Christopher Keating
To the Editors of the Duluth News Tribune,
Ways to support a truly
responsible and free press;
First of all, I must state
that this letter is not for publication in the Tribune. It’s meant as a
response to AGW denier Tom Harris’s latest deception in today’s Readers’
Views, which Chuck, you and others at the Tribune might want to take the
time to read.
Basically there are three
types of deniers; those who deny that global warming exists, those who
acknowledge that it exists, but is not caused primarily by human being’s
massive usage of fossil fuels. And also those who admit it exists, and is
contributed to by human beings, but not nearly so much that immediate actions
taken by human beings are required to limit Co2 emissions.
Several decades ago, there
was a much larger number of those who claimed that global warming didn’t exist.
However, with the passage of time and as the evidence began to increase, some
found it necessary (in order to remain credible) to concede to its existence,
but not to the fact that man is its primary cause. That led to the ever
increasing number of deniers who now admit that it really does exist but is
only “in part,” caused by man, therefore making it a primarily natural
occurrence, and thus, an issue that does not call for prompt political
decisions and actions in order to mitigate its effects. Tom Harris is in this
category.
Harris is listed on De Smog
Blog, as having these educational credentials:
“B. Eng., M. Eng.
(Mech., thermo-fluids and energy sciences)”
So Mr. Harris is educated
with a BS and a Master’s degree in English, and the fact that he knows about
Mechanics and thermo-fluids is placed in parenthesis. Thus like most of
the more sophisticated deniers he does have a background in some scientific
knowledge that might make him more aware of certain aspects and issues
involving AGW. But most deniers have less knowledge than he does, and nowhere
near the educational foundation shared by PhDs in Climate science—some of whom
are Nobel Prize winners, and who have studied global warming for decades. Here
is some information about Harris taken from the same link to the De Smog Blog
that I included above;
“Tom Harris is the Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), a group of climate change skeptics that has received
funding from the Heartland Institute. Before
starting work with ICSC, Harris was the Executive Director of the now-defunct Natural Resources Stewardship
Project (NRSP). [2], [3]
Prior to working with
the NRSP, Harris was a Former Director of Operations
at the Canadian PR and
lobbying firm called the High Park Group (HPG). Previously, Harris was an Associate with APCOworldwide, a group known for
creating The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) which worked to advance tobacco industry
interests. [4], [48]
The Heartland Institute
describes Harris as “perhaps the most frequently cited and interviewed critic
of exaggeration and alarmism in the global warming debate, appearing thousands
of times on online news forums and being regularly published in newspapers in
Canada and the U.S. and occasionally in Australia, New Zealand, the
U.K., and other countries.” [5].
Here is a list which is used
to describe his stance on climate change:
1. “Global climate is always changing in accordance with
natural causes and recent changes are not unusual.
2. Science is rapidly evolving away from the view that humanity's
emissions of carbon dioxide and other 'greenhouse gases' are a cause of
dangerous climate change.
3. Climate models used by the IPCC* fail to
reproduce known past climates without manipulation and therefore lack the
scientific integrity needed for use in climate prediction and related
policy decision-making.
4. The UN IPCC Summary for Policymakers
and the assertions of IPCC executives too often seriously
mis-represent the conclusions of their own scientific reports.
5. Claims that ‘consensus’ exists among climate experts
regarding the causes of the modest warming of the past century are contradicted
by thousands of independent scientists.
6. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant - it is a necessary
reactant in plant photosynthesis and so is essential for life on Earth.
7. Research that identifies the Sun as a major driver of
global climate change must be taken more seriously.
8. Global cooling has presented serious problems for
human society and the environment throughout history while global warming has
generally been highly beneficial.
9. It is not possible to reliably predict how climate
will change in the future, beyond the certainty that multi-decadal warming and
cooling trends, and abrupt changes, will all continue, underscoring a need for
effective adaptation.
10.Since
science and observation have failed to substantiate the human-caused climate
change hypothesis, it is premature to damage national economies with `carbon'
taxes, emissions trading or other schemes to control 'greenhouse
gas' emissions.”
