A conservative think tank attempted to engage the debate over climate policy recently, only to see that attempt explode in its face. The tangled episode, with its combustible mix of sensationalist journalism, public outrage, and the threatened intervention of the federal government, is rich with lessons about the current state of climate politics -- lessons none of the participants seem inclined to learn.
The brouhaha began on Feb. 2, when the U.K. newspaper The Guardian published an article by Ian Sample claiming that the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute was paying scientists $10,000 a piece to "undermine" the just-released report from the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. AEI was described as a "lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies" and an "ExxonMobil-funded think tank with close links to the Bush administration." And that was just in the first two paragraphs.
The story rode a wave of IPCC-driven global-warming coverage, finding its way into major newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, several cable news shows, and dozens of blogs. Such a fuss was kicked up that four U.S. senators -- Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) -- sent AEI a stern letter [PDF], reprimanding it for attacking IPCC science and summoning the two scholars in charge of the project to testify before Congress.
Sample's article is rich with insinuation. As AEI President Christopher DeMuth wrote in a heated response, AEI is not a "lobby group" -- it's a research institution that does no lobbying. Ties to the Bush administration consist in the fact that some AEI fellows once worked there, much as scholars at the Brookings Institution or the Center for American Progress once worked in Democratic administrations (though one does wonder what sort of scholarship is emanating from the august office of AEI fellow Lynne Cheney).
Sample reports that ExxonMobil has funded AEI to the tune of $1.6 million, without noting that the figure is an aggregate over seven years; DeMuth claims that no corporation's donations represent more than 1 percent of AEI's annual revenue. ExxonMobil denies being aware of AEI's project on climate-change policy, and says it accepts the IPCC's findings.
Nor is it particularly unusual for a scientist (or lawyer, or doctor) to receive an honorarium for original, publishable work. A $10,000 honorarium is on the generous side, but as one of the scientists approached by AEI later noted, it doesn't come out to a very princely hourly wage -- certainly not enough to buy the integrity of a well-known scientist.
The heart of the matter, of course, is whether the honorarium was meant to insure conclusions that would "undermine" the IPCC. Was AEI acting in the spirit of critical inquiry or offering a thinly disguised bribe? That depends entirely on one's interpretation of AEI's motives. Here it helps to trace the journey of the story out of obscurity and into the spotlight.
Steve Hayward.
What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been
It began in July 2006, when climate scientists Jerry North and Steve Schroeder at Texas A&M University received letters from AEI scholars Steve Hayward and Ken Green, soliciting a "review and policy critique" of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report. (At that point, the report was seven months away from official public release, but drafts had been widely leaked.) North and Schroeder are mainstream researchers who have done respected work on climate modeling. They shared the letter with their colleague Andrew Dessler, who had just started a blog on climate science and politics. Dessler scanned the letter [PDF] that had been sent to Schroeder and wrote up a short critique, which Hayward and Green have acknowledged is "critical but largely fair-minded."
That request is clumsy and somewhat muddled, but not obviously nefarious. Given the surrounding text, however, it wasn't difficult to imagine that Hayward and Green were fishing for IPCC-bashing. For example, there was this passage, which trots out some well-worn but largely baseless tropes from climate-skeptic circles: "As with any large-scale 'consensus' process, the IPCC is susceptible to self-selection bias in its personnel, resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent, and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work of the complete Working Group reports."
Dessler's post expressed doubt that AEI would give the IPCC's report a fair hearing, but ultimately refrained from judgment, noting the professional stature of the scientists being approached. Several blogs linked to his post and there followed a period of internet chatter on the subject, but it soon died down.
In the ensuing months, a few reporters sniffed around -- an ABC News producer contacted Dessler and New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin contacted North -- but none found the story worth pursuing.
Until recently, that is. In mid-January, on the eve of the IPCC report's release, the story resurfaced with a vengeance. Someone -- reportedly someone from Greenpeace -- began approaching reporters with it. A number of them contacted Dessler, who sent them on to North and Schroeder. Hayward says he was approached by someone from a major broadcast network, who talked to him extensively about his views before abandoning the story. Eventually, Ian Sample took the bait, and from there a controversy was born and spread back to the States.
