Environmentalism: "frustrated, angry and confused"

Over at the Daily Kos, and European Tribune, blogger 'Johnnyrook' attempts to connect 'denialism' with an ideology. The piece itself is an answer to a blog post elsewhere by Joseph Romm, The denialists are winning, especially with the GOP. David Roberts tried this approach on the Nation blog back in February:

Long-time greens are painfully aware that the arguments of global warming skeptics are like zombies in a '70s B movie. They get shot, stabbed, and crushed, over and over again, but they just keep lurching to their feet and staggering forward. That's because -- news flash! -- climate skepticism is an ideological, not a scientific, position, and as such it bears only a tenuous relationship to scientific rules of evidence and inference.

We replied that environmentalism used 'science' as a fig leaf. Environmentalism is an ideological position, whereas scepticism encompasses a range of objections to it, some of which are, in fact, perfectly valid on scientific grounds.

What Johnnyrook writes in Why Climate Denialists are Blind to Facts and Reason: The Role of Ideology is, frankly, unmitigated and unimportant crap. But it does offer some insight into the 'thought processes' of grass-roots Environmentalism. Johnnyrook whines that

Anyone who has tried to discuss Climaticide with a climate change denialist knows just how frustrating it can be. No matter how well informed you are, no matter how many peer-reviewed studies you cite, or how many times you point out the overwhelming agreement based on the evidence that exists among climate scientists that global warming is real and is principally caused by human fossil fuel use, you will get no where. Your adversary will deny the facts, cherry pick the scientific evidence for bits of data that, taken out of context, support his/her denialist view, or drag out long-debunked counter-arguments in the hope that they are unfamiliar to you and that you will not be able to refute them. If you succeed in countering all of his arguments he will most likely reword them and start all over again.

Climaticide? Climaticide? Is it even possible to kill a climate? But moving on, Johnnyrook clearly believes himself to be in possession of a faultless argument. So it must be the rest of the world that's wrong. Who said environmentalism was emotional, arrogant, and infantile?

After a couple of hours of this, you end up frustrated, angry and confused. You give up and storm off vowing to study and learn even more so that next time you will be better prepared and able to convince the denialist of the error of his/her ways.

Our advice to little Johnny is that perhaps his tantrums would be easier to manage if he reflected on why his arguments aren't convincing, rather than sought to find other reasons to explain his failure. But Johnny's tantrums are characteristic of the environmental movement as a whole - a movement that is unable to take responsibility for its own failures.

No, the true climate change denialist is an ideologue. Understanding this fact is key to comprehending the denialist mentality and to knowing how to respond to denialist arguments. Ideologues are adherents of closed, ideological systems, in which all problems are ultimately attributed to a single cause: original sin (Christianity), the accumulation of private property (Communism), restrictions imposed on a superior race by inferior ones (Fascism), the destruction of "freedom" by "Big Government" (Conservative/Libertarian).

And here Johnny gives us some insight into why he fails to make convincing political arguments. First, he doesn't recognise his own perspective as ideological, and that it is, in his own terms, about a 'single cause'. Perhaps we can help him - spell it out for him, in fact - with the aid of some emphasis to illustrate our point:

ENVIRONMENTalism

Environmentalists see society as intrinsically, fundamentally, inextricably linked to 'nature' - manifested as the 'environment'. To the Environmentalist, all moral actions are transmitted through the biosphere. Your wealth, relative to another's poverty is not seen in terms of the political, sociological, or historical background to your circumstances and those of your counterparts. It is instead seen in terms of biological and geological processes. You buy a big car, and the consequence is that it rains too much/doesn't rain at all on the poor, starving child in Africa. So, instead of addressing the poverty of the poor child through developing a critique of the socio-political relations throughout the world in order that we might begin to help, the Environmentalist just wants you to withdraw from your evil lifestyle. This moral framework is unchallengeable, according to the Environmentalist, because the causal chain between your consumer choice and the plight of the child in can be explained in 'scientific' rather than social terms; the car, the combustion, the CO2, the greenhouse effect, the warming, the climate change, the drought. (Forget any sense of proportion between these steps).

This perspective takes poverty as a given. Indeed, it needs poverty. Without poverty to designate a moral absolute, Environmentalism's moral calculations would cease to have meaning. Its objectives are, therefore, not to abolish poverty, but to make it 'less bad'. And, of course, the abolishment of poverty is, according to Johnny's maxim, 'ideological'. Thus, we are prevented from approaching the problem of poverty - or even the effects of climate change - through politics. In other words, poverty is not seen as a political problem. After all, poverty is natural. Just ask Malthus.

Second, Johnny gives us a particularly ignorant description of ideologies. Christianity is all about 'original sin', apparently. But can we comfortably say that Christianity is an ideology? It may well offer us an account of creation, but not necessarily to the exclusion of other ideological ideas. Can a Christian not be committed to free trade, on the one hand, or the abolition of private property on the other? There are interesting moral arguments for both. But why should Jesus be bothered, either way? And isn't that a problem for Christians, rather than political scientists? Communism, apparently, blames all problems on the accumulation of private property. Actually, Marx's contention was that the accumulation of private property is necessary to create a working class in an industrial - rather than feudal - society. In this sense, the accumulation begins to solve many of the problems of oppression and inequality. And Johnny is very much mistaken with his conception of Fascism, which he confuses with nazism. Nazism is indeed a racialised form of Fascism. But Fascism itself isn't a necessarily a racist ideology, and there is no consensus amongst historians about how fascism can be characterised; it is an issue of much debate, somewhat clouded by the fact that, at the time of fascism and Nazism, ideas about race such as eugenics were mainstream and orthodox - dare we say, the subject of a consensus. Finally, Johnny confuses libertarianism with conservatism. Yet conservatism, as the name suggests, seeks to use the state to preserve social orders, traditions and cultures, while libertarianism is a broader term, in that a libertarian would generally object to the state's intervention in such matters. Johnny's grasp on political ideologies is weak. No wonder then, that he fails to recognise his own.

He continues, oblivious,

Once the initial conclusion is reached (often after a long, complicated chain of deductive reasoning--Marx's Capital, the writings of Ayn Rand, etc.) that factor X is the source of all of society's ills, all debate outside the ideology's framework ends.

Hmm. Hasn't Johnny opened his story by telling us that carbon is the source of society's ills?

One may deduce new positions from the ideology's fundamental principles, but the fundamental principles can not be questioned because such questioning might undermine the entire ideological system and the psychological security that it provides, leaving the true believer in that most urgently to be avoided of states: UNCERTAINTY. Ideology is thus, inevitably, by it's very nature, anti-empirical.

We repeat:

ENVIRONMENTalism

Moreover, is it not precisely uncertainty that blights the environmental movement? Isn't it the environmental movement that needs to tell us that 'the science is in'? Wasn't it Johnny who was, just a few paragraphs ago, evincing his own sheer and absolute rightness? Isn't the entire momentum of the environmental movement predicated on a 'scientific consensus'?

Johnny borrows from Naomi Oreskes' critique of the "tobacco strategy", which we discuss - at some length - here. Oreskes' thesis is that doubt has been manufactured against the scientific case that smoking causes cancer and that global warming is caused by anthropogenic CO2, out of an ideological conviction. This forgets two things:

1. That, whatever the scientific evidence that smoking causes cancer is, and whatever the evidence that humans are influencing the climate is, our response to that evidence is necessarily political. Only a lack of response - indifference - is apolitical. In the case of smoking, the possible political responses to such information are many: we could put out the information that smoking causes cancer; we could restrict the sale of tobacco; we could ban it altogether; or we could even decide that we should all smoke more and die horribly. But all options are political.

2. That any objection to a political argument in favour of a course of action, founded on a scientific case, will necessarily 'doubt' that the scientific evidence is sufficient to warrant the political action to which one objects. To point that out is to state the obvious.

