Deny Global Warming, Intimidate A Scientist, And Pocket Some Money
By Farooque Chowdhury
06 March, 2012
Countercurrents.org
Denying the fact of global warming is “not” a sin. Intimidating a scientist providing facts on global warming is “not” an offence. These are in the interest of a bigger interest: an economy warming up and periling the world, and in eternal wish of perpetuating status quo. A section of the world masters clutch this pattern of praxis.
Michael E. Mann, a scientist at Penn State University , experienced this “sweet” fact. His research confirmed the fact of global warming. The results of his study were published in Nature in 1998. His finding showed a recent unprecedented alarming global temperature increase, and the increase in temperature is linked to human induced activities, to cars, factories, etc. Many other later studies have confirmed the finding. But the scientist was persecuted by conservative forces for telling the truth.
The data Mann got appeared the shape of a hockey stick as these were put as a graph, and the name, Hockey stick graph , and a confusion were brought to the Earth. His finding was used prominently by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Hockey stick graph angered global warming deniers, and Mann was made “a target of right-wing denial campaigners.” A section of scientists tied to status quo and a section of politicians of the same feather vigorously opposed it and created confusion. The opposition ultimately appeared in true color – status quo politics. Conservatives and capital joined hands in denying the fact.
While seeds of confusion were being sown Mann had to bear “the full brunt of attacks by climate change deniers, including death threats and accusations of misappropriating funds,” as The Guardian said. (“Death threats, intimidation and abuse: climate change scientist Michael E. Mann counts the cost of honesty”, March 3, 2012 ) “Among the tactics used against Mann were the theft and publication, in 2009, of emails he had exchanged with climate scientist Professor Phil Jones of East Anglia University . Selected, distorted versions of these emails were then published […] in order to undermine UN climate talks due to begin in Copenhagen a few weeks later”. Using those emails to kill off the climate negotiation was “a crime against humanity, a crime against the planet,” Mann said. (ibid.)
A number of policy foundations threw a barrage of intimidation to Mann. These “were set up by privately-funded groups that included Koch Industries and Scaife Foundations and bore names such as the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity and the Heartland Institute. These groups bombarded Mann with freedom of information requests […]” He was served with a subpoena by a Republican congressman to provide access to his correspondence. The aim was to intimidate the scientist. He was “attacked by Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican attorney general of Virginia who has campaigned to have the scientist stripped of academic credentials. Several committees of inquiry have investigated Mann's work. All have exonerated him. Thousands of emails have been sent to Mann, many deeply unpleasant. ‘You and your colleagues… ought to be shot, quartered and fed to the pigs along with your whole damn families', said one. ‘I was hopin [sic] I would see the news and you commited [sic] suicide', ran another.” “‘On one occasion, I had to call the FBI after I was sent an envelope with a powder in it', Mann adds. ‘It turned out to be cornmeal but again the aim was intimidation. I ended up with police security tape all over my office doors and windows. That is the life of a climate scientist today in the US .'” (ibid.)
Mann's book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars is coming out in April. “The book details the ‘disingenuous and cynical' methods used by those who have tried to disprove his findings.” (ibid.)
Intimidating Mann is not an isolated act. This type of activities has connection to bigger money. But, ultimately this comes to public view. Intimidators and global warming deniers are exposed. One such story is Chicago-based Heartland Institute's.
The institute's documents related to its donors, spending and anti-science strategy were leaked recently. The institute is one of the leading deniers in the US that strains to create confusion in the public “mind” by saying that “climate change is a controversial, unproven theory.”
The leaked documents prove that the oil-rich Koch brothers donated $200,000 to HI in 2011and before. The Koch brothers' involvement makes HI a shill for oil companies. The brothers have backed climate-denier Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign.
One of the documents reveal HI's plans to spend $100,000 to build an anti-climate change curriculum for schools that “shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain — two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.”
Recently, David Suzuki writes, someone sent documents from the HI's board of directors' Jan. 17 meeting to persons and organizations including DeSmogBlog, a website devoted to exposing the climate change denial. “The documents confirm much of what we already knew about Heartland […]” Suzuki says: HI doesn't publicly reveal its funding source and expenditure. “These documents indicate that Heartland has offered U.S. weatherman blogger and climate change denier Anthony Watts close to $90,000 for a new project. They also reveal that Heartland funds other prominent deniers, including ‘Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 per month, plus expenses), Robert Carter ($1,667 per month), and a number of other individuals' […] And even though it has received funding from wealthy individuals and corporations in the fossil fuel and tobacco industries, including the Koch brothers and RJR Tobacco, it gets most of its money from a single anonymous donor”: $4.6 million in 2008. “The papers also confirm that the institute's primary mission is to discredit the established science of human-caused climate change.” (“It's time that climate-change deniers were exposed”, Feb. 21, 2012 )
Citing leaked documents Josh Israel and Brad Johnson expose 19 major corporations backing the HI. The documents reveal “the think tank's plans to teach students that climate change is a hoax […]” ( ThinkProgress Green ) The institute, however, “ deemed at least one of the documents fake and some tampered with.” The think tank's 2010-2011 “corporate backers included Altria Client Services Inc. : $90,000, Amgen , USA : $25,000, Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. : $5,000, AT&T : $100,000, BB&T : $16,105, Comcast Corporation : $35,000, General Motors Foundation : $30,000, GlaxoSmithKline : $50,000, Microsoft Corporation : $59,908, Nucor Corporation : $502,000, PepsiCo, Inc. : $5,000, Pfizer : $130,000, Reynolds American Inc. : $110,000, Time Warner Cable : $20,000.” (Jaeah Lee, “Which Major Corporations Are Backing a Climate-Denier Think Tank?”, Mother Jones , Feb. 18, 2012 ) Other companies included Diageo: $10,000, Eli Lilly & Company: $25,000, KCI: $115,000, LKQ Corporation: $24,500, XL Group: $35,000. Combined contributions of the companies exceeded $1.3 million for an array of projects. The AP independently verified their contents. ( ThinkProgress Green ) HI also collects money from Philip Morris parent company Altria and the tobacco giant Reynolds American. (Cory Doctorow, “Leaked climate-change denial lobby docs came from water scientist”, Feb. 21)
However, a number of companies have issued statements about their contributions, but none have committed to ending their support for the HI. A Diageo spokesperson said: “Diageo provided a small contribution (nearly two years ago) […] related to an excise tax issue. We vigorously oppose climate skepticism and our actions are proof of this. We will be reviewing any further association with this organization.” A GlaxoSmithKline spokesperson said: “GSK absolutely does not endorse or support the [HI]'s views on the environment and climate change. We have in the past provided a small amount of funding to support the Institute's healthcare newsletter and a meeting.” While disavowing climate denial, Microsoft has indicated no intention to stop its in-kind tax-deductible contributions to the think tank. General Motors defended the HI as “careful and considerate.” Forecast The Facts has established a petition to GM asking them to stop funding climate denial. ( ThinkProgress Green ) It's only part of a story. There are also other parts of the denial story.