*
United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
While some of the points
above are true—Such as that Co2 is a necessary part of plant photo-synthesis,
several others are not—such as the contention that the Sun is a major driver of
global climate change. Well, of course the sun affects weather and climate, but
not currently, or nearly enough to be the primary cause of climate change. In
fact, if the sun were a major cause of the current global warming, the climate
would be cooling, since solar radiance has diminished over recent decades. And
while Harris dismisses AGW as an issue that has NOT been completely “settled”
by science, one must remember that all science and scientific theories
(including those about Gravity and the laws of motion) always involve issues
which are not currently nor completely understood—and the many thousands of
knowledgeable and esteemed climate scientists who report a 97% consensus about
AGW, have said nothing to contradict that fact. What is known with virtual
certainty is that Global warming does exist, and that its primary cause is the
human use of fossil fuels. There have even been studies indicating that, the
greater the educational backgrounds attained by scientists, such as those with
extensive knowledge about climate science (such as those having PhDs
specifically in climate science), involves an even higher percentage of
consensus—being at, or above, 99%. Here are some links to examine If you want
to know the true significance of the consensus which is affirmed by more than
97% of knowledgeable Earth scientists.
Here is a quote from the
above website:
“So a consensus in science is
different from a political one. There is no vote. Scientists just give up
arguing because the sheer weight of consistent evidence is too compelling, the
tide too strong to swim against any longer. Scientists change their
minds on the basis of the evidence, and a consensus emerges over time. Not
only do scientists stop arguing, they also start relying on each other's work.
All science depends on that which precedes it, and when one scientist builds on
the work of another, he acknowledges the work of others through citations.
The work that forms the foundation of climate change science is cited
with great frequency by many other scientists, demonstrating that the theory is
widely accepted - and relied upon.
In the scientific field
of climate studies – which is informed by many different disciplines
– the consensus is demonstrated by the number of scientists who have stopped
arguing about what is causing climate change – and that’s nearly all
of them.
Authors of seven climate consensus studies — including Naomi Oreskes, Peter Doran, William Anderegg, Bart Verheggen, Ed Maibach, J. Stuart Carlton, and John Cook —
co-authored a paper that
should settle this question once and for all. The two key conclusions from the
paper are:
1) Depending on exactly how
you measure the expert consensus, it’s somewhere between 90% and 100% that
agree humans are responsible for climate change, with most of our studies
finding 97% consensus among publishing climate scientists.
2) The greater
the climate expertise among those surveyed, the higher the consensus
on human-caused global warming.”
Here is another relevant
link:
And:
And:
And here is one that, as a
journalist you may have heard of, dealing with a popular myth promoted by
deniers which is just not true:
I selected these few articles
from the Skeptical science website, because for someone like me, who does not have
an extensive knowledge of climate science, they list various forms of
information more clearly, and more understandably. So like me, I assume that
most journalists also do not have an advanced knowledge of climate science, or
perhaps even of science in general. And these few articles are among almost 200
rebuttals made by scientists about the many and reoccurring false contentions
of deniers.
What we all need to realize
is that deniers like Tom Harris love sowing doubts in order to paralyze any
meaningful political actions undertaken by governing bodies around the
world. And Scott Pruitt, who has now been accepted as the head the EPA is
no better.
He calls on continued “open
debates,” even though such debates (as inaccurate as they may be) have been
taking place in public forums like the Tribune for decades. And even though
Pruitt has used the myth that no consensus exists, based primarily on the
mistaken assumption that because climate scientists and many other kinds of
scientists must continue to investigate aspects of, or answer various questions
about, areas of potential scientific knowledge which still include many
unknowns, he leaves plenty of wiggle room to pacify members of Congress by
claiming that it’s just not known how large man’s contribution to AGW is? When
in fact, it’s known for sure that we have clearly contributed, by far, the
lion’s share of our present global warming!
All kinds of scientists
continue to refine their arguments about such unknowns, but unlike the
implications of people like Harris and Pruitt, those unknowns are merely
ordinary aspects of scientific research. And all along, scientists have
referred to the 97% consensus concerning the facts that, (A) global warming
does exist, and (B) that it is primarily caused by human activities. So
to clarify, about these two specific questions, no significant doubts remain in
the climate science community. And unlike the contentions of Harris, the
projected warming of our planet does represent a serious, and essentially very
serious problem, that mankind will most certainly have to face.