Johnny's uncertainty and Oreskes' 'tobacco strategy' hypotheses are meaningless. They say no more than "objectors doubt the proposition". But Oreskes and Johnny have convinced themselves that scientific evidence exists in some separate, apolitical space, from where it can make scientifically sound political arguments; they hide their political ideology behind their scientific fig leaves.

He continues with another mischaracterisation...

The Soviets understood this way of thinking perfectly because Marxism too is an ideology, only in Marxism the great enemy is not the State but private capital.

Actually, the state is the 'enemy' in Marxism. For Marx, communist society is a stateless society, and the state is the apparatus of the bourgeoisie; it maintains the conditions in which the working classes are oppressed. Marx explicitly seeks the abolition of the state. Johnny is completely wrong.

He goes on to argue that it is pointless to argue with people who hold an 'ideological' objection to climate change alarmism, because 'facts' are not important to them. He offers a psychological account of his political opponents:

ideologues find psychological safety from an uncertain world in the certainties of their ideology. What you think of as an argument about global warming, they perceive as an attack on their entire world view. And they're right of course, even though it's not your intention.

We have seen attempts to profile the psychology of 'deniers' before. Here, for example.

What is interesting here is that Johnny, who, as we can see, fails to recognise his own ideology as an ideology, now makes an attack against all ideology - against all political perspectives. Ideology is now a symptom of a pathology, in much the same way that religion is seen as a pathology by Richard Dawkins et al; it is a comforting delusion, with a biological basis. This scientistic nihilism allows Johnny to diminish his opposition, rather than confront them. Isn't this what the Nazi's do, according to Johnny's account of ideology, to other races? Aren't other races, by virtue of this pathology, not only morally and intellectually inferior, but biologically inferior too? Johnny has just diminished his opponents to sub-humans, who do not have the right to engage in political discussion or to raise political objections. Disagree with Johnny and you are persona non grata. Johnny isn't even capable of identifying the opposition - of which he is evidently utterly ignorant - to his ideas. He doesn't need to know what ideas in an ideology might commit an 'ideologue' to an objection to Environmentalism, and it would seem that he doesn't care. All he can see is that convictions to ideas appear to stand in the way of his own beliefs.

Johnny's claim to empiricism belies his blatant anti-intellectualism. He too wants 'facts' but only in the sense that a caveman wants a club. He says that "one should generally ignore the denialists and concentrate on persuading the open minded". But anyone who is open-minded has to agree with him, or they are suddenly closed-minded. Johnny finishes:

For those of us in the reality-based community, understanding the role that conservative/libertarian ideology plays in determining Climaticide denialist behavior, whether sincere or simulated, can be very useful in making sense of the denialist position, a position which, ultimately, is rooted not in facts and critical thinking, but in political and psychological needs.

For Johnny to tell us that 'denialists' are blinded by ideology seems as reasonable as, say, somebody who wants to completely reorganise society around a principle of, ohh, let's say, 'harmony with nature', telling us that they are against reorganising society around a particular principle. Of course Johnny has an ideology - Environmentalism. And of course he is an 'ideologue'. Why then, does Johnny protest so much about ideology?

Johnny's inability to reflect on his own ideology, his poor grasp of politics and his disregard for others all go some way to explaining his frustration, anger, and confusion. This is a symptom of the environmental movement. We have written before about the many different ways that Environmentalists have tried to diminish their opponents by questioning their psychology and moral character, and by trying to locate a conspiracy - in every way, in fact, other than through careful, honest, political argument. Johnny's emotions characterise the shrill, impatient, self importance of the environmental movement, which prefers trantrums to debate, and panic and alarmism to convincing arguments. It prizes emotion over intellectual engagement. Environmentalism isn't so much a cause to fight for, than a symptom of belonging to nothing. It is, nonetheless, an ideology - one that needs to be challenged.

Save Any Planet

For Green buffoonery in all its ghastly, opportunistic, incompetent, self-righteous glory, there is the latest episode of the BBC's The Apprentice. That's the series where someone incredibly rich and successful like Donald Trump conducts a "job interview from hell" in which ambitious young things compete for employment at Trump Central. In the BBC version, silly posh people and salt-of-the-earth working class types battle it out for a job with Cockney barrow boy Sir Alan Sugar, whose businesses are worth, we are told, 800 million pounds.

British readers with an hour to kill within the next four days can watch the show here. For everyone else, it goes something like this...

The candidates must come up with a brand new occasion for a range of greetings cards. Will they find a gap in this saturated market? And will their ideas be commercial?

What the two teams come up with is Happy Singles' Day and, yes, Save Planet Earth Day. As bad as Happy Singles' Day may be, a packaged greetings card celebrating the use of fewer resources is, as Sir Alan points out, a complete non-starter. But that alone does not explain the excruciating hilarity of the team's attempts to sell them to retailers. What makes the pitches for Save Planet Earth Day such exquisitely uncomfortable viewing is the religious zeal with which they fight the cause. These guys think they ought to believe what they are saying. The problem is that they don't believe it. Which makes it tricky to convince others. But as any environmentalist worth their salt knows, when people don't believe you, you emotionally blackmail them or appeal to their sense of self-loathing. Team leader Kevin does both. In his pitch to market leader Clinton Cards, he resorts to:

If you don't put your weight behind it, then it's just the same as the US saying "we don't care about pollution"

Kevin missed a trick there. Why stop at the US? Surely, anyone who begs to differ with environmental orthodoxy is worse even than that - they're more like rats, slave traders, or Holocaust deniers.

Greens would interpret Kevin's embarrassing Green epiphany rather differently. They would write it off as mere Greenwash, just another cynical attempt by business to tap into the grassroots popularity of the Environmental movement. The problem for that theory is that the Environmental movement is not popular. No sooner had we mentioned last week the ABC News poll where global warming didn't figure at all in the US public's list of priorities, and last year's Ipsos Mori poll that showed that the great British public aren't quite so Green as Britain's Great and Good like to think we should be, than there was another poll, which found that 70% of us would not approve of tax hikes in the name of tackling climate change. The trouble is not that Kevin et al are cynically trying to exploit a market; it's that they're trying to sell a product that is wrapped up with a cynical ideology, and for which there is no market.

That the public are not as gullible as the Kevins of this world would have it does not bode well for green initiatives that rely on consumer power. Fairtrade, for example - still far from a market leader - won't stand a chance once we realise that it's not actually particularly ethical to give people a friendly pat on the head and toss them some loose change to make sure they carry on doing all those jobs that we wouldn't touch with a barge pole.

The beauty of it all for self-righteous greens, however, is that you don't actually have to take any responsibility when you fail - you just blame the consumers. Just as Kevin does when reflecting on what went wrong with his pitch:

If that's the attitude everyone takes, then we're not going to be able to save any planet

Sir Alan didn't get where he is today by not cynically exploiting markets. Nor by cynically exploiting non-markets. Nor by cynically blaming people who refused to buy his wares. Kevin gets fired.

More Geometric Congruence from the Poorly Physician

We have reported before how climate alarmists seek to draw parallels between the shape of arguments made by the morally reprehensible, and climate change "denialists". At the same time, some like to make analogies of climate scientists and physicians. Andrew Dessler, professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University, former scientific advisor to the Clinton Whitehouse, and climate change activist blogger at Gristmill does both.

After spotting an advert [PDF] in the New York Times for the Indoor Tanning Association's campaign website, sunlightscam.com, Dessler compares the strategies employed by the Indoor Tanning Association, and the deniers:

The association between sun exposure and skin cancer is every bit as robust as the association between greenhouse gases and climate change. And that means it's pretty damn robust. What's interesting is that the Indoor Tanning Association seems to have virtually plagiarized the strategy incorporated by tobacco companies and global-warming denialists. The phrases "hypothetical risks" and "no compelling scientific evidence," along with efforts to smear the mainstream scientific community with accusations of corruption, are right out of the global-warming denialists' handbook.

