Part 1: A brief history of denial
The early 1990s: the network of denial is createdIn the early 1990s a number of lobby groups were set up to stave off the prospect of political action to prevent climate change. These included the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), the Climate Council and the Information Council on the Environment (ICE).
The GCC called itself an ‘organisation of business trade associations and private companies established in 1989 to coordinate business participation in the scientific and policy debate on global climate change’ [6.] Its membership was a list of the largest coal, oil and car companies in the US.
The Climate Council worked with lobbyist heavyweight Don Pearlman, who became the right hand man of the Saudi, Kuwait and Russian governments [7].
ICE was formed by a group of utility and coal companies: the National Coal Association, Western Fuels and the Edison Electric Institute [8]. In 1991, according to journalist Ross Gelbspan, ICE ‘launched a blatantly misleading campaign on climate change that had been designed by a public relations firm…[that] clearly stated that the aim of the campaign was to ‘reposition global warming as theory rather than fact’. Its plan specified that three of the so-called greenhouse sceptics – Robert Balling, Pat Michaels and S Fred Singer – should be placed in broadcast appearances, op-ed pages and newspaper interviews.’ [9]
One of their arguments may ring a bell today: a newspaper advertisement prepared by the ICE was headlined ‘If the Earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis getting colder?’ Fox News anchors all suggested that the massive snowstorms on the East Coast of the US in early 2010 called into question the scientific consensus on global warming, comments that climate scientists rejected. [10] It would later turn out that, globally January 2010 was among the hottest on record. [11]
These groups supported a central team of spokespeople who set out to misinform the world. Their names frequently appear in the media challenging the science of global warming: Fred Singer [12], Sallie Baliunas [13], Willie Soon [14], Richard Lindzen [15], Patrick Michaels [16] and many others.
This network was constructed using money provided by fossil fuel companies, most notably Exxon who have spent $23 million US dollars supporting the climate denial movement since 1998. In 2008, after years of adverse publicity about its funding policies, ExxonMobil dropped its funding of nine groups, claiming that their ‘position on climate change diverted attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.’ [17] However, ExxonMobil continues to fund 28 groups campaigning against climate science.
This map at ExxonSecrets sets it out clearly - more information on each of the front groups or conservative think tanks is listed here, including details of funding from ExxonMobil
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/index.php?mapid=1530 View online at
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/index.php?mapid=15391990 – the IPCC’s First Assessment ReportDuring the final drafting of the IPCC’s First Scientific Assessment Report in 1990, Brian Flannery, Exxon’s Chief Scientific Advisor and climate lobbyist, took issue with the recommendation for 60% to 80% cuts in CO2 emissions, in light of what he suggested were ‘uncertainties’ about the behaviour of carbon in the climate system. [18] (In keeping with UN rules, the IPCC grants industry association members like ExxonMobil ‘observer status’ at its meetings, along with NGOs).
Although the consensus of opinion remained against him, Flannery continued to demand that the IPCC report’s Executive Summary stated that the range of model results were ‘quite scientifically uncertain’ [19]. He was unsuccessful: the summary concluded that greenhouse gas emissions at present rates would certainly lead to warming [20].
This statement made the IPCC report a direct threat to business-as-usual in the fossil fuel sector. Having failed to derail the IPCC from within, industry set out to discredit it. The attack focused on the IPCC’s statement that it was ‘certain’.
