Blinded by the Light? Ideology, Ignorance, and the Denial of Global - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Blinded by the Light? Ideology, Ignorance, and the Denial

• f Global Warming

Naomi Oreskes Professor of History and Science Studies Adjunct Professor of Geosciences University of California, San Diego

June 2, 2005, SAN FRANCISCO

"I say the debate is over. We know the science. We see the threat, and we know the time for action is now.”

• -Arnold Schwarzenegger

San Francisco, June 2, 2005

In the mid 2000s, it seemed that the American people agreed.

72 % of Americans completely or mostly convinced that global warming is happening

Yale Project on Climate Change/ Gallup Poll, 2007

“Sixty-two percent … believe that life on earth will continue without major disruptions only if society takes immediate and drastic action to reduce global warming.”

Even many former contrarians had come around…

Frank Luntz, Republican Strategist

"It's now 2006. I think most people would conclude that there is global warming taking place and that the behavior of humans are (sic) affecting the climate."

2003 Memo to Republican Candidates

• Use phrase “climate

change” rather than “global warming”

• “Climate Change is a

lot less frightening than global warming”

“Winning the global warming debate”

Emphasize scientific uncertainty Insist there is no consensus “The scientific debate remains

• pen. Voters believe that there

is no consensus about global warming within the scientific

• community. Should the public

come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change

• accordingly. Therefore you

need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate…

“Human activities…are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents…that absorb or scatter radiant energy. [M]ost of the

• bserved warming over the last 50 years is likely

to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”

• -IPCC, Climate Change 2001,

Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, p. 21.

Was Luntz’s position was factually correct?

In fact, the science had coalesced even earlier IPCC 1995: Second Assessment Report “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human impact on global climate.”

• My historical analysis
• f published scientific

literature: Scientists had a expert consensus on reality of human‐caused climate change by early 1990s

• This result surprised

many people, but it shouldn’t have.

President George H.W. Bush called on world leaders to translate the written document into "concrete action to protect the planet."

U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992)

What happened? Why didn’t we take those concrete steps that President Bush promised?

• Super brief history of evolution of climate

science

• Story of the emergence of a political challenge

to that science

• Story of selling “uncertainty” –of emphasizing

doubt

• Motivated by a doctrinaire belief in free

markets, born, and hardened, in the Cold War.

Carbon Dioxide as Greenhouse Gas

• John Tyndall (1820-

1893)

• Established

“greenhouse” properties of carbon dioxide, water in 1850s

1900s: Svante Arrhenius suggested that increased atmospheric CO2 from burning fossil fuels could warm Earth

• Early calculations of

effect of doubling CO2:

– 1.5 -4.5 o C.

• Swede.. Thought global

warming would be a good thing…

http://cwx.prenhall.com/petrucci/medialib/media_portfolio/text_images/FG14_19_05UN.JPG

First empirical evidence of both increased CO2 and warming detected in 1930s by G.S. Callendar

• Callendar argued that

increase in CO2 was already occurring (in the 1930s).

• Quarterly J. Royal

Meteorological Society 64: 223 (1938) suggested that temperature might be increasing, too.

• Biography by J. R. Fleming

One important uncertainty, competing effect of water vapor. Some thought CO2 would have little effect…

Resolved by Gilbert Plass, 1950s

• Pioneer in upper atmosphere spectroscopy.
• Resolved absorption bands to much greater

specificity Showed they did not in fact overlap.

• Warming from increased CO2 was likely

Suess and Revelle, Tellus, 1957

Mankind is performing “a great geophysical experiment…”

(Similar argument made in Europe by Bert Bolin, who would later work on acid rain and found the IPCC)

CO2 inventory: Charles David Keeling

Keeling curve began in 1958 as part of the IGY

1965: President’s Science Advisory Committee, Board on Environmental Pollution Committee led by Revelle and Keeling.

“….by the year 2000 there will be about 25% more CO2 in

• ur atmosphere than at present [and] this will modify the

heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate…could occur.”

– Restoring the Quality of Our Environment, Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, Presidents Science Advisory Committee, The White House, December 1965, on p. 9

“This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere

• n a global scale through…a

steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”

• -Lyndon Johnson

Special Message to Congress, 1965

But, in 1965 President Johnson also had a few other things to worry about. Little serious interest was generated in policy circles

Rise of Climate Modeling (late 1960s- ‘70s)

• Development of fast digital computers: First effective GCMs

to study Earth climate as a system

• Possible to model the dynamics of atmosphere is a quasi-

realistic way, and to consider long-term trends

• Possible to to re-visit the Callendar question
• State-of-art models confirmed his earlier results

1970s: Serious discussion of policy implications

“Energy and Climate”, National Research Council, chaired by Robert White, NOAA director (1977) “The long-term impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on climate” (1979), JASON report for DOE “Charney Report” (1979), U.S. National Research Council Study Group on Carbon Dioxide, National Academy of Sciences

“A plethora of studies from diverse sources indicates a consensus that climate changes will result from man’s combustion of fossil fuels and changes in land use.”

