Friday, February 02, 2007
AEI: Bribing Scientists to Invent a Debate
The fact is, this is exactly what has been wrong in the climate change debate for years: the majority of the scientific community says one thing, a couple of naysayers say another, and all of a sudden it's a controversy, rather than enough of a consensus to move forward. Irregular Times notes that it's just a coincidence that ExxonMobil posted record profits this year, all the while bankrolling pseudo-science.You're being a little naive if you think that AEI's goal is truly to inspire a real debate about the veracity of claims about man-made climate change. This is right out of the theocon playbook on evolution. The goal is not to have a real debate, because a real debate is something you can (and in both cases, when talking about scientific evidence, will) lose. The goal is simply to muddy the waters, try and get the media to portray climate change as a 'he said, he said' kind of issue. The fact is, there are a lot of scientists. You will find contrarians to any position imaginable. For an ideologically-inspired organization to cherry-pick a few who are willing to say what they want to hear (especially for a fee!!) and publish those reports, instead of those scientists having to go through the peer-review process, reduces the scientific rigor of the debate.
Many people don't have the time or interest to sift through the actual evidence, so they'll see one story that says yes, and another that says no, and throw up their hands and say 'oh well, whatever, who can know?' That has real-life consequences. So work like this really has a disproportionate effect, in the sense that 5 scientists who say 'man doesn't cause climate change' and are funded by oil companies can counteract the effect of hundreds or thousands of scientists who say 'man does cause climate change', but operate through the usual, scientifically-accepted channels. That's why shenanigans like this have to be see the light of day, so at least everyone knows who's pushing the pieces around.
My own evolution on this issue was a long time coming. I once worked for the National Wilderness Institute, a think-tank, now defunct, that was engaged in poo-pooing environmental "hysteria." As the evidence for man-made global warming mounted, I felt my assurance that this was all some sort of alarmist conspiracy start to waver. I remained agnostic on the issue for several years, which I now understand was exactly what the big oil types were trying to achieve.
Finally, Ronald Bailey, another of the environmental skeptics, convinced me that global warming is real, and is man-made. The reason it took so long was that I had not seen any of the skeptics actually reverse their positions, and I have an unfortunate tendency to believe the best in people until I am proven wrong. Bailey was someone I knew to be thoughtful and sincere on the subject, so when he turned, I knew it was time for me to jump to the other side of the "debate," which is now not really a debate at all. Yes, I know I was very late to the game.
Unlike William K. Wolfrum, I see some reason to be hopeful that something actually will be done. Not because of the environment, but because of our problems in the Middle East and Russia. The fact is that oil is the only thing keeping those guys in a position of power on the world stage. I predict that as tensions rise in the oil-producing nations, the West and the Far East will look for ways to extract themselves from that quagmire, and weaning ourselves off of oil will be the most obvious solution. This won't happen while Bush is in office, but get the right person in there--Gore is our best hope on this, and Obama or McCain would probably move us in the right direction, but I doubt Hillary would make any headway on this issue--and we could see serious strides made toward moving our infrastructure in the direction of alternative energy resources. Tying global warming to the GWOT seems, at least to me, the best overall strategy.
