Why should four distinguished American physicists ally themselves in their later years with movements to fight the scientific evidence and spread confusion on many of the most important issues of our time? That’s a question Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway address in their admirable new book Merchants of Doubt. Three of the physicists were Fred Seitz, William Nierenberg and Robert Jastrow. The fourth, Fred Singer, is still living.
The issues in which the men, jointly or severally, played a part cover a wide range. A surprising range at first sight. What have tobacco smoking, the strategic defence initiative, acid rain, ozone depletion, second-hand smoking and climate change got in common? They were not areas of professional expertise for the four scientists. Oreskes and Conway point to the fact that they all involved the possibility of government regulation of market activities in the interests of the environment. Regulation was the road to socialism. All four men were stout defenders of free market capitalism and strident anti-communists. Nierenberg and Seitz hated environmentalists, viewing them as Luddites.
As eminent scientists who had played important roles on a national level they were men of influence and did not hesitate to use it when opportunity offered. The book traces in considerable detail the way they added their weight to the battle against regulation in the fields they engaged with. Seitz, on retirement, was employed by R J Reynolds Tobacco Company to oversee the distribution of a very large grant to biomedical research. To some degree this worked to create friendly witnesses for the tobacco industry. Seitz agreed with the industry’s position that there was “no proof” that tobacco caused harm. When in later years the battle moved to secondhand smoke, the Environmental Protection Agency called the epidemiological evidence conclusive. Seitz and Singer leapt in to create confusion. Singer claimed that the EPA was taking “extreme positions not supported by the science.” He and Seitz became advisers to The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition which attacked the science and campaigned against it. Singer argued that the EPA assumed the risk from second-hand smoking was directly proportional to the exposure, whereas it should have assumed a “threshold effect” – that doses below a certain level would have no effect.
Ozone depletion is a serious matter on which to oppose the science, and fortunately the science won out in the Montreal protocol of 1987 and its subsequent revision in 1990. But Singer, at the time chief scientist at the US Department of Transportation wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal dismissing ozone depletion as localised and temporary and insisting that there was no proof that CFCs were responsible. The ozone hole he accounted for as part of Earth’s natural climate variability. There was therefore no need to regulate CFCs. His writing on this issue had three major themes: the science is incomplete and uncertain; replacing CFCs will be difficult, dangerous, and expensive; and the scientific community is corrupt and motivated by self-interest and political ideology. It reads like a striking prefiguring of the attacks on climate science that persist today.
The four men were closely involved in the attack on climate science in the early days. In 1980 Nierenberg chaired a National Academy of Sciences committee report in which economists Nordhaus and Schelling argued, contrary to the natural scientists’ contributions, that because there were enormous uncertainties about climate change and its potential costs, policymakers should do nothing but fund more research. The report synthesis followed the economists’ line. It was heavily criticised, but not by the White House which used it to refute two EPA reports advising immediate action to reduce coal use. Then in 1989 the Marshall Institute produced a report written by Jastrow, Seitz and Nierenberg which rejected Hansen’s 1988 claim that warming as a result of CO2 emissions was detectable and instead blamed rising temperature on the sun. It went down well at the White House. “They are eminent scientists. I was impressed,” said one member of the cabinet affairs office. Singer joined in during the 90s with a litany of complaints at the findings of the 1996 IPCC and a vicious attack on climatologist Ben Santer for alleged unauthorised changes to the chapter of which he was a lead author.
The book tracks the ways in which these four men lent their considerable scientific prestige to a series of issues in which vested interests tried to deter government action to regulate business activities. They did so not by engaging with the science but by downplaying it or attacking it. The motive was ideological. It’s a sad story.
Part of the interest of the book is its reflections on the nature of science. Science doesn’t provide certainty or proof. What it does provide is the consensus of experts, based on the organised accumulation and scrutiny of evidence. Thus the geological theory of plate tectonics, for example, has emerged as accepted scientific knowledge. Modern science is a collective enterprise. What counts as knowledge are the ideas that come to be accepted by the fellowship of experts, the jury of one’s scientific peers. If a claim is rejected the honest scientist moves on to other things. When Robert Jastrow and his colleagues first took their claims to the halls of public opinion rather than to the halls of science, they were stepping outside the institutional protocols that for four hundred years have tested the veracity of scientific claims. Many of the claims of the climate science contrarians had already been vetted in the halls of science and had failed to pass the test of peer review. Many were never even submitted for vetting.
