Blowing hot air about Global Warming
By Jim Lundstrom
The day after the United Nations Climate Change Conference started in Copenhagen on Dec. 7, we received a press release from a group calling itself Americans for Prosperity that promised to "expose the 'hot air' in global warming" with a live webcast from Copenhagen airing at a Madison hotel on Dec. 9.
AFP Wisconsin state director Mark Block said in the press release "its [sic] time to 'U.N.-mask international global warming alarmism'."
With his next sentence, Block gets down to the nitty-gritty of what AFP considers the "hot air" of global warming: so-called cap and trade programs that make carbon discharge from fossil fuels a costly liability.
"Supporters of Cap and Trade legislation are using made up research and junk science to drive up taxes and drive out jobs from Wisconsin," Block was quoted in the press release.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: "Cap and trade is an environmental policy tool that delivers results with a mandatory cap on emissions while providing sources flexibility in how they comply. Successful cap and trade programs reward innovation, efficiency, and early action and provide strict environmental accountability without inhibiting economic growth."
What the EPA does not say in that explanation is that the usual suspects might not necessarily benefit from uninhibited economic growth in a cap and trade world. For example, alternative energy companies (and their investors) would probably benefit more than big oil.
Why would that be of any concern to Americans for Prosperity? This is the same group that organized Tax Day Tea Parties and "town hall protests" to disrupt public health care reform meetings around the country.
Americans for Prosperity was founded by David Koch, the billionaire co-owner of Koch Industries, the largest privately owned company in the United States (Georgia-Pacific became part of the family in 2005), and this country's leading corporate environmental criminal.
Faulty Koch pipelines resulted in more than 300 oil spills in five states during the 1990s, which led to the corporation paying landmark penalties. A pipeline explosion in Dallas in 1996 that killed two teenagers cost the company more than $300 million.
Facing a 97-criminal count indictment and possible fines in the hundreds of millions for knowingly releasing large amounts of the carcinogen benzene at its Corpus Christi, Texas, refinery, in 2001 the U.S. Justice Department under George Bush II dropped all but one charge - concealment of information during a three-month period in 1995. The company was fined $10 million and ordered to pay another $10 million for community service projects in Corpus Christi.
Koch is a major contributor to Republican candidates and has been called "the patron saint of right wing think tanks." His father, Fred Koch, was a founding member of the John Birch Society.
So it makes sense that Americans for Prosperity would be against climate change legislation. But perhaps in the interest of truth they should call themselves Americans for the Continued Prosperity of Koch Industries and Other Big Oil Outfits.
In their 1996 book Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future, biological scientists Anne and Paul Ehrlich came up with the word "brownlashers" to describe those such as the AFP members who, for various motives, sow seeds of doubt "about the reality and importance of such phenomena as overpopulation, global climate change, ozone depletion, and losses of biodiversity.
Even in 1996, there was general scientific consensus on these matters that has only grown in the intervening 14 years. Early last year the results of a survey of 3,146 earth scientists around the world found they overwhelmingly agreed that global temperatures have been rising (90%) and human activity is a significant contributing factor (82%).
In 2006 the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest scientific society, adopted an official statement on climate change: "The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society....The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now."
If there is scientific consensus and a degree of scientific certainty, how can groups like the AFP sow seeds of doubt about global warming?
The Ehrlichs probably nailed it in 1996 when they attributed the success of obfuscators to "the overall lack of scientific knowledge among U.S. citizens."
They wrote: "To the average person, the scientific process is sort of a black hole, an alien world of arcane experiments, unintelligible or confusing results, and peculiar people."
"Science has a marketing problem," said Dominique Brossard, associate professor of life sciences communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Scientists often feel they don't have to respond, 'This is just nonsense. Nobody will pay attention.' But somebody has to respond. Whoever is vocal will be heard. If nobody responds, who will convince the people who are skeptical?"
Brossard's area of research is how Americans or the public at large form opinions related to science that ends up being controversial for whatever reason.
"What you can see in general, not only for global warming but for a number of other recent issues, is that you do have some special interest groups preying on the fears in people's minds to force through their own agenda," Brossard said.
She refers to the tactics of these groups as "junk public relations."
"These groups use public relations tactics that will use an angle that will be attractive to the public to try to convert," she said. "There is a significant amount of people that are skeptical about the science of global warming, so by playing that angle, it reinforces the view of people who are already to some extent doubtful."
Brossard also believes the insistence by American press to present balanced, objective reporting is partially responsible for sowing doubt about global warming among the public.
"You have somebody who covers a scientific issue and is not trained in science at all, and covers the issue by putting two scientists, one representing the majority and the other representing a very, very small minority. I think that has to some extent participated in the building in this country of the skepticism related to science and global warming."
And then there is the weather.
"We live in Wisconsin, we just had a snowstorm, many people will have a hard time to extrapolate to an issue that is very remote," Brossard said. "You need something that's much more local and relevant for people to be willing to take action."
If that relevance takes the form of regulation to correct decades of environmental apathy, so be it.
"This could be a mix of carrots and sticks," Brossard said. "If you are driving a car that pollutes you will be taxed, so suddenly it becomes relevant because your wallet is impacted. Make it relevant, anything that can be relevant for you and you see directly either a negative outcome or positive outcome for you to have to take steps. But right now it seems so remote or disconnected to everyday life, I doubt you will see much change in the next few years."
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