This really underscores the effectiveness of the strategy. Regardless of how strong the evidence is -- whether it's the connection between smoking and lung cancer, exposure to sunlight and skin cancer, or greenhouse gases and climate change -- it seems possible to create doubt in the general public's mind with a concerted PR campaign.

What is interesting about Dessler's inability to discuss global warming without recourse to crude analogy is that it reveals a strategy of his own, and the poverty of climate change "ethics". Climate alarmists find it so difficult to connect their arguments to people that they need to seek abstract parallels in the structure of dubious arguments, and those of their opponents, despite their being totally unrelated. Thus we see Naomi Oreskes struggling to identify continuity between the legal defence offered by tobacco companies and the inertia of the environmental movement in the USA. And we see Marc D. Davidson attempting to diminish the moral character of climate change "deniers" by comparing their arguments to the arguments in favour of the continuation of slavery made nearly 200 years ago.

These are sure signs of the exhaustion of the climate change argument. It borrows the moral high-ground from history, but struggles to make the moral case for 'action' on its own terms; climate change denial is the equivalent of being in favour of the slave trade. The climate change argument borrows scientific credibility from medicine; climate change is like cancer, and climate scientists are like doctors. This unsophisticated reasoning isn't designed to shed any light on the matters at hand. It merely uses this borrowed moral and scientific certainty to position climate alarmists on the "good" side.

Pesky Oreskes

And so to the 2nd (and quite possibly the final) part in our mini-series of posts about videos that really annoy us: “The American Denial of Global Warming”

We find ourselves somewhat obsessed with this one. It's a lecture by Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at the University of California, San Diego, that's been doing the rounds for a while. It's a polemic against US climate sceptics, who Oreskes believes are ideologically and financially motivated individuals, who have successfully impeded the dissemination of the "scientific message" about global warming.



Oreskes kicks off with statistics from a recent poll which suggest that “72% of Americans [are] completely or mostly convinced that global warming is happening” and that “sixty-two percent… believe that life on Earth will continue without major disruptions only if society takes immediate and drastic action to reduce global warming”. This shows, says Oreskes, that “the scientific message is getting through to the American people.” Except that it doesn't. Because the message that "life on Earth" hangs in the balance, such that it faces “major disruptions” unless we take “immediate and drastic action” is not a scientific one. You certainly won’t find it in any IPCC reports. Two minutes into a lecture about how climate sceptics misrepresent the the science for political ends, and Oreskes has herself done precisely that.

Her next offering is an “unequivocal” statement from the IPCC TAR (2001):

“Human activities… are modifying the concentrations of atmospheric constituents … that absorb or scatter radiant energy ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions”

But here is the entire paragraph, from which she quotes selectively:

Human activities — primarily burning of fossil fuels and changes in land cover — are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents or properties of the surface that absorb or scatter radiant energy. The WGI contribution to the TAR—Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis—found, “In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.” Future changes in climate are expected to include additional warming, changes in precipitation patterns and amounts, sea-level rise, and changes in the frequency and intensity of some extreme events.

“Most” and “likely”. “Unequivocal”. Spot the difference. Undaunted, Oreskes quotes the IPCC's 1995 Second Assessment report to show that “in fact, the scientific community had actually already come to a consensus that global warming was beginning to happen in 1995”:

“The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human impact [sic] on global climate”

And here is the full section from which she quotes:

Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited because the expected signal is still emerging from the noise of natural variability, and because there are uncertainties in key factors. These include the magnitude and patterns of long term natural variability and the time evolving pattern of forcing by, and response to, changes in concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and land surface changes. Nevertheless, the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.

In 1995, the scientific consensus, if that is what the IPCC represents, was little more than “we don’t know”. But, according to Oreskes, the consensus is even older than that. She quotes from a press release that announced the publication in 1979 of the US National Research Council's Charney Report:

A plethora of studies from diverse sources indicates a consensus that climate changes will result from man's combustion of fossil fuels and changes in land use

which is, she says, a

very clear statement of what it was that scientists felt they had come to understand. In short, there was already a consensus in 1979 that global warming would happen. And that it was not a small issue.

See what she did there? The fact that a 1979 press release used the word "consensus" (or more specifically, the words "indicates a consensus") means that, in 1979, there was a consensus. Hey, it's easy this history of science.

And who needs a consensus anyway? Lyndon B Johnson didn't. His message to congress in 1965 ("in the days when politicians actually listened to scientists" says Oreskes) that "This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through… a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels" demonstrates the gathering political momentum, she says. But here's Johnson's quote in its original context:

Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places. This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Entire regional airsheds, crop plant environments, and river basins are heavy with noxious materials. Motor vehicles and home heating plants, municipal dumps and factories continually hurl pollutants into the air we breathe. Each day almost 50,000 tons of unpleasant, and sometimes poisonous, sulfur dioxide are added to the atmosphere, and our automobiles produce almost 300,000 tons of other pollutants.

Johnson's 5,500 word message contained just that one reference to carbon. And nothing about climate change. It talks instead about clean air, disposal of waste, pesticides, that sort of thing. But Oreskes makes it look as though anthropogenic climate change was high on the political agenda 40 years ago.

The scientific case really firmed up, she says, in the 1970s. And importantly, she insists, the science was not yet politicised. She cites three studies, including one from the JASON Committee in 1979, which was commissioned by the US government amid a fuel crisis to analyse the environmental repercussions of a switch from oil to coal. The report featured an early climate model. The abstract of the paper says:

Calculation with this zonally averaged model shows an increase of average surface temperature of 2.4 deg for a doubling of CO2. The equatorial temperature increases by 0.7 K, while the poles warm up by 10 to 12 K. Effects of the warming of the climate are discussed.

Burning coal would exacerbate the problem, they concluded. We resist the temptation to shout "it's all about oil". And of course, Oreskes is guided only by the cold, hard facts of science. She presents a graphic from NOAA, to show how the JASON report's predictions have been confirmed by subsequent data:


This graphic does more than merely support the model, she says - it shows that the prediction has come true to a "startling degree":

They also predicted an effect which we now call 'polar amplifaction'; that the effect would be greatest at the poles, maybe as much as 10-12 degrees increase in temperature at the poles, for doubling of CO2. So, in other words, four or five times as great as the global average. Well, I want to jump ahead in my narrative for just a moment, because it's not that common that scientific predictions actually come true. Or at least not that often that they come true to a high degree of specificity. But this is an example of a prediction that has come true to a startling degree. So this is a map recently released by NOAA that shows the mean surface temperature increase compared to a base period 1951-1980. But not just average for the whole world, but showing you how the changes are different in different regions. So the global mean increase for this period, or now, compared to this period is half a degree centigrade. But look at the polar regions; look at Alaska. The increase in Alaska is 2.1 degrees. That's four times the global mean. That's exactly what the JASON Committee predicted in 1979.

"[E]xactly what the JASON Committee predicted in 1979" our collective arses. Were Alaska representative of the entire Polar regions, she might have a point. But it isn't. Most of the Northern Polar region's temperature anomaly is +1.2-1.6 or +0.8-1.2. And we can see there is just one small area of the Southern Polar region which is warmer than the global mean. Oreskes has selected an unrepresentative worst-case to support her point. From the evidence she presents, it would be equally justified to argue that the model predictions were wrong to a "startling degree" on the basis that parts of Africa, Asia and South America have seen temperature rises as big as those in Alaska. (And remember that the 2D projection used in the figure artificially increases the apparent size of Alaska compared to the Tropics.)

Anyway, the story goes that the Charney and JASON reports, among others, grabbed the attention of the White House. The IPCC was established in 1988, and in 1992 George Bush Sr. signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which set the stage for the Kyoto Protocol. Mother Nature was going to be OK. Except that then it all started to go horribly wrong. Oreskes wonders why:

If scientists understood in 1979 that global warming was going to happen, and if they knew by the early 1990s that it was starting to happen, and if our first president Bush signed the framework convention, why are we still here, in 2007, still arguing about whether global warming is even happening?

