New Attacks on the Science of Climate Change

 

Are you surprised that there are people who don’t believe that humans are responsible for climate change? “There is no scientific consensus on the human role in climate change,” says Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute. Mr. Bast also claims that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is “not a credible source of science or economics.” There you have it! We have nothing to worry about.

 

Except that we do, actually, have plenty to worry about. Human-induced climate change is very real, and it is profoundly affecting just about every aspect of life on our blue-green planet. But there are those, like Bast, who’d have you believe otherwise.

 

Mr. Bast’s organization, the Heartland Institute, has been spreading misinformation about climate change for over 20 years. The institute’s mission is to “promote public policy based on individual liberty, limited government, and free markets.” It’s not a scientific enterprise, in any way shape or form. Yet, it pretends to be a resource for scientific information about climate change through a organization called the “Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),” a knock-off of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

 

The IPCC is, true to its name, a collaborative effort of hundreds of physical scientists, social scientists and economists from all over the world. In contrast, the NIPCC is a relatively small organization founded by Fred Singer in 2004. Singer, who earned his PhD in physics at Princeton, has long championed contrarian viewpoints. He has made a name for himself questioning the link between CFCs and ozone depletion, the health effects of secondhand smoke and the origins of climate change.

 

You might ask: why should we care? Scientists can go about their business of careful research and analysis, debating the finer points of climate models and the robustness of data sets. But science does not exist in a vacuum; it’s part of our society. It needs funding, it needs objective forums for disseminating results and it must serve the greater purpose of helping society, such as developing new technologies, finding better medicines and, yes, improving our understanding of the natural world.

 

Organizations like the Heartland Institute aim to replace real science with fake science. Unfortunately, it reaches a wide audience. According to its website, nearly one of every two state elected officials say a Heartland publication influenced their opinions or led to a change in public policy. In the past few weeks, the Heartland Institute has come out with its latest anti-science book, which questions the reality of climate change. The organization is sending Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming to more than 200,000 K–12 science teachers across the US, as well as to elected government officials.

 

This book is dangerous because it makes suggestions shrouded in the guise of scientific language. Here’s one: “At the current level of 400 ppm, we still live in a CO2-starved world. Atmospheric levels 15 times higher existed during the Cambrian Period (~550 million years ago) without known adverse effects.” Well, that sounds like terrific news! For those of you who are not up on your geological eras, the Cambrian Period predates mammals, birds, dinosaurs, fish, amphibians, all land-based plants and insects.

 

Evolution — if you believe in that sort of thing — had advanced as far as producing trilobites, which lived on the sea floor. So, if you’re a trilobite, all this extra carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere is gonna be great for you and your family. But for the rest of us, it’s going to be a disaster. Why? Because the rate of change in the composition of the atmosphere is happening in a geologic blink of an eye. And most life forms cannot possibly adapt. Human beings are at risk, too, despite all our cleverness.

 

1. It acknowledges that the earth has warmed but asserts that “global warming ceased around the end of the 20th century and was followed by 19 years of stable temperature.” In fact, global temperature records have been rising every year for the past ten years.

2. It claims a 2ºC temperature increase (should it occur) falls within the bounds of natural variability, and would, overall, not be “harmful to the global environment or to human well-being.”

 

In reality, we’re already seeing dramatic changes in the environment, including major die-offs of coral reefs, melting sea ice threatening arctic ecosystems, rising sea levels threatening coastal cities, alteration of plant habitat, bird and fish migrations, movement of tropical disease northward, intensified drought in the many areas, including the Sahel and the American West, and bizarre weather patterns just about everywhere.

 

In short, this organization, among others, is pumping out fake science. It’s doing so with millions of dollars of funding from the fossil fuel industry and others seeking to maintain the status quo with respect to energy policy.

 

If you’re a science teacher, I urge you to do one of two things with this book. You can just throw it out. It’s fraudulent. The second option is better: use it to illustrate to your students that any subject, including science, can be distorted. Urge them to think critically, evaluate the facts and follow the money.

 

We Sierrans should all reach out to teachers to help them understand that climate change is real and that the next generation deserves to know the truth.

 

The National Science Teachers Association has already responded to this attempt to spread misinformation about climate change inside our educational system, calling out the book for what it is: propaganda. We need to stand with them.