SlowpokeBlog

Initial inspiration for this cartoon came from a post on Talking Points Memo about sci-fi author and global warming pooh-pooher Michael Crichton, who apparently put one of his critics in his latest novel as a child molester. Crichton's last novel, State of Fear, suggested that environmental groups are using global warming as a scare tactic to raise money. This meme, I have found over the past week, is astoundingly prevalent among right-wing websites and I have received several emails from people suggesting that global warming is merely a political ploy. I have been called a "populist cartoonist" who mimics the words of "actors, singers, and other non-scientists." Over and over, it has been suggested that I'm being naive about political and financial motives, and not on the side of sound science.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, no one mentions the massive political and financial motivations of global warming deniers (this includes people who admit global warming is real, but downplay or deny the scientific fact that humans are contributing to it, and that we urgently need to do something about it). I only wish they would take all that healthy skepticism and apply it to the right-wing think tanks and media spewing loads of BS about climate change.

I find it curious that the most prominent critics of efforts to curb global warming just happen to be market fundamentalists and libertarian groups who oppose any efforts to protect the public from the excesses of industry. "Crichton is Right!" beams a red button on the homepage of Chicago's libertarian Heartland Institute, which just happens to support "market-based approaches to environmental protection," not to mention "privatization of public services." The CATO Institute site is chock full of articles with Crichton-esque titles like "Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry About Global Warming." I'm sure they have every reason to be impartial about the science, given that they are funded by Chevron, Exxon, Shell Oil, the American Petroleum Institute, Amoco Foundation, and Atlantic Richfield Foundation. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which surely has no axe to grind, continues with their ridiculous "CO2: We Call it Life" campaign, though the CO2 has mysteriously disappeared from the header since the last time I checked the site. Hmm...

One of the most universally-quoted scientists among these groups is Patrick Michaels of the University of Virginia, who also happened to by my first-year adviser. Michaels is a libertarian and senior fellow at the CATO Institute. Harper's Magazine reported in 1995 that "Michaels has received more than $115,000 over the last four years from coal and energy interests." That means he's been on the coal dole since that day I sat in his office as an awkward teenager seeking advice about whether to pursue a major in science or the humanities. His answer, I recall vaguely, was a jocular jab at the humanities (or perhaps it was the English Department), that I didn't want to get caught up in all that BS. To be fair, he was a friendly guy, with maybe a hint of P.J. O'Rourkishness about him, and there's plenty of BS to go around in academia. But for global warming deniers to tout their position as pure, unbiased science in contrast to the cynical fabrications of greedy environmentalists does a clear 180 on the facts.

Here's a good, non-partisan PDF file from the Pew Center explaining the facts about global warming. The Pew Charitable Trusts, well-known to many in higher education, is a foundation started by the children of Sun Oil founder Joseph Pew which awards grants on the basis of "rigorous, non-partisan research." I used to work as a web designer for a Pew-funded institute whose only discernible bias was being pro-democracy.

The Pew document is a useful read even if you already accept the findings of the vast majority of the world's scientists. A quote:

Scientists studying the rapid rise in global temperatures during the late twentieth century say that natural variability cannot account for what is happening now. [Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001. In Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report, Cambridge University Press] The main culprit, they say, is emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Other human sources of these gases include deforestation, agriculture, and industrial processes.

And another:

In 2005, the United States National Academy of Sciences joined a group of 10 other science academies from around the world in a statement calling for "prompt action" on global warming by government leaders... It stated: "Action taken now to reduce significantly the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will lessen the magnitude and rate of climate change."

As for the argument that "We can't predict what will happen, so why worry?", the document details the very real risks, as well as things that are happening right now.

I would also point you to this essay written by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in which he discusses a debate with Patrick Michaels.

Think about it for a moment. If ideological groups like CATO were truly serious about science, why would they cherry-pick writings only by a tiny minority of scientific outcasts? You'd think they might mention the overwhelming majority of scientists who do find global warming a cause for concern.

The deniers' conspiracy theory about environmentalists, promulgated through well-funded think tanks and media outlets, is nothing less than a conspiracy in itself. They have a glaringly obvious profit motive; for them to suggest the conspiracy lies with environmental groups who need to fund their offices is absurd. The deniers have created an intellectual trap from which there is no way out: if scientists concerned about global warming are merely partisan alarmists, how can we ever know the threat is real?

The only way out of this hall of mirrors is, in a word, science. More specifically, deniers must overcome the mistrust they have of "the other side" and accept the findings of the majority of the world's scientists, however much they dislike those findings. You can accept the research of the 2,000+ members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and NASA, to name a few, or you can keep thinking global warming is a ruse by Greenpeace to get better office furniture.