Victory Declared For The Climate Science Denialists

authordefault
on

A VICTORY has been declared in the field of climate change but the lap of honour is not being run by research scientists or renewable energy bosses, or by coral reefs, drought-stricken farmers or the citizens of low-lyingย countries.

Rather, if you accept as valid this declaration of victory from one of Australiaโ€™s leading thinkers, then those popping the champagne corks are the fossil fuelย lobby.

Standing by the track cheering this triumph, are the conservative think tanks and the free market ideologues that believe the world should be run on their terms.ย To follow the analogy through to the bitter end, the losers are everyoneย else.

Professor Robert Manne, a political philosopher at La Trobe University, is making this declaration in a 7000-word essay published tomorrow in The Monthly magazine โ€“ its cover screaming โ€œVictory of the Denialists: How Climate Science Wasย Vanquishedโ€.

Manneโ€™s essay charts the decades-long effort to spread doubt and confusion about the science of human-caused climate change, focusing on the think tanks and corporations that created and backed a โ€œrelentlessโ€ campaign in the United States which has infected other parts of the western world, includingย Australia.

Manne draws on already published books and research papers about the climate denial industry, and so in that respect close watchers wonโ€™t find anything new.ย But it is his declaration that climate science denialists have won which will stick in the throat of many climate change campaigners and scienceย communicators.

I asked Professor Manne why he had come to thatย conclusion.

I find it difficult to see how a reasonably objective observer could deny that this is what has happenedโ€“gradually at first but also dramatically since the end of 2009 due largely to the combination of the failure of Copenhagen and the impact of ‘Climategate’.

The victory I write about is limited to the United States, although denialism is an important and almost certainly growing movement in Canada, Australia and the UK.

If climate change denialists are pleased [by the conclusion] then they have chosen to ignore the explicit claim of the article that they are part of an irrationalist movement that is placing the future of the Earth at risk. The role of analysis is to be as faithful to the truth as one can be, not to boost morale or to supportย delusion.

For the denialists to be โ€œvictoriousโ€ they do not need to โ€œproveโ€ that global warming is a โ€œhoaxโ€. All they have to do is to โ€œmanufacture doubtโ€, that is to say to create a substantial level of public doubt about the solidity of theย science.

According to Manne, President Barack Obama has been โ€œnobbledโ€ by the denialist campaign and the Republican Party almost โ€œentirely convertedโ€ to denying theย science.

Manne concludes in his essay that the success of the denialist campaign is one that subsequent generations will look upon โ€œas perhaps the darkest in the history ofย humankindโ€.

But just as Manne makes his declaration, a project funded by two of Americaโ€™s greatest supporters of the โ€œdenialistโ€ campaign has backfired spectacularly.

Professor Richard Muller, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley, led a project that accepted a $150,000 donation from a foundation controlled by the Koch brothers to study global temperature records (the Kochs have pumped millions into the global climate denial campaign).

Muller had previously stated that claims by skeptics that temperature records were unreliable merited a major investigation. He has also previously criticised the work of Pennsylvania State University scientist Professor Michael Mann, whose research gave birth to the now famous hockey stick graph showing a sharp rise in recent globalย temperatures.

After going through 1.6 billion records from 36,000 temperature stations, Mullerโ€™s team says the worldโ€™s temperature has risen by 1.5C in the 250 years since the start of the industrial revolution. More than half of this increase has occurred in the last 50ย years.

Whatโ€™s more, Muller now says that human activity, mainly burning fossil fuels, is to blame for practically all of thatย warming.

Mullerโ€™s study, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, has been widely reported not because of a novel approach to climate science research, or because it tells us anything new, but rather because of his reported โ€œconversionโ€ from being skeptical to accepting the science. ย He now describes himself as a โ€œconverted skepticโ€.

Presumably, the oil rich Koch brothers were so convinced the worldโ€™s temperature gauges were lying, that they were happy to provide a no strings donation to Mullerโ€™s project, which stipulated its donorsย  โ€œhave no say over how we conduct the research or what weย publishโ€.

