Polar Ice Caps and Galileo

Polar Ice Caps & Galileo

by Deb Powers

 Arctic ice got smaller, thinner, younger this year, proclaimed National Geographic back in April. Last week, the Obama adminisration released photos of Arctic ice and glaciers that had been taken by satellites over the past ten years. As pointed out by Jeff McMahon at Scorched Earth Blog, the photos didn't raise many eyebrows until about ten days later when they were picked up by the UK newspaper The Guardian, with the somewhat sensationalized headline Revealed: the secret evidence of global warming Bush tried to hide.

Now, in all fairness, Bush didn't exactly try to hide the photos. The photos were taken by U.S. spy satellites, and it's typical for spy satellite photos to be classified. After all, no one really expects that any nation is going to wave around picturest that were taken by their nifty handy-cams. There is a U.S. law, however, that allows scientists to request the declassification of photos that may help in our understanding of the Earth and the environment - among other things - and a request was put in to the Obama administration for release of photos taken of the Arctic region over the last ten years. The photos were released, along with several posters which can be found at the Global Fiducials Library.

The photos are startling - which of course, has raised the expected brouhaha from global warming skeptics that the photos were cherry-picked to release only those that show support for the global warming "theory". The hue and cry in comments on green blogs is almost comical - one person actually used the television shows "The Deadliest Catch" and "Ice Road Truckers", asking how these satellite photos squared with all the ice that you see on those shows. I say "almost comical" because I find it hard to laugh at people who are actively trying to derail efforts to save the planet.

Global Warming skeptics are not Galileo

The funniest part of the whole "global warming is a myth" movement, though, has got to be the dearly held comparison by the global warming skeptics of the controversy to the trial of Galileo, with themselves heroically cast in the role of the intrepid, independent thinking Galileo facing down the entrenched beliefs of the established authorities - the Church. In fact, Galileo's discovery challenged not just the Church, but an entrenched belief among the people that had existed for thousands of years - that the Earth stands still as a fixed point in the center of the universe, and the sun revolves around it.

By contrast, the global warming theory has not been an accepted fact for generations. It is, quite literally, upstart science, only a few decades in existence. And while we like to imagine that power lies in the hands of the government, the real Goliaths are those that make big money on keeping things as they are. Those Goliaths - oil and gas companies, power companies, coal companies, most large industries - will not be well-served if it is commonly believed that their activities are helping to change the planet in a way that will make it uninhabitable for us in a few centuries.

Who profits from global warming?

And therein lies the rub. Changing the status quo will cut into the profits made by the real establishment - the indutrial complex. Thus, any challenge to the status quo must be met with denial - denial of the science, denial of the effects, denial of the cause. If the science is wrong, then we don't need to do anything because nothing is really happening. If the effects aren't real - if, for example, the effects are being greatly exaggerated by cherry-picking - then we don't have to change anything, because nothing is really happening. If the cause is not man-made, then nothing we can do will make any difference, so what we should be doing instead is figuring out ways to adapt to a heating planet - like finding more fuel oil and making our homes tighter so that we can keep them cooler as the Earth outside fries.

 These are the same people who tried to argue that water pollution was a figment of the collective imagination in the 1970s, and fought any sort of regulation that forced them to clean up the toxic spew they poured into the waters. They argued there was no proof that these chemicals caused algae to choke the waterways and kill the fish and other water creatures. They argued that the water life would adapt to it, and that man had a right to pollute because it cost too much money not to pollute. When all else failed, they argued that the measures they were required by law to take wouldn't change anything because the damage was already done - and fought every effort to make them responsible for the damage that they've caused.

Far from being Galileo, the global warming skeptics are powered by the same forces that have tried to block every effort to rehabilitate the Earth for over 100 years - the industrial complex protecting its profits like the endangered polar bear protects its cubs. If you doubt it, figure out who actually profits if global warming is proved false - and then figure out who profits and where the money goes if we attempt to curb it.

Skeptical About Climate Change Skeptics

Photo Credit: Flavioka@stock.xchang (http://www.sxc.hu/profile/flaivoloka)It's impossible to read much about global warming online without running into those who are skeptical about climate change. These folks tend to fall into one of three categories:

• those who don't believe that climate change is happening;
• those who accept that the climate is changing, but believe it is due to natural rather than manmade causes;
• and those who believe that climate change is happening and is due to manmade causes, but believe that trying to control carbon emissions will cost more than any benefits that we'd get from it

Here in the U.S., we have a long history of corporations embracing science - until the conclusions reached by science will cost them money. Witness the history of the tobacco industry's fight against research showing the links between smoking and lung cancer, or the fights of the asbestos companies (and their insurers) against asbestos regulations. In both cases, the industries in question manufactured their own research, funded studies that were designed to dispute growing bodies of evidence that held them culpable, and in the case of the asbestos industry, knowingly and criminally conspired to hide evidence from their workers, the public and the government. The asbestos companies, in fact, were told by their own researchers that they could greatly reduce the damage done by asbestos by spending just a few cents per worker per day for a paper filter maks - and decided that it would be too expensive. Other companies decided that providing masks for their workers or giving them safety warnings would be tantamount to an admission that asbestos was hazardous, which could open the company to lawsuits.

 As a researcher, one of the first things that you learn is to consider the source of your information. When I teach internet research skills to kids, the first thing I teach them is to check the web site's owners to find out if they might have a bias. So you'll forgive me if I'm a little skeptical of the skeptics, especially when just a little digging turns up funding from organizations like ExxonMobil and other energy companies that depend upon the current polices on fossil fuel use for their profits.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists in their report Smoke, Mirrors and Hot Air How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science:

despite the scientific consensus about the fundamental understanding that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions, Exxon-Mobil has funneled about $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of ideological and advocacy organizations that manufacture uncertainty on the issue.

That's $16 million spent by a company that makes billions a year on fossil fuels to convince us that fossil fuels really don't muck up our world. Pay no attention to those other thousands of scientists who are telling you that carbon fuel emissions are heating up the planet and melting the ice caps. Really.

Of course, it does take a bit of digging to figure it all out. A lot of that money got funneled through "independent" research organizations that publish and republish papers by a small group of scientists. In the meantime, they also fund climate research through more legitimate organizations, which, say the authors of Smoke, Mirrors and Hot Air, lends them cover. The thing is, when you start tracking down the most vocal climate change skeptics, an awful lot of them tie back into the groups involved in Exxon's active disinformation campaign.

Here's the thing. I don't have a very hard time figuring out a motive for Exxon-Mobil to fund research that says "really, guys, this climate change stuff is just a whole lot of hot air!" A few billion dollars a year, give or take $100 million or so, is a pretty powerful motive. It doesn't take a brain trust to figure it out.

On the other hand, you really have to get convoluted to come up with an equally good reason - or really, any reason at al - to make up the scientific research that strongly suggests that our addiction to fossil fuels is putting some major monkey wrenches into the wheels of normal climate change. Why would dozens of organizations and thousands of scientists around the world tell us that we're heading for some serious problems with global warming if we don't do something about it unless we do something to slow it down? Who profits? Who makes money on it?

And the pure and simple fact is - there is no single industry that will profit if we restrict and regulate carbon emissions. There are only those that lose - and they appear to be doing their best to to make sure we ALL lose so that they can keep making money.

Deb Powers writes about Fair Trade coffee at Coffeebreak.Today.com.