Man-made climate change: a relatively benign religion?
Charla and I watched a Channel 4 programme entitled "The Great Global Warming Swindle" two nights ago.
The gist of the programme's message was that man-made climate change has become a scientific religion—and to question that religion, as a researcher or journalist, is now to jeopardize your career, or worse.
It seems quite plausible that this should be the case. The sustainability movement is rapidly tipping over into the mainstream, and the mainstream demands a simple message (in this case, "we are causing global warming, but if we change our behaviours we might be able to stop it").
Have Nots in the developing world are being pressured by us carbon-profligate Haves to forego industrial development on the basis of a provisional hypothesis of man-made global warming. Meanwhile alternative and complementary, perfectly valid, climate change hypotheses are being sidelined. Sadly, religions have always led to these kind of iniquitous behaviours and outcomes.
However, as religions go, I would argue that "man-made climate change" is a benign one, if taken as a whole. For it turns us, as a species, back onto ourselves: it leads each of us tiny individuals to identify with—and to take collective responsibility for—the continued survival and well-being of one another and the planet.
And this religion reaches far beyond its headline doctrine of action on climate change—the agendas of human rights, stewardship of natural resources, global peace and the democratisation of political power and economic opportunity all fall out of it as naturally as ripe fruit from a tree.
Which tree?
The tree of life.
Labels: channel 4, climate change, environment, global warming, identity, religion, tree of life
3 Comments:
Here is an url that you can send to friends and family that will direct them to the video "The Great Global Warming Swindle".
http://gorelied.notlong.com
For more information on the documentary you can go here.
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/index.html
Thanks for that, Anonymous! Actually, the link in my post is also to the microsite, but I didn't know the actual programme was also now online.
Hi Luke
I think that the show was very damaging to all of us, not because it raised questions, but because it did so irresponsibly, actually feeding the cynicism in all of us just when we need leadership to actually evolve beyond our profound narcisism and lust for materialism.
There were so many responses from a variety of sources, but I admire George Marshall from COIN, former director of Rising Tide. Here's his synopsis:
THE GREAT CHANNEL FOUR SWINDLE
George Marshall
Last night Channel Four kindly gave an hour and half and a large
budget to the international network of professional climate change
deniers. 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' was a propaganda gift to
the various vested interests who seek to undermine the fragile
political and social will to take action on this global action.
And it was sometimes very convincing, as strongly worded opinions
often are when they are not subject to any verification or external
challenge. For example, there are excellent rebuttals against the
contention that global warming is correlated to cosmic rays (for
example see... )
There was only one scientific advisor on the programme, Martin
Livermore, whose sole scientific qualification is that he is the
Director of a web-based think tank, The Scientific Alliance. The
Alliance was set up by in 2001 by Robert Durward, the fiercely
anti-green director of the British Aggregates Association, and
Foresight Communications, a Westminster public relations and lobbying
company, to "counter scare-mongering by the so-called green lobby".
(For more…)
The Scientific Alliance has no affiliation with any recognised
scientific body but, like most of the contributors to the programme,
it does have very strong links with the US public relations and
lobbying organisations that have been so effective in setting the Bush
agenda on climate change.
The writer and presenter of the programme was Martin Durkin. Although
it was written in a highly personal and opinionated style- speaking
freely of "lies", and the "shrill frenzy" of "scare stories" – we
never saw Durkin or discovered his personal credentials. As George
Monbiot has revealed Durkin is closely affiliated with the
Revolutionary Communist Party which has a strong ideological
opposition to environmental science (more on Durkin and the RCP.
In 1997 Channel Four was forced to issue a humiliating public apology
over a previous series of anti-environment programmes directed by
Durkin called "Against Nature". The Independent Television Commission
found that "the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the
interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing" and that they
had been "misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when
they agreed to take part."
For this programme Durkin drew up a dream team of scientists who have
built personal careers as media pundits debunking the peer-reviewed
work of their colleagues. There are few of them, but they are well
supported by the Washington lobbies and kept very busy with media
debates, documentaries and opinion pieces. (I have personally debated
with five of them in media debates).
Is it any surprise then, that they were so persuasive. Most of the
people on the programme are professional communicators who are more
familiar with the chat show than the lab. Of course they give good
interviews - it is what they do for a living.
And let us not forget that we all want to believe them. Wouldn't it be
wonderful to believe that the science is unsettled, that all that
carbon dioxide that we are pumping into the atmosphere really has no
effect, and that we do not have to worry about the future.