Modern journalism often misunderstands the process. It’s considered only fair to give due consideration to another viewpoint. Journalists don’t always understand that the contrarian has already received due consideration by peers. And contrarians are often very insistent that they should be given a hearing. In the case of the four men who are the subject of this book journalists were also fooled by their stature as scientists. But the authors point out that they were never really experts on the diverse issues in which they engaged “in their golden years”. They couldn’t be. Modern science is far too specialised for that. Physicists can’t also be epidemiologists, ecologists, atmospheric chemists or climate modelers.
The sensible conclusion of the book is that we must trust scientific experts who work in and through the scientific community of which they are part. The credentials of the experts matter, of course, but they are scrutinised by scientific bodies. We should take seriously the judgments of such groups as the National Academy of Sciences or the IPCC when they report on their searches of the science. It doesn’t make sense to dismiss the consensus of experts because someone dissents, especially if the dissenter is superannuated, disgruntled, a habitual contrarian, or in the pay of an interest group.
I took some comfort from the fact that this book is incidentally a record of the ultimate defeat of those who attacked the science in the issues the authors cover. But in every case the attackers succeeded in delaying appropriate action. When one considers the magnitude of some of the dangers they denied, their confidence seems irresponsible in the extreme. There is little doubt that the science of climate change will also ultimately prevail. But delay is costly and dangerous. It is to be hoped that many journalists and policy makers read this book and learn from it to ignore the specious attacks climate science still suffers from deniers who play little or no part in its patient work.
[Buy via Fishpond NZ, Amazon.com, Book Depository UK]
Just reading this myself, Bryan, and finding it a clear and illuminating book. There aren't many surprises if one has read other texts that document the ideologically driven propaganda war against health and environmental risks that dates back to the mid-twentieth century.
It's still disturbing to see the degree to which people who know better will lie and distort information to create doubt. The distortion of the DDT story and the attacks on Rachel Carson are a recent example of how bare-faced this process is, and the way lies ricochet around the conservative networks and get picked up in the mainstream media.
It's a bitter irony that people who trumpet freedom and openness, all those fine values of western democracy, end up using exactly the propagandist tactics that are associated with repressive totalitarian societies.
Yes John, I would have liked to have included mention of the attack on Rachel Carson but let it go for reasons of length. For the benefit of other readers, that's a chapter in which the authors identify the crux of their story. "For the shift in the American environmental movement from aesthetic environmentalism to regulatory environmentalism wasn't just changing political strategy. It was the manifestation of a crucial realisation: that unrestricted commercial activity was doing damage — real, lasting, pervasive damage. It was the realisation that pollution was global, not just local…" Digging up the bones of Rachel Carson and exposing them to public vilification is simpy another desperate attempt to deny the negative externalities of unrestricted market activity.
add 'libertarian' (of the "Free'm and Libuurty" variety) and that's pretty-well the full house
(+ the 'all of the above' option, of course!)
We also should not forget the valiant obfuscatory efforts of the fourth estate – or 'whatever you say, Rupert', as it is known in this country – as Hansen et al have just pointed out again;
This leads me to a chart that he-who-plagues-us might wish to see, in order to appreciate the difference between natural cycles (bottom) and a noisy but relentless incline (top). (Hell, why not collect the whole set?)
This will, of course, make not one iota of difference in his case, but may have some impact on those who haven't yet been fully assimilated into the collective.
Real live "laugh out loud" over your very apt description of the Fourth Estate.
When you say "this country" I assume you mean US?
Down here in Oz we have a dreadful Rupert infestation. It's even worked its way into our formerly world-class national public broadcaster.
You may like http://www.stopmurdoch.blogspot.com/ given that he hates pee-wees and you are a bird-liker.
Springhill, I'm a fellow Aussie; from Adelaide, in fact, the 'home' of News Ltd. (named after the eponymous local afternoon paper Citizen Rupert inherited from dad Sir Keith in 1952, trivia fans!)
He dislikes the murray magpies!? Is there no end to the man's infamy?
Murray magpies! Surely you don’t mean those brainless murray mudlarks! The ones that fall in love with your car’s side mirrors and, in one memorable instance, fly into your office because they got all confused while romancing the reflection in the office windows.
There’s one down the street that thinks it owns a particular intersection. Most disconcerting when you’re driving home after a hard day and this cursed, moronic waste of feathers marches and meanders across and around the road secure in the knowledge that the feeble driver of the multi tonne metal monster is unwilling to run you flat.
Why should four distinguished American physicists ally themselves in their later years with movements to fight the scientific evidence and spread confusion on many of the most important issues of our time?
Here is the “scientific evidence” for the unnamed “most important issues of our time”: catastrophic man made global warming.