Ken Green.
Battered by the enormous reaction to the story, Hayward and Green sent out a second round of letters to noted scientists and economists, saying they "have been persuaded that an IPCC-focused project is too limited" and are now expanding the project's focus, seeking papers on climate policy in general.
In a new piece in The Weekly Standard recounting these events, Hayward and Green again repeat some misleading talking points. To wit:
One possible reason for the timing [of the story's reemergence] is that there appear to be some significant retreats from the 2001 IPCC report. The IPCC has actually lowered its estimate of the magnitude of human influence on warming, though we shall have to wait for the full report in May to understand how and why. Only readers with detailed knowledge of the 2001 report would notice these changes, which is why most news accounts failed to report them.
This is highly misleading. The 2007 report did not "retreat" from the 2001 report; it simply increased its estimate of the climate-sheltering effects of aerosols, or tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere. As those aerosols are removed via stronger international air-quality standards, the climate will show more warming, not less. There's no good news there for denialists.
Is there enough evidence to suppose that Schroeder and North's work would have been used to "undermine" the IPCC report? They thought so. Schroeder, an IPCC supporter, told the Washington Post that he and North declined AEI's offer because they were worried their work would be "misused" and placed alongside "off-the-wall ideas" questioning anthropogenic climate change.
Hayward and Green say they had no such intention. Both claim to accept the core IPCC consensus, and despite a history of skepticism -- back in 2003, Green was downplaying the problem for Canada's right-wing Fraser Institute -- their more recent writings support the claim. Like many other once-skeptical conservatives, they seem to have been persuaded in recent years by the growing body of scientific research.
They claim their project was intended to highlight responsible -- as opposed to ideological -- analysis and criticism of the policy-relevant portions of the IPCC report. They point out that some scientists participating in the IPCC have spoken at AEI, and more have been invited. AEI has organized other panels and speakers [PDF] around climate issues, none overtly hostile to the basic science. Hayward has written supportively about the U.N. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and other environmental efforts, and at least five AEI scholars are on record in support of a carbon tax, which sits oddly with the notion that ExxonMobil is dictating research.
Based on the balance of evidence, it's reasonable to believe that AEI's project was always meant, as its architects claim, to focus on climate policymaking and not on disputing basic science. But some careless phrasing, coupled with a sensationalist Guardian story that presented a highly charged interpretation as fact, has brought a deluge of political opprobrium down on Hayward and Green's heads. The media frenzy has even raised the specter of federal interference in private-sector research, which can't be a comfortable prospect for anyone committed to open debate.
Lesson Meets the Eye
What can be learned from the episode? In their recent Weekly Standard piece, Hayward and Green settled on a familiar narrative: the left, abetted by its media proxies, seeks to stifle and marginalize those who would question strict orthodoxy. But reflexive conservative victimology seems a bit self-serving in this case.
What they do not acknowledge is that the conservative movement has squandered its credibility on the subject of climate change. After years of efforts to deny or obfuscate mainstream climate science -- driven by ideology, fossil-fuel funding, or some unknowable mix of the two -- conservatives simply are not trusted on the issue. A story about a right-wing think tank funding attacks on science is credulously accepted precisely because it conforms to recent history. Most people expect it to be true.
If a conservative think tank seeks to fund responsible criticism on climate science or policy, it would do well to tread carefully, making explicit its acceptance of the core IPCC consensus and reassuring potential participants that their work will not be drafted in service of an ideological attack. That Hayward and Green were so incautious in their approach indicates that they have not fully recognized the level of mistrust they must now overcome, simply by virtue of their institutional and ideological affiliations.
Those who favor action on climate change can learn something from this episode as well, and not just the wisdom of bringing heightened skepticism to favorably biased news stories. Too many activists and commentators are fighting the last war, pounding away on any sign of doubt about basic climate science, even where no such doubt exists. The debate over the existence of anthropogenic climate change, despite some noisy rear-guard skirmishes, is largely over.
