual difference in temperature. For instance, we'll get much less precipitation in places like the US SotuhWest, but with higher temperatures, there is more water in the atmosphere, and it comes in more storms, in places such as the upper Mid-West and North East. So the effects are really regional.
People might read the 5-page discussion for their own region, written for a general audience by experts for the US Global Climate Research Program in 2009:
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/regional-climate-change-impacts
This is good to share with children / grandhchildren, since it will help them know what to expect if they want to stay in the same area, or if they want to move, where might be good.
Prominent Climatologists Skeptical of AGW Alarm
http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/09/prominent-climatologists-skeptical-of.html
Eminent Physicists Skeptical of AGW Alarm
http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/07/eminent-physicists-skeptical-of-agw.html
NASA Astronaut Legends Skeptical of AGW Alarm
http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/06/nasa-astronauts-skeptical-of-man-made.html
We've been there and done that, but again here's Dr. Rogder Pielke Jr. admonishing you putting his studies and those of his father on one of your lists:
=================
Better Recheck That List
My attention has just be called to a list of "450 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming." A quick count shows that they have 21 papers on the list by me and/or my father. Assuming that these are Hypothesis 1* type bloggers they'd better change that to 429 papers, as their list doesn't represent what they think it does. ...
the title of your [Andrew/Poptech's] post is:
"450 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming"
There is nothing in my writing that fits in this category.
=================
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/11/better-recheck-that-list.html
"Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brendan-demelle/gop-chooses-lord-hitler-y_b_565126.html
When are you going to remove that blatant lie from your forum page?
http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Technology/index.php?showtopic=2050
Yes, again the following assertion is a lie:
"Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995"
I've already gone through why in explicit mathematical and scientific detail already with you:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brendan-demelle/gop-chooses-lord-hitler-y_b_565126.html
Here, again learn more:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/02/climategate_distortions
Poptech/Andrew: "and as I explained to you it will NEVER be removed from the page."
I'm well aware that you keep refusing to take that lie off of your PopularTechnology web page. Others here may not be, however, so I'm bringing it to their attention.
" a summary of the science states that "some uncertainties are unlikely ever to be significantly reduced". Unlike Climate change controversies, a simple guide - the document it replaces - it avoids making predictions about the impact of climate change and refrains from advising governments about how they should respond.
The new guide says: "The size of future temperature increases and other aspects of climate change, especially at the regional scale, are still subject to uncertainty."
The Royal Society even appears to criticise scientists who have made predictions about heatwaves and rising sea levels. It now says: "There is little confidence in specific projections of future regional climate change, except at continental scales."
It adds: "It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future.
"There remains the possibility that hitherto unknown aspects of the climate and climate change could emerge and lead to significant modifications in our understanding."
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/09/30/britains-leading-scientific-institution-softens-position-global-warming#ixzz11AMbYlPX
http://royalsociety.org/climate-change-summary-of-science/
Is there depth of depravity they will not plumb for the cause? A cause based entirely on the outputs of speculative, rigged computer models universally acknowledged to be unfit for prediction.
I notice now too how the rhetoric has changed from no global warming, to it's not us!, to it won't be as bad as they say because the earth has been through worse and come out okay so why should we change anything, because I DON'T WANT TO GIVE UP ANYTHING! AND OH YEAH! THE DEFICIT!
That's pretty funny coming from a guy who claims that the Moon violates the laws of physics. Gotta love your source for that - ClimateChangeFraud.com - too, as well as science denial in general.
Since about 97% of scientists have come to the empirically based conclusion that Greenhouse gases are changing the worlds climate- it perplexes me that 3% of the deniers are give 'equal time' with scientists who know what the reality is regarding CC.
Perhaps the media has to keep its profits high- and ratings up- and feel they need to lie and misinform the public about the true dangers we are facing- so they allow a small group of paid off 'scientists' from the Oil industry to be taken seriously.
When the full brute force of climate change hits us in the face- will the media still be talking about Lindsey Lohan>?
I mean really 'hockeysctick' c'mon
the schtick is from you----- give me more credit then sending to some denier web site
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoia-ssa011609.php
Since you SecondTime think the Moon violates the laws of physics that reality might be a little challenging for you as well.
Yes, they have an agenda against AGW, make up lies to support their claims, and ignore truths that run against them.
"Are you more qualified than Richard Linzen, Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels or Roy Spencer on this subject?"
Yes, they have an agenda against AGW, make up lies to support their claims, and ignore truths that run against them.
Those people you are listening to are not honest. Credentials don't matter when you follow a dishonest path that ignores the truth. Fred Singer was wrong about tobacco, wrong about SDI, wrong about acid rain, and now is wrong about AGW.