So while deniers continue to
make the contentions of scientists, seem like foregone conclusions used to
promote the existence of dangerous AGW, the debate goes on. So let me ask those
at the Tribune, how much longer this debate should continue? Remember, Tom Harris
has worked to promote the Tobacco industry and many of his tactics are taken
directly from the playbook that was used to sustain continuing doubts about the
role of cigarette smoke and its carcinogens in various forms of cancer. At one
point the CEOs from (I believe six different large Tobacco Companies) testified
before Congress and blatantly lied about their products, insisting that they
were not directly linked to serious health concerns. For years they supposedly
“reduced harmful” nicotine content, by introducing flavored cigarette to lure
young people, and by using catch phrases and slogans in their advertising—while
knowingly addicting millions of young people to their dangerous
products—including myself!
I’m proud to say that (thanks
to the nicotine patch) I have not smoked for almost 25 years, but I’m sad to
report that big coal and oil are now using the same kinds of deceptions that
were used to hook me with the claim that cigarettes had no seriously unhealthy
side effects—just as big coal and oil are currently promoting the idea that Co2
has little, or merely minor detrimental effects on the health of the climate.
This last claim is just as devious as the portrayals of the “minimal” dangers
of smoking that big Tobacco used to misinform us all in the past, when the
industry used menthol and other various flavors in its filters) to assuage the
concerns of the public.
So go ahead and publish the
false claims of deniers, but somewhere along the way it would behoove you, as well
as your readers, to publish a segment in which the contentions of deniers, are
debated with qualified climate scientists, but specifically in response to the
contentions raised by deniers, which may then be specifically rebutted by bona
fide climate scientists. The 300 words you currently allow in Readers’ views
though enabling more people to opportunity to comment, are hardly
adequate for most of us to raise a sufficiently backed up and researched
response to deniers. But if you were to employ the input of many qualified
climate scientists who would directly debunk specific points made by deniers,
you might begin to understand why the claims of most deniers are partially, or
even fully, lacking in substance. The Tribune would not have to run such forums
often, but it would help a great deal if real and qualified scientists were
able to make specific responses in print to the contentions of deniers.
In the days of big Tobacco’s
outrageous lies we were eventually able to accumulate evidence against them
through the use of the FOIA, but in today’s post Citizens United world, so
called non-profit charities provide slick opportunities for wealthy plutocrats
and executives in the big oil and coal industries, to anonymously make
extremely large contributions without needing to be held accountable for them.
However, some of that information is still out there, and is available on
well-established climate change sites (not the many deceptive denier’s sites)
which continue to try and catch climate scientists in “gotcha moments.”
However, invariably their questions have already been specifically answered by
legitimate authorities on climate science, and their deceptive, misquoted,
cherry picked, and/or completely bogus graphs and charts, are invariably
disproved and discredited by those same, many, legitimate climate scientists.
Please take the time to read
the relatively short links I included for articles on the skeptical climate
science website, which do excellent jobs of rebutting deniers. The sooner the
Press becomes aware of the true myth being perpetrated and perpetuated by
clever deniers, the sooner it, and we, will realize the importance of combating
climate change. Otherwise, like the victims of big tobacco, we may be caught
unaware of the dangers involved and most likely will find ourselves inhabiting
a world full of far more extreme and frequent weather events than those we are
seeing now. And, (although deniers would claim I am being an alarmist) there is
a real possibility that more than a million current species will become extinct
by 2100. So one begins to wonder when specific kinds of real information will
finally break through the wall of willful ignorance erected by extremely
well-funded conservative think tanks and bogus internet sites, which largely
exist to pull the wool over the public’s eyes, and are maintained by virtually
unlimited funds. Must we be swept up by hurricane winds, or float away from the
rooftops of our homes, once they are submerged by one epic flood event after
another, before we take prudent actions to prevent such disasters?
Please take the time to
listen to all of the facts presented by renowned authorities, and then perhaps
create a real and necessary debate in the Tribune and other newspapers around
the country between deniers and well qualified scientists—the latter of which
has been continually lied about and misrepresented by AGW deniers everywhere.
Sincerely,
Peter W. Johnson
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