Seitz
bak 320
evil?
Oregon Petition
In 1998, together with the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, Seitz circulated and gathered signatures for a **:{petition opposing the Kyoto Protocol:(style="color:#ed1c24"):}:**. In addition to the petition, the mailing included what appeared to be a reprint of a scientific paper from Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), and a letter from Seitz identifying himself as past president of the **:{National Academy of Sciences:(style="color:#ed1c24"):}:**. In fact, the petition, paper, and letter were entirely unrelated to the Academy, which issued a strong denunciation of the petition project as deliberately deceptive and an affirmation of the consensus in favor of the reality of anthropogenic global warming. Subsequent investigations of the signatories found a minority of them to be climate scientists, or even scientists of any kind. [9]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-ru-8) The web page of the petition itself states "31,478 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs."[13]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-12)
rockefeller U
32K sci
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py2XVILHUjQ
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz
early important target // mann hockey stick Madrid 12 words? ~ pat michaels
frontline 4 22
....
JOHN PASSACANTANDO:
The Global Climate Coalition is seeding doubt everywhere, sort of fogging the air with these counterarguments that are contradictory and nonsensical. Running this propaganda across the country, putting millions of dollars into this media effort. And environmentalists really don't know what's hitting them.
...
MALE NEWSREADER:
—in Madrid, where 2,500 scientists from around the world have finally agreed with one another and are convinced that burning oil and coal is causing the world's temperature to rise, which may bring with it environmental disaster.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT:
How do you think this is going to affect policy action on this?
MALE SPEAKER:
It's certainly ammunition for those that would like more government regulation of industry to move away from fossil fuels to other forms of energy.
BENJAMIN SANTER:
In retrospect those 12 words were the handwriting on the wall.
What happened next was that the Global Climate Coalition really came onto my radar screen.In the spring of 1996, they published this report, "The IPCC: Institutionalized 'Scientific Cleansing.'" They were arguing that I had purged all discussion of uncertainty from the document, which was patently untrue. Twenty percent of Chapter 8 was specifically devoted to the discussion of uncertainties.
[Reading] "The changes quite clearly have the obvious political purpose of cleansing the underlying scientific report of important information and scientific analysis that would lead policymakers and the public to be very cautious, if not skeptical, about blaming human activities for climate change over the past century."
I had grandparents who were "cleansed" because of their religion in the Second World War. People were being cleansed because of their religion in Bosnia. And the Global Climate Coalition, through this odious "scientific cleansing," was arguing that I was guilty of a crime.
[Reading] "These revisions raise very serious questions about whether the IPCC has compromised or even lost its scientific integrity."
DON RHEEM:
Um, I certainly had a, probably a role in the creation of this. There's a level of detail here I just, I don't remember. But what I do—I do remember the gist of this, where things were said at one point in the process and then they disappeared at the next, and that struck me as troubling. And so I noted that to the folks in the Coalition.
BENJAMIN SANTER:
This stuff caught on like wildfire. Patrick Michaels devoted substantial time to amplifying the Global Climate Coalition’s allegations. Others picked up that report and repeated bits of it verbatim.Things became worse when Prof. Frederick Seitz wrote an op-ed inThe Wall Street Journal.I was accused of the worst abuse of the peer-reviewed system that Prof. Seitz had seen in his 60 years as a scientist. Folks were calling for my dismissal with dishonor from my position. A gentleman intimated that I was about to be indicted by the Hague International Court of Justice for quote, falsification of international scientific documents.
JANE McMULLEN:
That document set in motion a number of public attacks on the lead scientist, the lead author of that chapter.
DON RHEEM:
Oh.
JANE McMULLEN:
He was particularly shaken by the accusation that he was guilty of scientific cleansing. He found that hard to take.
DON RHEEM:
Yeah, that wouldn't have been terminology, by the way, that I would have used. How this was used and what others did with it was outside of my control and purview. And it troubles me to hear that this had such an impact on an individual. That's not something I would want to do to anybody.
BENJAMIN SANTER:
This attack on individuals, on their integrity, decency, honesty, involved high personal cost, and the Global Climate Coalition knew what they were doing. Sow those seeds of doubt, and watch them grow and mature. And they did.
