Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
in using science as a political tool.
114
Moreover, he and Sagan from the
beginning jointly opposed the Reagan administration's blasé response to
the issue. In a dismissive report released in early 1985, the Department of
Defense claimed to have already incorporated nuclear winter into exist-
ing defense strategy, and Weinberger went so far as to suggest that nuclear
winter actually strengthened the case for the Strategic Defense Initiative.
115
Throughout 1984 and 1985, Schneider's NCAR group consequently spent
a good deal of time and ink defending the nuclear winter hypothesis and
reiterating its potential policy impact, despite their problems with some
of Sagan's science.
But for Schneider, politically motivated science had to be impeccable,
and popular scientists like Sagan had a responsibility to alter the specifics
of their political objectives as the science behind those objectives changed.
For the forcing function of knowledge to work, the knowledge had to be the
best it could be. When Sagan refused to budge on the threshold concept,
Schneider felt he had to air his results publicly for the sake of scientific
credibility. Over the next two years, the TTAPS group and Schneider's
NCAR team publicly traded views in scientific journals like
Science
and
Nature,
in the popular press, and in the pages of
Foreign Affairs.
Schnei-
der and Thompson argued that “the global apocalyptic conclusions of the
nuclear winter hypothesis can now be relegated to a vanishingly low level
of probability.”
116
Nuclear winter thus could not provide the sole impetus
for a build-down policy, as Sagan had described. Still, as Schneider pointed
out, even nuclear autumn could have a catastrophic effect on world agri-
culture, and he continued to urge the defense community to more mean-
ingfully incorporate the environmental consequences of nuclear war into
strategic planning. For Schneider, like Sagan, this included “significantly
reduced levels of arsenals.”
117
As with the 1983 EPA and NAS reports on CO
2
and climate, the dis-
agreement between Schneider and Sagan on nuclear winter allowed
skeptics and political opponents to cast the whole issue as speculative.
Schneider repeatedly insisted that he and Sagan had “few fundamental
differences,” but conservative climate scientists, skeptical defense ana-
lysts, and the press highlighted the NCAR and TTAPS disagreements
to foreground the uncertainties of the hypothesis and to undermine the
credibility of the science.
118
In what has by now become a familiar refrain,
conservative commentators echoed conservative scientists in accusing the