National Academy of Sciences Archives, An Evaluation of the Evidence for CO2-Induced Climate Change, Assembly of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Climate Research Board, Study Group on Carbon Dioxide, 1979, Film Label: CO2 and Climate Change: Ad Hoc: General

There was a consensus in 1979 that warming would happen.

And that it was not a small concern

“The close linkage between man’s welfare and the climatic regime within which his society has evolved suggests that such climatic changes would have profound impacts on human society.”

• -NRC Proposal for Support of Carbon Dioxide and Climate

Change: A Scientific Assessment, 1979 NAS Archives, Climate Research Board

Big question was when. Most scientists thought changes would not be detectable until the 21st century. Surprising result...

Six years later, NASA Climate modeler James Hansen and his team concluded that the signal had been detected.

1988 James Hansen declares 99% certain that climate change now detectable.

It was this emerging (and disturbing) evidence that had led to the creation

• f the IPCC in 1988…

It also led to the emerged of a politically-motivated campaign to cast challenge that consensus and cast doubt upon the science…

Campaign focused on claim that the science was unsettled, and therefore it was premature to act… …and the origins of that claim can be traced back to a small handful of people.

Today doubt about climate science promoted in many quarters

• One of the most important for a long period of

time, going back to the late 1980s, is the George C. Marshall Institute.

• A think tank in Washington, D.C.
• For many years, denied reality of global

warming, or insisted that, if there were warming, it was not caused by human activities.

Where did the Marshall Institute come from? Why do they promote doubt about climate science?

Robert Jastrow, Astrophysicist, Head of Goddard Institute for Space Studies. William Nierenberg, Nuclear physicist and long-time Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography Frederick Seitz, President of NAS, Rockefeller University, and Consultant to R J Reynolds Tobacco

Early 1980s, working together on an advisory panel to the Reagan Administration on SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars”) 1984: Created the George C. Marshall Institute to defend SDI against scientists’ opposition… …and to promote continuing importance

• f science and technology in national

defense, in part by insisting on reality of Soviet strength and U.S. weakness

1987, Jastrow published in National Review, insisting that if we did not act quickly to improve our nuclear capability, Soviets would overtake us, and be able dictate terms.

At time, Seitz was working as consultant to R.J. Reynolds Corporation

• Principal strategy of tobacco

industry to defend its product was “doubt‐mongering”

• To insist that the science was

unsettled

• Premature to act to control

tobacco use.

1989, these two strands merged

• Cold war ended, Soviet enemy was gone.
• Our Cold Warriors found a new enemy:

Environmental “extremism”: Exaggeration of environmental threats by people with a left wing agenda

• They applied the “tobacco strategy”—to insist that

the science was unsettled…

“Doubt is our product,” ran the infamous memo written by one tobacco industry executive in 1969, “since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds

• f the general public.”

– Smoking and Health Proposal, 1969, BN: 680561778, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/nvs40f00

These scientists supplied it

Harms of tobacco (both direct and second‐hand) Threat of nuclear winter Reality of acid rain Severity of ozone hole Human causes of global warming (DDT)

The physicists cast doubt on all these issues

In every case, insisted that the science was too uncertain to justify government action

How they did this, you’ll have to read the book

Why they did it. Why it gained so much traction, especially on the conservative side of the American political spectrum

Ideology: Neo‐liberalism, Free Market Fundamentalism

• Modern neo‐liberalism: focused on de‐regulation,

“releasing” the “magic of the marketplace.”

• Came to prominence in early 1980s: Margaret

Thatcher, Ronald Reagan.

• Not just conservatives, Tories and Republicans.
• Also promoted throughout 1990s: “Washington

Consensus,” led by US Democratic President Bill Clinton and UK Labour leader Tony Blair

• 1990s‐2000s, right up to the GFC, bipartisan

consensus on virtues of de‐regulation

Intellectual Roots: Two Key Thinkers

• Capitalism and Freedom (1962)

Milton Friedman:

– Civic freedom and free markets are inextricably linked: to control markets, states have to control people. Without free markets, we’re on the slippery slope to tyranny…

• Road to Serfdom (1944)

Friedrich Hayek:

– Passionate opponent not only of Soviet‐style communism, but of Western European social democracy, fearing that it would put us on the “road to serfdom.”