KERT DAVIES:
Clearly, one of the GCC’s main missions was to blunt the scientific urgency driven by scientific reports.
Simultaneously, there's an assessment done, written by a Mobil scientist within the GCC. So it says, "Can human activities affect the climate?" And the answer is, "The scientific basis for the greenhouse effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on the climate is well established and cannot be denied."
What's really interesting about this document is the back six pages—and this is just a draft; this was never published as far as we know. [Reading] "Several arguments have been put forward attempting to challenge the conventional view of greenhouse gas-induced climate change."
Patrick Michaels is named as one of the people putting forward these arguments and concludes, "They do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change." So don’t use don’t use their voice!...
Mo D
ch2 sdi
hudson, founded by kahn, H ~ detente = appeasement , w hoover and heritage justified RR war buildup 37 cast doubt on intel asssess // tob strategy, created marshall inst (~ UCSci)
TEAM B
CIA B1 head teller (pitch sw to rr) perle, wolfie etc report leaked to beat carter, didn't --> Committee on Pres Danger
star wars was end run on anti-nuke movment, successful 43
opposed by Sagan and ehrlich , nuke winter 1983
we later learned ussr thot nuke war unwinnable~ team B 47
cousin russell did PR work 60, ~ computer models, attacked sci itself , claimed lib shut out opponents, but no true (teller publ in Sci mag eg) 63 WSJ publ RS attack 65
ch 5 2ns haND : attack epa as junk sci 145
a bomb
Frederick Seitz
From SourceWatch
Dr. Frederick Seitz was born in San Francisco, California on July 4, 1911. He died March 2, 2008.[1]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-0)[2]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-1)Seitz was a former head of Rockefeller University, a former head of the National Academy of Sciences and the principal scientific advisor to the R.J. Reynolds medical research program. In 1984 he co-founded the George C. Marshall Institute with Dr. Robert Jastrow and Dr. William Nierenberg.
He was later the Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the Institute, an organization that has long denied global warming.
- Former Board of Sponsors, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [3]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-2)
Contents[hide] |
Tobacco industry involvement and documents
A 2006 article in Vanity Fair magazine called Dr. Seitz the "$45 million man" for the amount of money he helped R.J. Reynolds distribute for research that specifically avoided the health issues surrounding smoking. "They didn't want us looking at the health effects of cigarette smoking," Seitz admitted in the article. During the time RJR was funding the research, it used the results of the program to claim that the evidence was inconclusive about the health effects of smoking. Dr. Seitz went on to become a denier of global warming. [4]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-mh-3)
Contract with R.J. Reynolds
In 1986, while at Rockefeller University, Dr. Seitz mantained a contract for his services with RJR Nabisco. According to a letter from RJR's CEO Edward A. Horrigan, Jr., he originally entered into the contract with RJR in 1976. In 1986, RJR paid him $65,000 for six months' work. Vanity Fair reported in its 2006 article about Seitz that he had earned a total of approximately $585,000 from his contract with RJR. [5]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-4) [4]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-mh-3)
Involvement in secondhand smoke issue
On January 7, 1993, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Risk Assessment that concluded that secondhand tobacco smoke was a Group A human carcinogen responsible for approximately 3,000 deaths in the U.S. annually.[6]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-5) The tobacco industry was threatened by this designation and worked to discredit EPA and neutralize the report by casting doubt on EPA's conclusions.
In March, 1994, the George C. Marshall Institute, a U.S. policy group, issued a report by Dr. Seitz in which Seitz claimed the government had misled the public about the relative dangers posed by global warming and secondhand smoke. Seitz claimed many of the scientific conclusions reached and publicized by the federal government were based on faulty science. He lumped into that category additional issues like nuclear power, asbestos and pesticides.
