Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
our airwaves and television screens and the Internet.
Figure 5.1: Teach the Controversy
A Doonesbury cartoon encapsulates the spirit of attacks on the science relevant to environmental and consumer protections.
[DOONESBURY © G. B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL UCLICK. All rights reserved.]
A central focus of many of these campaigns in recent years has, of course, been the discourse
over global warming and climate change. For more than a decade, the scientific community, in its
effort to communicate the threat of climate change, has had to fight against the headwind of this
industry-funded disinformation effort. The collective battles are what I term the “climate wars.”
The Climate Wars
The evidence for a well-organized, well-funded, and orchestrated climate change disinformation
magazines,
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and by an increasingly rich array of scrupulously researched topics on the topic.
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The
campaign has its roots in the larger industry-funded public relations efforts that emerged during the
1970s and 1980s over acid rain, ozone depletion, missile defense, stem cell research, biodiversity
loss, and a host of other issues.
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Foreshadowing the climate change denying tactics outlined in the
2002 Luntz memo were the activities of the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). Formed in the late
1980s, the GCC was a consortium of more than fifty companies and trade associations representing
chemical, mining, automotive, transportation, fossil fuel, shipping, farming, power, defense,
pharmaceutical, and manufacturing industries with the purpose of funding and organizing opposition
to emerging policy efforts aimed at greenhouse gas emission reductions. They played a critical role, it
may be recalled, in the attacks on Ben Santer, accusing him of “political tampering” and “scientific
cleansing” following publication of the IPCC Second Assessment Report.
In April 1998, just days after the publication of our original hockey stick article, new revelations