This question is the subject of the second half of Oreskes' talk. In her own words, "the first half of this talk was about the truth; the second half is about the denial".

I've spent a lot of time over the last year or so, really trying to understand what has happened here in the United States in the past fifteen or twenty years and I believe the answer is explained by one very strange poll result. The fact is that although the American people are now convinced that global warming is indeed happening, more than half the American people still think that scientists are still arguing about it.

This apparent contradiction is not, says Oreskes, the result of disagreements between scientists (as we can see do exist) and/or disagreements between the scientific predictions and observations (ditto). Nope...

We, the American people, think that scientists are still arguing about it because this is in fact what we have been repeatedly told.

That is to say that what the American public are being told is false, and they believe it, and this belief is reflected in the poll. Oreskes says that the sort of falsehoods peddled

include that there is no proof - that the science is uncertain. That there's no consensus - that scientists are divided. That if warming is happening, it's not anthropogenic, it's just natural variability. If it is anthropogenic, it isn't necessarily bad. That we can adapt to any changes that might occur. And that controlling greenhouse gases emissions would cost jobs, harm, or even destroy the U.S. economy.

Having just failed so spectacularly to prove the robustness of the consensus, Oreskes might wonder why anyone should find any of these challenges particularly outlandish. (And how can there possibly be a scientific consensus that we cannot adapt to any changes that might occur, or that controlling greenhouse gas emissions would not cause economic harm?) But instead, she asks: "When did scientific uncertainty become a political tactic?" (When surely a more pertinent question for an historian of science is: When did certainty start having anything to do with science?)

She tells us that the history of denialism is as long as that of the consensus on climate change. And at the heart of the denial industry is the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington.

The Institute was founded, according to Oreskes, to defend Ronald Reagan's plans for the SDI "Star Wars" project. Members of the GCMI would make public statements in the mass media, to show that scientists were not "unified in their opposition, but in fact were arguing about it", and would threaten to sue under a Fairness Doctrine that required balance in the media at the time. She asks:

If you have 6500 physicists opposing a program [SDI], and three supporting it, then what kind of balance would it be if you gave equal time to the three?

By the 1990s, however, the cold war was over, leaving the GCMI without a purpose. They employed their skills instead to casting doubt on the mainstream science of global warming, says Oreskes. To illustrate the point, she shows a graphic from a 2004 study by Boykoff and Boykoff of global warming press coverage between 1988 and 2002.




There is a number of problems with this approach. First, the study looked at only four publications - NY Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Such prestige publications are far more likely to report cutting-edge, controversial research, and are more likely to seek a counter opinion so as not to insult their audience. Second, this shows just one level of media bias - of which there are many (like which research gets covered in the first place. And indeed, the Boycoff study is not without it's own biases. For example, it tells us on page 1 that, "The continuous juggling act journalists engage in, often mitigates against meaningful, accurate, and urgent coverage of the issue of global warming.") Third, the study looks for agreement between the thrust of an article and the "consensus position" that AGW is real and is happening. In which case, a story reporting James Hansen's claim that global warming will "result in a rise in sea level measured in metres within a century" will be put in the AGW dominant/exclusive categories, while a story along the lines of "global warming unlikely to cause significant problems to New York City in the near future" will find itself in one of the sceptic categories - even though the latter is closer than the former to the IPCC position. The statement "global warming is happening" simply isn't sophisticated enough itself to provide anything meaningful to measure statements by. The analysis lacks any measure of how far a story departs from the IPCC - in either direction. Fourth, it assumes that the "global warming is happening" side has not engaged with tactics of its own. Yet, as we can see, the unsophisticated "global warming is happening" statement can turn barking mad statements about climate science into truth, while assigning informed caution to the "denier" camp. Is that not a tactic? It certainly looks tactical. And, of course, the message that we're all going to die, because something really really horrible is about to happen is also a tactic - one that we have referred to here as "the politics of fear". Such tactics ask us to suspend our judgement because the consequences are just too great. Yet Oreskes shows that, if we suspend judgment, anything can pass as evidence. Fifth, Oreskes uses the statistics from the report with no historical perspective. Another graphic from the same study reveals the more interesting picture that, from about 1996, the number of "balanced" articles is roughly equal to the number of stories which push the AGW line:




Oreskes then says that it is an irony that the Reagan Administration had been dismantling the Fairness Doctrine, "which it viewed as unnecessary government intervention in communication markets". Huh? Yes, it is ironic, but only because it undermines her own argument that there is a cabal of Republicans bent on distorting the scientific message.

"As the science became firmer", says Oreskes, the "attacks became harsher and more personal". She highlights a "highly personal attack" against IPCC lead author on the 1995 IPCC SAR, Benjamin Santer, by Frederick Seitz (GCMI Chairman), William Nierenberg, and S. Fred Singer, who, in an open letter to the IPCC...

accused Santer of making "unauthorized" changes to the IPCC reports to downplay doubts, make science seem firmer than it was

That's a personal attack? As it happens, it is true that Santer made changes to the report subsequent to its approval, but before its publication. The letter claimed that Santer had removed the following three clauses, which had been agreed to by the authors, reviewers and governments:

"None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gasses."

"No Study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic causes."

"Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced."

This "personal attack" was neither groundless nor personal. Santer took responsibility for the changes, though it emerged that he had been "prevailed upon" to make the chapter consistent with the Summary for Policymakers (a point acknowledged by Fred Singer). Oreskes goes on to claim that the alteration was legitimate and within the peer-review process, as though it were the final word. But as Fred Seitz has pointed out:

Dr. Santer says that "IPCC procedures require changes in response to comments," Of course they do, but not after the governments have accepted the final draft. The fact is that someone connected with the presentation of the published version -- presumably Dr. Santer and others -- rewrote basic technical material in Chapter 8 with the result that scientific doubts about man-made global warming were suppressed. Clearly, governments will have to look elsewhere than the IPCC for sound science on climate change.

Whether or not the revision was legitimate in terms of the IPCC process, it reveals something rather murky. Oreskes, meanwhile, sets the legitimate dispute up as an attempt to smear honest scientists, who had no questions to answer. She then proceeds to tell us "who Fredrick Seitz was"... Beginning with his academic credentials, and a few of his career highlights, culminating in his last paying job...

In 1979, Fredrick Seitz became an advisor to the R.J. Reynolds Corporation. His job was to direct a medical research program to confound the links between tobacco and cancer. Between 1975 and 1989 RJR Nabisco Company, the parent company of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco spent $45 million on this program. And from 1978 onwards, Seitz was its director. The focus of the program was to (quote) identify highly promising young investigators who are underfunded at present, and to fund them to do research that could be then used to argue that the scientific evidence was uncertain.

The next few minutes are spent going over old documents and speeches to show that the point of the scientific research was to build a case against litigation in the US courts. The important thing about this, Oreskes says, is that it shows that science was used not to show how tobacco was safe, but to create reasonable doubt. She then moves on to Fred Singer, and his work in challenging various "consensus" positions on environmental issues, and "defending tobacco". Her point, it seems, is to show that in the cases of acid rain, CFCs, and environmental tobacco smoke, these men used the same argument: the science was uncertain, concerns were exaggerated, technology will solve the problem, no need for government interference. This is what Oreskes calls the "Tobacco Strategy".

But why would they do this - attack science, defend tobacco - Oreskes wonders. It's politics, she says. They are against regulation. It's the ideology of laissez-faire. Earlier in their careers, when these men were working to defend Regan's SDI program, they were driven, according to Oreskes, by anti-communism. They object to regulations and environmental laws because they represent "creeping communism". Testing the men's actions and words against the maxim that "extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice", Oreskes concludes that it is indeed vice that Singer and Seitz are engaged in. They do not "make a political argument on political grounds", she complains, and they "disguised a political debate as a scientific one". She charges them with misrepresenting the science, confusing the American people, and, in the case of climate change, delaying political action on one of the most pressing global issues of our time.

