Denying climate change
02.06.2010
How is information on climate change presented? Are there ‘serial’ sceptics?
Denying climate change is not something new. Within a few months of taking office as President of the United States, George W. Bush, under pressure from powerful oil companies such as Exxon-Mobil, repudiated the Kyoto Protocol.
One of the reasons why the Bush administration opposed the Kyoto protocol was that they claimed it would be an enormous financial burden because it would slow down the US economy. Jobs would be exported overseas to countries which had not signed up to the Kyoto Protocol.
Commentators such as William Nordhaus of Yale University and his colleague Dale Jorgenson of Harvard University disputed this claim. According to them complying with the Kyoto Protocol would be quite modest and the cost would have to be off-set against the cost of doing nothing and therefore paying a high price for the damages inflicted by hurricanes such as Katrina in 2005.
Conservative ‘think-tanks’ such as the Cato Institute which opposed the Kyoto Protocol were funded by big oil companies such as Exxon-Mobil. Cato published reports questioning the scientific basis for global warming. Among these publications are Climate Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry about Global Warming and, Meltdown: the Predictable Distortions of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and Media.1
Professor Jeffrey David Sachs is a well-known American economist. He has written extensively on combatting poverty and promoting sustainable development. He is the author of numerous books, including The End of Poverty and Common Wealth, both of which made the New York Times bestsellers list. He is a Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon and founder and Co-President of the Millennium Promise Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger.
On February 19, 2010, he wrote an article in The Guardian entitled, “Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain.”2 He began by reflecting on the recent challenges to the data on climate change provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Naturally, this is impacting on public support for initiatives to curb global warming.
“If experts cannot agree that there is a climate crisis, why should governments spend billions of dollars addressing it?”
Sachs points out that the critics “who are few in number but aggressive in their attacks – are deploying tactics that they have honed for more than 25 years. During their long campaign they have greatly exaggerated scientific disagreement in order to stop action on climate change, with special interest groups like Exxon Mobil footing the bill.”3
He refers to a book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway entitled Merchants of Death, which is due for publication in mid-2010. Oreskes is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She has written on such topics as global warming and the history of science. In their book they will show that “the same group of mischief-makers, given a platform by the free-market ideologues of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, has consistently tried to confuse the public and discredit the scientists whose insights are helping to save the world from unintended environmental harm.”
Many of these are the same people who set about discrediting the science which linked smoking to a variety of diseases, including lung cancer.
A decade later they defended the tobacco companies against scientific claims that second-hand smoke could cause cancer.
These sceptics supported utility plants by denying the evidence that sulphur dioxide emissions from the coal-fired power plants were causing what became known as “acid rain.” Also in the 1980s, they sided with the chemical companies which were manufacturing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). They denied any link between CFCs and the depletion of the ozone layer of the atmosphere which could have horrendous consequences for life on earth, including human life.
Sachs is particularly scathing in his comments about the editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper owned by the Australian billionaire, Rupert Murdoch. When the emails from the University of East Anglia came to light the editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal launched “a vicious campaign describing climate science as a hoax and a conspiracy. They claimed that scientists were fabricating evidence in order to obtain government research grants – a ludicrous accusation.”
Sachs remembered that the ‘drumming up business for scientists’ argument had been used in all the previous campaigns against restriction on tobacco, CFCs, acid rain and banning dangerous chemicals. It is a question of the same tune, just different lyrics.
1 David Cromwell, “Burning the Profit, Znet Commentary, 18th January 2006, www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/14/10/2006 cromell.cfm
2 Jeffrey Sachs, “Climate skeptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain,” The Guardian, www. guardian.co.uk, February 19, 2010.
3 Ibid.
Fr Sean McDonagh is a researcher on justice and peace issues and more recently ecological challenge.
Read more from The Far East, June 2010
