Global Warming Detractors

What we call “climate” is an enormously complex physical system of causes and effects. Scientists and engineers have developed tools for measuring and analyzing the behavior of complex physical events, and as well they have developed methods for using the fundamental laws of physics to predict the behavior of very complicated physical systems.

The preponderance of scientific analysis, and the conclusions drawn from scientific analysis, argue on the side that Global Warming is an impending threat to the stability of life on our planet.

And yet many people, some of them decision controllers in Congress, do not believe there is a real threat to our future. 

In this post I will examine the arguments of these “Global Warming Detractors,” and provide evidence that they are misinformed in many cases, and in some cases are deliberately and deceptively  arguing against undeniable scientific evidence.

How do you Judge a Debate?

If governments are to take steps to deal with the predicted consequences of Global Warming, then the public (at least, in democratic countries) will be involved. It is likely that taxes will rise to meet the expenses of corrective steps. It is likely that the cost of many essential consumer goods will rise. 

Citizens will be asked to vote on legislation relevant to Global Warming. 

How can we cast intelligent votes when most of us are not educated in the relevant areas of science and technology related to Global Warming? How is one to evaluate the arguments of those who predict that a world-wide crisis is looming?

There is another side to the Global Warming debate. The doubters and detractors of the Global Warming analyses and recommendations, constitute a large body of highly vocal and in many cases politically influential people. 

How is one to evaluate the arguments of the detractors?

One answer to this question is that the arguments against the reality, the magnitude and/or the consequences of Global Warming must be examined with the same methods used to evaluate the arguments of the proponents. 

But if the ordinary individual is not trained to evaluate the data, methods, etc., then on what basis does that citizen decide to accept the conclusions of one body of argumentation, and reject the conclusions of the opposite side of the argument?

The conclusions drawn in the IPCC reports are drawn from decades of scientific research and analysis carried out throughout the world. 

The thousands of studies that form the basis of the Reports have been published in peer reviewed scientific journals. 

The scientific community has worked, over these decades, to improve the measuring techniques and the analysis techniques.

Despite the enormous body of information supporting the reality of Global Warming, some scientists have disagreed on a variety of details which were then subjected to additional studies aimed at evaluating the arguments and methods of analysis. 

Disagreements still exist, as do many uncertainties. But in the end, the vast majority of those experts who have examined the evidence, and who are capable by virtue of their education and experience to evaluate the evidence, conclude that global warming is real, and that it is man-made.

Now let's examine the detractors. 

 Who are they? Do they have the expertise to analyze the arguments put forth in the scientific literature?

Has their work been subjected to the peer review system that is central to scientific progress?

 Do their negative arguments hold up to scientific scrutiny?

 Are their arguments relevant?

At the outset, it is important to acknowledge that there are legitimate scientists who question or disagree with specific aspects or details of the methods, analysis and conclusions of the IPCC reports. 

Science can never be absolute. But there are well-established methods for evaluating these disagreements.

Unfortunately, the people who wish to undermine the whole idea of Global Warming, despite the enormous body of scientific evidence that Global Warming is real and man-made, focus on the existence of these disagreements among scientists to "prove" their case against Global Warming. 

Their "proofs" do not stand up to legitimate scientific examination. Let's explore some of these so-called "proofs"  in the posts that follow.

Misrepresentation of Facts

Scientific predictions are always subject to uncertainty, and must be continually subjected to intelligent and knowledgable criticism. But when public opinion is swayed by misrepresentation and deceit, it is important to expose the sources and motivations of the deceivers. The next several posts deal with this issue.

1: Misrepresentation of Opposing Science and Presentation of Irrelevant Facts

On April 29, 2008, environmental journalist Richard Littlemore revealed that a list entitled "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares" distributed by the Heartland Institute included at least 45 scientists who neither knew of their inclusion (though they were clearly listed as coauthors of the article), nor agreed with its contents. 

Many of the scientists asked the Heartland Institute to remove their names from the list.

Heartland's publications make the following assertions about climate change:

"Most scientists do not believe human activities threaten to disrupt the Earth's climate. "

"The most reliable temperature data show no global warming trend."

"A modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world and to human civilization."

"The best strategy to pursue is one of 'no regrets'."

One should always begin by examining the source of any contrarian opinion.

The Heartland Institute receives donations from approximately 1,600 individuals, foundations, and corporations. 

Heartland states that it does not accept government funds and does not conduct "contract" research for special-interest groups.

However, the Heartland Institute accepted funding from politically conservative foundations (special interest groups) such as the Castle Rock Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. 