To find support for her Tobacco Strategy theory, Oreskes simply takes debates about acid rain, secondhand smoke and CFCs, and divides each into two positions such that, with the benefit of hindsight, one is necessarily false, and the other is necessarily true; she polarises the debate so that it can be cast as a reasonable position versus a ridiculous one. From this vantage point, she can claim that a strategy has been in place throughout. But what debate with a scientific element to it wouldn't be about how well understood the science is? Which one of these debates hasn't involved exaggerated claims from alarmists? And what demands for regulation have not been met by opponents that it is not necessary. The Tobacco Strategy is a rather mundane observation about the nature of arguments. Yet Oreskes gives it enough significance to paint a picture of a conspiracy. As we have argued before, this search for geometric congruence between "denialist" arguments comes at the expense of meaningful moral or political analysis. And by the same token, it could be argued just as easily that demands for acting on the best scientific evidence and scientific opinion makes bedfellows of greens and the eugenicists of the early-mid 20th century.

In Oreskes' world, a warm Alaska is enough to prove the 1979 theory of Polar Amplification, a single graph from a biased study is enough to show that the media is dominated by a secret political agenda, and the dealings of two dodgy scientists is apparently enough to undermine the good work of climate science in the eyes of the public - a public that she sees as an unthinking, uncritical mob who just sit there swallowing any old rubbish that is thrown at them. Oreskes accuses others of "distorting science", "tactics" and "political motivation". But her argument is all three. She lies to show that others have lied. She distorts the science to show that others have distorted the science. She points to others' political agendas to conceal her own. She does not search for agreement between scientists about theories, and she does not look for agreements between theories and observations to prove a consensus. It doesn't matter to Oreskes what the science is, or whether it can be verified, nor even if it is consistent. She is only interested in consensus. And consensus is about politics, not science.

But despite the onslaught from the influential denialists, the fact remains that - according to Oreskes' own figures - 62% of the US public "believe that life on Earth will continue without major disruptions only if society takes immediate and drastic action to reduce global warming". If any distorted message is getting through to the American poublic, obviously it does not come from the denier camp. Oreskes' problem is not that science gets distorted for political ends, but that that distortion is not always in the direction that she would prefer. One can only assume that Oreskes would be happier only if the message that was getting through was even more unrepresentative - and even more hysterical - than it already is.

Climate Deniers Are Slaves to Democracy

On the New Scientist (which is neither) blog last week, Catherine Brahic, the rag's online environment reporter was struck by a paper published in the journal Climatic Change. Brahic summarises:

Davidson claims that historical hindsight shows how preposterous the claims made in favour of slavery were. He suggests they bear striking resemblance to claims made against taking any action on climate change by contemporary members of Congress.

Like the mag itself, this argument is neither new nor science. It poses as philosophy. Which is fine. But really it's just a rehash of the climate-denial-equals-holocaust-denial chestnut. Yet it is still interesting, because, just like the climate-denial-equals-holocaust-denial chestnut, it tells us more about the people making it than it does about its subjects. In spite of being 'not convinced the comparison is helpful', Brahic is sufficiently sympathetic to finish her article with the cynical words:

Political decisions are based on money, not morals.

It's that money argument, again, even though abolition is about as good an example of a political decision based on morality rather than money that you are likely to find. Brahic's sympathy for Davidson's thesis appears to be based on the idea that arguments for the continuation of slavery were preposterous, and business-as-usual arguments are preposterous, therefore, denying climate change is as bad as being in favour of slavery. Or something.

The causes of 'bad science' in today's society - such as the rise of alternative therapies, creationism, and new religious movements - are the subject of many a hand-waving thesis. But when that discussion extends to arguments about the role of oil and money in society, people claiming to have science on their side are adding bad politics, bad history and bad philosophy to the mix. And in his paper, Parallels In Reactionary Argumentation In The US Congressional Debates On The Abolition of Slavery And The Kyoto Protocol, Marc D. Davidson certainly claims to have science on his side. In fact, he goes as far as to equate the science of climate with the morality of equality. Well, he has to really, otherwise he wouldn't have a paper to write. Davidson's abstract reads:

Today, the United States is as dependent on fossil fuels for its patterns of consumption and production as its South was on slavery in the mid-nineteenth century. That US congressmen tend to rationalise fossil fuel use despite climate risks to future generations just as Southern congressmen rationalised slavery despite ideals of equality is perhaps unsurprising, then. This article explores similarities between the rationalisation of slavery in the abolition debates and the rationalisation of ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases in the US congressional debates on the Kyoto Protocol.

He then makes equivalents of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 1856 13th Amendment to the US constitution, abolishing slavery. The earlier document, states:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

On the UNFCCC agreement, Davidson writes:

Despite this commitment [“to protect the climate system for present and future generations.”], the US Congress has as yet rejected any mandatory regulation of greenhouse gases, including the binding emission targets for the industrialised nations agreed to under the Kyoto Protocol

But how is using slaves the moral equivalent of using oil? The subtitle of the second section of Davidson's article - 'Similarities between slavery and the use of fossil fuels' - promises to answer the question... but doesn't. Instead Davidson argues that they are similar because (i) abolition of slavery/oil is not in the interests of the electorate - people who had a vote did not have an economic interest in abolishing slavery, or in the later case, oil; (ii) the electorate shifts costs onto those outside of the electorate - the slaves do all the work in the same way that oil does, and the costs of using that oil (as opposed to labour) are borne by future generations, who are not yet part of the electorate; and (iii) arguments against both the slave trade, and efforts to reduce CO2 are similar because they both resist social change.

Davidson's problem, it seems, is with democracy - that it does not represent the interests of people who do not yet exist; people in the future are excluded from the process because they aren't alive yet, just as slaves were denied access to the democratic process. But this does not make equivalents of using slaves and using oil. In order to be deprived of 'rights' it is necessary to exist. So to grant rights to people who do not exist, or to claim that they are being denied their rights, or to imply that you somehow speak for them are all totally absurd.

And it's far from clear that using oil does leave a cost for future generations to pay. This claim cannot be tested until such time as such people exist. It is a significant assumption. Davidson defers the argument to the future, in order to escape being challenged. And he admits that reducing CO2 emissions is not without its detrimental effects: after all, he agrees that it's not in the electorate's interests. It is democracy itself which creates slaves out of the humans of the future, according to Davidson; democracy is the means by which social progress is thwarted; it cannot transcend self-interest in favour of the interests of people he has conjured from his imagination. The "social progress" (and it is neither) he has in mind (even though he agrees it's not in people's interests) is one where people who don't exist yet are spoken for by anyone who wants to call the precautionary principle, against the interests of people who actually exist.

More interestingly, especially given that he's a philosopher, Davidson doesn't even explain why slavery is wrong. Slavery is wrong, of course. But if you want to show that something else is wrong in a similar way, you have to make it clear why it is wrong. Were we to claim that tap-dancing is the moral equivalent of drug-pushing you'd want to know why. If we answered in terms that failed to connect tap-dancing to drug-pushing, you'd close your browser, never to return.

Phillis Wheatley was a slave from Gambia bought by a wealthy Boston Family at the age of just seven in the mid 1700s. Unusually, the family encouraged her to read and write, especially poetry - for which she became famous on merit.

On being brought from Africa to America

`Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

You don't need to be a Christian to see the message. Wheatley was grateful for being brought to the USA, and for the opportunities she had, but not for being bought and sold as a slave. This is pertinent because no barrel of oil could ever write a poem which expresses such potential. As her poem suggests, the act of buying, selling, or using slaves is immoral because it creates a relationship between people which degrades humanity, when in fact, slaves were in every respect as capable of achieving as much and contributing to civilisation as their white counterparts.