But in a chronology, Mullerโ€™s work has come to essentially the same conclusion as the rest of the climate science community, except they got there a good decade or soย earlier.

In The Monthly, Manne defines โ€œdenialistsโ€ as โ€œorthodox members of a tightly knit group whose natural disposition is not to think forย themselvesโ€.

But on the same spectrum is a group of individuals, lobbyists and think-tankers who hide their skepticism behind a charade of pragmatism. Professor Clive Hamilton, recently appointed to board of the Australian Governmentโ€™s Climate Change Authority, describes them as the โ€œluke warmistsโ€.

Luke warmists, Hamilton wrote recently, accept the science but relentlessly and unrealistically emphasise uncertainties, play down the dangers and advocate for only tokenistic, low-impact policyย responses.

But what about those world leaders who have accepted the science of human caused climate change and have articulated the risks? Even these have hardly covered themselves inย glory.

Because after Kyotos, Copenhagens, Durbans, Cancuns and revisits to Rio for new earth summits, the worldโ€™s emissions continue to boom reaching an all-time record last year.

Even though Australia has introduced a price on greenhouse gas emissions on the heaviest polluters, the scheme will allow these emitters to buy carbon credits from overseas to offset as much as half theirย liabilities.

This means that Australiaโ€™s domestically generated emissions will likely rise for the next 20 years, although not nearly as quickly as they would have risen without the schemeย altogether.

Bizarrely, this situation is seen by some as majorย progress.

The carbon price is an important step forward and will help drive the roll-out of renewable energy in the same way that decades of subsidies have helped the fossil fuel industry to retain its marketย dominance.

But then there is Australiaโ€™s hypocritical position of claiming to be concerned about climate change while at the same time becoming a world leader in the export of coal and gas to be burned outside the jurisdiction of any carbon pricing mechanism (although plans to price carbon in China could changeย things).

Research just published by not-for-profit group Beyond Zero Emissions suggests when Australiaโ€™s domestic emissions are added to those from the coal and gas we export, Australia becomes a major global emitter, ranking sixthย globally.

The BZE Laggard to Leader report finds that by 2030, the emissions locked-up in Australian coal and gas exports would combine with domestic emissions to give the country an annual carbon footprint in the region of 2.2 billionย tonnes.

In terms of exports, these emissions from Australian coal and gas exports will be almost double those coming from Saudi Arabiaโ€™s exports ofย oil.

And this is the position currently being advocated by Australia, whose Prime Minister Julia Gillard says that inaction on climate change is โ€œultimately threatening for our planetโ€. She is certainly noย โ€œdenialistโ€.

Robert Manne says the denialist triumph might not be stable โ€œin the long termโ€.โ€œWho can tell?โ€ he said in an email to me. โ€œAs Maynard Keynes once famously observed: in the long-term we are allย dead.โ€

authordefault
Admin's short bio, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Voluptate maxime officiis sed aliquam! Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit.

Related Posts

on

Critics say support for TMX means struggling Canadians end up paying the price as global fossil fuel companies โ€œreap the rewards.โ€

Critics say support for TMX means struggling Canadians end up paying the price as global fossil fuel companies โ€œreap the rewards.โ€
on

His push for more gas development alarms climate change experts amid growing evidence of declining global LNG demand.

His push for more gas development alarms climate change experts amid growing evidence of declining global LNG demand.
on

A pro-Trump, pro-oil oligarchy is being convened by a group backed by the owners of GB News, campaigners say.

A pro-Trump, pro-oil oligarchy is being convened by a group backed by the owners of GB News, campaigners say.
on

Office of Management and Budget General Counsel Mark Paoletta reportedly drafted the memo that took aim at the โ€œgreen new dealโ€ but caused widespread upheaval.

Office of Management and Budget General Counsel Mark Paoletta reportedly drafted the memo that took aim at the โ€œgreen new dealโ€ but caused widespread upheaval.