In addition, oil companies (who have a special interest in the continued use of greenhouse gas producing fossil fuels) have contributed substantially to the Heartland Institute. ExxonMobil contributed a total of $560,000 between 1998 and 2005. 

Nearly 40% of funds from ExxonMobil were specifically designated for  projects aimed at undermining the IPCC Reports. 

As of 2008, ExxonMobil has contributed almost $800,000 to the Heartland Institute. 

Promoting information contrary to well-founded scientific studies is a precedent set in the past by the Heartland Institute when they contested the health risks of secondhand smoke while accepting significant funding from Philip Morris, a major tobacco company, to finance their dissemination of misinformation.

In the case at hand (Global Warming) we have an example of contrarian claims put forth by a special interest organization that offer no scientific analysis or evidence to refute the conclusions found in the IPCC reports, even though these reports represent decades of research carried on by climate experts, all of which has been subjected to peer review. 

Where is the evidence in support of these contrarian claims? None is provided. 

It is not true that most scientists do not believe that global warming is man-made. 

It is not true that the most reliable temperature data show no global warming trend. 

No peer-reviewed evidence is presented in support of these assertions. 

Among the techniques used by Global Warming Detractors is to present statements that are out of context, or irrelevant, but sound like they makes sense to the ordinary person who is not an expert.

For example, one finds comments that deny the role of CO₂ as a major cause of Global Warming. 

It is stated that CO₂ is a colorless, odorless, non-toxic gas, and that CO₂ plays an essential role in the growth of plants. 

These statements are correct, but they are irrelevant! The aim is to distract people from the question of whether Global Warming is real by implying that since CO₂ is a harmless gas, it cannot be the cause of any projected calamity. 

But CO₂ is a greenhouse gas. This means that its molecular properties cause it to retard the transmission of infrared radiation, thereby trapping heat in the earth’s atmosphere. 

These molecular properties are in addition to and distinct from those properties that make CO₂ an otherwise benign gas.

Perhaps the most egregious and dangerous example of the misuse of an irrelevant fact is the following. 

During the week of March 1, 2010, in South Dakota, a resolution calling for the “balanced teaching of global warming in public schools” passed the Legislature. 

In the discussion supporting the adoption of this resolution, the proponents of this legislation referred to CO₂ as "the gas of life" as a basis for their rationale, including the statement: “Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant, but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life.”

One can only pray that the teachers in South Dakota are sufficiently educated in the legitimate science to point out to their students that this irrelevant fact about Carbon Dioxide was being deliberately misused in order to promote a contrarian agenda. 

Another distracting argument put forth by Global Warming detractors is with respect to water vapor. One finds the statement that water vapor is Earth’s most significant greenhouse gas. 

What is the purpose of this correct but distracting statement? How do Global Warming deniers use it?  

The statement is used to argue that because water vapor is a major greenhouse gas, then there is no point to give attention to CO₂, and no point in arguing that the world's industrial nations must limit CO₂ production.

What's wrong and misleading with this argument?

It is true is that water vapor is a greenhouse gas. The concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is much higher than the concentration of all the other greenhouse gases combined. While some water vapor is released to the atmosphere from industrial sources, most of the water vapor occurs naturally and is not man-made. 

But this ignores the fact that it is the addition of other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere (especially CO₂) that has been proven to be the major cause of Global Warming. 

In fact, there is a serious “feedback” problem here, and one that does involve water vapor, that in fact argues that the reduction of CO₂ is essential to reversing the warming of the planet.

The concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere depends primarily on the temperature of the oceans. The man-made addition of CO₂ raises the ocean temperature. This puts more water vapor into the atmosphere. This leads to further ocean warming, which leads to more water vapor. 

So water vapor is a significant greenhouse gas, but because its concentration is increased by the addition of CO₂, it is appropriate to ascribe a man-made role to the subsequent effect of additional water vapor. 

What climatologists mean by a "feedback" problem is this:

The naturally occurring amount of water vapor in the atmosphere provides a "heat blanket" for the Earth which makes the planet livable. 

But the man-made addition of  CO₂ raises the temperature of the ocean. This adds water vapor to the atmosphere. Because water vapor is a greenhouse gas, this causes a further rise in the ocean temperature. This raises the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. This feedback cycle leads in only one direction: a continuing rise in the temperature of the planet.

For a  more detailed discussion of this, see “Water vapor Confirmed as a Major Player in Climate Change” at 

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/vapor_warming.html .

In the following post I'll continue to examine the arguments of Global Warming/Climate Change Deniers.

