AAAS "What We Know" Initiative: Same Denial, Different Issue – From Ozone Depletion to Climate Change

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This is a guest post by Cindy Baxter, cross-posted from PolluterWatch withย permission.

It must be like Groundhog Day for Mario Molina, the scientist who has presided over the American Association for the Advancement of Scienceโ€™s new report and publicity drive aimed at convincing Americans about the urgency of whatโ€™s happening on climateย change.

The normally reticent AAAS has taken a highly unusual step. Thereโ€™s no new science in it.ย  Instead, it summarizes โ€œwhat we knowโ€ on climate science, highlighting the 97% consensus on the issue and calling forย action.ย 

Why did they do it? The AAAS says itโ€™s becoming alarmed at the American publicโ€™s views on climate change, stating in the opening paragraphs:

โ€œSurveys show that many Americans think climate change is still a topic of significant scientific disagreement.ย  Thus, it is important and increasingly urgent for the public to know there is now a high degree of agreement among climate scientists that human-caused climate change isย real.โ€

Theyโ€™re right:ย  the latest Gallup Poll published this month shows that climate change is low on Americansโ€™ priority list, with 51% saying they worry about climate change very little โ€“ or not at all.ย ย  And 42% said they believe the seriousness of the issue was โ€œgenerallyย exaggerated.โ€

The AAAS report alsoย stated:ย 

โ€œIt is not the purpose of this paper to explain why this disconnect between scientific knowledge and public perception hasย occurred.โ€

Thatโ€™s not their job.ย  But I bet theyโ€™d like to. Especially Marioย Molina.ย 

The reason for that American disconnect between scientific and public views on global warming is simple:ย  itโ€™s the result of a 20-year campaign funded by the fossil fuel industry that profits from the very products causing it โ€“ oil, coal and gas.ย ย  Itโ€™s got nothing to do with science perย se.

A brief history of that campaign is outlined in a report I wrote last year: โ€œDealing in Doubtโ€ that catalogues the attacks on climate science, the IPCC and on the scientistsย themselves.

But whatโ€™s that got to do with Mario Molina?ย  Molina, now 70, was one of the researchers who discovered the chemistry around ozone depletion. He and two other scientists received the 1995 Nobel Prize for chemistry for their work.ย ย  20 years ago, he faced a remarkably similar campaign to what the climate scientists faceย today.

In 1992, Molina was at a gathering of scientists in Brazil, ahead of the Rio Earth Summit, and about to present a 30-minute talk on ozone depletion.ย  He was dumbfounded when the presenter before him told the assembled scientists that the ozone depletion theory was a sham. He later told the AAASโ€™s Science magazine (full text here):

โ€œGiven enough time I could have carefully rebutted his objections.ย  They sounded reasonable but they were onlyย pseudoscientific.โ€

At the time, in the face of increasing scientific certainty, there was a (successful) push to strengthen the Montreal Protocol, to further regulate CFCs to stop ozone depletion.ย  The fight wasย on.

The Science article went on to outline how talk show host Rush Limbaugh was leading the charge against the ozone science, labeling the issue a โ€œmassive conspiracyโ€ promulgated by โ€œdunderhead alarmists and prophets of doom.โ€ย ย 

Limbaugh claimed the only reason scientists were working on ozone depletion was because โ€œthey always want more funding, and today that means government funding.ย  What could be more natural than for [NASA], with the space program winding down, to say that because we have this unusual amount of chlorine in the atmosphere, we needย funding.โ€

This is one of the main mantras of the climate science deniers today โ€“ theyโ€™re only in it for the funding.ย  They also get labeled โ€œalarmistsโ€ and โ€œdoomsayersโ€ amongst other things.ย  Same arguments, differentย subject.

Enter S Fred Singer, a serial denier who cut his teeth on tobacco science, before moving on to ozone depletion and global warming.ย  In a 1995 article, he said this on ozoneย depletion:

โ€œThe facts are that the scientific underpinnings are quite shaky: the data are suspect; the statistical analyses are faulty; and the theory has not been validatedโ€ฆ The science simply does not support this premature and abrupt removal of widely used chemicalsโ€”at great cost to theย economy.โ€

Itโ€™s telling that one of Singerโ€™s early articles, โ€œMy adventures on the ozone layer,โ€ can be found today on the Heartland Institute website.ย  This is the same Heartland Institute that last year employed Singer to help work on its โ€œNIPCCโ€ report, designed to confuse a casual observer with the similarity to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) while using debunked arguments to suggest there isnโ€™t a problem โ€“ which couldnโ€™t be farther from the truth.ย ย 

In 1996, Singer told a House Committee there was no scientific consensus on ozone depletion. He went on to use the high-cost argument, and brought in a new theme that is very much prevalent in todayโ€™s anti climate arguments: that it would hurt the developingย world.

โ€œWe are flying blind on this issue, at a huge cost to the U.S. economy and ultimately to every American household. In less developed countries, absence of low-cost refrigerationโ€“for food preservation and vaccinesโ€“could, unfortunately, exact an even higher price in humanย lives.โ€

Two years later, Singer was even advocating putting mirrors in the sky to stop ozone depletion. That article can be found on another think tank website, the Competitive Enterprise Institute.ย  The CEI set up the Cooler Heads Coalition. But its extensive ExxonMobil funding was dropped in 2007 because the company said their campaign โ€œdiverted attentionโ€ from a real conversation about how to tackle climateย change.

Meanwhile, over at the Marshall Institute, Fred Seitz and Sallie Baliunas had also picked up the cause, with Baliunas arguing that it was the sun and other natural factors causing theย problem:

โ€œScientific findings do not support an immediate ban on CFCโ€™s. Both global and Arctic measurements point to natural factors as the main cause of recent ozone fluctuations. Ozone levels change primarily as the result of natural factors such as the ultraviolet output of the sun, oscillation of upper stratosphere winds and El Ninoย conditions.โ€

Sunspots is one of the main denialist arguments used against global warming today, notably by Baliunasโ€™s colleague, Willie Soon.ย  A later Marshall Institute report about global warming, ozone depletion and tobacco science was picked up and pushed by Phillip Morris.

No consensus, science unsettled, the sun, El Nino, in it for the funding, doomsayers, solutions will hurt the poor, natural variations:ย  all these arguments are run today around global warming science by, amongst others, the Heartland Institute, the CEI, the Marshall Institute, S Fred Singer, Baliunas, Limbaugh andย others.

The late Steve Schneider described the problem as being โ€œcaught between the exaggerations of the advocates, the exploitations of political interests, the media’s penchant to turn everything into a boxing match and your own colleagues saying we should be above this dirty business and stick to theย bench.โ€

The AAAS appears to have gotten off of that bench, not least because theyโ€™re worried about Americans sleepwalking into climate chaos, cheered on by industry.ย ย ย 

But the bottom line, as the AAAS has stated in no uncertain terms, is this: ย โ€œhuman-caused climate change is happening, we face risks of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes, and responding now will lower the risk and cost of takingย action.โ€

Perhaps our elected leaders might also like to spend some time readingย it.

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