The trouble for Davidson is that were he to state a principled objection to slavery, he would undermine his own argument. It would fall apart because, of course, people are not oil. It is only by dint of similarities in the shape of certain arguments, without historical and political context, superficially sharing some conceptual space, that slavery and oil usage can be seen as moral equivalents. Morality, for Davidson is more like geometry than an expression of humanity. This reveals far more than any resemblance between arguments against abolition and against climate change mitigation.

Davidson goes on to look for more geometrical congruence between arguments made hundreds of years apart, and finds another six arguments used by both Kyoto sceptics and anti-abolitionists: (i) What is deemed bad is in fact good; (ii) The benefits of the proposed policy are uncertain; (iii) Change brings economic ruin; (iv) Solo action will be ineffective and unfair; (v) Sovereignty will be undermined; (vi) Social change will hit other groups.

This is utterly mundane. What political issue is not debated on these lines? What divides camps on any matter, where one sees a thing as a good, and the other bad, with one arguing for either progressive or retrogressive change, the other for the status quo? Davidson might just as well argue that using oil and using slaves are moral equivalents because arguments in favour of their continuation were both constructed using words and marks of punctuation, arranged into sentences. What he is describing are six questions that will likely be at the centre of any political discussion about change. The closer you look at these six points, the sillier they become. In fact we are starting to seriously wonder whether his paper is some sort of clever spoof.

(i) Opposing political ideas will necessarily always differ about what is bad, and what is good. That's why we have arguments. From some perspectives, a welfare state is bad, while others maintain that it is a good. Environmentalists argue that industrial society is bad, and deep ecologists argue that nature is itself a good. Others see nature as 'red in tooth and claw'. Davidson juxtaposes statements by vice president John Caldwell Calhoun, on February 6, 1837 with bogeyman du jour, Senator James Inhofe:

“the Central African race...had never existed in so comfortable, so respectable, or so civilized a condition as that which it now enjoyed in the Southern States”...Slavery was not “an evil. Not at all. It was a good – a great good.” - John Caldwell Calhoun

"Thus far, no one has seriously demonstrated any scientific proof that increased global temperatures would lead to the catastrophic predictions by alarmists. In fact, it appears just the opposite is true, that increases in global temperature have beneficial effect on how we live our lives." - Sen. James Inhofe.

We know why slavery is wrong. It deprives individuals of their liberty, and the institution limits the development of human society. Meanwhile, Inhofe's point finds support among among many mainstream climate scientists, such as the Tyndall Centre's Professor Mike Hulme, who has observed that catastrophe "is not the language of science". And the idea that climate change might produce benefits - however true or false it is - is not a moral argument. By contrast, the ideas that slavery is either right and good or wrong and bad are not testable, are moral arguments, and more to the point, slavery is an idea which disgusts us today not because of scientific investigation, but because of our understanding of humanity. Yet Davidson uses scientific and moral arguments as though they were interchangable.

(ii) The benefits of any proposed policy are always uncertain to any opponent. How can somebody who doesn't see the policy as good, ever see the benefits as certain?

(iii) No doubt the end of slavery did bring economic problems, and yes, sceptics do worry about the economic costs of policies to mitigate climate change. But anyone who cites the Stern report in support of immediate mitigation also makes an economic argument. Does that make them the moral equivalent of slave traders, too? And even Davidson agrees that the economic effects of Kyoto would cause economic problems.

Although economic forecasts vary widely, there are few studies predicting that climate policy will benefit employment or economic growth.

(iv) It is precisely the environmentalists who are arguing that solo action will be ineffective and unfair. That is why they - and Davidson - are calling for international frameworks.

(v) Sovereignty is not only a key concept in most political theories, it was also at the heart of the abolitionist argument, for slavery denies personal sovereignty. Davidson contrasts the argument that it is for individual states to decide the legal status of slavery in the 1800s with more recent complaints about supranational organisations (IPCC) creating policy frameworks.

As sincere as this fear of supranational bodies may be, however, the arguments become suspect if they are not accompanied by proposals for unilateral action.

And yet he's already claimed that the "solo action will be ineffective and unfair" argument is "reactionary"! Only, it seems, if it doesn't conform to climate orthodoxy. Again, Davidson's contempt for democracy is palpable.

(vi) All change creates winners and losers. Whether that change is progressive, or retrogressive, is, of course, the point. And as political scientist Harold D. Lasswell explained, "Politics is who gets what, when, and how." Even Davidson recognises this...

Apart from specific groups like manufacturers of solar cells or windmills, few people have a personal interest in rising energy prices.

For Davidson, Kyoto sceptics are "reactionaries", but it is Davidson who shows contempt for democracy, and for politics. He is unable to make moral equivalents of slavery and using oil, and so searches for abstract ways to connect them that bear no scrutiny. In doing so, he also shows contempt for humans. The relationship between slave and master is vicious, exploitative, and deliberate. The link between slaves and not-yet-existing-slave-like-people-of-the-future is merely tortured. The only person deliberately exploiting future generations is Davidson. The irony is that it is people in the present who suffer.

The Well-Funded "Well-Funded Denial Machine" Denial Machine

One of the arguments which frequently emerge from the warmers in climate change debates is that the scientific expertise of sceptics has been bought – literally – by oil companies. We see this tired argument again wheeled out in the aftermath of the Inhofe 400 list. For example, James Wang of non-profit organisation Environmental Defense tells us,

The aim of the report is to refute that only a handful of scientists - mostly in the pocket of oil companies - still dispute that global warming is happening, and that it's caused by human activities.

The logic of the "industry funded sceptics" argument seems to be that scientists can’t possibly have an honestly held position which contradicts the “consensus” because the consensus cannot possibly be mistaken, so their opinion must have been paid for. These scientists (and, for that matter, anyone with a public profile who has anything critical to say about global warming) are whores – “industry shills” , “corporate toadies”, or part of the “well funded denial machine” – who not only prostitute themselves, but also sell us all out to an apocalypse for dirty, dirty dollars... Those who "deny" climate change are in fact, denying a "holocaust". As ecowarrior Mark Lynas puts it,

I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put this in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial – except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don’t will one day have to answer for their crimes.

It would be hard for the warmers to escalate the rhetoric against their detractors and for the tone to sink any lower. Yet still, the inclination of those using this argument is not to engage their sceptical counterparts in scientific discussion, or even to allow their political opinions on the best way to act on the available evidence to be challenged in an open and democratic way. Meanwhile, the scientific and political debates go unheard, and are overwhelmed or shut down by the shallow rhetoric of 'consensus science versus industry-funded sceptics'.

This is not merely the language of hairshirt lunatics and fringe activists operating in the blogosphere and Internet forums, but even the "considered" opinion of "experts". But far from lending the argument credibility, this expert opinion only reveals its own shallow, fragile and nervous claim to objectivity and the hollowness of the political environment that it thrives in. The truth of the matter appears to be that few people recognise environmentalism as a political ideology. We’ve reported before how the Royal Society - the UKs leading "science academy" - make bigger noises about "funding" than they shed any light on the science.

There are some individuals and organisations, some of which are funded by the US oil industry, that seek to undermine the science of climate change and the work of the IPCC. They appear motivated in their arguments by opposition to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, which seek urgent action to tackle climate change through a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions... Often all these individuals and organisations have in common is their opposition to the growing consensus of the scientific community that urgent action is required through a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. But the opponents are well-organised and well-funded...

The Royal Society's statements that sceptics aren't interested in debate but "seek to distort and undermine the science of climate change and deny the seriousness of the potential consequences of global warming" are unequivocal. According to them [PDF] (and pretty much any activist), at the centre of this conspiracy to pervert the course of science are "climate criminals" ExxonMobil, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. And at the centre of the attempt to expose this devious master plan, and dishing the dirt on the backroom negotiations is the website Exxonsecrets, a database of rumour, innuendo, and leaked documents, which sells itself as:

a Greenpeace research project highlighting the more than a decade-long campaign by Exxon-funded front groups - and the scientists they work with - to deny the urgency of the scientific consensus on global warming and delay action to fix the problem.