Calling on the Non-Expert 'Witness'

In this post I look at another misleading method used by Global Warming deniers.

2. Arguments put forward by high profile individuals who have no expertise in the area of Global Warming

The author of many successful novels, Michael Crichton, was a spokesman against Global Warming for years prior to his death. Crichton was an MD who turned to fiction when his novel, “The Andromeda Strain,” became so successful in the 1960s. He was an intelligent, educated and successful man. But he had no standing as an expert on Global Warming.

The following is from Crichton’s interview with John Stossel on the TV program 20/20, on December 10, 2004.

"If somebody said, 'John, I've got a nice weather forecast for you for next year, this time next year,' you wouldn't [believe them]. How about this time a hundred years from now? I mean, are you going to give that any credence at all? No."

Here’s another one from Crichton: From "Aliens Cause Global Warming," a lecture by him given at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, January 17, 2003.

“Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future?”

In an earlier post I already noted the difference between weather and climate. Crichton surely understood this. But to people who do not understand this, it sounds like a valid criticism of climate prediction.

The use of publicly known and respected individuals, especially those who have no training and experience in the study of climate, to counter the science of Global Warming, is not just misleading, it is reprehensible.

But there are scientists who deny the evidence on Global Warming. What about them? We have to examine the motives and the history of these people. We have to "follow the money."

Non-Expert Scientists as Witnesses

3. In this post I turn to disinformation regarding Global Warming/Climate Change that is presented by, or cited in the name of, scientists who have earned the respect of their peers, but in fields that have no connection to the issues relevant to Global Warming.

One of the more scientifically informed global warming skeptics was Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin. His credentials are impressive. 

In 1948, he became the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which has since become one of the largest and one of the most prestigious meteorology departments in the nation.

Over his long career as scientist and teacher, Reid Bryson significantly advanced the understanding of climate, people, and the environment. He wrote more than 273 articles and eight books ranging over the fields of geology, limnology, meteorology, climatology, archeology, and geography. 

He has not published anything in the past 20 years that represents peer reviewed research on the extent of global warming, or its causes.

Writing in That Was The Week That Was (January 8, 2005) Bryson stated:

That [referring to the fact that the warming of the past century was man-made in origin, and due to carbon dioxide emission] is a theory for which there is no credible proof. 

This is simply not true. There is an abundance of credible, peer-reviewed proof, as previous posts have shown.

Bryson continues:

There are a number of causes of climatic change.

This is true. However, when Bryson goes on to write

and until all causes other than carbon dioxide increase are ruled out, we cannot attribute the change to carbon dioxide alone.

this is flat-out bogus reasoning, because no one is claiming that carbon dioxide "alone" is responsible.  The question is whether carbon dioxide is contributing to global warming in a major way.

This is a short post. There are other examples along these lines, but I want to turn instead to the most egregious cases of Climate Change denial, cases that can be shown to be deliberate campaigns of disinformation.

Deliberate Disinformation

It is essential that a wide-ranging study of the issues, and open debate of the conclusions drawn, take place when the future of the quality (including the possible extinction!) of life on earth is brought into question. 

The introduction of any deliberate distortion of facts is unethical and immoral. But this is what is happening in the debate over Climate Change/Global Warming. 

4. Deliberate Campaigns of Disinformation

Much of the material that follows is from Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an organization founded in 1969 by faculty and students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Scientists formed the organization to "initiate a critical and continuing examination of governmental policy in areas where science and technology are of actual or potential significance" and "devise means for turning research applications away from the present emphasis on military technology toward the solution of pressing environmental and social problems."

The most vocal critics of the Union of Concerned Scientists assert that the organization harbors a liberal "pro-regulation, anti-business" agenda. The UCS has also been criticized by skeptics of climate change. 

In 2007, the conservative non-profit group Capital Research Center accused the UCS of waging a "jihad against climate skeptics", and televangelist Jerry Falwell even cautioned Evangelical Christians against "falling for...global warming hocus-pocus" propagated in the mass media, with the UCS "leading the charge". 

In the following, the Union of Concerned Scientists documents an example of the use and abuse of the reputation of a famous scientist in order to put forth the case against Global Warming. 

In order to promote a disinformation campaign against Global Warming evidence, ExxonMobil and its public relations partners recognized that they would need to cultivate new scientific spokespeople to create a sense among the public that there was a serious debate among scientists. 

Toward that end a memo suggested that the team 

"identify, recruit and train a team of five independent scientists to participate in media outreach. 

These will be individuals who do not have a long history of visibility and/or participation in the climate change debate. 

Rather, this team will consist of new faces who will add their voices to those recognized scientists who already are vocal." 