In February 1992, at a press conference in New York during the negotiations that led to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the GCC used Fred Singer to attack the IPCC science, issuing a briefing entitled ‘Stabilising carbon dioxide emissions would have little environmental benefit’, [21] in which it cited denier Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Singer is a serial denier and has published little, if any, peer-reviewed climate science in the last 20 years. [22] He has spoken out as a scientific expert on subjects including smoking, ozone depletion, nuclear energy and toxic waste. [23]
Throughout 1992 the GCC used well-known climate deniers like Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling [24] and Fred Singer (all of whom have been partly funded by either Exxon or other energy companies at one time or another) as ’experts’ at press conferences in its attempts to undermine the credibility of accepted climate science and the findings of the IPCC. [25]
The same year, Exxon’s Flannery was quoted by the World Coal Institute in a briefing for climate negotiators: ‘…because model-based projections are controversial, uncertain, and without confirmation, scientists are divided in their opinion about the likelihood and consequences of climate change.’ [26]
In 1994, the GCC continued the attack on the IPCC when it hired a public relations firm to take climate sceptic Dr. Sallie Baliunas [27] on a media tour. [28]
Baliunas is an expert in astrophysics, not climate. She built her denial career downplaying the significance of the destruction of the ozone layer, publishing a report entitled ‘The Ozone Crisis’ in 1994 for the George C Marshall Institute [29]. Baliunas was, at the time, the chair of the Marshall Institute's Science Advisory Board and pro-tobacco campaigner, now deceased Fred Seitz [30] chaired the Marshall Institute Board.
Through the George C.Marshall Institute, Baliunas has published several reports that attempt to show that human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels play no role in global warming, that science does not support the prospect of dangerous climate change [31], and that scientific findings do not support federal regulation of emissions. [32]
She also worked for the Greening Earth Society, a front group for the Western Fuels Association (the coal industry) that promoted the idea that the increased CO2 released by the burning of fossil fuels is greening the earth (leading to more plant growth) [33].
By the mid-90s the GCC started to draw heavy criticism, and leading members began distancing themselves from it. Instead companies like Exxon and Mobil turned to front groups and conservative think tanks who could continue the campaign on their behalf.
They were already funding The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), set up by the tobacco industry in 1993 to ‘promote sound science’ [34].
Other groups in the core list of Exxon’s funding included the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, Frontiers of Freedom and the Hoover Institute. By 1998 when Exxon and Mobil merged, they were funding 21 different organisations that challenged climate science. In total, over the years since then, ExxonMobil has funded a total of 70 groups running the campaign [35].
1995 - the Second Assessment Report (SAR)When the IPCC released its Second Assessment Report (SAR) in 1995, it met a similarly aggressive response. Among the key findings of the IPCC was the acknowledgement of a ‘discernable’ human impact on climate and a prediction that sea levels could rise 15 to 95cm by 2100, in line with temperature increases ranging from 1°C to 3.5°C (1.8°F to 6.5°F) [36].
The SAR’s Summary for Policymakers contained the conclusion that, ‘The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.’ That one sentence set the sceptics on fire. One called it the ‘most disturbing corruption of the peer-review process in 60 years’. [37]
Charles DiBona, president of the American Petroleum Institute, called the report ‘inflammatory’ [38], while oilproducing countries such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia tried to delay the report’s release because of this ‘strong language’, and argued against the use of the words ‘appreciable’, ‘notable’, ‘measurable’ and ‘detectable’ in place of ‘discernable’. [39]
However the attacks weren’t restricted to the science or the report. This time the scientists were fair game. The GCC co-ordinated vicious personal attacks on Dr Ben Santer, one of the key authors of the report. The aim was to discredit the process by which the IPCC worked. This and other personal attacks are detailed in Part Two of this report.
Fred Singer meanwhile used the 1997 climate negotiations to launch an attack on the chair of the IPCC, Bert Bolin. Following a debate at the talks, Singer fabricated quotes from Bolin, attempting to suggest that he had changed his mind about climate change, saying ‘Bolin remained adamant that there has been some human influence on climate, but conceded that ‘man-made increases in temperature are so small as to be barely detectable’.’ [40]
Bolin, the chair of both the World Meteorological Organisation and the IPCC for nine years, was forced to release a press statement rejecting the allegations as ‘inaccurate and misleading’. He said ‘Regarding Singer's self-congratulatory statement that the ‘discussion appeared to go decidedly against Dr. Bolin's IPCC position,’ I had rather the impression that Dr. Singer’s views did not convince those present.. [41] I find it most annoying that the account of the meeting in Stockholm has been presented in such a biased manner.’ [42]
The mid 90s – a new front ‘down under’With a massive coal and mining industry backing him, Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s government was the perfect breeding ground for climate denial. This was recognised by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in 1996, which began strategising to develop the Australian arm of their campaign.
