The following is a guest essay by John Tirman, Executive Director of MIT's Center for International Studies.
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Recently I have encountered the counterattack on climate-change science, and it is a sobering experience.
When I was giving a talk at a book store on Manhattan's Upper West Side late last month, a young man began to pester me with hostile questions. My book, 100 Ways America is Screwing Up the World, has "Altering the Earth" listed at No. 1, a chapter that briefly tours the science and politics of climate change. The young man (among other obstreperous comments) upbraided me for saying there was scientific consensus on climate change, telling the audience that he had a petition signed by 17,000 scientists denying the threat of global warming.
It was the first I had heard of such a petition, but in the days to come I noticed emails from people I'd never heard of on this same topic. The book, I knew, was bound to stir some passions, and it has. I have a dozen ecological topics listed, so anti-green zealots were bound to find me. And the main way they have attacked the book is by wielding this Global Warming Petition.
The petition flatly states that "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."
A little investigation revealed that the petition is actually eight years old, although a "living" document in that signatures are still being solicited. Its originator is an obscure place called the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which specializes -- according to its own website -- in civil defense, home-schooling materials, and health profiling, among a few other research areas of "science and medicine." Arthur B. Robinson, a chemist who is the prime mover behind the "institute" and the petition, appears around the country excoriating environmentalists as dangerous and responsible for millions of deaths.
The petition has been roundly criticized, and is prominent among a series of anti-green hoaxes that purport to counter broad scientific judgment about climate change. (The Union of Concerned Scientists has an informative list of "skeptics" that reveals them to be largely phony.) I call this a hoax because I did a little random survey of the names listed on the petition, those for my home state of Massachusetts. The results were revealing, to say the least.
Of 100 names googled, only about 2 percent turn out to be scientists with any training relevant to climatology, usually physics. A small number -- about 15 percent -- were other kinds of scientists or physicians, but with no relevant training. Several in this overall pool of scientists were quite elderly. The remainder were either people with no scientific credentials whatsoever (40 percent), or names that did not appear in the search -- highly improbable nowadays if indeed such people existed.
Scientific American similarly probed the petition list last year. The journal ...
... took a sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition -- one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers -- a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.
So the petition is clearly a fabrication, and a nasty one at that.
Now, this would be fairly harmless except that the web and the blogosphere in particular keep such things alive and dangerous. The petition is featured on right-wing websites and by prominent bloggers. Robinson published an article in the Wall Street Journal in 1997 titled "Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth" that is widely cited. Along with the other fabrications of skeptics (and with the tiny number of highly publicized scientists who are skeptics), this petition is used to feed industry-led efforts to block meaningful federal action.
It is part of a broader attack on science, which uses either superstition, phony "science," or fear-mongering about economic costs to undermine rational discourse. The same crowd decrying global warming is usually lining up to prevent new stem cell research and insist that schoolchildren be taught "intelligent design."
So beware the Petition on Global Warming. As ludicrous as it is in many ways, it has, like an urban legend, gained an inexorable life of its own.
Comments
View as Flat
bookerly Posted 12:21 pm
07 Sep 2006
Great Post!
David,
Thanks! This post is very important because it should remind us of what we're up against. Which is not science but rather political people who have no desire to fight fair.
We can expect to see more such efforts. It's not just the silly petition, but the play it gets in so called "respectable" MSM newspapers like the Wall Street Journal. Lots of people read this, and assume therefore it must be true.
In actuality, the WSJ is about on a par with Wikipedia in terms of accuracy. (Smile).
Seriously, unless we can find ways to defeat this kind of anti-environmental ponzi scheme, we will always be on the defensive.
It would be useful to see who funds these folks....
patrick
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NedRoscoe Posted 2:53 pm
07 Sep 2006
Phoney Petitions?
The original purpose of the petition was to show that there is not a consensus on global warming. A consensus is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove that the earth will be warmer in the future, that the change in temperature is or will be anthropogenic, or that the force of government should be used to rectify the situation.
One should also look at the "Doctors for Disaster Preparedness" society to see what the Oregon Institute of Science & Medicine people and their colleagues discuss in addition to global warming: malaria, hormesis, and the effects of funding upon research.
What if the consensus isn't always right?
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amazingdrx Posted 10:08 pm
07 Sep 2006
Nucler war: Not that bad?
http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p912.htm
Another presentation from the good folk who brought you this petition. All hail home (father)land security!
Dr Strangelove (Ed Teller) provides the introduction to this tome.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:05 am
08 Sep 2006
I looked at that petition earlier in the year
I found the same results. A large percentage of the signers were ordinary physicians. I know a number of physicians. They can be as conservative, religious, and overall stupid as anyone else. They don't know anymore about climate change than anyone else.
Always look at the sources for things said on the net, and if a source was not provided, it is best to take whatever was said with a big grain of salt, even if it tends to support what you want to be true. Demand sources.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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mihan Posted 4:14 am
08 Sep 2006
Consensus
NedRoscoe raises a very good point: what if the consensus is not right? Historically, we know it's not always right (just ask Galileo G.).
However, usually, society goes with the majority: it's as good as we've got. There's no issue on which everyone agrees (thank god). But the way science works is, we go on what most of us agree is true, everyone continues their research, and eventually the random walk of most/all scientists converge somewhere: it may be where the original consesus was, it may be in a totally different place.
It is indisputable that the vast majority of scientists do agree that the climate is changing AND that we're causing a large part of it. The reason that the small number of so-called skeptics doesn't "prove the rule" is political/rhetorical. The basic argument is, "this one person disagrees, so it can't be true." This article does a good (though maybe dry) job of pointing out logical fallacies in the arguments of people who claim that hurricane strength is not linked to global warming; many of the same fallacies are used by the global-warming "skeptics" in general.
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bookerly Posted 2:28 pm
09 Sep 2006
If the Consensus is Wrong
If the consensus is wrong and we have acted to stop global warming, we will have created a society that uses sustainable energy resources in a manner which will have our descendants blessing us instead of cursing us.
If the consensus is wrong and we have done nothing, Americans will still be consuming resources at at rate which is not sustainable. (Ummm, sustainable is not just a buzz word, it means that it SERIOUSLY cannot continue.)
If the consensus is right and we have acted to stop global warming, we will be smuggly congratulating ourselves on getting it "right".
If the consensus is right and we do nothing, it will be too late, and all those who favor doing nothing now will be whining about how come no one told them how bad it was really going to be.
patrick
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mihan Posted 2:35 am
10 Sep 2006
forgot to make my point...
which is that we're asking the wrong question. If our question is, "Are we causing the earth to warm up?" we get bogged down because some people think not (though most think so).
Instead we should ask, "Is it right to be spending our grandchildren's inheritance (so to speak)?"
As Patrick points out, acting now to change our economy and lifestyles to be sustainable is a good thing (and answers question #2), and does not depend at all on the answer to the first question.
I suppose you could still point out that there are some who think that the rapture will soon be upon us so the answer to #2 doesn't matter, either. I have no idea what to do with those people.
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