The policy debate is going to be more messy and politicized than the science debate ever was -- after all, science will not be there to settle it. It will turn on risk assessment and the untidy art of balancing competing interests. Many conservatives who have abandoned their contrarianism on the science will likely now turn to carving out a policy position that downplays the risks of climate change, exaggerates the costs of addressing it, and above all discourages any response that relies too heavily on government regulation or investment.
Those who favor immediate, substantial action to address climate change would do well to prepare for that debate. Bashing climate denialists still makes good copy, but it is increasingly beside the point.
How industry pressures and competing national agendas dim prospects for a climate treaty
Flurry of lobbying cash obscures U.S. climate debate
Comments
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Delay And Deny Posted 10:08 am
13 Feb 2007
Try as you might, and that includes running the LONGEST article you could possibly run...science by committee does not work. I'm glad the Oil Companies handed out a few pittances to countervail the billions of dollars spent by Lib institutions and power mad "scientists" to try and scare the American Public into funding their crackpot ideas and "seminars" about Global Heating.
Case in point: It's already been proven that solar activity is responsible for 100% of Global Heating. There's nothing you can do about it. Dry your eyes, put the granola back in the cup board and enjoy some rolfing on the sun deck.
Here, read and understand it:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=fee9a01f ...
Svensmark and his colleague had arrived at their theory after examining data that showed a surprisingly strong correlation between cosmic rays --highspeed atomic particles originating in exploded stars in the Milky Way -- and low-altitude clouds. Earth's cloud cover increased when the intensity of cosmic rays grew and decreased when the intensity declined.
Low-altitude clouds are significant because they especially shield the Earth from the sun to keep us cool. Low cloud cover can vary by 2% in five years, affecting the Earth's surface by as much as 1.2 watts per square metre during that same period. "That figure can be compared with about 1.4 watts per square metre estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the greenhouse effect of all the increase in carbon dioxide in the air since the Industrial Revolution," Dr. Svensmark explained.
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greenlantern Posted 10:56 am
13 Feb 2007
Allow me also to apologise to Americans for any crack that a Canadian may have made about how much better our education system is than yours...
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thomaslknapp Posted 1:52 am
14 Feb 2007
The two leading candidates for the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination (Steve Kubby and George Phillies) take climate change issues seriously, despite hits from the entrenched "skeptic" faction for doing so. It's too early to say that the battle is won, but it does look like the tide is turning.
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EliRabett Posted 2:59 am
14 Feb 2007
There were two letters. The one to Schroeder and NORTH made an UNCONDITIONAL offer of $10K. No other copies of such a letter have appeared. The second made a conditional offer. Only the AEI would determine what would be paid. Replies were to have been received by 9/1/06. Who were these letters sent to. Who replied. What were the replies.
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Rob Smith Posted 3:46 am
14 Feb 2007
Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Short on this subject: http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/sgw_feature.asp?id=2
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bkrell Posted 3:52 am
14 Feb 2007
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EliRabett Posted 5:10 am
14 Feb 2007
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jre Posted 5:15 am
14 Feb 2007
We have plenty of the home-grown variety down here. Blessedly, their influence appears to be waning on both sides of the border. The dogs bark, but the caravan, after all, moves on.
As to Svensmark -- though Eli was too modest to note it, the techno-bunny has already dealt with that particular barking dog. There's also an excellent treatment at RealClimate.
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Benny Big Eye Posted 5:33 am
14 Feb 2007
I think it's wonderful that Dessler and Roberts tried to sort it all out, but I think you're both more than a little naive and definitely lacking Beltway sophistication.
Groups like the AEI claim to be think tanks, but they have a very aggressive agenda. Brookings may be seen as a little to the left, but to compare the two is like saying CNN and MSNBC are liberal, while Fox is conservative.
So let's call it a wash.
In the words of William Greider, groups like AEI function as "deep lobbyists"--groups that are not specifically lobbyists in the ways that people might expect, but who are part of the crowd trying to set a legislative agenda. And they have been far too ideological in their approach.
What makes this whole episode so disappointing is that the only newspaper to point this out is all the way across the Atlantic. What's going on with the American media? Why have the lost their courage?