In November 1996 a strategy meeting was held at the CEI in Washington that would begin to cement the cross-pollination of people and ideas between Australia and the US [43].
At the meeting, RJ Smith from the CEI argued that it was clear that ‘Australia if possible would be a key player in this’, so the CEI decided to hold a conference [44] .
The CEI [45] is a Libertarian anti-regulation ‘free market’ think tank based in the USA. For many years it has attacked global warming science and received more than $2 million US dollars in funding from Exxon since 1998. The CEI coordinates the ‘Cooler Heads Coalition’ and the website
http://www.globalwarming.org. It is perhaps best known for its bizarre ‘CO2 is life’ advertisements [46] in 2006. Shortly after these ran ExxonMobil dropped its funding, under pressure from, among others, the UK Royal Society [47].
Interviewed by Bob Burton in 1997 Smith said ‘Early last winter, right after Tim Wirth of the US State Department announced they were going to call for mandatory controls in Kyoto, we said what do we do? How do we stop this?’ [48]
The CEI’s RJ Smith met Ray Evans of Australia’s Western Mining Corporation (WMC), and the two began planning.
They held a conference in Washington 1997, and several key deniers were in attendance, along with the Australians. According to PR Watch it ‘offered blanket dismissals of the scientific evidence for climate change and predicted staggering economic costs for any policies aimed at restricting emissions’ [49]. Australian Embassy Chief of Mission Paul O’Sullivan, gave the address.
In August 1997, the CEI and the Frontiers of Freedom front group sponsored another conference, this time in Canberra, Australia, along with the Australian and New Zealand Chambers of Commerce and the WMC. Ray Evans and WMC’s Managing Director Hugh Morgan played a significant role at the conference, and attendees included the Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer and Environment Minister Robert Hill. Fisher claimed that tough emission reduction targets could put 90,000 jobs at risk in Australia and cost more than $150 million [50].
Speakers included American climate sceptic Patrick Michaels, climate sceptic politicians, Rep. John Dingell [51], Senator Chuck Hagel and Richard Lawson (President and Chief Executive Officer of the US National Mining Association and present at the earlier CEI meeting).
According to RJ Smith from the CEI, the purpose of the Canberra conference was to ‘try and buck [Prime Minister John Howard] up a little more and let him know that there is support of the American people’ for his government's obstructionist stance [52].
Later that year, an Australian at the CEI, Hugh Morley, noted on the CEI’s website that ‘If Australia sticks to its gun [sic], there might not be a Kyoto treaty after all’ [53].
The Australian denial movement, funded by the WMC and other big business groups, and led by the Institute of Public Affairs, has had a relationship with the US climate sceptics ever since. Meanwhile, Australia has adopted a weak climate policy, only signing the Kyoto treaty after the Howard administration lost power in 2008.
1998 - the American Petroleum Institute’s Communications PlanIn early 1998, a small group sat down together at the American Petroleum Institute [54] in the US to draw up a communications plan to challenge climate science. The group included representatives from Exxon, Chevron, the Southern Company (a large US coal company), the American Petroleum Institute and people from a number of the front groups and conservative think tanks that are still campaigning against climate science today, including the George C Marshall Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. All have received long-term funding from ExxonMobil and other big industries [55].
The plan they drew up [56], leaked to Greenpeace, proposed:
‘…a national media relations programme to inform the media about uncertainties in climate science; to generate national, regional and local media on the scientific uncertainties and thereby educate and inform the public, stimulating them to raise questions with policymakers.’
