Media corporations often exhibit a strange lack of scrutiny when it comes to misleading and outright fraudulent claims by greenwashers and astroturf groups intent on clouding the waters on environmental issues.
Some newspapers are worse than others, I have noticed over decades of (unscientific) analysis. Last week, the Vancouver Sun published a letter from the executive director of an organization calling itself the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), another cabal of energy industry lobbyists and charlatans.
This led me, in the following (unpublished) letter, to forward one of my favourite rhetorical questions to the Sun‘s editorial department, headed by Fazil Mihlar, an alumni of Vancouver’s best-known purveyor of global warming denial literature, the Fraser Institute
If I formed an organization—say Scientists For the Preservation of Air—that had as its agenda the promotion of an industry that was depleting atmospheric oxygen levels at a rate threatening life on the planet, I wonder how much scrutiny that group might attract?
Suppose the SFPA created fake “studies” and quoted fraudulent petitions, endorsed by “experts” without knowledge in the field, or even by non-existent signatories.
What if purported experts’ credentials turned out to be nothing more than a background in public relations, in the area of “crisis management?”
How many column-inches should such a blatantly misleading organization be allotted in a respected newspaper?
And yet, when it comes to well-known global warming deniers—“astroturfers,” that anyone with access to Google can debunk—we continue to see the fabrications of such groups appearing in letters, opinion columns and too often quoted as authorities in news reports.
Anyone is entitled to an opinion, though sound judgment should be based on a firm understanding of issues. Cynical propaganda undermines understanding.
Surely, trusted media should try to filter blatantly misleading content, so that debate can at least be based on credible sources.
The Tyee on The Fraser Institute | Sourcewatch ICSC profile
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That was written with more moderation than I could have mustered and yet they still didn’t publish it – quelle surprise!
Some years ago I came across “an old Soviet joke”: What’s the difference between communism and capitalism? Answer: Under capitalism, man exploits his fellow man, but under communism, it’s the other way around. It occurred to me that there’s another comparison: under communism, the population is brainwashed by the government, but under capitalism, it’s left to the private sector. This is a perfect example.
Dave, my original reply seems to have turned into tomorrow’s post, but here’s a few preliminary thoughts.
“Journalists” like Terence Corcoran (The National Post having probably the most egregious record of promulgating deniers’ propaganda*), Lorne Gunter, Michael Campbell (Gordon’s brother), and confusion sowers such as Victoria’s own Tim Ball and (retired columnist) Paul MacRae have dominated the opinion pages on this issue over the last decade.
Analysis in 2007 found that the prolific Ball successfully published 39 opinion pieces and 32 letters to the editor in 24 Canadian newspapers, totalling 44,500 words. Fifty of these ran in papers owned by CanWest (predominantly our own Times Colonist, I’d guess) :-).
Your answer nudged me to poke around for my published and unpublished pieces on this, one of my pet issues. Look for them soon–as well as searching the tags and categories now.
*Mind you, even Jonathan Kay is worried about the damage these cranks are doing to the conservative cause.
Raymond, you’ll be happy to hear that the Times Colonist hasn’t published a skeptical piece on climate in more than a year. How do I know? Because I’ve heard, through the grapevine (I used to work there, remember), that the editor has banned articles by climate skeptics, because several of my articles have been rejected, and because the book review section was ordered by the editor not to do a review of my book False Alarm: Global Warming—Facts Versus Fears.
It’s sort of like, to refer to another of the comments above, the communist system, where only one side of any issue is presented: the party’s side. Yet, if you look at the overall landscape of climate change science these days, you’ll see the warming dogmatists pulling back and admitting that, maybe, the science isn’t as “settled” and “certain” as they’ve claimed. If the science isn’t settled, that means there is room for more than one interpretation of the climate data. However, these days, you’ll now find only one point of view at the Times Colonist.
I have not forgotten your CV. You may remember we’ve crossed paths before; notably during the period when you habitually held up George W. Bush as a noble statesman.
