http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010409&s=gelbspan
See same article also
at:
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/4211
THE SCIENCE OF SKEPTICISM
Raymond Doesn't Have the Corner on Distortion
Ross Gelbspan is a veteran newspaper editor and reporter,
and the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Heat Is On,
published by Perseus Books in 1998. He maintains the
Web site The Heat Is On-Line: http://www.heatisonline.org/
Posted March 22, 2001
Bush's
Global Warmers
by Ross Gelbspan
Four days after the
press reported that he was about to cut
climate-altering carbon dioxide emissions from power plants,
George W. Bush caved in to the Neanderthal wing of the fossil
fuel lobby--the coal industry and ExxonMobil--and reversed
himself. In reneging on his campaign pledge, Bush thumbed
his nose at Holland, Germany and Britain, which are planning
to cut carbon emissions by 50 to 80 percent over the next
fifty years, as well as EPA Administrator Christine Todd
Whitman, who had voiced support for carbon regulation.
By calling the science
"still incomplete," Bush also lent
new credibility to the tiny handful of industry-sponsored
"greenhouse skeptics" who have been thoroughly discredited
by the mainstream community of climate researchers--including
the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
(http://www.ipcc.ch/),
the National Academy of Sciences
(http://www4.nationalacademies.org/nas/nashome.nsf)
and
other blue-ribbon scientific groups that deem global
warming to be real, immediate and ominous.
For most of the 1990s,
Western Fuels (http://www.westernfuels.org/),
a $400 million coal industry propaganda outlet, funded the most
visible of the greenhouse skeptics. Now ExxonMobil
(http://www.exxonmobil.com/index_flash.html)
--the only major
oil company to deny the reality of climate change--has joined
the coal industry to finance the skeptics, confuse the public
and undermine the work of 2,000 scientists from 100 countries
on the IPCC.
The most widely quoted
skeptic, S. Fred Singer, denied
receiving oil industry money in a February letter to the
Washington Post. But in 1998 ExxonMobil gave $10,000 to
Singer's institute, the Science and Environmental Policy
Project, and $65,000 to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation,
which shared building space with SEPP. Says Atlas's website,
"For those who believe public policy should be based on sound
science, Dr. Singer offers a wealth of information,
credibility and encouragement."
Singer's denial of
oil funding is only the most recent of his
many fabrications. In 1997 he declared that Dr. Bert Bolin,
then chairman of the IPCC, had changed his position on climate
change and denied a connection between global warming and
extreme weather, accusations that Bolin called "inaccurate
and misleading." While he touts himself as an accomplished
scientist, Singer has been unable to publish in the
peer-reviewed literature for at least fifteen years,
other than one technical comment, according to
Congressional testimony.
ExxonMobil states candidly
that it "provides support to
selected organizations that assess public policy alternatives
on issues with direct bearing on the company's business
operations and interests." Many of the ExxonMobil grants
are relatively small. But given the company's size and
reputation, they are useful in leveraging other grants.
For example, the company supports the Center for the Study
of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, staffed by Sherwood
Idso, a longtime coal-sponsored global warming skeptic,
and two relatives, Keith and Craig Idso. In 1998 ExxonMobil
gave $15,000 to the Cato Institute's Environment and
Natural Resources program, which boasts coal-sponsored
skeptic Patrick Michaels as its senior fellow. Michaels's
"statements on [climate models] are a catalog of
misrepresentation and misinterpretation," says
Dr. Tom Wigley, a leading climate modeler at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research. And
ExxonMobil bankrolls the Pacific Research Institute
for Public Policy, which published The Heated Debate,
a book by greenhouse skeptic Dr. Robert Balling.
ExxonMobil has isolated
itself from the community of
major oil companies in the area of climate. British
Petroleum is now the world's largest producer of solar
energy systems, Shell created a $500 million renewable
energy company and Texaco has invested substantial
resources in hydrogen-powered fuel cells.
Around the world, glaciers
are melting, oceans are
heating up and infectious diseases are migrating.
The buildup of our coal and oil emissions has triggered
a wave of violent and chaotic weather. All this has
resulted from one degree of warming. During this century,
the temperature will rise by up to 10 degrees, according
to the IPCC. It's time for journalists to stop quoting
Singer and the other global warming skeptics. They might
as well go straight to the ExxonMobil public information
office for comment.
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