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Steve Bloom Posted 6:11 am
14 Feb 2007
AEI lobbies at the policy level. Notwithstanding that it's a critical distinction as far as the IRS is concerned, meaning that DeMuth's "heated" response should be seen as being for the benefit of government tax lawyers, in the real world it means nothing. Probably it would even make an outfit like AEI less effective in their lobbying if they tied themselves too closely to particular pieces of legislation.
By the way, I'm sure that every one of AEI's fossil fuel industry funders could join EM in claiming no specific advance knowledge of this campaign. Based on that, should we conclude that the campaign is something that AEI did because it wanted to for reasons having nothing to do with the perceived interests of those funders?
AEI quite consciously shifts its position on climate change in accordance with their perception of which approach will be most effective in advancing the interests of their funders, and those interests are to delay serious action for as long as possible and then to ensure that the process of responding to climate change is as industry-friendly as possible. Any other approach would dilute the effectiveness of their lobbying.
One last point on the carbon tax: AEI knows that such a tax is a non-starter in Congress for the forseeable future. So their new-found advocacy for such a tax vs. cap-and-trade is likely to have what practical effect on legislation over the next few years?
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KenGreen Posted 6:28 am
14 Feb 2007
I'll make this simple and unambiguous:
I agree, and have always agreed, that we have seen a warming of the atmosphere since 1850, as noted in the IPCC reports.
I agree, and have always agreed, that the warming is causing secondary climate effects, some of them negative.
I agree, and have always agreed that SOME of the observed warming was likely due to human GHG emissions. How MUCH we contributed at which point, and through which activity is still an open question, as is clearly evidenced from the fact that the IPCC itself keeps changing that assessment. That is policy-relevant data to question, as it bears on how effective a given action will be.
I agree, and have always agreed that the risks of climate change, whether human or natural, are serious, and warrant a firm policy response. When uncertainty was higher, I proposed adaptation actions and more funding for sequestration research. As the information has improved, I've recently also argued for congestion pricing, and a revenue-neutral carbon tax as an efficient and non-distorting policy approach.
I do not put much faith in the IPCC's predictive modeling, (nor anyone's predictive models!) and I'm far from alone on that. Many economists have taken exception with the input assumptions dreamed up in the SRES "Storylines and Scenarios." In that regard, I believe it is more intellectually honest to extrapolate forward from observed rates of warming, and develop policy proposals based on that level of warming, sea-level rise, and so on.
Ken Green
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Steve Bloom Posted 7:02 am
14 Feb 2007
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EliRabett Posted 7:09 am
14 Feb 2007
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KenGreen Posted 7:35 am
14 Feb 2007
Ken
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EliRabett Posted 9:33 am
14 Feb 2007
Why do you claim that the IPCC reports ONLY rely on computer models? There are many other threads to the argument, including but not limited to paleoclimate studies, which I note, you do your best to trash in #2 as unreliable. I could also quibble about some scientists, more accurate would be the vast majority of those who study climate, but that would not convey the image you are trying to create..
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 11:44 am
14 Feb 2007
The projections are too uncertain to be cause for concern.
Climate change is real but actually isn't that big a deal.
It costs too much to effectively mitigate.
There are so many better ways to spend our money. HIV/AIDS, malaria, and a new yacht for the CEO.
We could do something, but we'd be paying more than __ which would be unfair to __ because of __(fill in the blanks & accompany with lots of fearmongering, blaming, finger-pointing, and "You first! No, you first!")
We should just continue the status quo and adapt to the changing climate.
Climate change is good for you!
The climate change train has already left the station, it's too late/too difficult to do anything major about it anyway.
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KenGreen Posted 1:04 pm
14 Feb 2007
The answer is simple: Because they do. I would encourage you to call up a climate modeler (such as Gerald North) and ask him exactly what climate scientists are referring to when they attribute observed warmth to human emissions of greenhouse gases.
Go on, Gerry is an approachable guy. Ask him. I did, which is where I got that information.
Oh, and, if you weren't paying attention, the NAS pointed out that paleoclimate reconstructions are not primary evidence of human causation of observed climate change. The Chairman of that effort? Gerald North.