A March 1, 1994 Activity Report for Thomas J. **Borelli**, Manager of Philip Morris Corporate Scientific Affairs states,
Initiated a strategy to publicize and communicate the results of a Marshall Institute report that challenges the scientific basis of various environmental regulations. The report was written by Dr. Frederick Seitz who is a world renowned scientist. Dr. Seitz is President Emeritus of Rockefeller University and past President of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition to his criticisms of the global warming and ozone depletion issues, Dr . Seitz also addressed the ETS [environmental tobacco smoke] issue. With respect to ETS, Dr. Seitz concluded that ". . . there is no good scientific evidence that moderate passive inhalation of tobacco smoke is truly dangerous under normal circumstances." The report will be used to challenge the EPA's report on ETS in domestic and international markets."[7]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-6)
Philip Morris employed the lobbying firm Multinational Business Services to help raise doubt about the EPA's risk assessment on secondhand smoke. MBS's activities included publicizing Seitz's Marshall Institute report, and working through industry-funded group Federal Focus to organize a seminar for federal employees in an attempt to seek a commitment from Federal agencies to address the issues raised in the Seitz report. Specifically, MBS sought the formation of an interagency team to respond to the conclusion about secondhand smoke in the Seitz report, with the ultimate goal of re-opening the risk assessment.[8]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-7)
Involvement in global warming skepticism
In the 1990s, Seitz' work with the George C. Marshall Institute changed to debunking anthropogenic global warming by publishing reports and opinions of those questioning the theory. In a 2007 report, the Union of Concerned Scientists described the GMI as a "clearinghouse for global warming contrarians" funded by Exxon Mobil Corporation and employing the same strategy formerly used by the tobacco industry, repeatedly attacking the science behind the theory and insisting that there was actually a great deal of uncertainty and disagreement among scientists. [9]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-ru-8)
In an April, 2006 interview for the PBS show Frontline, Seitz discussed his denial of global warming, his consultancy with R.J. Reynolds and his support of nuclear power. When asked why we need a nuclear answer to energy problems, Seitz stated: "We have more control over the cost of nuclear power. The Muslims can raise the price of oil to any level they want...." [10]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-9)[11]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-10)[12]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-11)
Oregon Petition
In 1998, together with the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, Seitz circulated and gathered signatures for a **:{petition opposing the Kyoto Protocol:(style="color:#ed1c24"):}:**. In addition to the petition, the mailing included what appeared to be a reprint of a scientific paper from Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), and a letter from Seitz identifying himself as past president of the **:{National Academy of Sciences:(style="color:#ed1c24"):}:**. In fact, the petition, paper, and letter were entirely unrelated to the Academy, which issued a strong denunciation of the petition project as deliberately deceptive and an affirmation of the consensus in favor of the reality of anthropogenic global warming. Subsequent investigations of the signatories found a minority of them to be climate scientists, or even scientists of any kind. [9]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-ru-8) The web page of the petition itself states "31,478 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs."[13]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-12)
Education
- 1932 Bachelor's degree from Stanford University (mathematics)
- 1934 Ph.D. from Princeton University (physics
Former Postions
- 1946-1947 director of the training program on peaceful uses of atomic energy at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
- 1949-1968 professor of physics at the University of Illinois
- 1957-1964 department head at the University of Illinois
- 1964-1965 Graduate College dean at the University of Illinois
- 1962-1969 president of the National Academy of Sciences
- 1968-1978 president of Rockefeller University
Positions After Retirement in 1978
- chairman of **:{Science and Environmental Policy Project:(style="color:#ed1c24"):}:** (SEPP)[14]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_note-13)
- member of the Risk Policy Center [1]
- Council member of the Environmental Literacy Council
- member of the National Advisory Board of :{Accuracy in Media:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:
- member of the Board of Directors and Chairman Emeritus of the :{George C. Marshall Institute:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:
- President Emeritus of Rockefeller University
- Former Member of Advisory Council, National Strategy Information Center (1984 at least)
Books
- Frederick Seitz ,"Modern Theory of Solids", McGraw-Hill, NY, 1940, (reprint Dover Publications, 1987: ISBN 0486654826)
- W. Thüne, F. Singer, F. Seitz, Helmut Metzner, "Treibhaus-Kontroverse und Ozon-Problem : Symposium der Europäischen Akademie für Umweltfragen Leipzig 9.-10. November 1995", Böttiger, 1996, ISBN 3925725296
- S. Fred Singer, Frederick Seitz , "Hot Talk Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate", *The Independent Institute*, December 1, 1998, ISBN 094599978X
Articles and Resources
References
- ↑ F. Seitz. Biography of Frederick Seitz Resume'. November, 1985. 5 pp. Lorillard Bates No. 87697430/7434
- ↑ George C. Marshall Institute, "Remembering Frederick Seitz", March 4, 2008.