The plan would roll out up to and beyond the UNFCCC meeting (COP4) later that year in Buenos Aires. The plan’s milestones were:
‘Victory will be achieved when
• Average citizens understand (recognise) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom’
• Media ‘understands’ (recognises) uncertainties in climate science
• Those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.’ [57]
Part of the strategy was to co-ordinate ‘a complete scientific critique of the IPCC research and its conclusions’ and to enable decision makers to raise ‘such serious questions about the Kyoto treaty’s scientific underpinnings that American policy makers not only will refuse to endorse it, they will seek to prevent progress towards implementation at the Buenos Aires meeting in November, or through other way’. [58]
This would be achieved by recruiting and training five ‘independent’ scientists – ‘new faces… without a long history of visibility in the climate debate’ to participate in media outreach. The API aimed to ‘maximise the impact of scientific views consistent with ours, with Congress, the media and other key audiences’ and admitted shamelessly that it would target teachers and students, in order to ‘begin to erect a barrier against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future.’ [59]
2001 – the Third Assessment Report (TAR)In its Third Assessment Report released in 2001, the IPCC reported the consensus view on climate change, including these key findings:
‘Globally, it is very likely that the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the instrumental record, (1861-2000) [60]’ and ‘[M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations’ [61] and ‘Emissions of CO2 due to fossil fuel burning are virtually certain to be the dominant influence on the trends in atmospheric CO2 concentration during the 21st century’. [62]
As with the first Assessment Report, the IPCC had to contend with the fossil fuel lobby even as it was being written. In September 2001, the IPCC met in London to reach agreement on the final chapter and summary of the TAR. The IPCC’s draft final report contained the following line: ‘The Earth’s climate system has demonstrably changed on both global and regional scales since the pre-industrial era, with some of these changes attributable to human activities’. [63]
At this meeting, ExxonMobil’s Brian Flannery suggested an amendment deleting the clause ‘with some of these changes attributable to human activities.’ The IPCC ignored Exxon and kept the clause [64].
American Petroleum Institute – contracted analysis of TARIn the summer of 2001, prior to the release of the IPCC TAR working group reports, the American Petroleum Institute distributed an internal memo [65], authored by oil industry employee Lenny Bernstein, that laid out the industry’s primary talking points for attacking the conclusions of the international science body.
Bernstein [66] was well positioned to critique the Third Assessment Report, given that he was one of its lead authors. His analysis coached the API membership on how to attack the IPCC report, laying out many of the arguments that have been repeated since by sceptics, industry and the Bush administration.
‘The IPCC itself is made up of government representatives… The Summary for Policymakers… have a much more political flavour,’ he wrote. Never mind that the SPM is agreed by a consensus process that produces a very conservative outcome.
Above all, Bernstein stressed the ‘uncertainty’ argument, asserting that sceptics can maintain the appearance of an unsettled ‘debate’ on climate science by repeatedly referencing the ‘considerable uncertainties’ involved in this ‘complex’ area of study.
Bernstein instructed the oil industry to point out the ‘beneficial effects’ of increasing CO2 concentrations and rising temperatures, which have led to ‘longer growing seasons in Europe’ [67] and could ‘help feed a growing world population’ [68].
American Enterprise Institute attacks the Third Assessment ReportEarly copies of the TAR were leaked long before they were finalised and published, prompting an early attack by the denial industry.
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research’s [69] ($2.1 million from ExxonMobil since 1998 [70]) Kenneth Green was central to this strategy. He wrote several articles over the year before the TAR was released, attacking the models and labelling the process political. [71]
He wrote in 2001 that ‘IPCC, a political organisation, produces the policy guidance documents that dominate international policy discussions. The reports of the IPCC are portrayed as scientific documents. Yet IPCC reports are outlined by governmental representatives … The process departs dramatically from standard scientific methodology and publishing procedures. Document architects only selectively include relevant studies. The peer review process is, at best, a fig leaf.’ [72]
Green called the Summary for Policymakers a ‘derivative document’ which condenses and expresses IPCC findings ‘in a language suitable for moderately educated readers’.[73]
According to Green, the summaries were loaded with ‘speculative scenarios’ and not reflective of the full reports. He argued that the summary document ‘has not been peer-reviewed. Its author is anonymous, the document is created independent of the actual report, and the summary is so short that issues were overly simplified.’ [74]
Writing in his role as Director of Environmental Programs for another front group, the Reason Public Policy Institute [75], Green summarised what we know as the key denier attacks on the IPCC in an October 2000 briefing report: [76] - attack the models, attack the objectivity, claim that the IPCC is ‘political’ rather than ‘scientific’, attack the data and attack the scientists.
