A Case Study of Personal Harassment and Amplification of Nonsense by the Denialist PR Machine
(pdf), by John R. Mashey
Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) - the idea that recent temperature rises are substantially caused by humans is supported by a very strong scientific consensus. But for ideological or economic reasons some people are absolutely sure that it cannot be true, frequently attack it and are often called contrarians or denialists as a result. They try to manufacture doubt on the consensus among the public, not by doing good science, but by using PR techniques well-honed in fights over tobacco-disease linkage. These are amplified by widespread use of the Internet, which is at least as good at propagating nonsense as truth.
A recent, well-coordinated transatlantic attempt to attack the consensus included:
-A not-very-good anti-consensus paper written in the UK by an NHS King’s College endocrinologist, Mr Klaus-Martin Schulte, not obviously qualified for this task,
-of which much was posted by Viscount Christopher Monckton at a Washington, DC denialist website of Robert Ferguson, and publicized by Marc Morano of Senator James Inhofe’s staff.
-The non-story then propagated rapidly and pervasively through the blogosphere.
-This expanded further into personal harassment of a US researcher, Naomi Oreskes
by Naomi Oreskes
Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then–EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, “As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change”. Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science. Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/306/5702/1686.pdf
Benn announces ’stronger’ climate change bill
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,,2201343,00.html
Rosalind Ryan, Elizabeth Stewart and agencies
Monday October 29, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The government today announced a “stronger, more effective and more
transparent” climate change bill, following a period of public
consultation and scrutiny.
The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, said in a speech at Kew
Gardens that the amended bill was a “ground-breaking blueprint” to
help lower Britain’s carbon emissions and would strengthen the
country’s position in response to climate change.
Mr Benn said: “We need to step up the fight against climate change and
we need to do it fast. The draft bill we set out earlier this year and
have now refined is a ground-breaking blueprint for moving the UK
towards ea low carbon economy.”
By taking a strong domestic stance on climate change, the environment
secretary said it would help Britain make its case for change
overseas.
The suggested amendments go further than the draft bill on climate
change published in March. Key among these is the possible inclusion,
for the first time, of emissions from the aviation and shipping
industry in the UK’s targets, something for which environmental
campaigners have been clamouring.
The revised bill also raises the possibility of raising the emissions
reductions further. Environmental groups have called for an 80%
target, which they say needs to be set before the proposed five-year
carbon budgets are decided on, and annual targets to ensure
year-on-year cuts are being made.
The new proposed climate change committee will also be given more
teeth, with greater independence from the government and its own chief
executive. In future, the government will have to seek advice from the
committee before amending any emissions targets in the bill.
The bill will make the UK the first country to put reducing carbon
emissions into law. The bill, to be published next month, will put a
legal duty on the government to cut emissions by at least 60% by 2050.
As Mr Benn told the Guardian today in his first major interview on
global warming since taking over at the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs, he believes that improving home energy
efficiency is crucial to meeting targets for reducing carbon
emissions. He said the bill would lay plans for “one-stop-shops” for
homeowners to make their houses more environmentally friendly, by
offering advice on greener living, installation services and loans for
equipment such as solar panels.
While the planned legislation has been welcomed by environmental
groups, concerns have been raised that the targets do not go far
enough and the bill should include sectors such as aviation and
shipping to be fully effective.
The original draft of the bill left out industries including aviation,
and set a target of 60% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, which
campaigners claim is too low.
In his speech to the Labour party conference last month Gordon Brown
announced he would be asking the new climate change committee,
proposed under the bill, to review whether that target was strong
enough.
But environmental campaigners are sceptical that the government will
be able to meet a more robust long-term target when it is currently
failing to achieve its own short-term domestic target of a 20%
reduction in emissions.
MPs also called today for the creation of a new Whitehall body to
drive climate change policy. The environmental audit committee (EAC)
said the government’s current framework for dealing with climate
change was “confused” and did not promote effective action on reducing
emissions.
The committee suggested there should be a new climate change
secretary, based in the cabinet, who would be in charge of the
government’s climate policy.
The MPs also recommended the creation of a new cross-departmental
climate change minister who could attend cabinet meetings.