- ↑ Board of Sponsors, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, accessed September 1, 2009.
- ↑ 4.0^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_ref-mh_3-0) 4.1^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_ref-mh_3-1) Mark Hertsgaard While Washington Slept Vanity Fair, April 5, 2006
- ↑ Edward A. Horrigan, R.J.R. Nabisco We should like to renew the letter agreement dated July 12, 1978 between you and RJR Nabisco, Inc. Letter. July 15, 1986. 1 page. Bates No. 508263286
- ↑ United States Environmental Protection Agency EPA Designates Passive Smoking a "Class A" or Known Human Carcinogen Press release. January 7, 1993. Accessed April 9, 2009
- ↑ Thomas J. Borelli, Philip Morris February Activity Report March 1, 1994. 2 pp. Bates No. 2046585282/5283
- ↑ Jim Tozzi, Multinational Business Services Untitled Memorandum. December 29, 1993. Philip Morris Bates No. 2024207141/7142
- ↑ 9.0^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_ref-ru_8-0) 9.1^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Seitz#cite_ref-ru_8-1) "Frederick Seitz", Natural Selections, Rockefeller University, March, 2009
- ↑ "Frederick Seitz", Hot Politics, PBS, April 3, 2006.
- ↑ Holtzman A., Philip Morris Fred Seitz Memorandum. August 31, 1989. Bates No. 2023266534
- ↑ Bacon JL. External Advisors. Consultancy Agreements - Dr's Seitz and McCarty Letter, July 15, 1986. R.J. Reynolds Bates No. 508263284/3285
- ↑ "Global Warming Petition Project"
- ↑ SEPP Board of Directors, accessed April 8, 2009
External links
Related links
- Frederick Seitz, Wikipedia
- Presidents of the Academies/Chairmen of the Research Council, National Academy of Sciences
- University of Illinois Archives Holdings, Frederick Seitz Papers, 1935-1965, University of Illinois
- Original Petition Project Site
- Current Petition Project Site
mark H while Wash slept says seitz handed out $45M, kept 900K 41 Pm thot senile in late 80's hoggan
From tobacco to climate change, ‘merchants of doubt’ undermined the science
By Osha Gray Davidson
17 Apr 2010
Because Americans are optimists we tend to see Mead’s observation as upbeat and life-affirming (as it was probably intended). Blinkered by optimism, however, we miss the dark flip side of her observation — that a few fanatics can do immense harm.
Book cover. In their sweeping and comprehensive new book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erick M. Conway document how a handful of right-wing ideologues — all scientists — have (mis)shaped U.S. policy for decades, delaying government action on life-and-death issues from cigarettes and second-hand smoke, to acid rain, and now, finally, to climate change. The book is similar to the popular Discovery Channel show “How Do They Do It?” Only instead of investigating quirky mysteries like how stripes get into toothpaste, Merchants of Doubt looks at exactly how we arrived at the gravest crisis in the history of our species — one we created ourselves.
Although most of these scientists were influential men in themselves (and they are all men), they could not have done as much damage without powerful allies. Whole industries bankrolled their research, sometimes laundering the money through front groups with innocuous names. Think tanks like the George C. Marshall Institute were financed specifically to publish and disseminate their papers — junk science that couldn’t survive the rigors of peer-reviewed journals. Oreskes and Conway also devote an insightful section to the mass media’s mostly unwitting complicity in this scandal.
This premise may sound like a conspiracy theory, but the truth Oreskes and Conway elucidate is more banal and convincing. The title, Merchants of Doubt, frames the authors’ argument, echoing an internal memo from the Brown & Williamson tobacco company that declared: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.” Big tobacco helped finance the industry of doubt in its modern form, run by the scientists whose schemes this book details. In a sense, this is an industrial history and it should be no more shocking to see the same names continually popping up than it is to see Lee Iacocca’s in a history of the auto industry.
