If you haven’t read George Monbiot’s Heat yet, you need to check out this week’s Newsweek. In this week’s edition, the news periodical does an excellent job exposing the shameful, yet intricate workings of the global warming denial industry. Click here to read the article.
This is significant, because as far as I know, this is the most mainstream and widely circulated piece of literature to date breaking down the tactics of climate change naysayers.
The article does a good job naming names, connecting the dots, and following the money trail. Let’s hope this wakes up politicians and the general public, because we cannot afford to be paralyzed by pseudoscience while the world becomes increasingly destabilized by climate change.
Though I highly recommend reading this Newsweek piece in its entirety, regardless of how you feel about climate change, I’ve summarized some major tactics used by naysayers below, as mentioned in the article:
- Exxon Mobile, the world’s most profitable corporation, has been paying “scientists” $10,000 to write articles undercutting peer-reviewed climate change reports.
- The deniers have been employing similar tactics used by the tobacco industry, such as relying on the notion that there is too much “scientific uncertainty”; to do this, they regularly print white papers and “studies” (not empirical research, but critiques of others’ work).
- Former employers from the coal/oil industries landing high-ranking government jobs related to environmental action, largely resulting from connections with Washington conservatives who feel action taken to fight global warming will harm business (and thus, those lining their campaign pockets), have been avoiding action, and even editing the research and reports of top climate scientists to portray “scientific uncertainty”.
- Constantly changing their story; for example, first they claimed the “world is not warming”, then they claimed warming was occurring, but that it was natural instead of anthropogenic (caused by humans). Now, their most recent claim is that the world is warming, but the effects will be small and harmless.
- Their main goal is not to argue global warming is good, or even neutral, but to create doubt among politicians and the general public that it poses a serious threat to global stability. This, they hope, will keep us from achieving the consensus and support necessary to act.
- Making up “think tanks” and disguising them with names like “The Global Climate Coalition” and “Information Council on the Environment” (aka ICE - a not so subtle acronym).
- The use of lists and petitions that aim to portray climate science as divided; funny thing is these “petitions” are mostly signed by a motley crew of folks who’ve never done any real climate research.
Though the Newsweek piece does a solid job exposing the global warming denial industry, I still recommend Monbiot’s book, Heat. He does an even better, more comprehensive job articulating how the denial industry functions.
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