The EAC’s chairman, Tim Yeo, said: “Th UK must be equipped to meet
both the challenge of a carbon constrained world and the likely
climate change impacts that will occur. It would be disastrous if bad
planning policy meant that today’s new developments become tomorrow’s
climate slums.”
Content-Disposition: inline
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/dayearthdied.shtml
The Day The Earth Nearly Died - programme summary
250 million years ago, long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the land =
and oceans teemed with life. This was the Permian, a golden era of biodiver=
sity that was about to come to a crashing end. Within just a few thousand y=
ears, 95% of the lifeforms on the planet would be wiped out, in the biggest=
mass extinction Earth has ever known. What natural disaster could kill on =
such a massive scale? It is only in recent years that evidence has begun to=
emerge from rocks in Antarctica, Siberia and Greenland.=20
"At the end of the Permian you'd see virtually nothing alive&q=
uot;
Professor Peter Ward, University of Washington
=
The demise of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago (at the so-called K/T =
boundary), was as nothing compared to the Permian mass extinction. The K/T =
event killed off 60% of life on Earth; the Permian event 95%. Geological da=
ta to explain the destruction have been hard to find, simply because the ro=
cks are so old and therefore subject to all kinds of erosion processes. It =
seems plausible that some kind of catastrophic environmental change must ha=
ve made life untenable across vast swathes of the planet.=20
"A volcanic eruption ten thousand times larger than man has ever s=
een"
Professor Vincent Courtillon, University of Paris
The world's biggest volcanoes
In the early 1990s, the hunt for evidence headed for a region of Siberia=
known as the Traps. Today it's a sub-Arctic wilderness but 250 million=
years ago, over 200,000km=B2 of it was a blazing torrent of lava. The Sibe=
rian Traps were experiencing a 'flood basalt eruption', the biggest=
volcanic effect on Earth. Instead of isolated volcanoes spewing out lava, =
the crust split and curtains of lava were released. And the Siberian flood =
eruption lasted for millions of years. Could volcanic activity over such a =
long time alter the climate enough to kill off 95% of life on Earth?=20
Vincent Courtillon used a much smaller flood basalt eruption, in Iceland=
in 1783, as the basis for some calculations. Writing in the 18th century, =
Benjamin Franklin (then American Ambassador in Paris) described 1784 as a y=
ear without a summer. Ash from the eruption blacked out the sky and crops f=
ailed across Europe. Courtillon extrapolated the climatic impact of the Sib=
erian Trap eruption from the records of the Icelandic event. He deduced tha=
t a 'nuclear winter' lasting decades would be followed by rapid glo=
bal warming due to the increased level of greenhouse gases in the post-erup=
tion atmosphere.=20
"It's the equivalent of a billion atomic bombs going off at th=
e same place"
Dr Michael Rampino, New York University
Vincent believes the disruption of cooling followed by warming could cau=
se the Permian extinction but other geologists disagree. Peter Ward returne=
d to the Siberian Trap data to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide - and =
global warming - that could result. His worst case scenario is a temperatur=
e rise of 5=B0C, enough to kill off many species but not the 95% wipeout th=
at ended the Permian.=20
If the Siberian eruptions were not deadly enough, what other effects mig=
ht be at work? To try to answer that, Michael Rampino set out to establish =
an even more fundamental piece of data: how long did the extinction take? H=
e studied rock sedimentation rates in the Alps and concluded that the Permi=
an killer had stalked the planet for just 8,000-10,000 years, far less than=
had been thought. His mind turned to ways of causing such catastrophic des=
truction in - on geological timescales - the blink of an eye. He wanted to =
explore the possibility of a meteorite strike.=20
The hunt for meteor evidence
Meteor strikes that wipe out life may sound like sci-fi but it's gen=
erally accepted that an impact sparked the K/T extinction and the end of th=
e dinosaurs. That meteorite was 10km wide and left a crater in what is now =
the Gulf of Mexico. The dust raised by such an impact could make global tem=
peratures plummet overnight. How big would any Permian meteorite have to be=
? Rampino suggests one just 50% bigger could cause sufficient environmental=
change. There is one huge flaw in this argument: where is the crater?=20
"The original crater is completely drowned by lava"
Adrian Jones, University College London
