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In the
weeks before and after the Copenhagen climate change
conference last December 2009, the science of climate change
came under harsh attack by critics who contend that climate
scientists have deliberately suppressed evidence and that
the science itself is severely flawed. The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global group of experts
charged with assessing the state of climate science, has
been accused of bias.
The global
public is disconcerted by these attacks.
If experts
cannot agree that there is a climate crisis, why should
governments spend billions of dollars to address it?
The fact
is 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 disagreements in
order to stop action on climate change, with special
interests like Exxon Mobil footing the bill.
Many books
have recently documented the games played by the climate
change deniers. "Merchants of Doubt," a new book by Naomi
Oreskes and Erik Conway, set for release in mid-2010, will
be an authoritative account of their misbehaviour. The
authors 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.
Today's
campaigners against action on climate change are in many
cases backed by the same lobbies, individuals, and
organisations that sided with the tobacco industry to
discredit the science linking smoking and lung cancer.
Later, they fought the scientific evidence that sulfur
oxides from coal fired power plants were causing acid rain.
Then, when it was discovered that certain chemicals called
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were causing the depletion of
ozone in the atmosphere, the same groups launched a nasty
campaign to discredit that science, too.
Later
still, the group defended the tobacco giants against charges
that second-hand smoke causes cancer and other diseases. And
then, starting mainly in the 1980s, this same group took on
the battle against climate change.
What is
amazing is that, although these attacks on science have been
wrong for 30 years, they still sow doubts about established
facts. The truth is that there is big money backing the
climate change deniers, whether it is companies that do not
want to pay the extra costs of regulation, or free-market
ideologues opposed to any government controls.
The latest
round of attacks involves two episodes.
The first
was the hacking of a climate change research centre in
England. The emails that were stolen suggested a lack of
forthrightness in the presentation of some climate data.
Whatever the details of this specific case, the studies in
question represent a tiny fraction of the overwhelming
scientific evidence that points to the reality and urgency
of manmade climate change.
The second
issue was a blatant error concerning glaciers that appeared
in a major IPCC report. Here it should be understood that
the IPCC issues thousands of pages of text. There are, no
doubt, errors in those pages. But errors in the midst of a
vast and complex report by the IPCC point to the
inevitability of human shortcomings, not to any fundamental
flaws in climate science.
When the
emails and the IPCC error were brought to light, 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, I thought at the time, given that the
scientists under attack have devoted their lives to finding
the truth, and have certainly not become rich relative to
their peers in finance and business.
But then I
recalled that this line of attack - charging a scientific
conspiracy to drum up "business" for science - was almost
identical to that used by The Wall Street Journal and others
in the past, when they fought controls on tobacco, acid
rain, ozone depletion, second-hand smoke, and other
dangerous pollutants. Their arguments were systematic and
contrived, not at all original to the circumstances.
We are
witnessing a predictable process by ideologues and rightwing
think tanks and publications to discredit the scientific
process. Their arguments have been repeatedly disproved for
30 years - time after time - but their aggressive methods of
public propaganda succeed in causing delay and confusion.
Climate
change science is a wondrous intellectual activity. Great
scientific minds have learned over the course of many
decades to "read" the Earth's history, in order to
understand how the climate system works. They have deployed
brilliant physics, biology, and instrumentation (such as
satellites reading detailed features of the Earth's systems)
in order to advance our understanding.
And the
message is clear: large-scale use of oil, coal, and gas is
threatening the biology and chemistry of the planet. We are
fueling dangerous changes in Earth's climate and ocean
chemistry, giving rise to extreme storms, droughts, and
other hazards that will damage the food supply and the
quality of life of the planet.
The IPCC
and the climate scientists are telling us a crucial message.
We need urgently to transform our energy, transport, food,
industry, and construction systems to reduce the dangerous
human impact on the climate.
It is our
responsibility to listen, to understand the message, and
then to act.
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