The Origins of Denial - The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars - page 46

temperature changes, and so on). This article, too, was formatted to look as if it had been published
as a peer-reviewed journal article, 28 and yet again was accompanied by a petition demanding the
United States not sign the Kyoto Protocol. The origin of these materials was, once again, the Oregon
Institute of Science and Medicine.
That group's activities seemed to be part of a coordinated effort. One year earlier, Kenneth
Green of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) was implicated in what at least appeared to be an
attempt to solicit pieces from climate scientists critical of a recently published IPCC report in return
for a cash award of $10,000. 29 In addition, in recent years, the Heartland Institute, a group that has
been funded by both tobacco (Philip Morris) and fossil fuel (Exxon, Koch, Scaife) interests, has
financed a series of one-sided conferences on climate change, featuring a slate of climate change
deniers, many with no discernible scientific credentials, and most with financial connections of one
sort or another to the fossil fuel industry or groups they fund. 30
S. Fred Singer, whom we met in previous chapters, followed in Seitz's footsteps. Like Seitz,
Singer's origins were as an academic and a scientist, and like Seitz, he left the academic world in the
early 1990s 31 to advocate against what he called the “junk science” of ozone depletion, climate
change, tobacco dangers, and a litany of other environmental and health threats. 32 He founded an
entity in 1990 called the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) 33 that he used to launch
his attacks and has also received considerable industry funding for his efforts. 34 Singer was the
principal behind the denialist response to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the so-called
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) funded by the aforementioned
Heartland Institute, and characterized by ABC News as “fabricated nonsense.” 35
Singer, like Seitz, has been accused of having engaged in serious misrepresentation, in this case
involving the great scientist Roger Revelle. 36 Revelle was instrumental in our early understanding of
human-caused global warming and the potential threat of continued fossil fuel burning. He is also
credited with having inspired many of today's leading climate scientists and is cited by former U.S.
vice president Al Gore as the origin for his concern about climate change. In 1991, shortly before
Revelle's death, Singer added Revelle as a coauthor to a paper he published in the Cosmos Club
journal Cosmos . The paper attacked the science of climate change and was nearly identical in both
title and content to a paper that Singer had previously authored alone. 37 Reports from both Revelle's
personal secretary and his former graduate student Justin Lancaster suggest that Revelle was deeply
uncomfortable with the manuscript, and that the more dismissive statements in the paper were added
after Revelle—who was gravely ill at the time and died just months after the paper's publication—
had an opportunity to review it. 38
While Seitz and Singer may have been the most prolific and versatile of the denialists, other
scientists have served as specialists in the climate change denial movement. Frequently, though not
always, they do so with either direct or indirect financial compensation and support from the fossil
fuel industry. 39 Many write op-eds and opinion pieces for conservative-leaning newspapers or outlets
supported by industry, such as TechCentralStation. Often they are sponsored to go out on the climate
change denial lecture circuit, or they write topics that are promoted, marketed, and even published by
fossil-fuel friendly groups.
One of the more formidable among them is Richard Lindzen. His credentials, like those of Seitz,
are impressive; he is a chaired professor at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.