IPCC projected “for a warming of about 0.2°C per decade”, the actual observed global mean temperature tends are as follows: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from…
1) Data from NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies => 0.1 deg C per decade (half the warming rate of the IPCC projection)
2) Data from Hadley Centre / UEA CRU => Zero deg C per decade (Flat)
(continued)
3) Data from UAH National Space Science and Technology Center => -0.05 deg C per decade (slight cooling)
4) Data from Remote Sensing Systems => -0.06 deg C per decade (slight cooling)
As the result, the data shows there is no accelerated global warming and no catastrophic “climate change”.
Why the four distinguished scientist took their position is because the data, the science, does not support man made catastrophic global warming.
Here is the comparison of the IPCC projections and actual observations.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/0…
Note that the actual temperatures are LESS than if human emission of CO2 had been held constant at the 2000 year level.
We should take seriously the judgments of such groups as the National Academy of Sciences or the IPCC when they report on their searches of the science.
We live in the age of the enlightenment. If any authority makes a claim that is not supported by the data or it makes an incorrect interpretation of the data, it must be challenged.
This is the case with the IPCC. It claimed “accelerated warming” based on the global mean temperature anomaly data as shown in following chart.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/comp…
This interpretation is wrong because it ignores the cyclic nature of global mean temperature.
Another interpretation of the same data is the global temperature pattern is cyclic as shown in the following chart:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/0…
As financial modellers made mistakes, it is also possible that climate modellers could also make mistakes.
Oh dear, it's hitherto-warmest-(or-equal-warmest)-year-ever 1998 to a convenient end-point in 2009 again. Let's see what the IPCC actually have to say, shall we?
(Note the profoundly alarmist 'strengthening confidence'. These ideologues at the IPCC never let up!)
Let's look again at the chart I just posted before. He Who Should Just Go Away is one of the school that insists we're heading for some mini 'ice age', along with Easterbrook.
Even if temperature trends were to suddenly miraculously switch and decline as quickly as they have risen for the last half-century we would not return to 1980's temperatures until about 2040 (and bear in mind Easterbrook predicts 30 years of cooling.)
Yet here's Easterbook defending his 'Global Cooling is upon us' thesis in his response to 'truffle grower,' (a conflation of Gareth and Tim Lambert ) –
And then there's the disciple; that other (unfortunately global) weather phenomenon, El Ninny –
You could not make these people up!
Girma, you have already received a good deal more patient attention than you deserve on another thread. Please don't attempt to hijack this thread to go over all the same material again. The four men who are the subject of this book attacked climate science long before 1998, on grounds different from, but equally as spurious as, those you now advance repetitively.
I guess there is one point at which you make a relevant comment, albeit using it as a springboard for yet another repetition of what you've said elsewhere. It's when you say:
"We live in the age of the enlightenment. If any authority makes a claim that is not supported by the data or it makes an incorrect interpretation of the data, it must be challenged."
The whole point of Oreskes' and Conway's remarks on the nature of modern science is that the scientific community puts claims through a severe testing process before they can make it through to any kind of acceptance. You're at perfect liberty to say you doubt the conclusions of the scientific community engaged for years in working through to them, but you can hardly expect denialism's patently superficial reading of the data to be given equal credibility. Climate change is a deeply serious issue, not a light-hearted romp.
Would you have liked the denial of the dangers of smoking, of the threat to the ozone layer, of the origins of acid rain, to have carried the day, by the way?
Sorry, that's partly my fault – though IIRC his post was being written up as I was writing my second one.
I'm happy to revert-to-topic, as the discussion of why a minority of dissidents – frequently blatantly propagandist hacks, at that – merit so much attention is an intriguing one.
I've no doubt the science will 'win' in the long run; it will be proved unarguable in the most empirical manner possible. However, that's not going to be pleasant. And by the time we reach 'point incontrovertible' (this, of course, will never be reached for some posters on this blog) the damage will be both appalling and irreversible.
(For the umpteenth time; who are the conservatives in this debate?)
The effects of smoking are apparent at a personal level – it's a nasty habit, and why should I run risks to allow someone else to sustain their addiction? – and tobacco transnationals are powerful, but hardly at the heart of the economy. Plus their army of the sadly-addicted will buy their toxic product anyway! CFC's are also not at the heart of the economy; hence 'precautionary-principle' common sense prevailed. The impact of scrubbers on acidification was swift and readily measurable.
Now we're fighting the very core of the economy, and at least the 'black' component of the growth economy itself. We know from our own experience on this blog that many would rather risk seeing the planet crippled than curtail capitalism! Or admit that 'the Greenies' and/or 'the Lefties' could ever be right!