It seems to me that you now support the fabrications of a new set of charlatans, at the same time as attempting to dismiss legitimate scientists as “warming dogmatists.”
Science is never “settled.” Ascribing that position to atmospheric scientists is a poor ruse. What the best science tells us, beyond a reasonable doubt, is that the planet is warming dangerously and our actions are the cause.
You and other deniers attempt to undermine that understanding, backed by the best international scientific analysis available, with untested hypothesis and fictions that stretch the limits of credulity.
Good luck with that. Perhaps–if what you say is true–your colleagues at the TC are looking for content with a better shelf life.
Raymond,
Andrew Weaver writes in his book Keeping Our Cool that he doesn’t debate with skeptics because “scientific debate over global warming would … imply uncertainty” (p. 23). A fairly recent oped in the TC by Guy Dauncey was headlined “The science of climate change is settled,” and that was the argument he made. No more need for discussion or debate. There certainly isn’t in the TC, as I noted above.
On the other hand, and perhaps you will agree with this comment, the late Stephen Schneider note that, in climate change, “there is a maddening degree of uncertainty” and that we don’t know whether the outcomes will be benign or catastrophic. I don’t see the alarmist side putting much emphasis on how uncertain climate science actually is, or on the possibility that the catastrophist prediction is an extreme that is highly unlikely; more likely is a mild set of climate problems, no worse than humanity has dealt with in the past, or, perhaps, warming will be benign. In the past, warming has always been better for civilization than cooling.
When skeptics point out these uncertainties, and there are many, they are attacked as “deniers.” But who’s in denial here? Those who think the science is certain and settled and beyond debate? Or those who know science is never settled, and that therefore there can be, and should be, respectfully debated, differing points of view.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to fantasize about just blowing up deniers (I assume you’ve seen the 10:10 video) that constructively debating with them. One of my aims in writing my book was to get a full-dress debate on the TV networks, skeptics versus believers. Why hasn’t this occurred, as it usually would with an issue involving billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money? Skeptics are eager to debate; what are the alarmists so afraid of? Why did James Cameron pull out of a debate at the last minute when the debate had been set up for weeks in advance?
I’ll tell you what they’re afraid of: in almost all debates between skeptics and alarmists so far, when audiences are polled there has been a movement toward the skeptical side. The skeptical side simply makes more sense, logically and scientifically.
As I wrote in an earlier response to one of your letters (published a few months back in the paper you claim is ignoring you) “skepticism” is indeed a good thing … and we should not allow the meaning of the word to be debased by those who will believe any old hogwash.”
What deniers offer is not skepticism; it’s distortion, out of context quotes, straw man arguments and any other falsity they can repeat over and over until it creates uncertainty in those unfamiliar with the science.
It’s too bad Stephen Schneider is not here to correct your misrepresentation of his work; he did as much as any scientist to make global warming understandable to the layperson and counter “contrarian” confabulation like the stuff you’re leaving here. I think it’s shameful that you are misrepresenting this honourable man so soon after his death.
The cherry picked quotes above are the same old same old and not worth a response.
Readers might be better served by visiting Schneider’s website (particularly his page on contrarians) and the excellent Real Climate site, staffed by, well, real scientists, who tirelessly attempt to correct the barrage of denier propaganda.
It isn’t cherry-picking to point out that so much of climate science is uncertain. Even warming believers like Kevin Trenberth are now acknowledging that “the more we know, the less certain we become,” which is what Schneider was saying. Is it cherry-picking to quote Trenberth on this, too? And, remember, Schneider at first believed the earth was heading for a new ice age (see The Genesis Strategy, 1976).
There is no empirical evidence whatsoever pointing to a dangerously warming planet. These “real scientists” are working entirely from models, most of which overstate the sensitivity of climate to CO2. How do we know? Because the planet hasn’t warmed for over a decade, while CO2 levels have gone steadily up. That’s empirical evidence, based on actual observations, not mathematical models based on formulas.
