From another list.
-------- Original Message --------
Newsweek Hides Global Warming Denier's Financial Ties to Big Oil
By Joshua Holland
AlterNet.org
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/041307EB.shtml
Thursday 12 April 2007
A recent Newsweek op-ed by global warming denier Richard Lindzen
claims the meteorologist has no industry ties, but his bio is as
misleading as his writing.
So Newsweek is running an opinion piece about global warming
titled: "Why So Gloomy?" The piece is authored by Richard Lindzen, a
well-known meteorologist, and his thesis about the potential melt-down
of our climate can be boiled down to this: Don't worry, be happy!
At the bottom of the article, is this brief biographical sketch of
the author:
Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has always been
funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from
any energy companies.
Sounds like he's on the up-and-up, no? After all, the guy's not one
of those scientists who denies global warming and then cashes nice
checks from a bunch of big energy firms, right? Maybe those wing-nuts
are right when they deny that there's a scientific consensus about human
activities contributing to global warming. Hmmm.
Oh, but wait. That name ... Lindzen ... sure does sound familiar.
Yes! From that excellent investigative piece in Harper's on the
funding behind the climate skepticism "industry" ...
In the last year and a half, one of the leading oil industry public
relations outlets, the Global Climate Coalition, has spent more than a
million dollars to downplay the threat of climate change ...
For the most part the industry has relied on a small band of
skeptics - Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Dr. Pat Michaels, Dr. Robert Balling,
Dr. Sherwood Idso, and Dr. S. Fred Singer, among others - who have
proven extraordinarily adept at draining the issue of all sense of crisis.
Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day
for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate
committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled
"Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,"
was underwritten by OPEC.
His research may be funded entirely by the government, but Lindzen
himself - his kids' college tuition, his mortgage payments - have at
least in part been funded by Big Oil and Big Coal, including OPEC for
crying out loud!
But wait, it gets worse. The positions advocated by Richard
Lindzen, the paid-by-OPEC opinion writer commenting in Newsweek - he's
also written op-eds for a number of other publications including the
Wall Street Journal - appear to be the diametric opposite of those held
by Richard Lindzen, the serious meteorologist, when he's writing
peer-reviewed scientific texts.
Specifically, Lindzen co-authored the 2001 National Academy of
Science's report on climate change. It concluded that despite some
scientific "uncertainties," there is "agreement that the observed
warming is real and particularly strong within the past 20 years."
Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result
of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface
ocean temperatures to rise.
The report predicts: "increases in rainfall rates and increased
susceptibility of semi-arid regions to drought."
Global warming could well have serious adverse societal and
ecological impacts by the end of this century, especially if
globally-averaged temperature increases approach the upper end of the
IPCC projections. Even in the more conservative scenarios, the models
project temperatures and sea levels that continue to increase well
beyond the end of this century, suggesting that assessments that examine
only the next 100 years may well underestimate the magnitude of the
eventual impacts.
The NAS study endorsed "The [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change's] conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50
years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas
concentrations," saying it "accurately reflects the current thinking of
the scientific community on this issue."
Here's some highlights of what the IPCC report Lindzen endorsed
considered to be "virtually certain" outcomes of global warming (they
list other potential outcomes that were only "very likely," but I'm not
including them here):
* The troposphere warms, stratosphere cools, and near surface
temperature warms.
* As the climate warms, Northern Hemisphere snow cover and sea-ice
extent decrease.
* The globally averaged mean water vapour, evaporation and
precipitation increase.
* Most tropical areas have increased mean precipitation, most of
the sub-tropical areas have decreased mean precipitation, and in the
high latitudes the mean precipitation increases.
* Intensity of rainfall events increases.
* There is a general drying of the mid-continental areas during
summer (decreases in soil moisture). This is ascribed to a combination
of increased temperature and potential evaporation that is not balanced
by increases in precipitation.
* A majority of models show a mean El Niño-like response in the
tropical Pacific, with the central and eastern equatorial Pacific sea
surface temperatures warming more than the western equatorial Pacific,
with a corresponding mean eastward shift of precipitation.
* Available studies indicate enhanced interannual variability of
northern summer monsoon precipitation.
* Most models show weakening of the Northern Hemisphere
thermohaline circulation (THC), which contributes to a reduction in the
surface warming in the northern North Atlantic. Even in models where the
THC weakens, there is still a warming over Europe due to increased
greenhouse gases.
In other words, Richard Lindzen the meteorologist is part of the
very scientific consensus on global warming that Richard Lindzen the
opinion writer has called into question.
Whether Newsweek's editors were duped by Lindzen's admittedly
impressive credentials or not is irrelevant - this info took me about 18
seconds on Google to unearth. There's no excuse for that stuff about how
his research is all government-funded in that bio - it simply buries the
rather clear appearance of a conflict-of-interest.
That's common, and really bad for democracy. I, for one, am sick of
it. If you are too then tell Newsweek that if they're going to run
opinion pieces by industry-funded shills, they need to disclose those
shills' financial interests.
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
-------
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored
by the originator.)
--
Darryl McMahon
It's your planet. If you won't look after it, who will?
The Emperor's New Hydrogen Economy (now in print and eBook)
http://www.econogics.com/TENHE/
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