Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
—Mark Twain
As we entered the new millennium, the hockey stick emerged as a central object of attack in the
broader battles waged against climate science, and the attacks became increasingly political. Among
them was an effort by the Bush administration to purge the hockey stick from a government science
report, a hostile hearing held by a prominent congressional climate change denier to attack our work,
and a denunciation of our work by that same congressman on the floor of the U.S. Senate on the eve of
a vote on a key climate bill.
The Scientization of Politics
Five years after the IPCC Third Assessment Report finding of a “discernible human influence” on the
climate, during the run-up to the 2000 presidential election, one of the two candidates said: “As we
promote electricity and renewable energy, we will work to make our air cleaner. With the help of
Congress, environmental groups and industry, we will require all power plants to meet clean air
standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide
within a reasonable period of time. And we will provide market-based incentives, such as emissions
trading, to help industry achieve the required reductions.”
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If you guessed those were the words of Democratic candidate and climate change crusader Al
Gore, you guessed wrong. It was the vice president's Republican opponent, George W. Bush. Given
position it would eventually take, that there was still “a debate over whether [global warming] is
manmade or naturally caused,”
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it is easy to forget that Bush originally expressed a more enlightened
view about climate change. He appointed a pro-environment northeastern Republican moderate,
Christine Todd Whitman, to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). One could be forgiven
for thinking he might even have been on his way to fulfilling a promise that his father, former
president George H. Bush, had made but, in the opinion of many, had failed to live up to: becoming
the “environmental president.”
In a Senate hearing in 2001, Whitman had stated that “there's no question but that global
warming is a real phenomenon, that it is occurring.” Increased flooding and drought “will occur” as a
result, she had declared. “The science is strong there.” She encouraged the president to support
policies aimed at controlling greenhouse gas emissions, even stating in a confidential memo that
doing so was a “credibility issue for the U.S. in the international community.” She advised the