Other attacks on the Third Assessment Report‘The Summary for Policymakers… represents a consensus of government representatives (many of whom are also their nations' Kyoto representatives), rather than of scientists. The resulting document has a strong tendency to disguise uncertainty, and conjures up some scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.’
- Richard Lindzen [77], The Wall Street Journal, 11 June 2001. [78]
The release of the Summary for Policy Makers ‘has everything to do with political spin and very little to do with climate science’, says Myron Ebell [79], who runs the global warming programme at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The 18-page summary, said Ebell, ‘is not a fair or accurate summary of the IPCC’ s full Third Assessment Report, which is over 1,000 pages long and which has not yet been released in final form.’ [80]
2007 – the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)At the end of 2007, the IPCC released the final document in its fourth assessment (AR4): the Synthesis report. It confirmed and built on the previous reports, saying that the warming of the Earth’s climate systems was now ‘unequivocal’. [81]
‘Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica).’ [82]
It also noted:
‘There is high agreement and much evidence that with current climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable development practices, global GHG emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades.’ [83]
It also outlined and updated its ‘reasons for concern’ [84] on the vulnerability of ecosystems to survive climate change, risks of extreme weather events, costs of impacts and sea level rise.
American Enterprise Institute offers cash to trash IPCCIn July 2006, six months ahead of the AR4 release, the American Enterprise Institute was gathering its forces to undermine it. In a letter [85] leaked to the media [86] the AEI was looking for accredited scientists who might be willing to ‘review’ the upcoming Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [87]
The AEI hoped to find a scientist - at a rate as high as $10,000 for 10,000 words - whose review ‘thoughtfully explores the limitations of climate model outputs as they pertain to the development of climate policy.’
It would appear that the idea behind the recruitment drive seems to be an effort to find academic scientists with a low-profile or non-existent record of talking to the press about global warming. That way, the AEI would be able to use an ‘unblemished’ critic’s credentials to support their arguments.
The story hit the media at the time of the AR4’s first report release in February 2007 [88]. Professor Steve Schroeder of Texas A&M University turned down the offer. He told the Washington Post [89] that he ‘worried his contribution might have been published alongside ‘off-the-wall ideas’ questioning the existence of global warming.’
The letter’s authors were the AEI’s chief climate lobbyists Kenneth Green [90] and Steven F Hayward [91]. Both have a long history of connections with a number of the front groups funded by industry.
Hayward’s list includes the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, ($530,000 from Exxon [92] since 1998), the Heritage Foundation ($585,000 from Exxon [93] since 1998) and Reason magazine ($381,000 from Exxon since 1998 [94]).
Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, is contributing author on Tech Central Station ($95,000 from Exxon since 1998), but set up by Exxon’s PR firm, DCI [95], the Executive Director of the Environmental Literacy Council, a group heavily funded by oil and other extractive industries [96] to infuse industry propaganda into classrooms), Chief Scientist at the Fraser Institute [97] ($120,000 from Exxon since 2003) and Director of the Environmental Program at Reason Public Policy Institute. (See map, above). Green, to this day, is a widely-quoted ‘independent’ source on climate and energy in Washington.
Fraser Institute launches ‘independent’ assessmentThree days after the first of the AR4’s four reports was released in Paris, Canadian think tank, the Fraser Institute, held a press conference in London, headed by its senior fellow, economist Ross McKitrick [98].
The Fraser Institute released its ‘Independent scientific assessment’, a document whose layout bears a remarkable similarity to the IPCC documents. The Institute questions the models, and questions the conclusions of the IPCC.