Contrarians took this argument

• ne step further:

Environmentalism  slippery slope to socialism Because environmentalists generally argued for government regulation…and from regulation of acid rain,

• r second‐hand smoke, it was only a small step towards

government control, generally.

Idea articulated in several of their writings, but most clearly by a fourth scientist, who joined the cause in the 1980s…

S Fred Singer, also a Cold War physicist‐in fact, a rocket scientist. Involved in campaigns to challenge evidence

• f acid rain, global

warming and ozone hole

1979-1985: Seitz had worked for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. Early 1990s, Singer worked with Philip Morris to attack the EPA over issue of second hand smoke

1993:

• S. Fred Singer and Kent Jeffreys,

“EPA and the Science of Environmental Tobacco Smoke” Published by Alexis de Tocqueville Institute, with funding from Tobacco Institute

Jeffreys: Lawyer affiliated with the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

EPA had declared second-hand smoke a carcinogen. Result affirmed by U.S. Surgeon General.

Evidence supported by diverse, independent, peer-reviewed studies.

Why would a rocket scientist challenge it? Why would any scientist challenge it?

“...if we do not carefully delineate the government’s role in regulating…dangers there is essentially no limit to how much government can ultimately control our lives.”

• S. Fred Singer, “EPA and the Science of

Environmental Tobacco Smoke” , Alexis de Toqueville Institute, (p. 2)

Luntz made a similar point, while challenging climate science in The Wall Street Journal in 2003 (before his conversion) “Once Republicans concede that greenhouse gases must be controlled, it will

• nly be a matter of time before they end up

endorsing more economically damaging regulation.….”

Frank Luntz, The Wall Street Journal, 8 April 2003

This debate was not about science. It was about government control. Of markets and of individual liberties. Whether governments should intervene in the marketplace to protect people from dangers.

In their writings, contrarians frequently assert that environmentalists—and by implication scientists working on environmental issues—have a hidden agenda. Anti-business, anti-free market, anti- technology

Irony: Origins of the U.S. environmental movement Progressive Republicanism of Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and John D. Rockefeller

1920s‐1970s Bipartisan consensus on importance of environmental protection

Wilderness Act Clean Air Act Clean Water Act National Environmental Policy Act

Things began to change in the 1980s…

When scientific evidence began to reveal serious problems: acid rain, ozone hole, and global warming Problems that seemed to demand government action Problems that seemed to demand regulation

Issues emerged just as Reagan administration was arguing for less government, less regulation, as advocated by Milton Friedman

Put Reagan administration (and later the neo‐liberal consensus) on a collision course with science. On a collision course with the future.

Ronald Reagan may have had a point. Government regulation is not the solution to every problem… Technology will be the solution to climate change (if we are lucky)… …and some environmentalists may be socialists.

The cutting edge of science is always “unsettled” There is always uncertainty, always room for doubt

But this doesn’t mean that DDT, acid rain, the ozone hole, and second‐hand smoke weren’t real problems needing real solutions. Problems that got worse the longer we delayed in acting on them

It does mean that the free market capitalism, like any system, has its limits. “Negative externalities”—costs that accrue to people who did not reap the benefits of the activities that generated them Environmental damage is the textbook case of a negative externality.

This is common thread uniting the diverse science challenged by the Merchants of Doubt: they were all market failures. seen.” They were all examples of behaviors that generated large external costs, and therefore provided justification for government intervention in the marketplace. Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, has called anthropogenic global warming ”the greatest and widest- ranging market failure ever seen.”

• Not surprising then, that environmentalists, liberals,

and Europeans were quick to accept their reality.

• Conservatives, libertarians, and Americans have been

slow to accept them.

• Judge Richard A. Posner: “Behavior that generates

large external costs provides an apt occasion for government regulation.”

• How we feel about regulation will affect how we feel

about that behavior, whether it is smoking or burning fossil fuels.

We are all more likely to accept evidence consistent with

• ur pre‐existing world view.
• Posner: “A rational decision‐maker starts with a prior

probability…but adjusts that probability as new evidence comes to his attention.”

• History tells us that scientists have known for a very long

time that global warming, from burning fossils fuels, could

• ccur.
• For more than 20 years, evidence has been mounting that

it is occurring, evidence that our scientists now tell us is “unequivocal.”

Sometimes said that communism failed because prices didn’t reflect economic realities Will capitalism fail because prices don’t reflect ecological realities?

Conclusion

The industrial revolution brought the developed world 150 years of unprecedented prosperity. Global warming is the bill. A bill that has now come due.

“The invisible hand never picks up the check.”

• -Kim Stanley Robinson

The End.