The central characters in Merchants of Doubt include Fred Seitz, S. Fred Singer, William Nierenberg, and Robert Jastrow. These may not exactly be household names, but it’s probably not much of a stretch to call them the founding fathers of industrial-strength doubt.
Fred Seitz was a pioneer of solid-state physics who helped develop the atom bomb. From the end of World War II until his death in 2008, Seitz devoted himself to protecting laissez-faire capitalism from communism. He moved quickly from scientific research to administrative work, serving as president of the National Academy of Sciences from 1962 to 1969. When the Soviet Union broke a moratorium on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, Seitz immediately urged President John Kennedy to respond in kind, despite evidence that radioactive fallout contaminated swaths of land for more than a thousand miles. Innocent people would die, but some collateral damage is inevitable when fighting a war, even a cold one.
Fred SingerFred Singer is another physicist turned cold warrior. He began his career developing the government’s earth observation satellite system. Along the way, Singer took up the cudgel defending free enterprise by opposing environmental regulations. The other “merchants of doubt” profiled by Oreskes and Conway traveled a similar path. Physicist William Nierenberg’s work on the Manhattan Project led him in the early 1960s to become NATO’s chief scientist working on developing weapons to use against the Soviets. Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow moved from NASA into a leading position supporting Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, aka, Star Wars) to counter “Soviet hegemony,” which he called the “greatest peril” in U.S. history.
What all these men have in common (aside from their background in physics) is the belief that the Cold War didn’t end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In their minds, and in the minds of their followers, “real Americans” are still battling socialism, only now the threat comes primarily from within. Grasping that bizarre and paranoid notion is central to understanding their motivations and methods.
In the 1950s, Big Tobacco had begun using scientists to sow doubt about links between their product and cancer. As the evidence against them mounted in the 1970s, the tobacco industry realized they needed something more. They found it in Seitz, who was not merely a scientist, but the former president of the Academy of Sciences.
Indecision.
R. J. Reynolds put Seitz in charge of the company’s biomedical research grant program. The amount of money available was staggering. In 1981, Oreskes and Conway write, the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association together contributed $300,000 to research. In that same year, Big Tobacco directed $6.3 million to researchers who consistently found no evidence conclusively linking tobacco to serious medical problems.
Seitz and the tobacco industry were a perfect fit. Environmental and industrial regulations were anathema to each. For the industry, it was a simple matter of self-interest. While Seitz was well-paid for his work, ideology may have been the more important factor. Over the years Seitz’s conservative views had grown ever more extreme. He found himself alienated from many of his scientific colleagues over the Vietnam War (many of them were against the war; Seitz was an enthusiastic supporter). He also became convinced that environmentalists were dupes of communist propaganda, if not outright traitors.
Eventually, Seitz’s right-wing views would become too much for even the tobacco industry. Seitz was, in their view, “not sufficiently rational” to maintain a public connection with the industry.
William Nierenberg:
While Seitz was busy doling out “research” funds for R. J. Reynolds, his colleague, William Nierenberg, was leading the fight in a different arena: to prevent the federal government from taking action on acid rain. Once again, Oreskes and Conway do an excellent job of bringing to life a complex and important environmental battle that is poorly remembered today. In 1982, Nierenberg was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to lead a review of the scientific evidence concerning acid rain. Had the acidity of rain in the northeastern part of the United States really increased? If so, how serious was the problem? And what caused acid rain? Was it naturally occurring, or did humans play a role in creating the problem?
The questions were valid, or at least they had been when the phenomenon was first examined a decade earlier. A broad scientific consensus had emerged over several years, so that by 1979 it wasn’t news to most scientists in the field when Scientific American published an article explaining to the public that “In recent decades, the acidity of rain and snow has increased sharply over wide areas. The principle cause is the release of sulfur and nitrogen by the burning of fossil fuels” to generate electricity. What’s more, the National Academy of Sciences had released a report in 1981 with similar conclusions, but going even further. That study concluded that there was “clear evidence of serious hazard to human health and the biosphere” from acid rain, requiring immediate action.