Unlike the IPCC, which receives funding only from the UN system and relies almost totally on voluntary input from the majority of those who work on it, the Fraser Institute’s team of ‘experts’ included several scientists with direct connections with industry front groups and conservative think tanks, none of whom appear to have published any peer-reviewed articles on global warming. [99]
The ‘usual suspects’ join inThe AR4 flushed out the denial ‘A list’ who have been campaigning to undermine the science of climate change since the early 1990s - Fred Singer [100], Richard Lindzen [101], Patrick Michaels [102] and William O’Keefe [103] and organisations like the George C Marshall Institute [104], the Cato Institute ($125,000 from Exxon since 98) [105] and the Competitive Enterprise Institute [106].
Fred S Singer [107] attacked the models, and the politics in an article in the New York Sun [108].
The Competitive Enterprise Institute returned to another familiar theme. ‘The Summary for Policymakers is designed to be a propaganda document that will promote global warming alarmism. It is not written by the scientists who wrote the report, but by the governments that belong to the IPCC [109],’ stated Marlo Lewis, a CEI lobbyist [110].
The CEI had been planning for the AR4 for some time, with one of its key deniers, ‘senior fellow’ and attorney Christopher Horner (not a climate scientist), releasing his new book, ‘The politically incorrect guide to global warming and environmentalism’ – a book all about climate science - at a special event at the Heritage Foundation on 15 February 2007 [111].
2009-10 – no scandal behind these gates‘The very fact that Climategate was newsworthy is evidence that reporters hold scientists to a much higher standard than they hold denialists, even if they won’t admit it in their quest to report a controversy.’
- Mark Boslough [112], Physicist at Sandia National Laboratories
In late 2009 hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) surfaced on the internet. These sparked a succession of climate stories that found willing homes in the media, with the UK media providing the staging ground. This time the organised sceptics found themselves following the news, repeating and publicising a succession of non-stories dug up by amateur experts, convinced that they had found evidence of either global conspiracy or scientific failure.
CRU hacked emailsAs this video [113] explains, nothing in the emails stolen from the CRU did anything to call into question any climate science. As the video documents, that didn’t stop deniers alleging that not only did they bring the whole edifice of climate science crashing down, they also claim they brought to light a conspiracy of truly epic proportions - claims that some of the media were all too willing to repeat.
Several independent investigations are underway, and are to be welcomed, but already some investigations have exonerated the scientists (see below). Whether police investigations will ever uncover how the emails were hacked and who hacked them, leading to criminal prosecution of the perpetrators remains unknown.
‘Not pretty but not faked’ was the conclusion of five Associated Press reporters reading and rereading the 1,500 or so stolen emails - around 1 million words in total:
‘In the past three weeks since the e-mails were posted, long-time opponents of mainstream climate science have repeatedly quoted excerpts of about a dozen e-mails. Republican congressmen and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin have called for either independent investigations, a delay in US Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases or outright boycotts of the Copenhagen international climate talks. They cited a ‘culture of corruption’ that the e-mails appeared to show.
That is not what the AP found. There were signs of trying to present the data as convincingly as possible.’ [114]
Even the deniers themselves have admitted that the hacked emails do not bring the large body of climate science into doubt. When questioned by the UK House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on 1 March 2010 [115], climate deniers Lord Lawson and Benny Peiser, of the newly-formed UK front group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation [116] both admitted that, at worst, the emails revealed a problem with the CRU’s process, but didn’t actually unravel any of the climate science [117].
Neither Peiser nor Lawson are climate scientists, something Peiser admitted to the Committee, yet they continue to concentrate on the science as their main platform. Bob Ward of the London School of Economics pointed out an error on the foundation’s website in a graph of 21st century temperature, but it hasn’t been corrected.
‘While it is a relatively small error, it is the kind of discrepancy that many sceptics would be seizing upon if it had been found on the website of the Climatic Research Unit,’ wrote Ward in a blog on the Guardian website [118].
On another occasion, former IPCC working group chair, Sir John Houghton, who was misquoted by UK sceptic Benny Peiser in The Observer [119], who claimed Houghton had said, ‘Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.’ ‘[He] thereby attributed to me and the IPCC an attitude of hype and exaggeration. That quote from me is without foundation. I have never said it or written it,’ Houghton told the Observer [120].