By the late 1990s, the scientific evidence on global warming was so strong that it became difficult to find scientists who disputed the reality of human-caused climate change. 

But ExxonMobil and its public relations partners persevered. 

In 1998, ExxonMobil helped create a small task force calling itself the “Global Climate Science Team” (GCST).  

One member of the GCST task force, Steven Milloy, headed a nonprofit organization called the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, which had been covertly created by the tobacco company Philip Morris in 1993 to manufacture uncertainty about the health hazards posed by secondhand smoke. 

Ultimately this plan led to the involvement of (quoting now from the UCS report): Frederick Seitz, who has ties to both Big Tobacco and ExxonMobil. 

Seitz is a prominent solid state physicist who was president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) from 1962 to 1969. Consider, for instance, one of Seitz’s most controversial efforts. 

In 1998, he wrote and circulated a letter asking scientists to sign a petition from a virtually unheard-of group called the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine calling upon the U.S. government to reject the Kyoto Protocol. 

(The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement that aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the presence of greenhouse gases. 

Countries that ratify the Kyoto Protocol are assigned maximum carbon emission levels and can participate in carbon credit trading. 

Emitting more than the assigned limit will result in a penalty for the violating country in the form of a lower emission limit in the following period. The United States has not ratified the Protocol, though it has met the emissions goals embodied within it.)


So, returning to Seitz, he initiated a petition, fronted by the OISM, that solicited scientists to take a stand against the mounting evidence that Global Warming was occurring.  

Now we need to examine three things: 
1. What do we know about the OISM?
2. What do we know about Seitz?
3. What are the relevant scientific credentials of the signers of the petition?

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) describes itself as "a small research institute" that studies "biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and the molecular biology of aging." 

It is headed by Arthur B. Robinson,  who has a long history of controversial entanglements with figures on the fringe of accepted research. 

OISM also markets a home-schooling kit for "parents concerned about socialism in the public schools" and publishes books on how to survive nuclear war.

The OISM would be obscure, except for the role it played in 1998 in circulating a deceptive "scientists' petition" on global warming in collaboration with Frederick Seitz.

Seitz signed the petition identifying himself as a former NAS president. He also enclosed with it a report asserting that carbon dioxide emissions pose no warming threat. 

The report was not peer reviewed. But it was deceptively formatted to look like an article that had been published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a leading peer reviewed scientific journal. 

The petition’s organizers publicly claimed that the effort had attracted the signatures of some 17,000 scientists. But it was soon discovered that the list contained few credentialed climate scientists. For example, the list was riddled with the names of numerous fictional characters, including the crew of the Starship Enterprise. 

See, for instance, a review of the Seitz petition saga on the SourceWatch website, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine

It should be noted that the current website for the Oregon petition no longer includes fictional characters (such as doctors from the television show M*A*S*H). 

A video report (produced by University of California Television) on this misadventure by global warming detractors can be seen at 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py2XVILHUjQ&feature=player_embedded

Likewise, after investigating a random sample of the small number of signers of the Seitz petition who claimed to have a Ph.D. in a climate-related field, an article in a 2001 issue of Scientific American  estimated that approximately one percent of the petition signatories might actually have a Ph.D. in a field related to climate science. 

In a highly unusual response, the National Academy of Sciences issued a statement disavowing Seitz’s petition and disassociating the academy from the fake PNAS-formatted paper. 

None of these facts, however, has stopped organizations, including those funded by ExxonMobil, from touting the petition as evidence of widespread disagreement over the issue of global warming. 

For instance, in the spring of 2006, years after it had been discredited, the petition surfaced again when it was cited in a letter to California legislators by a group calling itself “Doctors for Disaster Preparedness,” a project of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine is only one example of an organized campaign of disinformation on the issue of Climate Change and Global Warming in particular. 

I have presented its history at this length because its failure to adhere to the most basic criteria of honest promotion of a position is so well documented. 

The word "Science" does not belong in its title. The institute has not submitted its claims to the review and criticism of scientists qualified to judge these issues.

Other Deliberate Denials of the Scientific Evidence of Climate Change

Let’s summarize the point of the last few posts. 

Many uncertainties exist in the scientific basis for the conclusions expressed in the IPCC reports. Reputable scientists, seeking the truth, or at least greater certainty, continue carrying on research in appropriate fields. This continuing work is submitted to peer reviewed scientific journals. 

Those individuals who doubt the validity of the IPCC conclusions can generate and submit their own evidence to the peer review system. 

