The Origins of Denial - The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars - page 48

People like Seitz, Singer, and Lindzen have been in the front lines of professional climate change
denial. But others have participated as well. There is a whole corps of columnists and commentators
who help promote climate change disinformation. In the United States, they include prominent radio
and TV commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, as well as many other
lesser known, but similarly active and effective protagonists. Some, such as Bret Stephens of the Wall
Street Journal and Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle , also operate with the imprimatur
of ostensibly mainstream news organizations.
The boundaries between journalist, commentator, and paid industry advocate have become
increasingly blurred with the development of the new media. Consider in the United States, for
example, individuals such as Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and James
Taylor (no, not the singer-songwriter made famous by “Fire and Rain” and “Sweet Baby James”) of
the Heartland Institute. Though employed as lobbyists or lawyers by the industry-funded Competitive
Enterprise Institute, they are regularly granted a forum by conservative news outlets to pen pieces
attacking climate science and climate scientists. Tobacco and fossil fuel industry lobbyist Steven J.
Milloy sometimes appears as a “junk science expert” on Fox News. 53 He runs a site called
junkscience.org , billing himself, with no apparent sense of irony, as the “junk man.” In the United
Kingdom, Christopher Booker of the Telegraph has such a biased record of reporting on
environmental issues that it has earned him the title of “patron saint of charlatans” from award-
winning Guardian journalist George Monbiot. 54
Video also has played an increasingly important role in climate change denial. Martin Durkin of
the United Kingdom produced the ironically entitled documentary “The Great Global Warming
Swindle.” British media regulator Ofcom found that the film “did not fulfill obligations to be
impartial and to reflect a range of views on controversial issues” and that it “treated interviewees
unfairly.” 55 This problem was particularly evident in Durkin's interview of MIT physical
oceanographer Carl Wunsch, who was upset by the way his words were edited to imply a contrarian
viewpoint very much at odds with his actual views. 56
Then there is the recently deceased science fiction writer Michael Crichton. One of Crichton's
last novels, State of Fear, was a thinly veiled climate change denialist polemic masquerading as an
action adventure novel. Crichton even was invited as a witness in a U.S. Senate committee hearing
held by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) to sow doubt on the reality of climate change. It is telling that
Inhofe had to turn to a science fiction novelist to make his case.
The United Kingdom has produced some of the more colorful climate change deniers.
Christopher Monckton, the third viscount Monckton of Brenchley, has emerged on the denial scene in
recent years. He claims to be an expert on climate change, though he has no formal scientific training.
Richard Littlemore of the fossil fuel industry watchdog group DeSmogBlog tells us that Monckton has
been caught on several occasions “indulging in deliberate manipulation of scientific data to arrive at
misleading conclusions about climate science.” 57 Monckton's assertions aren't confined to science;
he has even claimed, falsely, to have won the Nobel Prize. 58 After he had repeatedly represented
himself publicly as a member of the House of Lords, the clerk of Parliament took the unprecedented
step of publicly demanding he cease and desist making this false claim. 59
Then there are the amateurs down in the trenches who execute the ground game in the climate
wars. Many of these individuals are simply ill informed, and are no doubt acting in good faith in
expressing what they believe to be honest skepticism. But strident claims without substance abound,