The Nierenberg Panel produced a report at war with itself, marked by a key internal contradiction. For the most part, the executive summary agreed with the 1981 NAS study. But, write Oreskes and Conway, an appendix was added suggesting that “we really didn’t know enough to move forward with emissions controls.” The confusion bred by the report cast just enough doubt on what was actually known about acid rain to allow the Reagan administration to do exactly what it had wanted to do all along: nothing. The misleading appendix was written by Fred Singer. In the early 1980s, Singer was a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, arguably the most influential conservative think tank during the Reagan era. Created with an initial quarter-million dollar grant from beer magnate and right-wing Republican activist Joseph Coors, the group was initially led by Paul Weyrich, who combined absolute allegiance to the Free Market, ultra-nationalism, and fundamentalist evangelical Christianity of the narrowest kind. (Along with Jerry Falwell, Weyrich founded the group Moral Majority.)
Nineteen eighty-four marked a key moment in Oreske and Conway’s darkly fascinating history of selling doubt. The issue at the center of events at the time had no obvious relation to climate change. The controversy involved missiles, specifically, Ronald Reagan’s $60 billion program to build an impenetrable “missile shield” over the United States. Most scientists regarded SDI as technologically impossible and almost certainly destabilizing. Over a thousand experts signed a petition stating that they would refuse any government funding of projects that could further SDI. The move enraged Seitz and his colleagues Nierenberg and Robert Jastrow. In reaction, the three hawks formed the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank dedicated to selling Star Wars to policy makers and the public. For Seitz and his colleagues, GMI represented a decisive step away from the scientific community — and from science itself. With the fate of the country hanging in the balance, an ideology devoted to the red, white, and blue came before science, which prided itself on being colorless and colorblind.
As the unworkable SDI inevitably faded, GMI turned to other ideological battles, including ozone depletion and global warming. Their adversaries saw these as scientific issues, not clashes of ideology, which gave GMI an advantage. Science recognizes the inevitability of uncertainty. The point isn’t to go for perfection but to continually refine models of how complex phenomena work. Science uses doubt as a tool, a prod to deepen understanding. Seitz and his associates used doubt as a weapon against science. They seized on inevitable uncertainties in scientific models as evidence that the models had no value, or worse. In 1987, for example, Singer, then working at the Department of Transportation, wrote an article published in The Wall Street Journal that was rife with inaccuracies and distortions minimizing the importance of the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer, a portion of the lower stratosphere that blocks most harmful ultraviolet rays from reaching the surface of the earth.
“It was the beginning of a counternarrative,” write Oreskes and Conway, “that scientists had overreacted before, were overreacting now, and therefore couldn’t be trusted.”
That same counternarrative of denial continues today, stronger and more strident than ever, and now focused on creating doubt about all aspects of climate change. The ultimate goal hasn’t changed since the tobacco days — preventing government regulation of industry. In a 2007 article, Newsweek called the George C. Marshall Institute “a central cog in the denial machine.” GMI has received millions of dollars from conservative foundations and corporations. Exactly how much isn’t known because in 2001, tired of facing criticism over the fact that one of the largest corporate donors to its anti-global warming work was oil giant ExxonMobil, GMI made its donor list secret.
The denial machine contains a huge number of cogs, and it would take an encyclopedia to list them all. The authors do an excellent job, however, of touching on many of the cogs inside that dreadful box, from clueless writers (Bjorn Lomborg, John Tierney, George Will) to odious politicians (Sen. James Inhofe, Vice President Dick Cheney) to the scores of conservative foundations that wrap themselves in the flag that they disgrace by their actions.
Merchants of Doubt is an important book. How important? If you read just one book on climate change this year, read Merchants of Doubt. And if you have time to read two, reread Merchants of Doubt.
boho
| Hideaway |
Princeton University, one of two inventors of the Wigner-Seitz unit cell, which is an important concept in solid state physics, president of the National Academy of Sciences 1965-1968, president of the Rockefeller University 1968-1978, questions the reasons for global warming, was a director and shareholder of a company that operated coal-fired power plants, chairman Science and Environmental Policy Project, Chairman George Marshall Institute, violently opposes the Kyoto protocols and is being criticized for that, member of the New York City Commission for Science and Technology, chairman of the United States delegation to the U.N. Committee on Science and Technology for Development.