Or they can participate in flooding the public media (avoiding the peer reviewed scientific media) with misinformation, unsupported “facts,” and irrelevant statements. 

(See, for example, the “hacked email scandal” referred to earlier by Sarah Palin: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/04/MNRL1AV3Q1.DTL) aimed at producing further doubt in the minds of those who would like to form their own opinion of the status of Global Warming research.

As another  example of a campaign of deliberate disinformation, the work of climate scientist Mojib Latif has been misrepresented in a manner to support the “global warming is a hoax” position. 

In an interview on All Things Considered on NPR, Latif clarifies that his data, showing that ocean temperatures have been relatively stable over the ten years from 2000 to 2010 (and so, not warming), cannot be used to argue about the validity of long-term global warming. A portion of the interview is available from the link http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120668812&ft=1&f=1007 )

From the Mother Jones website (Go to  http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/01/daily-mail-bends-science-support-global-cooling for a more complete report) we find a brief summary of the Latif controversy:

Daily Mail Bends Science to Support 'Global Cooling'

By Ben Buchwalter, Jan. 12, 2010

The deniers are at it again.

This winter's cold spell, which chilled folks in England, the Midwest, and even Florida farm country, has led a prominent European scientist to argue that global warming has ended and that we're in for 30 years of global cooling. Or at least that's what Britain's Daily Mail says. 

The scientist, Professor Mojib Latif of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told the Mail that "winters like this one will become much more likely."

In addition to a 2008 report that is widely mischaracterized as proof that warming has slowed, this led the Mail, whose report was later picked up by Fox News, to claim that such statements could prove that the threat of global warming has been blown out of proportion:

“Some experts believe [that natural weather] cycles - and not human pollution - can explain all the major changes in world temperatures in the 20th century.

If true, the research challenges the science behind climate change theories, and calls into question the political measures to halt global warming.

According to some scientists, the warming of the Earth since 1900 is due to natural oceanic cycles, and not man-made greenhouse gases.

It occurred because the world was in a 'warm mode', and would have happened regardless of mankind's rising carbon dioxide production.”

But speaking to the Guardian yesterday, Latif pushed back hard against the Mail, saying that the tabloid took his comments out of context to make an editorial statement. 

"It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming. I have said that if my name was not Mojib Latif it would be ‘global warming’," he said. 

"There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases."

The misunderstanding/distortion of Latif’s study has been taken up by Global Warming deniers, and embellished to make it appear that a well-known climate scientist predicts global cooling. 

The persistent quoting of “credentialed” global warming deniers has the power to sway public opinion. Below is a letter to the editor of the San Diego Union Tribune, published on Dec. 1, 2010. 

The letter touches on two points made in the posts presented above. It repeats the misleading and irrelevant statement that CO₂ is a harmless gas, and it cites a “highly credentialed scientist,” J. Fred Singer.

Singer rows the same boat occupied by Frederick Seitz, and is his evil twin in the disinformation war against science. Let's look first at the letter:

As to J. Fred Singer, in brief one can note that Singer's early career does indeed include a string of highly respected positions in the progress and advancement of science. At some point, however, his efforts apparently turned to advocacy of the agenda of the tobacco and the fossil fuel industry. The latter part of his career seems to fall in the vein of what might be called serial denialism, particularly with respect to his positions on second hand smoke which he claims is not unhealthy and on human caused global warming which he claims is “all bunk.”

His organization, The Science and Environmental Policy Project, has been used as a platform to support his assertions. 

The fact that “second-hand smoke” and “human caused global warming” are well understood scientifically to be dangerous for varied reasons, seems to have been missed entirely by Singer.

The writer of the letter cited above refers to Naomi Oreskes as an alarmist.  She is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Concerned with the Bush administration's insistence that "most" scientists disagree with the notion of global warming, and with the repetition of this statement in the public media, often through letters to the editor, she did what a real scientist does—she read the science written on the subject to see what "most" scientists said about global warming. Dealing with the oft-cited argument that global warming proponents are expressing a “belief,” and not a “theory,” she stated that

No scientific conclusion can ever be proven, absolutely, but it is no more a 'belief' to say that Earth is heating up than it is to say that continents move, that germs cause disease, that DNA carries hereditary information or that quarks are the basic building blocks of subatomic matter. You can always find someone, somewhere, to disagree, but these conclusions represent our best available science, and therefore our best basis for reasoned action.

Let's end this post here. A lot of attention and detail has been given to make the point that there is a persistent and well-funded campaign of deliberate disinformation aimed at discrediting the scientific evidence that Climate Change is real, and the consequences are of great concern.