Naomi Oreskes, one of the champions of sound science on climate change, has done it again, piercing through the veil of skeptic-speak and public misinformation to reveal another insight into the politics of global warming.
Oreskes, you might recall, is the University of California, San Diego professor of history and science studies who thoroughly discredited the argument that there’s yet no scientific consensus on climate change. Her 2004 analysis of 928 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 1993 and 2003 found that not one author disputed the consensus that Earth’s climate is changing.
Writing this week with Jonathan Renouf (producer of “Earth: The Climate Wars”) in the Times Online, Oreskes details how a group of elite scientists — known as Jason — warned U.S. officials about the future dangers of climate change way back in 1979. Their report, “The Long Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate,” sounded the same warning signs we’re hearing today from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) … only, back then, we had a larger window of opportunity to take effective action.
Action, though, was never taken, except in the form of two additional reports. The first, commissioned under the Carter administration, found the same concerns after examining the science. The second, prepared after Reagan came into office, did not.
That second followup report looked at the same science, but came to a different conclusion. Its message was essentially, “Don’t worry now. It’s too costly to take action today, and technology will probably save us in the future.”
The man behind that message was the late Bill Nierenberg, a Manhattan Project veteran who eventually went on to found the George C. Marshall Institute, a think tank that Newsweek last year described as the “central cog in the (climate change) denial machine.”
Why does this matter now? Oreskes and Renouf make it clear in the last paragraph of their article:
“The creed that Nierenberg originated all those years ago still has its dwindling band of followers. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, recently responded to a question about global warming by saying: ‘I’m not one who would attribute it to being man-made.’ ”
Thirty years after top scientists warned us about climate change, and we’re still having this discussion?
You can find the entire article about Jason and the past politics of climate change at the Times Online. Links to Oreske’s works are listed on her profile page on UCSD’s Website.