Ken
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EliRabett Posted 1:59 pm
14 Feb 2007
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sunflower Posted 2:30 pm
14 Feb 2007
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Steve Bloom Posted 8:20 pm
14 Feb 2007
Climate projections based on the models are an IPCC baseline conclusion, and are implicitly in conflict with the Pat Michaels linear approach you prefer (from point 6). In point 7, you rely on an MIT study to criticize the IPCC projection range, but oddly that study itself relies on IPCC models. Make up your mind.
In point 4, you say:
"In fact, some of the potential cooling forces and climate feedback mechanisms that are poorly understood may be large enough to offset the warming influence of the greenhouse gases. For example, research published in the August 4, 2006, issue of Science found that human-caused emissions of aerosol particles may increase cloud cover by up to 5 percent and that clouds have a cooling effect that may neutralize the warming that is caused by human-induced greenhouse gases. If that is true, then natural variation could be the best explanation for surface warming."
(I'll pause for a moment here to give Andrew a chance to stop choking.)
This too conflicts with a baseline IPCC conclusion, but worse than that it's completely wrong within its own terms.
I'll leave the hockey stick discussion for now since I don't have time to re-read the NAS report.
So other than that you agree with the IPCC that the world is warming, I don't see that you're at all in agreement with their baseline conclusions.
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Andrew Dessler Posted 3:54 am
15 Feb 2007
I have to agree with Steve, Eli, etc. that you still sound like a skeptic. In my opinion, the most important conclusion of the IPCC is: Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.If you do not accept that statement (which it appears you don't), then (in my opinion) you do not accept the IPCC.
What you've done here is take a few uncontroversial parts (e.g., the Earth is warming), accept them, and then claim to have science on your side. That's what George Bush does, and it doesn't work for him, either.
You still don't seem to get the point of the article. If you want both sides of the climate debate to take your policy views seriously, then just stop arguing about the science (and that includes trying to claim that you've been on-board with the science all along).
Regards
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Forbes Posted 9:45 am
15 Feb 2007
I thought science was advanced by skepticism, not consensus. The suggestion that Green and Hayward must agree to the "facts" of the IPCC report before debate can commence appears not so different from an earlier period where skeptics were branded as heretics. Claims of authority don't much advance debate, either.
(It seems to me, it is not the facts that are in doubt, but the conclusions drawn therefrom that are in question.)
If the scientific evidence is so overwhelming, why all the pixels expended to personally denigrate Green and Hayward as motivated to mislead and obfuscate? If Green and Hayward are so wrongheaded, why engage them in debate at all? There can't possibly be any merit to their arguments, can there?
The Lady doth protest too much, methinks.
"A story about a right-wing think tank funding attacks on science is credulously accepted precisely because it conforms to recent history. Most people expect it to be true."
So skepticism is now defined as an attack on science, and a canard repeated ad nausium is recent history. But Dan Rather would be proud: a story too good to check, i.e. fake but accurate.
And "questioning authority" and "speaking truth to power" is strictly the province of the political left.
Something comes to mind about stones and glass houses...
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Steve Bloom Posted 7:23 am
17 Feb 2007
"Still mis-representing my views...
"You claimed that in 2003, I was still "downplaying the problem" and cite a Source Watch page, rather than actually going out and reading my work. If you did so, you'd find that I have acknowledged the IPCC's baseline conclusions as being likely to be correct since I started writing about climate policy in 1997."
As was amply demonstrated above, this claim was itself a misrepresentation in that Ken was still downplaying the IPCC's baseline conclusions as of October 2006.
Of course Ken and the AEI are entitled to express their views. It's Ken's job to figure out what the minimum credible denialist position on climate science is at any given time and to promote policy based on that view. That's what he's paid to do (largely by the fossil fuel industry) and that's fine. It's equally fine for others to make it widely known that the AEI's work on this subject lacks even a shred of credibility.
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Sylvia S Tognetti Posted 8:34 am
18 Feb 2007
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ccdangelo Posted 3:50 pm
21 Feb 2007
What's your position on energy conservation policies?
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