Look at the Tea Party – we are not talking 'rational actors' here! 'Look at BP CEO Tony Hayward's blatant 'Denialism' of the demonstrable impacts of his own spill!
Between the corporate media and the governments that cannot afford to fall foul of it the chances of the case for action prevailing are… well, I was going to say 'slight', but we hardly need to speculate on what we already know; what messages do you get if you open the paper?
We can't afford to leave it at that: because if we do, I've already seen the future, and it looks a lot like this.
There's an interesting review of Merchants of Doubt and a number of other recent books about global warming (all previously reviewed by Bryan) by Philip KItcher at Science magazine here. Well worth a read.
Are there any exceptions to the following?
A thread is started relating to climate science or its history.
Regardless of the topic of that particular thread, some denialist always jumps in with comments that ignore the topic and s/he instead repeats some denialist script that just happens to the favoured script of the moment.
Given that they have many mutually exclusive beliefs, how do they keep doing this?
Well, literally, because Gareth won't censor them.
Obama is in bed with BP
Obama is a socialist
Are those the kind of mutually exclusived beliefs you're talking about? Came across those ideas hundreds of times, while perusing the comments at AP and CNN stories about the oil gusher.
My recent post Climate Change and Disinformation
Ah, but is that inconsistent? Perhaps Obama is a socialist in the same sense that Bush was; he's there to maintain the pseudo-Keynesian Military Industrial Complex and the Corporate Welfare State! Privatise the profits and socialise the losses, that's the motto… and with spunk, energy and industry we might all dream of being Too Big to Fail!
TrueSceptic – I sort of find myself in a similar position on the odd occasion when i want to ask a question unrelated to the day's topic. Not that easy to go back through the archives to find something relevant to 'my' topic. A 'general debate' board might be the answer…
I did briefly introduce a Hot Topic bulletin board — 18 months ago? — but after a burst of initial posts (mainly at the expense of Ken Ring) the thing went dead. Boards are quite a lot of work to operate as well… On the other hand, WordPress offers an easy BB option these days (Buddy Press), which I could introduce, if the demand was there. I'd need to tweak the theme, and perhaps drop the current comment system, so it won't be done lightly.
Gareth,
Many similar blogs have an Open Thread for general discussion. When this gets too long, a new one is started. This appears to work very well.
That's true. I'm willing to experiment. I'll post one today, with rules of engagement…
Brian
You wrote, You're at perfect liberty to say you doubt the conclusions of the scientific community engaged for years in working through to them, but you can hardly expect denialism's patently superficial reading of the data to be given equal credibility.
Who are the real deniers?
IPCC: For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/…
Comparison of IPCC projection with observation: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/0…
Observation: Zero warming trend for the last 12 years http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from…
The data shows IPCC projections are wrong.
Who are the real deniers?
Girma, you are only confirming the "patently superficial" description. And contrary to my request you are transferring to this thread exactly the same points that you have already tried to make on another, where they have received comprehensive attention. Did you not understand what I asked, or did you deliberately decide to ignore the request?
Girma: Please keep your stuff about temperature trends for the "All guns blazing" thread. It is off-topic here. I will moderate or delete any further mentions here.
Ok Gareth
Bill
You wrote, We know from our own experience on this blog that many would rather risk seeing the planet crippled than curtail capitalism!
I guess your “planet crippled” means catastrophic man made global warming. Bill, the data does not support that. It is a wrong alarm. The observed temperatures are below projection if CO2 had been held constant at the year 2000 level. Just try to enjoy the longest life expectancy, the most free and comfortable life ever lived by a human.
I wish you focus on real issues like poverty, deforestation etc and stop smearing the plant food, i.e foundation of life.
Wake up, Girma.
CO2 is a waste product of animal and industrial metabolism. Natural sinks such as vegetation can accomodate the animal emissions, but not the industrial, which is why atmospheric CO2 is increasing.
How would you feel if your only source of drinking water was ever more polluted with urine and faeces? Or if your children were threatened with disease from raw sewage seeping into their playground?
Hey, what's the problem, it's all just "plant food", right?
Rob
CO2 is a trace gas and it is only about 0.04% of air. In a 2500 ml bottle, the amount of CO2 is only 1ml. CO2 is not a polutant.
CO2 + H2O + Light + Soil => Plant Food => Animal Food; therefore, CO2 is foundation of life
Fantastic. I thought this one had died. Reading it I felt like Orbell must have felt.
