Attacking Global Warming

• What strategies have been used to promote doubt about climate change? Have they been effective? With what consequences?

When ideas concerning global warming and climate change circulated during the mid 1900’s they were met with strong opposition from a handful of renowned physicists. These men tried several methods to merchandize doubt about the issue, all of which confused the public and the government and slowed the progress of policy making.

In 1989 Bill Nierenberg, Robert Jastrow and Frederick Seitz (As part of the Marshall Institute) began to attack global warming. Their first strategy was to relocate the blame from fossil fuels to the sun. They wrote a small book called “Global Warming: What Does the Science Tell Us?,” in which they picked and organized data to their liking, and presented it to the White House. The report attempted to de-validate past scientist’s conclusions by claiming data did not align. Instead, they drew connections between sun spots and warming trends, blaming the sun for the warming. There were numerous flaws in this report, including contradiction, but the damage was already done. The report had been presented to the government and it’s ideas spread to the press. Doubt was spread and policy making halted.

During this time Fred Singer took a different approach. He claimed that an important scientist, Roger Revelle, had changed his stance on climate change. By getting close to Revelle, Singer was able to “coauthor” one of Revelle’s papers while Revelle was sick. He was then able to change the tone of Revelle’s conclusions by simply removing data. Singer published the paper in Cosmos. Fred Singer used two strategies to promote doubt through his actions. First, he sold the idea that an important scientist had changed his mind, second he published this information in a public and nonscientific journal, reaching a broader and more gullible audience.

In 1994 Benjamin Santer became the convening lead author for chapter 8 of the IPCC Working Group I Report. During the construction of this report Santer was falsely accused of alerting and removing material by some of his scientific peers. Fred Seitz learned of this confined scientific dispute and publicly accused Santer of fraud. This was just the beginning of the explosive attack on Santer. By publicly attacking Santer this way, Seitz was able to spread doubt about the entire report and global warming itself.

These examples of the attack on global warming are just a small portion of what has gone on. All of these strategies have the same aim: to make the public question the validity of global warming. They confuse the public by providing other possible reasons for warming, making the scientists involved look bad, and by claiming scientists involved have changed their minds. When the public is confused about something they find it hard to take a stance on the issue, and when the public can’t make a stance the government has a hard time making a stance. When the government can’t make a stance then no policy can be made, the result of this is an essentially halted movement.