Posted by Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data.
The scientific basis for climate change is highly debated. The “global warming community” believes the following about global warming –1) the planet is warming, 2) warming is caused by human activity, particularly, but not solely, the burning of fossil fuels, 3) warming is occurring very quickly and is approaching a tipping point, 4) warming raises real economic and health threats, as well as the likelihood of causing increased international violence, and 5) most known solutions, while expensive, are not nearly as expensive as doing nothing. The (for want of a better term) “climate deniers,” think the evidence for all of this is very shaky or non-existent. What should an educated layman believe?
In one sense we are in the world of dueling experts, and, in particular, of dueling climate models, that we don’t understand. It turns out that understanding climate change requires a knowledge of mathematical modelling, fluid mechanics, physics, statistics, and many other arcane scientific subjects. What are we to do? Common sense counts for nothing. Looking at weather, such as a particularly hot month, tells us nothing; weather and climate are different). We could add up the scientists favoring either side and decide to believe that side with more scientists. Additionally, we could examine the credentials of those on either side –which have more burnished credentials? Or we could look at what well-regarded scientific organizations –for example, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA), or the International Program on Climate Change (IPCC) –are saying.
By all these criteria, the preponderance of evidence lies on the climate change side. NASA lists eighteen major scientific organizations that state that there is a scientific consensus that the earth is warming and over two hundred international organizations that believe that that warming is caused by human activity.
In an article by John Cook et.al. examining journal articles on climate change, the authors state:
“We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW [anthropogenic global warming –the idea that human activity is causing global warming], 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”
The data on warming are not disputed, only the interpretation.
This graph illustrates the change in global surface temperature relative to 1951-1980 average temperatures. Eighteen of the 19 warmest years all have occurred since 2001, with the exception of 1998. The year 2016 ranks as the warmest on record. (Source: NASA/GISS). This research is broadly consistent with similar constructions prepared by the Climatic Research Unit and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
If the weight of scientific belief is so preponderantly on the side of AGW, what explains the reasonably high, though rapidly declining, percentage of everyday Americans who don’t agree that AGW is true? The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication divides Americans into six groups –alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful, and dismissive. In the last five years, the percentage of those who were alarmed or concerned about global warming rose sharply from 43% of the sample to 59%, while the share of those who are either dismissive, doubtful or disengaged fell from 32% to 23%.
The answer, I believe, is systematic misrepresentation of the scientific evidence –in this case, the deliberate effort of the petroleum industry to finance think tanks and research to spread doubt about the scientific consensus. The promotion of misinformation has been coupled with intensive public lobbying. The Petroleum Industry has long understood the dangers of climate change and its links to fossil fuels.
As early as 1978, James Black, a scientific adviser to Exxon, wrote in a memo describing his review of greenhouse gases which he presented to the Exxon Corporation Management Committee “the best presently available climate model for treating the Greenhouse Effect predicts that a doubling of the C02 concentration in the atmosphere would produce a mean temperature increase of about 2o to 3oC over most of the earth. The model also predicts that the temperature increase near the poles may be two to three times this value.”
The role of think tanks. There are a number of conservative think tanks which promote research that promulgates a narrative that (1) global warming isn’t happening or (2) if it is happening, it’s a natural phenomenon, not the result of human activity. Money from the oil and gas industry has been the fuel propelling climate denial research.
Let’s just consider one of these think tanks–the Heartland Institute, founded by the late David Padden, a log-time libertarian. In the 1990’s Heartland worked with Philip Morris to deny the risks of second-hand smoke. By the 1990’s the Institute shifted emphasis to climate change. According to the Union of concerned Scientists Heartland received $561,500 from Exxon Mobile (part of the $15 million in grants that Exxon Mobile has given to over 50 think tanks and associations).
According to Inside Climate News, The Heartland Institute launched a billboard campaign in 2012 to compare believers in global warming to “murderers and madmen” such as the Unabomber, Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden. The backlash was so severe that Heartland pulled the plug within 24 hours, but it still lost major donors and political allies and faced criticism that its fight against climate science was beyond extreme. Five years later, on June 1, 2017, the group’s chief executive, Joseph Bast, was a guest of Donald Trump in the White House Rose Garden as the president announced the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
“We are winning in the global warming war,” Bast declared later in an email to supporters.
Leaked documents from the heartland Institutes reveals their strategy (as of 2012) for promoting their point of view. Of particular interest is the 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy which discusses the development of a K-12 Global Warming Curriculum.
In 2017, Heartland mailed its publication “Why Scientists disagree about Global Warming” to 350,000 high school and college science teachers. While most teachers rejected the publication (One Pennsylvania teacher said “I use the book as an example of the nonsense that is climate denial. I show the students how they made it look official, gave a good ‘look’ to the materials, but that the content is hogwash),” it nevertheless muddied the waters. Just one small point –while the book says “There is no survey or study showing “consensus” on the most important scientific issues in the climate change debate, I cited (above) an article by Brian Cook that found that indeed 97% of peer-reviewed articles that took a position agreed that anthropogenic climate change was true.
Promoting Climate Denial in Public Policy (Lobbying). A 2019 Influence Map report found that “the five largest publicly-traded oil and gas majors (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, BP, and Total) have invested over one billion dollars of shareholder funds in the three years following the Paris Agreement on misleading climate-related branding and lobbying.” A key trend is the tactical use of social media. In the four weeks up to the 2018 mid-term elections Exxon Mobile led the majors and their agents in spending two million dollars on combined Facebook and Instagram ads promoting the benefits of increasing fossil fuel production and supporting successful opposition to several key climate ballot initiatives.”
Conclusions. While the details remain in dispute, several facts stand out:
- The vast preponderance of scientific thought believes that the planet is warming and that this is caused in large part by fossil fuels consumption.
- The petroleum industry has been financing think tanks and scientists who don’t believe that climate change has been proven; they have also been lobbying aggressively promoting climate change denialism.
- This “agnotology” has confused Americans as to what is true and what isn’t.
- This, in turn, has led to policies which support the status quo.
Despite this active pursuit of disinformation it should be noted that Americans are increasingly of the belief the AGW is true (see opinion poll above). Even the current United States Government recognizes the reality of climate change and is planning accordingly (See, for web-sites of the EPA, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense, and the United States Agency for International Development). For example, the DOD writes, “From a resources perspective, DoD is incorporating climate resilience as a crosscutting consideration for our planning and decision-making processes…” Our government may dispute the climate change science, but its agencies are going ahead with plans to mitigate the effects they know are coming.