It would be entirely possible to put together a similar programme,
with a string of credible former academics, to argue that smoking does
no cause cancer, that HIV does not cause AIDS, or that black people
are less intelligent. However, Channel Four would not dare broadcast
the programme and we would not believe them if they did. Is it not a
reflection of the deep public ambivalence about climate change that
these dissenters are given such a prominent and uncritical showcase
and that we are so keen to listen to them?
Make up your own minds from their records. Here is a little more
information on some of the people who appeared on the programme:
Fred Singer. Despite the caption on the programme, Singer has retired
from the University of Virginia and has not had a single article
accepted for any peer-reviewed scientific journal for 20 years. His
main work has been as a hired gun for business interests to undermine
scientific research on environmental and health matters. Before
turning to climate change he has argued that CFCs do not cause ozone
depletion and second hand smoke does not cause cancer (more... ). In
1990 he founded "The Science and Environment Policy Project", which
aggressively contradicts climate science and has received direct
funding from Exxon, Shell, Unocal and ARCO. Exxon is also among the
funders ($20,000 in 1998 and 2000)
Patrick Michaels is the most prominent US climate change denier. In
the programme he claimed "I've never been paid a nickel by the old and
gas companies" which is a curious claim. According to the US
journalist Ross Gebspan Michaels has received direct funding from,
among others German Coal Mining Association ($49,000), Edison Electric
Institute ($15,000), and the Western Fuels Association ($63,000) an
association of US coal producing interests (more...). The WFA is one
of the most powerful forces in the US actively denying the basic
science of climate change, funding, amongs other things, the Greening
Earth Society which is directed by Patrick Michaels. Tom Wigley, one
of the leading IPCC scientists, describes Michaels work as "a catalog
of misrepresentation and misinterpretation". (More on Michaels…)
Philip Stott was captioned as a Professor at the University of London
although he is retired and is therefore free of any academic
accountability. Stott is a geographer by training and has no
qualifications in climate science. Since retiring Stott has aimed to
become Britain's leading anti-green pundit dedicating himself to
wittily criticizing rainforest campaigns (with Patrick Moore),
advocating genetic engineering and claiming that "global warming is
the new fundamentalist religion."
Patrick Moore is Stott's Canadian equivalent. Since a very personal
and painful falling out with Greenpeace in 1986 Moore has put his
considerable campaigning energies into undermining environmentalists,
especially his former friends and colleagues. Typical of his rhetoric
was his claim in the programme that environmentalists were
"anti-human" and "treat humans as scum". Throughout the 1990s Moore
worked as lead consultant for the British Columbian Timber Products
Association undermining Greenpeace's international campaign to protect
old growth forest there. Whenever he has the chance he also makes
strong public statements in favour of genetic engineering, nuclear
power, logging the Amazon, and industrial fishing- all, strangely,
lead campaigns for Greenpeace (more on Moore..)
Piers Corbyn has no academic status and his role in such programmes is
to promote his own weather prediction business. He has steadfastly
refused to ever subject his climatological theories to any form of
external review or scrutiny.
Richard Lindzen. As a Professor of Meteorology at the credible
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lindzen is by far the most
reputable academic among the US climate deniers and, for this reason,
he is heavily cited by sympathetic journalists such as Melanie
Phillips and Michael Crichton. His arguments though are identical to
the other deniers – for example an article in the Wall Street Journal
(June 11 2001) he claims that "there is no consensus, unanimous or
otherwise, about long-term climate trends or what causes them".
He is strongly associated with the other people on the programme
though co-authored reports, articles, conference appearances and
co-signed statements.
Tim Ball was captioned as the University of Winnipeg. In fact he left
in 1996 since when he has run political campaigns through two
organisations he helped found: the Natural Resources Stewardship
Project and the Friends of Science which, according to their websites
aim to run "a proactive grassroots campaign to counter the Kyoto
Protocol"; and "encourage and assist the Canadian Federal Government
to re-evaluate the Kyoto Protocol". Ian Clark is also on the board of
the NRSP.
This article was posted on the 9th March to www.climatedenial.org
George Marshall,
Climate Outreach Information Network,
16B Cherwell St.,
Oxford OX4 1BG
UK
Office Tel. 01865 727 911
Mobile 0795 150 4549 (I will call you back to save you the high charge
of calling mobiles)
E-mail: george@COINet.org.uk
Website: http://www.COINet.org.uk
The Climate Outreach Information Network is a charitable trust with
the objective of 'advancing the education of the public in the subject
of climate change and its impact on local, national, and global
environments'.
Charity registration number 1102225
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