The Truth About Denial
The reason for the inaction was clear. "The questioning of the science made it to the Hill through senators who parroted reports funded by the American Petroleum Institute and other advocacy groups whose entire purpose was to confuse people on the science of global warming," says Sen. John Kerry. "There would be ads challenging the science right around the time we were trying to pass legislation. It was pure, raw pressure combined with false facts." Nor were states stepping where Washington feared to tread. "I did a lot of testifying before state legislatures—in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Alaska—that thought about taking action," says Singer. "I said that the observed warming was and would be much, much less than climate models calculated, and therefore nothing to worry about."
But the science was shifting under the denial machine. In January 2000, the National Academy of Sciences skewered its strongest argument. Contrary to the claim that satellites finding no warming are right and ground stations showing warming are wrong, it turns out that the satellites are off. (Basically, engineers failed to properly correct for changes in their orbit.) The planet is indeed warming, and at a rate since 1980 much greater than in the past.
Just months after the Academy report, Singer told a Senate panel that "the Earth's atmosphere is not warming and fears about human-induced storms, sea-level rise and other disasters are misplaced." And as studies fingering humans as a cause of climate change piled up, he had a new argument: a cabal was silencing good scientists who disagreed with the "alarmist" reports. "Global warming has become an article of faith for many, with its own theology and orthodoxy," Singer wrote in The Washington Times. "Its believers are quite fearful of any scientific dissent."
With the Inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, the denial machine expected to have friends in the White House. But despite Bush's oil-patch roots, naysayers weren't sure they could count on him: as a candidate, he had pledged to cap carbon dioxide emissions. Just weeks into his term, the Competitive Enterprise Institute heard rumors that the draft of a speech Bush was preparing included a passage reiterating that pledge. CEI's Myron Ebell called conservative pundit Robert Novak, who had booked Bush's EPA chief, Christie Todd Whitman, on CNN's "Crossfire." He asked her about the line, and within hours the possibility of a carbon cap was the talk of the Beltway. "We alerted anyone we thought could have influence and get the line, if it was in the speech, out," says CEI president Fred Smith, who counts this as another notch in CEI's belt. The White House declines to comment.
Bush not only disavowed his campaign pledge. In March, he withdrew from the Kyoto treaty. After the about-face, MIT's Lindzen told NEWSWEEK in 2001, he was summoned to the White House. He told Bush he'd done the right thing. Even if you accept the doomsday forecasts, Lindzen said, Kyoto would hardly touch the rise in temperatures. The treaty, he said, would "do nothing, at great expense."
Bush's reversal came just weeks after the IPCC released its third assessment of the burgeoning studies of climate change. Its conclusion: the 1990s were very likely the warmest decade on record, and recent climate change is partly "attributable to human activities." The weather itself seemed to be conspiring against the skeptics. The early years of the new millennium were setting heat records. The summer of 2003 was especially brutal, with a heat wave in Europe killing tens of thousands of people. Consultant Frank Luntz, who had been instrumental in the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, suggested a solution to the PR mess. In a memo to his GOP clients, he advised them that to deal with global warming, "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." They should "challenge the science," he wrote, by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view." Although few of the experts did empirical research of their own (MIT's Lindzen was an exception), the public didn't notice. To most civilians, a scientist is a scientist.
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Member Comments
Posted By: florianb @ 03/15/2008 7:04:50 PM
Comment: The reason "deniers" do not like being called deniers is because it is a very insulting ad-hominem. Five years ago I was fully convinced that man-made CO2 is by far the largest driver of global warming and that the cost to man-kind in the future are going to be staggering if "we don't do something now". Since then I have spend considerable time researching this issue by studying what is actually known and with what certainty it is known by reading scientific publications. I have a B.S. from Caltech *** laude, and probably a better quantitative understanding on these matters than Al Gore or Sharon Begley. There are distortions of facts on both sides of the argument, but what is astonishing to me is the lengths some people in the media and in politics (Al Gore) go to denounce anyone who may question the wisdom of the Kyoto Treaty as a stooge of big oil or a whacko. This is one of the worst pieces of journalism I have come by in a while, and consists of little more than ad-hominems. To any sensible and critically-minded reader, I highly recommend doing some personal research on this, admittingly difficult, issue and judge for yourself.
Regards,
Florian
Posted By: rockhead @ 02/23/2008 12:54:28 PM
Comment: I guess that I am one of the deniers, and this probably disqualifies me to the enlightened ones that want to tell the rest of us how to live. Maybe Mr. Gore should lead by example by getting rid of his mansion(s) and showing the rest of us how it is done. Maybe those who would wreck our economy by instituting draconian cuts should be forced to live the life style that this would cause. Maybe someone that thinks that Kyoto was such a great idea should check out how many countries have dropped out of the protocols, and how many others have failed to abide by it. Remember that when the treaty was first negotiated, the U.S. Senate voted UNANIMOUSLY to reject it.
I have no problem with living a simpler life and I do try to reduce my use of energy, but my primary reason is that I have to pay my own bills, and energy is expensive. Maybe we should try making everyone pay for what they use. I had Greenpeace come to my door to try to convince me that the local power company could more to reduce emissions. After a little give and take, I asked them if they really wanted to help reduce emissions. Of course, both of them readily agreed. I told them to go home, open their main breaker and shut off their gas. They were not so enthused about that solution.
Posted By: Deep Blue @ 01/24/2008 8:41:22 AM
Comment: Here in Sweden we get to hear about how the US is the main leg-dragger for a global consensus on man-made global warming (MMGW). Gore was treated like a demi-god during his visit here to pick up the Peace prize (which seems to no longer be given to people who have worked for peace, but for those who create conflict - ???...to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses???) and there were yards of full-page "People=Cars=CO2 =MMGW" stuff in the papers for weeks. But nowhere were there voices questioning all this information except for the rare ???reader send-ins???.
Unfortunately, Sweden does not have as open of a climate for criticism of "known facts" as the states do, therefore the media continues to pump out these MMGW ???truths??? and the schools swallow them since there's never been a public factual challenge to Gore's movie like in England.
For example, my girlfriend's daughter (15) is preparing to write a report about man-made global warming and I've been introducing, what Sharon Begley calls ???...a paralyzing fog of doubt ???, where I suggest that ???MMGW??? is more of a prideful exaggeration of our very limited power to really effect a global climate change. For an example we get a 145-255 million ton CO2/Methane injection each year from volcano eruptions. This ???volcanic injection??? into our atmosphere (along with other cyclic ???warming??? activities like our sun), provide, in my opinion, a much heavier GW load than anything that we have produced since we started making fires outside of our caves (unless we unleash all of the world's nuclear warheads of course).
Because of my ???paralyzing fog of doubt??? she was interested in learning more, so I gave her some links to check out which may help her to separate the husk from the corn and encourage her to think (and write) critically about today's political and scientific ???facts???.
http://www.solarnavigator.net/volcanoes.htm
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-04/rtsu-slv042507.php
http://www.inteliorg.com/co2_climate_change.html