Can You Guess What Climate Deniers Said of the IPCC 20 Years Ago?

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The DeSmog UK epic history series recalls how the war between the climate sceptics and the IPCC heated up as they tried to cast doubt over theย science.

The climate sceptics were ever ready to attack the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) following its second report, released in 1995. They well understood the political dangers that confrontedย them.

Frederick Seitz, (pictured) then chairman of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) โ€“ which argues against the existence of climate change โ€“ demanded that IPCC chairman Bert Bolin draft a statement immediately saying that the IPCC had โ€œnot been able to quantify the magnitude of the greenhouse gasโ€; he even took the extra step of drafting the proposed letter, ready for Bolin toย sign.

โ€œI was indeed amazed about Dr Seitzโ€™s way of proceeding,โ€ Bolin wouldย recall.

โ€˜Disturbingย Corruptionโ€™

Seitz would later use the pages of the Wall Street Journal to issue unsubstantiated claims against the IPCC, rather ironically under the headline โ€œA Major Deception on Globalย Warmingโ€.

He stated that โ€œthis report is not what it appears to be โ€“ it is not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists listed on the titleย page.โ€

โ€œIn my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCCย report.โ€

The newspaper, however, did not inform the reader of Seitzโ€™s oil or tobacco funding, which meant the author was not what he appeared toย be.

Seitz was joined by Patrick Michaels, then a visiting scientist at the Exxon-funded George C. Marshall Institute, in the attack against the IPCC.

State of theย Climate

Michaels used his position as editor of the publication the State of the Climate Report to accuse scientists of hiding any weaknesses from policymakers and members of the public in the most recent climate models, despite the fact that this issue had been directly addressed in the IPCCย documents.

Michaels also demanded that the Met Office in Devon, England, provide the original data supporting some of the science, and complained bitterly when itย refused.

The State of the Climate Report was delivered to every member of the US Congress on Earth Day in Aprilย 1996.

Bolin was absolutely furious and unusually blunt about his feelings. โ€œThe way Michaels dealt with the climate change issue in the first issue of the State of the Climate Report disqualified him from taking part as a serious fellow scientist in the climate change debate. His statements were simply notย trustworthy.โ€

The Union of Concerned Scientists responded by issuing a press release attacking the maverick scientist for his sources of funding. They claimed: โ€œThe forthcoming climate change report sponsored by the Western Fuels Association is like a lung cancer study funded by the tobaccoย industry.โ€

Coolerย Heads

Michaels was then invited to speak at the launch of the latest sceptic vehicle, the Cooler Heads Coalition. The coalition presented itself as a subgroup of the National Consumer Coalition and wished merely โ€œto dispel the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific and riskย analysis.โ€

Myron Ebell, the chairman of this new outfit, around the same time joined the newly formed Exxon-funded free market think tank, the Frontiers of Freedom. The economist currently works with Fred Smith at the Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

Meanwhile, Roger Bate, founder of the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), was working equally hard in the UK to attack the IPCC and climateย science.

Politicisation ofย Science

An internal memo set out the tasks for the tobacco- and oil-funded front: โ€œRB to write a short book on the politicisation of science, showing the motivations of the various players influencing the outcomes. May concentrate on one topic so one can analyse the players properly. Climate change is the obvious choice. Two publishersย interested.โ€

The ESEF also planned to place articles implying that the โ€œsource is now more important than the science,โ€ defending British American Tobacco while Bate and an environmental journalist named Richard D. North wrote an article titled Anatomy of Health Scares, dubbing the salmonella outbreakย โ€œChickengateโ€.

Bate also penned a comment article asking, โ€œWhy Regulate Nicotine When Caffeine is More Addictive?โ€ and continued to promote his latest climate change book, Global Warming, A Report of the European Science and Environment Forum.

Subjectiveย View

Promotional material sent to tobacco companies stated: โ€œThere has been much focus on the IPCC and the only opposition to the idea that there is a consensus has come from individual scientists who, with a few notable exceptions, have been dismissed as misguided by those within the process, and indeed mostย commentators.โ€

It goes on: โ€œWe are identifying mainstream journalists, specialist science journalists, selected MPs and MEPs and other policy advisors and academics. We want the media to come to ESEF for a different subjective view.โ€

The book was advertised as including contributions from the major climate change deniers: Singer, Michaels, geography professor Robert Balling, and the increasingly eccentric climatologist Piersย Corbyn.

The next article in the DeSmog UK epic history series will recount the growing environmental movement in the 1990s and the reaction of one major oilย company.

@brendanmontague

Photo:ย DeSmogBlog

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