Lacking empirical evidence linking increased CO2 with catastrophic warming, a wise scientist, or anyone, would be wise to avoid getting too dogmatic over what computer models predict may or may not occur, and listen to more than one interpretation of the data before making billion-dollar decisions that could have devastating effects on the economy that pays for environmental protection.
In fact, your whole comment is one long string of cherry-picked misrepresentations.
That Kevin Trenberth discusses “uncertainties” in the advances in climate science in no way throws doubt on the greater understanding of global warming.
As Trenberth says, regarding the misuse of the purloined University of East Anglia emails, gaps do “NOT mean that global warming is not happening.”
The whole “scientists once claimed we were heading for another ice-age” thing is bogus. While Schneider once expressed uncertainty about the balance between the cooling effect of aerosols and radiative forcing caused by CO2, he actually criticized a popular book, in 1977, that suggested such an outcome.
THE MYTH OF THE 1970S GLOBAL COOLING SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS Thomas C. Peterson* NOAA National Climatic Data Center (PDF)
You continue to shamelessly misquote and distort Schneider’s work. You ignore his confirmation “To be clear, the globe has warmed for the last decade. You can get different results if you pick out your start dates carefully, a practice known as cherry-picking since it is trying to use the data to say something other than what it generally shows, but you are much better off looking at the longest time scales you have (such as these from NASA).”
Indeed, rather than examining the overwhelming body of evidence that points to rising temperatures, forced by CO2 release, you go searching for statements to take out of context.
Thank you, once again, for illustrating the dishonest and vexatious techniques of global warming deniers.
http://geo-engineering.blogspot.com/
The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is now venting up to 3.5 Gt methane per annum. This is a result of the massive reduction in Arctic sea ice, the warming of the oceans, and warming of the Arctic. This warming was caused by a net forcing due to human carbon emissions and land-use change. No surprise that a thin gaseous film in space responds to forcing, be it Milankovich cycles, asteroids, volcanoes, or 7 billion critters that dig up carbon from Earths crust and burn it into the air. I guess the acidifying oceans are imaginary too.
This 3.5 Gt has more warming potential than all the industrial emissions put together. This will only increase year by year. The rate of CO2 emission and associated warming is a magnitude higher than the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum, which had a significant extinction rate. The methane will degassing correspondingly fast – that is higher than any know paleoclimatic precedent. It will be the Permian all over again, and now James Hansen is saying in his bjerknes Lecture to the AGU 2008 that we could even evaporate our oceans away. But of course, because that fact is alarming, Paul Macrae will label me an alarmist. I guess a doctor that tells you you have cancer or a fireman that wants to douse your flaming home is also alarmist.
While we still require massive emission reductions, it is no longer enough. We need geoengineering now too. We’re going to have to geoengineer the Arctic wholesale. See Jeff Goodel Geoengineering The Climate, and Wikipedia geoengineering.
http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?lnk=
We’ve only warmed 0.8 C and we now face runaway climate change. Thermal lag means were locked in for another 0.8C, and aerosols are blocking another 2 C or 1.6 W/sqaure meter.
I argued with my English teacher at UVIC about climate change. He pushes uncertainty and denial. I told him he does a disservice to the students in the room who are hearing of this for the first time. I’m glad most students backed me up. Here we have Paul Macrae, another climate denial shill. I guess the English and Philosphy departments at UVIC are a bunch of idiots posing as climate scientists. He pushes myth that CO2 will increase global plant productivity. Yet our forests are being eating by pine beetles and fires destroying crops in Russia (2010). Now that our atmosphere holds 4% more H2O were going to get heavy dumps of rain and and even snow. Oh well, these people don’t care about their lies and reality because they know the young will inherit the effects of their carbon pollution.
Thanks for your thoughts Shaheer.
I do question, however, the whole idea of “geoengineering” as an answer to global warming. I’m not an expert, but it seems to me that the kind of inputs required to affect change on a global scale would introduce a whole new set of environmental issues.
The idea also, IMO, distracts from the urgency of recognizing that we must inherently change our demands on the planet.
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