And the reason Greenpeace have targeted ExxonMobil is that,

For over a decade, it has tried to sabotage international climate change negotiations and block agreements that would lead to greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

A report by the campaign [PDF] in May last year concluded that

ExxonMobil’s campaign to fund “think tanks” and organizations that spread misinformation about the science and policies of global warming is now widely known. The company’s multimillion dollar campaign has undoubtedly contributed to public confusion and government inaction on global warming over the past decade.

and suggested that ExxonMobil should

Apologize to the world for the damage delay caused by the company’s actions to confuse the public understanding and slow political response to this global crisis.

And the sums we are talking about, which have been spent on comissioning these "climate criminals"...

TABLE 1. EXXONMOBIL’S “HANDFUL” OF 2006 FUNDING CUTS

Organization	2005 ExxonMobil Funding	Total funding 1998-2005
Center for a New Europe USA	$50,000	$170,000
Center for Defense of Free Enterprise	$60,000	$230,000
Competitive Enterprise Institute	$270,000	$2,005,000
Environmental Literacy Council	$50,000	$50,000
Free Enterprise Education Institute.	$70,000	$130,000
TOTAL	$500,000	$2,585,000

( page 5 http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/assets/binaries/exxon-secrets-analysis-of-fun )

So, according to Greenpeace and co, the $2,005,000 given to the CEI between '98 and '05 was enough to stall worldwide action on climate change.

But hang on a minute. Don't Greenpeace also seek to influence the debate by lobbying politicians, and making public statements to “inform” the public?

Gosh, looking back over some of our recent posts, it seems as they do. Just last month, we reported on how Conservative leader (and quite possibly the UK’s next Prime Minister) David Cameron was so impressed by Greenpeace’s views on micro-generation that he was virtually singing about it from the rooftops.

Here he is, actually on Greenpeace’s rooftop, at their expensive headquarters in London. Not quite singing, but policy-making and webcasting, nonetheless.

In a BBC article last year, a Greenpeace representative summed up the way they like to be perceived...

“But it is not enough for green campaigners just to be seen as "nice people", argues Greenpeace's Jean McSorely - they must also have the stronger arguments. The pro-nuclear lobby has been clever in using environmental arguments, on climate change, and the security of supply issue, to push its case, she says. She believes Greenpeace has a stronger scientific case, but, she argues, it does not always get a fair chance to make it. "The access industry gets is just phenomenal compared to green groups," she tells the BBC News website. "Labour has often castigated the old boy network, the public school tie and so on, but they have a similar network. It depends who you know in the unions or ex-Labour ministers. "People may accept that as the way things are, but there needs to be more transparency."

Greenpeace… Always the victim, the underdog, the oppressed. Never mind its access to teams of lawyers, opposition parties and its favourable media image as heroic planet savers, and their proximity to the old-boy, public school tie network in the forms of David Cameron, and the billionaire Goldsmiths, among many others.

But if it is true that poor little Greenpeace doesn't always have a fair chance to make its case, (which is news to us) how much smaller is this David, than the Goliath? If it's true, as Greenpeace say, that "You Get What You Pay For", how much cash has it had to spent on PR, and to influence the global dialogue on climate change?

Year	Income (US$)	Income (Euros)	Source URL (reduced for better formatting)
1994	137,358,000		http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/greenpeace-international-annua.pdf
1995	152,805,000		http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/annual-report-1996.pdf
1996	139,895,000		http://archive.greenpeace.org/report97/finance3.html
1997	125,648,000		http://archive.greenpeace.org/report98/index.html
1998		110,833,000	http://archive.greenpeace.org/report99/index2.html
1999		126,023,000	http://archive.greenpeace.org/Annualreport_2001/report.html
2000		143,646,000	http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/greenpeace-annual-report-2002-2.pdf
2001		157,730,000	http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/stichting-greenpeace-council-a.pdf
2002		165,349,000	http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/greenpeace-annual-report-2004.pdf
2003		163,439,000	http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/annual-report-2005.pdf
2004		162,043,000	http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/annual-report-2006.pdf
2005		173,464,000	http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/annual-report-2006.pdf
Total	$418,348,000	E1,202,527,000

(Speaking very roughly, Euros 1,202,527,000 = US$1,772,404,550. @ todays exchange rate = $2,190,752,550 total)

That is a lot of money.

Let us recap. Of all the oil companies, according to Greenpeace, the Royal Society, and campaigning organisations, journalists, and scientists, ExxonMobil is the worst. And of all the wrong things it does, the worst has been to give $2 million to the CEI over the course of a decade. This funding has been sufficient to significantly stall international action on climate change on the global political agenda. Allegedly.

Yet as we can see, since 1994, Greenpeace have been the lucky recipients of well over $2 billion in roughly the same time. A difference of three orders of magnitude.

And what have they done with it? Lobbied. And pulled high-profile stunts to gain media attention. And lobbied. And run expensive PR and media campaigns. And lobbied. And interrupted democratic processes and the generation of electricity and sabotaged crops. And lobbied. And picketed the forecourts of privately run ESSO garages. And lobbied. And lobbied. And lobbied. And, of course, terrified the public about cancers, apocaplyses, armageddons, catastrophes, too often and too many to begin to list here. You can do a lot of lobbying and PR work with 2.2 billion dollars. And don’t forget that a vast amount of work done is done for Greenpeace for free by activists, journalists, campaigning celebrities, and politicians who are keen to appear to be up-to-speed with the climate bandwagon, and therefore 'in-tune' with today's concerns. Nothing epitomises this state of affairs better than the image of an MP or prospective Prime Minister in bed with an NGO. Because politics is regarded as sinister, whereas NGOs, in today's world, are seen to be above that kind of stuff - "ethical", rather than political. By achieving the ethical seal-of-approval of vociferous and high-profile NGOs, politicians can claim to have a stainless character. Environmental NGOs foster suspicion of politics, which is corruptible, claiming that their vision of "the good life" isn't subject to contest, criticism or influence because "the science is in".

Greenpeace want to claim that the corrupting influence of money has distorted the public perception of climate science. Given the scale of their funding and the extent of their influence, shouldn't we agree with them? Couldn't we say that Greenpeace have been engaged in exactly the propaganda exercise they accuse ExxonMobil and the CEI of? It accuses other organisations of sabotage, yet sabotaging and interrupting legal and democratic processes and stopping industrial operations is precisely how Greenpeace has risen to prominence. It terrifies people into donating and believing, and in doing so, over the last few decades, Greenpeace has successfully influenced politics throughout the world. But it is right and proper that they have been able to do so. What is a terrible, terrible shame is that opposition to them has been insufficient, and that, their own shrill complaints have gone largely unchallenged. There have not been enough Exxon-funded CEIs. If Greenpeace really had "science" on its side, and really had our interests in mind, it would welcome challenge, and debate - like all good political campaigns, it would shout "BRING IT ON!". It would be through this process that Greenpeace would influence the debate. Instead, Greenpeace, the scientists at the Royal Society, and anyone using the cheap language of rumour, conspiracy, and innuendo avoid debate. This argument has been successful only because of the mass withdrawal from politics, and the political elite's desperate need to find ways to justify itself. The 'scientific consensus' is a stand-in for political legitimacy, and the terrifying images of Armageddon constructed by environmentalists are a surrogate 'purpose' or vision. To challenge the consensus is to undermine that legitimacy, and to challenge the terrifying images is to undermine that purpose. It is far easier to shift the debate away from such potential damaging and revealing matters, to focus on 'interests', and to say that such challenges are the obfuscations of profit-seeking oil-barons. The most peculiar thing about this is that in this strange way of thinking, those who claim to have the least interests get to have the loudest voice, and it is up to the sceptics to prove the argument false.

