Climate change denial

Climate change denial is a term used to describe the denial of all or part of the theory of global warming. Those who believe anthropogenic climate change to be real and skeptics alike recognise that climate change has occurred throughout geologic history; more in dispute is what role human activity plays in recent climate change. Whereas skepticism is a necessary and productive part of the scientific effort to understand these changes, “climate change denial” typically refers to a disinformation campaign thought to be promoted and funded by groups interested in undermining the scientific consensus, particularly by groups with ties to the energy lobby.. As Newsweek reported in August, 2007,

"this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless."

Denial vs. skepticism

Main article: Global warming controversy

Climate change denial differs from skepticism mainly in that skepticism is based on established scientific practice and methodology, while denial does not employ such methods, argues Peter Christoff. Instead, the aim of what has been called the "denial industry" is to promote controversy and doubt. In the September 21, 2006 issue of The Guardian, columnist George Monbiot wrote "Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial."

Origins of the "denial industry"

"As soon as the scientific community began to come together on the science of climate change, the pushback began," according to University of California, San Diego historian Naomi Oreskes. Newsweek has described the pushback as follows:

"Individual companies and industry associations—representing petroleum, steel, autos and utilities, for instance—formed lobbying groups with names like the Global Climate Coalition and the Information Council on the Environment. ICE's game plan called for enlisting greenhouse doubters to 'reposition global warming as theory rather than fact,' and to sow doubt about climate research."

Organized climate change denial efforts began to make headlines shortly after the Kyoto Protocol was opened for signature in 1997. In 1998, John H. Cushman of the New York Times reported on a memorandum written by a public relations specialist for the American Petroleum Institute; the memo contained a detailed description of a plan "to recruit a cadre of scientists who share the industry's views of climate science and to train them in public relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify controls on greenhouse gases." As part of a US $5,000,000 strategy to "maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences," the document included

"A proposed media-relations budget of US $600,000, not counting any money for advertising, [that] would be directed at science writers, editors, columnists and television network correspondents, using as many as 20 'respected climate scientists' recruited expressly 'to inject credible science and scientific accountability into the global climate debate, thereby raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom.'"

Various reports have pointed out the resemblance of this strategy to one adopted by the tobacco lobby after being confronted with new data linking cigarettes to cancer: namely, to shift public perception of the discovery toward that of a myth or unwarranted claim rather than an accepted scientific theory. In 2006, The Guardian reported:

"There are clear similarities between the language used and the approaches adopted by Philip Morris and by the organisations funded by Exxon. The two lobbies use the same terms, which appear to have been invented by Philip Morris's consultants. 'Junk science' meant peer-reviewed studies showing that smoking was linked to cancer and other diseases. 'Sound science' meant studies sponsored by the tobacco industry suggesting that the link was inconclusive. Both lobbies recognised that their best chance of avoiding regulation was to challenge the scientific consensus. As a memo from the tobacco company Brown and Williamson noted, 'Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the "body of fact" that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.'"

Frederick Seitz earned more than US $500,000 in the 70s and 80s as a consultant to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, then went on to become chairman of groups such as the Science and Environmental Policy Project and the George C. Marshall Institute, known for their efforts to "downplay" global warming. Seitz also authored the Oregon Petition, a document published jointly by the Marshall and Oregon Institutes in opposition to the Kyoto protocol. The petition and accompanying "Research Review of Global Warming Evidence" claimed:

"The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. ... We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life than that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution."

In 1993, according to the Guardian, Phillip Morris, in conjunction with the APCO public relations firm, established the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TAASC) as part of a plan to combat proposed regulation of secondhand smoke: "Philip Morris, APCO said, needed to create the impression of a 'grassroots' movement - one that had been formed spontaneously by concerned citizens to fight 'overregulation'. It should portray the danger of tobacco smoke as just one 'unfounded fear' among others, such as concerns about pesticides and cellphones." Within ten years, the group was also receiving funds from Exxon:

"TASSC, the ‘coalition’ created by Philip Morris, was the first and most important of the corporate-funded organisations denying that climate change is taking place. It has done more damage to the campaign to halt it than any other body."

Several think tanks funded by Exxon or, later, ExxonMobil to contest climate change have also reputedly received funding from Philip Morris, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the Reason Foundation, George Mason University's Law and Economics Center, and the Independent Institute.

Notable instances of climate change denial

Public sector

In 1994, according to a leaked memo, the influential Republican strategist Frank Luntz advised members of the GOP that with regard to climate change, "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue" and "challenge the science" by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view."

In 2005, the New York Times reported that Philip Cooney, a former lobbyist and "climate team leader" at the American Petroleum Institute, had "repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents." The George W. Bush administration had hired Cooney in 2001 as chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, "the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues." As the Times reported,

"Climate experts and representatives of environmental groups, when shown examples of the revisions, said they illustrated the significant if largely invisible influence of Mr. Cooney and other White House officials with ties to energy industries that have long fought greenhouse-gas restrictions."

