Al Gore seems all-too-aware of what the reality-based community is up against.
Research aimed at disputing the scientific consensus on global warming is part of a huge public misinformation campaign funded by some of the world’s largest carbon polluters, former Vice President Al Gore said Tuesday.
“There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community,” Gore said at a forum in Singapore. “In actuality, there is very little disagreement.”
Gore noted that tobacco companies, for years, worked to convince consumers that there was some scientific debate on smoking’s harmful effects. If cigarette manufacturers could just muddle the debate, they could create doubt about the science. The same thing, of course, is happening now with climate change.
“This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science,” Gore said. “We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion.”
With this in mind, the cover story in the latest Newsweek is an important piece.
[O]utside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.
Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless.
It’s a daunting propaganda machine. Newsweek noted that the Clinton administration was anxious to get a GOP-led Congress to take the issue seriously in the 1990s, but couldn’t make any progress. Every proposed climate bill “ran into a buzz saw of denialism,” says Manik Roy of the Pew Center on Climate Change, a research and advocacy group, who was a Senate staffer at the time. “There was no rational debate in Congress on climate change.”
The reason for the inaction was clear. “The questioning of the science made it to the Hill through senators who parroted reports funded by the American Petroleum Institute and other advocacy groups whose entire purpose was to confuse people on the science of global warming,” says Sen. John Kerry. “There would be ads challenging the science right around the time we were trying to pass legislation. It was pure, raw pressure combined with false facts.”
This isn’t exactly a surprise. When AEI offers $10,000 rewards to scientists who’ll tell conservatives what they want to hear about global warming, you know a larger, concerted effort is at work. But the Newsweek piece ties it all together nicely (and frighteningly).
If the first step is admitting we have a problem, the sophisticated propaganda campaign by global-warming deniers is the first hurdle to clear. They’re clearly having an effect with those who don’t know better. Consider this discussion from a recent edition of CNN’s Situation Room.
J.C. WATTS: Well, like I said, I can’t talk for John McCain, but I can talk for me. I don’t believe the Earth is melting because of carbon emissions.
MILES O’BRIEN: Oh, well, you’re not paying attention to the science, J.C.
WATTS: Well…
O’BRIEN: You’re definitely not paying attention.
(CROSSTALK)
WATTS: You have got science on both sides of that issue.
BEGALA: No.
(CROSSTALK)
O’BRIEN: No, you don’t. No, you don’t.
(CROSSTALK)
O’BRIEN: The scientific debate is over, J.C. We’re done. We’re out of…
(CROSSTALK)
WATTS: Well, Miles, that’s your position.
O’BRIEN: No, no, no, that’s not — that is science. That is science.
(CROSSTALK)
O’BRIEN: The science is…
(CROSSTALK)
WATTS: Well, it’s political science.
We have a lot of work to do.