Greenpeace should be free to make its political arguments, as should the CEI - wherever they each get their money from. But if Greenpeace want to continue to appeal to victimhood, as the hard-done-by truth-seekers, oppressed by the nefarious influence of cash, they should consider that their billions of dollars make their claims look not too dissimilar to those of the old church, which preached the virtues of poverty while raking in a vast wealth, using it to expand its influence, and to coerce and harass disbelievers. Such is the nature of orthodoxies.

The only real value in pointing out Greenpeace's billions is to show how exhausted the political environment has become. People who clothe themselves in terms such as "progressive" and "liberal" yet get behind Greenpeace's arguments about "scientific consensus" and "industry funding" should therefore take stock of the fact that, if it is true that alternative voices are being funded by corporate interests, it is big business which has created a challenge to powerful, well-funded and well-connected quasi-corporate interests and orthodoxies. No doubt it is confusing for such liberals to learn that they are in fact, engaged in undemocratic, and elitist argument.

The irony of "the well-funded well-funded-denial-machine denial machine" is not simply that it is well funded, and denies critics of its political agenda, whilst complaining about funding and political distortion of science. But that the angry accusations thrown at sceptics - both scientists and 'ideological' sceptics - are the product of a deeply illiberal form of politics, which seeks to deny opposition its right to expression, avoids debate, and hides behind the distorted conception of science that comittees can determine scientific truth which politicians and individuals should obey, and damn anybody who disagrees.

The Great Big Bali Beano Ding-Dong Roadmap to Nowhere

What is there to say about Bali?

There have been rumours of punch-ups, singing and drinking and dancing, weeping delegates, and Mea Culpa's from failed US presidential candidates on behalf of the entire USA. It was, in this sense, like any other industry's Christmas party - an expenses-paid event, which went on too late, at which the tired staff, drunk on their own self importance, became emotional, and fell out with each other. Office politics, writ really bloody large. So much ado about nothing.

The media lapped up the hysteria nonetheless, and gave it 'meaning'. What has emerged are unsatisfied eco-activists, disgruntled at the failure of the world's politicians to achieve a "legally binding framework" to reduce green house gases in the atmosphere. These responses tell us more than Bali itself.

First, George Bush is once again vilified as the "climate criminal" second to none, for his undoubted links to the oil industry. According to some, he's almost single-handedly managed to ruin the party for everyone else. We at Climate Resistance are no fans of the Bush administration, but it seems to us that, if the US were to tie themselves to the framework - whatever it turns out to be - it would be against the interests of Americans. (We believe that the same is true of any other country, too, incidentally - it's not really in anyone's interests). In this respect, we find ourselves curiously aligned with GWB, if indeed it is he who is wrecking the Bali Roadmap. For he is one of the few who appears to be representing people's actual interests - err, you know, like, in a democratic kind of a way.

It's all well and good sitting around in conferences, pretending to be sorting out the world's problems, but actually, beating up the USA for the failure of Kyoto (and the future failure of the Bali roadmap) smacks of a deep contempt for democracy - Kyoto simply wasn't wanted in the USA. And what is stopping every country that wants to sign up to a legally binding framework which guarantees their populations a lower standard of living from going right ahead, and making laws which will reduce CO2 emissions? It's happened here in the UK without an international law. Might it be because people aren't trusted to make sensible decisions at the ballot box, so international frameworks are needed to make sure that no democracy gets out of hand?

Second, a sign of just how shallow and desperate the vilification of world-leaders and industrialists who do not genuflect to climate orthodoxy is the language that is used to diminish them. "Climate criminal", for example, is one such cartoonish pejorative. And now, Dr Gideon Polya gives us "climate racism":

“Climate racism” refers to the extraordinary, “might is right”, entrenched disparity in “per capita greenhouse gas pollution” between the “colonial” Anglo-Celtic countries of the US, Canada and Australia and the countries of the developing world. ... The worst offenders (the US, Canada and Australia) successfully blocked Scientist and EU demands at Bali for definite “25-40% reductions by 2020” targets and argued for constraints on developing countries. The de facto position of these climate racist countries is that they somehow have a “right” to pollute with annual per capita CO2 pollution up to 160 times that of Third world countries such as Bangladesh but that developing countries must be constrained.

The irony of Polya's singling out the Anglo-Celts as the polluting race, while complaining about "climate racism" may be lost on him. We've pointed out before how feminists and Marxists struggle to frame their agendas in today's world, and so seek to clothe themselves in contemporary anxieties to make themselves look radical. (You have to worry when communists and conservatives are bleating the same thing about "the dangers of uncontrolled growth".) Now, inequality is not a matter of actual substance - ie, cash - but how much you pollute. Racism is no longer defined in terms of attitudes towards racial groups, but how much pollution one group does, compared to another. In other words, Polya has lost the plot, and the only way he can express his moral calculations is by referring to absolutes like 'racist', just as others make equivalents between climate sceptics and holocaust deniers. If there were any real substance to the moral claims made by environmentalists, it wouldn't be necessary to do this.

Inequality is, no doubt, a great wrong. But Polya misses the point. He doesn't seem to want to solve inequality by creating more for those at the bottom, but by demonising those at the top. "Stabilising" atmospheric gases will do nothing to stop racism, nor will it create a world free of inequality.

Lucas and the Majority of Some Scientists

In a conversation about EU policy on restricting CO2 emissions from aircraft, on BBC Radio 4's Today program, this morning, Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for the Southeast region said

Well, when you hear scientists say that we have about eight years left in order to really tackle climate change, I don't think what the public actually want is cautiousness, what they want is real leadership, and that is what the EU is promising to give, and yet that's what we're failing to do here.

More often than not, what green politicians mean by "what scientists say" is actually "what green politicians say". So this morning, we rang Caroline Lucas's office to ask her which scientists are telling her that we've only got eight years left. We've never heard them say it, and we listen out for them saying it. They said they'd get back to us...

Meanwhile... this is not Lucas's first comment of this nature. Back in July, we picked up on her comments on climate change scepticism being the equivalent of holocaust denial.

What's prompted me is real concern that a recent opinion poll showed that half the population still don't think that there's scientific certainty about climate change; they still think there's a real debate to be had there. And it worries me enormously because if we don't have a population that really understands that 99.999% of international scientists do believe that climate change is happening and do believe that it's human caused, if people don't understand that then they're not going to put the pressure on the politicians that is so desperately needed and so urgently needed because we’re being told we've literally got between five and ten years in which to put in place a proper policy framework to address climate change. And unless people are really convinced that it's a problem they're not going to act to change it.

Dr Lucas's comments this morning seem equally confused. On the one hand, she appears to be claiming that people are terrified into demanding action because they've heard scientists say we've only got eight years left to save the world. On the other, she's demanding that air travel is restricted. But if people really are as concerned about what Lucas says scientists say as Lucas says they are, then there would be no need to respond to their fear with new EU legislation, people simply wouldn't fly. But, as she points out, aviation is a growing industry.

So if Lucas isn't talking on behalf of the frightened public, (the ones who manage to find their way to the airport in spite of their fear) is Lucas speaking for science at least?

It turns out not, because in answer to our question, Lucas's press office emailed us back with a bunch of links, saying,

The quote in question - that which contains the estimated 'deadline' of 8 years for the world's government to act seriously on climate change - has been used generically for some time now, and is taken from a consensus view among a number of scientists.

"The consensus of a number of scientists". Would that be the same as "the majority of some of the population"? We read the links to find out. They consisted of:

* Guardian Environment Correspondent David Adam's interpretation of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report - "Governments are running out of time to address climate change and to avoid the worst effects of rising temperatures, an influential UN panel warned yesterday". (The influencial UN panel don't actually se