I don't know exactly how to write this in a way that will not seem overly
abrasive, but it seems to me that the intense resistance to the idea of global
warming is partly being fed by institutions and maybe social movements that
find in the science a very serious threat to their interests.
In some cases -- in the instance of the big fossil fuel companies, joined by
the governments of many oil-dependent nations -- those interests in the
economic sense are almost overwhelming, literally amounting to trillions of
dollars. It therefore seems unsurprising to me that some of the threatened
interests will fight very, very hard against AGW findings that indicate that
fossil fuel production, for example, is an environmental problem or a threat
to climate stability.
And since the corporations and governments with an economic stake in fossil
fuel production really do have trillions of dollars invested, they have ample
financial resources available to carry on a very skillful and determined public
relations campaign that promotes what many people in this group would consider
"denial of reality."
This means that AGW researchers are simply going to encounter quite a lot of
"denial of reality," doesn't it?
There's also a fairly powerful and quite well-funded set of organizations and
interests that has been agitating for some time against what they consider
"environmental extremism," more or less apart from the question of what this
environmental extremism might mean for energy companies in particular.
I recall a book called "The Green Backlash" that appeared around a decade
ago, outlining how in the American West in particular, corporations and
individuals associated with the major extractive industries had invested quite
heavily in educational and organizational efforts to discredit
environmentalists as supposedly representing an illegitimate and excessively
left-leaning political agenda, and how these "anti-green" interests were
working to mobilize ordinary citizens in many western towns and rural areas to
stop the "liberal" or "socialist" green threat.
This "anti-green backlash," I think, represents another entire network of
different economic and political interests, some only loosely connected to the
fossil fuel producers, who have an interest in trying to minimize the
significance of any AGW effect. And they too have considerable amounts of
money and established networks for spending that money to influence public
opinion.
This situation virtually guarantees that many seemingly intelligent people
are going to be quite skeptical of the IPCC findings and other pronouncements
by AGW researchers, I think.
This is quite apart from what many of us in here would consider "legitimate"
or "honest" skepticism about anthropogenic climate change. There are people
with scientific backgrounds, some of them in this group, who have genuine
doubts about some of the pronouncements made by Hansen, say. But there also
are quite rational people working for the energy industry and other large
extractive industries who feel they have excellent instrumental reasons for
combatting the IPCC's findings, regardless of whether these scientific findings
are trustworthy. And given the intensity of their opposition to the IPCC and
the extent of their financial resources, it's inevitable that this will have
some effect on public debates and discussions of climate issues.
How scientists like Jim should go about trying to cope with this problem is
unclear, but it seems essential to recognize that it exists.
Raymond Arritt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Jim Torson wrote:
> It has been clear for a long time that some people on that list
> think global warming is just hysteria invented by scientists so
> they can get research funding. I.e., basically, the vast majority
> of climate scientists around the world are lying and falsifying
> data for their own personal short-term gain. I have to say that
> that is certainly some whopper of a conspiracy theory!
Man, does that sound familiar.
At the moment the Wikipedia article on Global warming is under heavy
assault from people who want to, uh, "broaden the article's scope"
precisely so that such allegations can be included.
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