The newspaper also claimed that "[e]fforts by the Bush administration to highlight uncertainties in science pointing to human-caused warming have put the United States at odds with other nations and with scientific groups at home." Cooney reportedly removed an entire section on climate in one report, whereupon an oil lobbyist sent him a fax saying "You are doing a great job."

After the IPCC released its Feb, 2007 report, the American Enterprise Institute reportedly offered British, American, and other scientists $10,000, plus travel expenses, to publish articles critical of the assessment. The institute, which had received more than $US 1.6 million from Exxon and whose vice-chairman of trustees is Lee Raymond, former head of Exxon, sent letters that "attack the UN's panel as 'resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work' and ask for essays that 'thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs'." More than 20 AEI employees have worked as consultants to the George W. Bush administration. Despite her initial conviction that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered," U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer said that when she learned of the AEI's offer, "I realized there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."

In 2007, the Washington Post's four-part examination of Dick Cheney's powerful role in the White House alleged that the Vice President's "unwavering ideological positions" prioritizing economic over environmental interests had led to significant conflict regarding greenhouse gas emissions standards:

"It was Cheney's insistence on easing air pollution controls, not the personal reasons she cited at the time, that led Christine Todd Whitman to resign as administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, she said in an interview that provides the most detailed account so far of her departure. ... And in April, the Supreme Court rejected two other policies closely associated with Cheney. It rebuffed the effort, ongoing since Whitman's resignation, to loosen some rules under the Clean Air Act. The court also rebuked the administration for not regulating greenhouse gases associated with global warming, issuing its ruling less than two months after Cheney declared that 'conflicting viewpoints' remain about the extent of the human contribution to the problem."

Cheney's connections to the Energy Lobby and to ExxonMobil in particular have fueled speculation that his characterization of climate change science is linked to the "denial industry." In 2000, Cheney’s Energy Task Force, officially known as the National Energy Policy Development Group, invited the executives of various major oil companies, including Exxon, Conoco, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell, to consult with the White House regarding the development of a national energy policy, although this was initially denied by the participating companies. Exxon was also personally thanked by the White House for advising President Bush on the Kyoto accords. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists:

“In her talking points for a 2001 meeting with a group that included ExxonMobil lobbyist Randy Randol (uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act request), U.S. Undersecretary for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky thanked the group for their input on global warming policy, noting, ‘POTUS [the president of the United States] rejected Kyoto, in part, based on input from you.’"

The Government Accountability Project's "Climate Science Watch" has questioned the administration's appointment of officials with private-sector ties to climate change denial:

"Jeffrey Salmon is the Associate Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy. Prior to moving to DOE, from 1991-2001 he was Executive Director of the George C. Marshall Institute, a key actor in the global warming disinformation campaign. In 1998 he participated in the development of a now-notorious oil industry-sponsored plan to wage a campaign against the mainstream science community on global warming. Before that, he was senior speechwriter for Dick Cheney, when Cheney was Secretary of Defense. The Office of Science oversees roughly $4 billion a year in DOE-supported research, including a roughly $140 million climate change research budget. What does Salmon do in this position—for example, on matters of climate change research, assessment, and communication?"

ExxonMobil

The British Royal Society conducted a survey that found ExxonMobil had given US$ 2.9 million to American groups that "misinformed the public about climate change," 39 of which "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence". In 2006, the British Royal Society issued a demand that ExxonMobil withdraw funding for climate change denial. The letter, which was leaked to the media, drew criticism, notably from Timothy Ball and others, who argued the society attempted to "politicize the private funding of science and to censor scientific debate."

Effect of climate change denial

According to former U.S. senator Tim Wirth, the denial effort has affected both public perception and leadership in the United States. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry. [...] Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress." Newsweek reports that whereas "majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world's economies—are altering climate," as recently as 2006 only one third of Americans considered human activity to play a major role in climate change; 64% believed that scientists disagreed about it "a lot." A 2007 Newsweek poll found these numbers were declining, although majorities of Americans still believed neither that scientists agree climate change is taking place, nor that scientists agree climate change is caused by human activity, nor that climate change has yet had noticeable effect. Citing the following remarks in Science by physicist and U.S. Representative Rush Holt, the Newsweek report attributes American policymakers' failure to regulate greenhouse gas emissions to consistent undermining of science by the "denial machine":

"...for more than two decades scientists have been issuing warnings that the release of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide (CO₂), is probably altering Earth's climate in ways that will be expensive and even deadly. The American public yawned and bought bigger cars. Statements by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others underscored the warnings and called for new government policies to deal with climate change. Politicians, presented with noisy statistics, shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing."

See also

• disinformation
• global warming controversy
• scientific opinion on climate change

External links

• "Live Talk: Climate Change Deniers." Newsweek Aug. 8, 2007
• "Climate of Denial." Bill McKibben, Mother Jones, May/June 2005
• "Some Like It Hot." Chris Mooney, Mother Jones, May/June 2005
• "The Denial Machine." CBC
• ExxonMobil’s Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science - the Union of Concerned Scientists