Manatee Memories wrote:
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/...te-phil-jones/
>
> <Q>
> The climate change crusader breaks his silence in a New York Times op-ed
> piece. But do his arguments make sense?
> </Q>
News & Observer
Published Tue, Mar 02, 2010 02:00 AM
Modified Tue, Mar 02, 2010 06:15 AM
Climate change goes on trial
In recent years, every major scientific body in the world has produced
reports confirming the peril of climate change. All 15 of the warmest
years on record have come in the last two decades. And Earth's major
natural systems are all showing undeniable signs of rapid flux: melting
Arctic and glacial ice, rapidly acidifying seawater and so on.
Yet because of a recent onslaught of attacks on the science of climate
change, fewer Americans now believe humans are warming the planet than
did just a few years ago.
The doubters of climate science have launched an enormously clever - and
effective - campaign, and it's worth trying to understand how they've
done it. The best analogy is perhaps the O.J. Simpson trial.
The "dream team" of lawyers assembled for Simpson's defense had a
problem: The evidence against their client was formidable. Nicole Brown
Simpson's blood was all over his socks, and that was just the beginning.
So Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey,
Robert Kardashian et al. decided to attack the process, arguing that it
put Simpson's guilt in doubt - and doubt, of course, was all they
needed. Hence, those days of cross-examination about exactly how Dennis
Fung had transported blood samples and which racial slurs LAPD Det. Mark
Fuhrman had used.
In his closing arguments, Cochran compared Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler and
called him "a genocidal racist, a perjurer, America's worst nightmare
and the personification of evil." His only real audience was the jury,
many of whom had good reason to dislike the Los Angeles Police
Department, but the team managed to instill considerable doubt in lots
of Americans tuning in on TV as well. That's what happens when you spend
week after week dwelling on the cracks in a case, no matter how small
they may be. They made convincing mountains from the molehills they had
to work with.
Similarly, the immense pile of evidence now proving the science of
global warming beyond any reasonable doubt is in some ways a great boon
for those who deny that the biggest problem we've ever faced is actually
a problem at all. If you have a three-page report, it won't be
overwhelming, but it's also unlikely to have many mistakes. Three
thousand pages (the length of the latest report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change)? That pretty much guarantees you'll get some
things wrong.
Indeed, the panel managed to include half a dozen errors - most
egregiously a spurious date for the year by which Himalayan glaciers
will disappear. It won't happen by 2035, as the report indicated - a
fact that has now been spread so widely across the Internet that it's
more or less obliterated the indisputable fact that virtually every
glacier on the planet is busily melting.
Much has been made of the so-called Climategate scandal involving
thousands of hacked e-mails and documents from a British research
center. A few of the communications suggested the scientists were
dismissive of research that came to conclusions they disagreed with. One
British scientist, Phil Jones, has been placed on leave while his
university decides if he should be punished for, among other things, not
complying with Freedom of Information Act requests.
Jones could be considered the Mark Fuhrman of climate science; focus on
him and maybe people will ignore the inconvenient mountain of evidence
about climate change that the world's scientific researchers have compiled.
The skeptics also have taken advantage of lucky breaks that have crossed
their path, such as the recent record set of snowstorms that hit
Washington. It doesn't matter that such a record is just the kind of
thing scientists have been predicting, given the extra water vapor
global warming is adding to the atmosphere. The doubters simply question
how it can be suddenly super-snowy if the world is actually warming.
For a gifted political operative like, say, Marc Morano, who runs the
Climate Depot Web site, the massive snowfalls this winter provided grist
for a hundred posts poking fun at the very idea that anyone could still
possibly believe in, you know, physics. Morano truly is talented - he
immediately posted a link to a live Web cam so readers could watch snow
coming down. Meanwhile, his former boss, Oklahoma's Republican Sen.
James Inhofe, had his grandchildren build an igloo on the Capitol
grounds, with a sign that read: "Al Gore's New Home."
These are the things that stick in people's heads. If the winter glove
won't fit, you must acquit.
In the long run, the climate-deniers will be a footnote to history. But
by delaying action, they will have helped prevent us from taking the
steps we need to take while there's still time. If we're going to make
real change while it matters, it's important to remember that their
skepticism isn't the root of the problem. It simply plays on our
deep-seated resistance to change.
That inertia is what gives the climate cynics ground to operate. That's
what we need to overcome, and at bottom that's a battle about data, but
also about courage and hope. In the last year, we've rallied millions of
people in almost every country to demand action on climate change, and
to start building the world beyond fossil fuel. The truth will out.
Bill McKibben is the author of the forthcoming "Eaarth: Making a Life on
a Tough New Planet." He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College
in Vermont and the founder of 350.org, a global grass-roots climate
campaign. A longer version of this article can be read at tomdispatch.com.
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