Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Seeds of Doubt in Climate Change Were Sown, and the Consequences We’ve Reaped

Is there strong scientific consensus that human activity is changing the climate? The answer is likely to depend on whether you ask the scientific community or the general public. Why the discrepancy? Because the deliberate efforts of a small few have drastically skewed the public’s perceptions about the science of climate change.

The methods involved in generating this misperception are certainly not new. In fact, they bear a striking resemblance to those employed by the tobacco industry to deny and downplay the link between lung cancer and smoking. The strategy used in both cases is a simple one: take scientifically valid facts and give the general public reasons to question their validity; and doing so is not hard given the cautious nature of the scientific method, which rigorously questions facts again and again to ensure they are accurate. Exploiting this methodology, opponents of the cancer-tobacco link first cast doubt upon the association itself, then began to point to other possible causes of cancer once outright denial became impossible. Similarly, opponents of climate change began by denying the certainty with which we knew the climate was changing, and then shifted to pointing out causes of climate change other than human activity – such as natural cycles of warming and cooling. All of these arguments could be refuted by other scientists, but that did not keep them from confusing those without any scientific background of their own.

This confusion was largely made possible by the media, which portrayed both sides has having equal merit. This gave the public a sense that the scientific community was greatly divided, both on the cancer-tobacco link and more recently on anthropogenic climate change. This uncertainty proved sufficient to undermine regulation of the tobacco industry, just as it has for regulation of the fossil fuel industry. Both industries have sought to protect their profits by distorting the truth. And were they could not distort the truth, they have had no scruples with accusing good scientists, like Ben Santer, of fraudulent work.

These efforts have proven very effective. On the one hand, they have caused a great many Americans to doubt the reality of climate change and the need for action to confront it. On the other, they have muddied the waters enough to make government action on climate change politically unfeasible, even though many Americans are concerned about climate. The latter is the more damaging, as it has cost the United States a leadership role in international climate efforts (there was no support for ratifying the Kyoto Protocol) and cost the U.S. economy the edge in developing renewable energy technologies (by blocking federal policies to support the transition to a green economy). Rather than getting down to a serious discussion about the solutions, people are still hung up debating the nature of the problem.

Now that this strategy of mass deception has been exposed, perhaps America can begin the see the problem of climate change as it really stands and mobilize some action to address it.