One of the scientists at the centre of the emails, Michael Mann, has been largely cleared by Penn State University where he is the Director of the Earth System Science Centre in the Meteorology Department. ‘The internal inquiry has found that Mann did not ‘participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data’.’ [121]
Penn State is still undertaking one further investigation.
IPCC references challengedFrom the leaked emails, the deniers then moved on to link the CRU’s problems to their favourite target, the IPCC. The UK media led the charge, fed by the now lively UK denial community, dubbing each accusation a ‘gate’ so as to highlight the so-called ‘scandal’ in each.
The accusations centred around three different references in the IPCC. These points have been thoroughly rebutted by climate scientists on the RealClimate blog. [122] In summary, two errors were found in the IPCC report, the third allegation having been thoroughly discounted.
The 2,800-page AR4 report contains around 18,000 references. The two incorrect references identified have rightfully pointed to a need for the IPCC to review the way its processes work, a review that the IPCC has announced it is undertaking.
But, again, what these ‘gates’ have not done is undermine the massive body of evidence pointing to the fact that climate change is happening and is being caused by human activity.
The IPCC has now announced an independent review into its processes [123], which, again, is a welcome move but, as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said when he announced the review, ‘Let me be clear: the threat posed by climate change is real. Nothing that has been alleged or revealed in the media recently alters the fundamental scientific consensus on climate change. Nor does it diminish the unique importance of the IPCC's work.’ [124]
The hacked emails provided a platform for the denial movement, which has launched an all-out campaign, from everyone from Marc Morano, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the UK deniers – including climate denier and Republican Senator James Inhofe [125].
Inhofe is now attempting to use the hacked emails and IPCC references to run ‘McCarthy-style’ ‘criminal investigations’ on a list of 17 of the world’s top climate scientists and lead authors in the IPCC. He is using the (non) scandals to question not only the IPCC’s conclusions, but also to challenge the scientific basis of new US EPA rules on regulating greenhouse gas emissions [126].
On 16 February 2010, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, along with Fred Singer, filed a lawsuit to the US EPA, [127] demanding that, on the basis of the hacked emails and so called ‘flawed datasets’, the EPA drop all its proposed regulation on CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
20 years on - the global denial industryThe denial industry has worked itself into the international arena, slowly but surely, over the past 20 years. It remains a largely English-speaking affair centred around the United States, but has spread further into key countries targeted by the deniers and think tanks.
Along with the US, the countries listed below all pursue climate policies that are hopelessly inadequate when compared to the challenge we face.
AustraliaRecent events in Australia have led to the ousting of the leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, with much of the controversy over his support for a proposed Emissions Trading Scheme [128]. Turnbull faced a backbench climate denier revolt, and lost his leadership to Tony Abbott, a confirmed climate sceptic [129].
There is a close relationship between Australia’s key deniers: Bob Carter [130], Ian Plimer [131], David Evans – and the US groups. The Australian Institute of Public Affairs and business groups are continually bringing deniers like Patrick Michaels for speaking tours of the country [132]. The Emissions Trading Scheme is still not off the ground.
CanadaThe Canadian denial industry has been especially vigorous, with key deniers McIntyre, McKitrick and the Fraser Institute at its centre. The Canadian Government is one of the most recalcitrant in action on global warming, backing off commitments to cuts in emissions. It has now even limited the amount of media exposure its scientists are allowed, leading to a massive reduction in coverage of climate science there [133].
New ZealandThe campaign has made it to New Zealand, where the Business Roundtable has regularly hosted a slew of denial tours, from Fred Singer in the early ‘90’s to Lord Lawson as recently as 2007 [134]. The New Zealand government’s international stance on climate change is one of the weakest in the industrialised world.
The New Zealand and Australian deniers have joined forces with Canadian deniers to form the International Climate Science Coalition [135]. The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, formed in 2006, has given international fame to a small group of retired colonels and scientists, who managed to get the Heartland Institute to pay for them to attend conferences, and were supported, in part, by Heartland to go to the Bali climate negotiations in 2008 [136].