I had this discussion via the letters page of the ODT a few years ago with a fellow who finished with an apparently irrefutable: "…CO2 too small an amount to have an effect unless the laws of chemistry have changed since I was at university in the early 1940s".
Well, as it happened, the "laws of chemistry" had changed since then. It is difficult to get this across to a non chemist but it was essentially the same as an astronomer in 1670 saying "The planets are perfect spheres and move in circles around the Earth unless the laws of astronomy have changed since I was at university in the early 1610's."
Top effort girma, keep it up.
I haven't seen Ken Ring's "CO2 is too heavy to rise so levels must be falling" for a while. Would you care to revive that one as well?
I am not commenting on this tread anymore; please let us debate at the "All guns blazing" thread.
Girma, your tired old zombie "arguments" have been debunked over and over on this site – can't you do some reading before putting your foot in your mouth?
Even better, try swallowing 0.04% of your body weight in arsenic, or, better yet, polonium!
Rob
Arsenic is poison, CO2 is plant food. The more CO2, the better!.
Imagine plants could speak.
What would they response be when some call their food a polutant? Who is standing up for plants? I do!
(I know I'm contributing to this derail but)…
Girma,
I'd like to come over to your house and install a few "plant food enhancers". They will ensure that every room is maintained at 5% CO2. I think you'd welcome this, and in fact I'm surprised that supplying this service has not become a major industry in the last few years, given the apparent number of plant food enthusiasts. Perhaps we could set up a partnership to exploit this market?
BTW is 5% OK? If not, what would you prefer?
I thought CO2 is only a minuscule amount of 0.04% of air. I will be fine with 0.1% that we may have by 2100.
Hydrogen may meet the energy need in due time, but please don't slug us with an "AIR TAX" before then. You call it action on climate, but I call it "AIR TAX"
Girma, you seem to have succeeded in diverting the comment thread from Oreskes and Conway to yourself, as you did with the All guns blazing thread. Mission accomplished, I suppose, so far as you are concerned. Distraction and delay marked the efforts of the men whose activities the book recounts. You're obviously committed to the same cause. Whether it's ideology or a perverse psychology that drives you I have no idea, but it's certainly not science. You show no respect for the intellectual effort and patient investigation of the community of climate science. I can perhaps make you relevant to this thread by remarking that you are an example of the failure to understand how painstakingly the conclusions and predictions of the science have been arrived at, a failure on which the authors of the book spend a good part of their final chapter.
Bryan Walker,
You wrote:
I can perhaps make you relevant to this thread by remarking that you are an example of the failure to understand how painstakingly the conclusions and predictions of the science have been arrived at, a failure on which the authors of the book spend a good part of their final chapter.
Let us see "how painstakingly the conclusions and predictions of the science have been arrived at":
(continued)
Example 1: Mike MacCracken wrote to Phil Jones, Folland and Chris
I think we have been too readily explaining the slow changes over past decade as a result of variability–that explanation is wearing thin. I would just suggest, as a backup to your prediction, that you also do some checking on the sulfate issue, just so you might have a quantified explanation in case the prediction is wrong. Otherwise, the Skeptics will be all over us–the world is really cooling, the models are no good, etc. And all this just as the US is about ready to get serious on the issue.
….
We all, and you all in particular, need to be prepared.
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=94…
(continued)
Example 2: Mick Kelly wrote to Phil Jones
Just updated my global temperature trend graphic for a public talk and noted that the level has really been quite stable since 2000 or so and 2008 doesn’t look too hot.
…
Be awkward if we went through a early 1940s type swing!
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=92…
Bryan, what is you response?
Commenters tempted to respond to this comment of Girma's please note that I've transferred it to the new open thread in an attempt to rescue this post from focusing on his well-used denialist snipppets. I'd be grateful if anyone who wishes to respond to him would do so there, not here.
“The sensible conclusion of the book is that we must trust scientific experts who work in and through the scientific community of which they are part. The credentials of the experts matter, of course, but they are scrutinised by scientific bodies. We should take seriously the judgments of such groups as the National Academy of Sciences or the IPCC when they report on their searches of the science. It doesn’t make sense to dismiss the consensus of experts because someone dissents, especially if the dissenter is superannuated, disgruntled, a habitual contrarian, or in the pay of an interest group.”
If you adopt this foolish view they will lead you to destruction. Always question so-called experts.
You miss the point competely. The book’s point is that the experts have already been thoroughly questioned by those with the knowledge to conduct the questioning searchingly. The questioning by peers has been far more painstaking than anything the dissenting community has come up with.