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.