Money business with the global warming issue is quite old. In 2010, after analyzing publicly available campaign finance records the Climate Action Network (CAN) stated that “a number of European companies are supporting climate legislation blockers in the U.S. by funding the campaigns of republican candidates to the U.S. Senate.” The CAN finding was that a number of big European industrial companies including Arcelor Mittal, GDF Suez, BP, BASF, Bayer and Lafarge already spent a total of 171.000 Euro on candidates. “They are funding almost exclusively Senate candidates who have been outspoken in their opposition to comprehensive climate policy in the U.S. , and candidates who actively deny the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is caused by people. These companies are simultaneously lobbying against aggressive emissions reductions in Europe – and are arguing that such reductions should not be pursued until the United States takes action”, it said.
Indicating the climate change deniers Bryan Walsh writes: “[T]hey refuse even to believe that a problem exists — despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that says it does. One of America 's major political parties has, in effect, adopted denial as policy.” (“Who's Bankrolling the Climate-Change Deniers?”, Time , Oct. 4, 2011 )
Citing sociologists Riley Dunlap of Oklahoma State University and Aaron McCright of Michigan State University Bryan writes: “[C]limate denialism exists in part because there has been a long-term, well-financed effort on the part of conservative groups and corporations to distort global-warming science. That's the conclusion of a chapter the two researchers recently wrote for The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society . ‘Contrarian scientists, fossil-fuel corporations, conservative think tanks and various front groups have assaulted mainstream climate science and scientists for over two decades,' Dunlap and McCright write. ‘The blows have been struck by a well-funded, highly complex and relatively coordinated denial machine.'” (ibid.)
“Fossil-fuel companies like Exxon and Peabody Energy — which obviously have a business interest in slowing any attempt to reduce carbon emissions — have combined with traditionally conservative corporate groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and conservative foundations like the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity, to raise doubts about the basic validity of what is, essentially, a settled scientific truth. That message gets amplified by conservative think tanks — like the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute — and then picked up by conservative media outlets […] and cable TV.
“For both Big Oil and Big Smoke, that playbook is lethally simple: don't straight-up refute the science, just raise skepticism and insist that the findings are ‘unsettled' and that ‘more research' is necessary. Repeat that again and again regardless of the latest research, and you help block the formation of the solid majority needed to create any real political change. (ibid.)
Climate crisis denial is well organized. Claims have been made that lobbyists including the Western Fuels Association funded efforts to undermine the scientific basis of climate crisis explanation. In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute organized discussions between oil companies, trade associations and conservative think tanks. The API provided fund for research critical of the Hockey stick graph. In June 2002, the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists published a paper arguing against the IPCC findings and the Kyoto Protocol.
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway's Merchants of Doubt (2010) cites collusion between private corporations, conservative think tanks and conservative scientists to create confusion so that scientific consensus on current burning issues are not questioned as the burning issues have been blazed by the present economic world order.
Since long, climate crisis issue has turned into a political issue. A section of capital is fully in politics with the issue. Sections of conservatives deny the fact of climate crisis while the rest of the human society is concerned with the facts. Contradictory activities and interests have made it also a class issue. Interests opposed to people, especially the poor are well aware of it. All their activities, in economy, politics, diplomacy, propaganda, in bargaining conclaves, in education, in scientific pursuits, reflect this. All their efforts are to keep people unaware, uninformed, misinformed, demobilized. It's not only labor's, entire people's interests also stand opposed to the status quo interests in the global warmsphere.
However, there is effort and hope as “Mann insists he will not give up. ‘I have a six-year-old daughter and she reminds me what we are fighting for.' […C]limate change deniers and their oil and coal industry backers have overstepped the mark and goaded scientists to take action. He points to a recent letter, signed by 250 members of the US National Academy of Science, including 11 Nobel laureates, and published in Science . The letter warns about the dangers of the current attacks on climate scientists and calls ‘for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.' ‘Words like those give me hope', says Mann.” ( The Guardian , op. cit.) The more people get mobilized the more there will be hope.
Farooque Chowdhury is Dhaka-based freelancer.
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