Adrian Jones models the effects of impact on the Earth's geological =
crust. He has a hunch that meteorite crater hunters are looking for the wro=
ng thing. After an impact, the crust rebounds to form a large shallow crate=
r. If the meteorite if truly massive though, an extra process occurs. The c=
ombined heat of the impact and rebound is enough to melt the crust. Lava fl=
oods through and the crater disappears beneath new crust. If he's right=
, the Permian meteorite crater can't be found because it doesn't ex=
ist.=20
"When a meteorite wiped out the dinosaurs it left ample evidence i=
n its wake"
Greg Rettaleck, University of Oregon
All of which serves to help proponents of the meteorite impact theory. I=
ts detractors, though, point out that meteors leave several trails in their=
wake - fragments of minerals that have come from space. Greg Rettaleck mou=
nted an expedition in the mid-1990s looking at Permian rock beds in the Ant=
arctic. Some of the quartz grains looked like they had been fractured by a =
very energetic process - a meteorite?=20
Although this was evidence for a strike of some sort, there were unanswe=
red questions as well. The K/T meteorite left a trail of iridium - characte=
ristic of space materials - around the world. Yet there is no evidence the =
Permian strike did the same.=20
"No need to guess any more… the whole extinction from beginning =
to end"
Paul Wignall, University of Leeds
Paul Wignall is a British geologist who doubts a meteorite caused the ma=
ss extinction 250 million years ago. In the late 1990s he had a hunch of a =
way to prove his beliefs, a good idea of where to look for new evidence: Gr=
eenland. Permian rocks are hard to find because they are usually just thin =
layers, yet his trip yielded rock beds metres thick. This was more than jus=
t new evidence; it was the best he could have hoped to find.=20
Carbon copious
The Greenland rock told a very different story to that Michael Rampino h=
ad found in the Alps. Instead of a rapid event of under 10,000 years, the e=
xtinction beds Wignall examined lasted 80,000 years and showed three distin=
ctive phases in the plant and animal fossils they contained. The extinction=
appeared to kill land and marine life selectively at different times. Such=
a long process contradicted the catastrophic meteorite theory but Wignall =
couldn't explain what=20
had come close to killing all life on Earth. His best clue was the c=
arbon isotope balance in the rock, which showed an increase in carbon-12 ov=
er time. The standard explanation - rotting vegetation - could not have cau=
sed such a marked effect. Wignall was curious what this could mean.=20
An answer came from geologist Gerry Dickens, who knew just how to get la=
rge amounts of carbon-12 rapidly, thanks to his work with offshore drilling=
companies in the USA. He had spent time helping them try to tap reserves o=
f frozen methane hydrate from the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico. He knew met=
hane hydrate is found around many of the world's coasts. Dickens wonder=
ed how large a rise in sea temperature was necessary to cause the solid che=
mical to gasify and ascend to the atmosphere. Experiments suggested a rise =
of 5=B0C would be sufficient. And he was amazed to see how much gas came fr=
om pieces of solid methane hydrate that were placed in water.=20
"The south of England would turn into the Sahara Desert"=
Michael Benton, University of Bristol
When Paul Wignall learned of Dickens' findings, he used his carbon-1=
2 data to estimate how much methane hydrate would have to be released to af=
fect the isotope balance. Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gase=
s and he deduced that unlocking frozen methane hydrate would have caused a =
temperature rise of 4-5=B0C over time. Not enough to kill off 95% of life o=
n Earth but he realised this was a compounded effect. A rise of about 5=B0C=
must already have occurred to prompt the frozen methane to melt. The combi=
ned temperature rise of 10=B0C is generally accepted as a figure able to ca=
use truly mass extinction.=20
So it seems likely there were two Permian killers. The Siberian T=
raps did erupt, contributing first to a nuclear winter cooling effect (caus=
ed by dust) and and then to global warming (due to greenhouse gases). Over =
40,000 years, some land animals gradually died out while life in the seas l=
ived relatively calmly on, as the water temperature gently rose. Then the s=
eas gave up their frozen methane. In just 5,000 years, there was massive lo=
ss of species from the world's oceans. In a third and final phase of th=
e extinction, the Permian killer returned to stalk the land for another 35,=
000 years. By the end of that process, 95% of the Earth's species were =
extinct.=20