A Global Warming Winner

by Liberty and Power

William Stepp and Mark Brady have brought to my attention an absolutely outstanding essay by Alexander Cockburn, titled "Who are the Merchants of Fear" which is posted on Counterpunch. In a previous piece, linked to here by Brady, Cockburn inquired about the sinfulness of Global Warming and in this new article he recaps the basic thrust of his earlier work saying that, "I refer those who rear back at the words 'imaginary crisis' to my last column on this topic, where I emphasize that there is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely entirely on unverified, crudely oversimplified computer models to finger mankind's sinful contribution."

Now, Cockburn seeks to shed light on some of the reasons why something so very tenuous is about to cause such drastic harmful changes in policy public. As I read this essay there were at least ten important well written passages that I wanted to quote here, however, I will content myself with two. The first relates to someone that I have become convinced is one of those historical figures that will do or say anything in their quest for power, no matter how many people it hurts or how much it erodes core values. Cockburn tells me something that I had not thought too much about before, concerning a certain ex-Senator from Tennessee, when he writes that, "The world's best known hysteric and self promoter on the topic of man's physical and moral responsibility for global warming is Al Gore, a shill for the nuclear industry and the coal barons from the first day he stepped into Congress entrusted with the sacred duty to protect the budgetary and regulatory interests of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Oakridge National Lab." Of course, nuclear power and clean coal are part of the solution to the problem of human induced global warming so let us just put Three Mile Island into the memory hole.

Lastly, Cockburn's conclusion is worth noting. He states that, "As with the arms spending spiral powered by the Cold War merchants of fear, vast amounts of money will be uselessly spent on programs that won't work against an enemy that doesn't exist. Meanwhile, real and curable environmental perils are scanted or ignored. Hysteria rules the day, drowning urgently needed environmental cleanup in our backyard while smoothing the way for the nuclear industry to reap its global rewards."

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Tim Sydney - 5/17/2007

"The Watt" a blog that follows Energy and greenhouse issues has had two recent posts that indicate Al Gore may now be closer to the position taken by (say) Exxon-Mobil, than most AGW skeptics.

See the two posts here and here.

John Kunze - 5/14/2007

How would Gore's record on nuclear power and "clean coal" prove anything? He surely has talked "green" for decades. Anyone concerned with pollution due to fossil fuels should consider nuclear attractive from that standpoint. (The knock against it is the risk of nuclear material falling into evil hands, an entirely different concern.) "Clean coal" may well be a boondoggle, but how does favoring it prove he is captive to an industry, as opposed to merely being a naive green?

Tim Sydney - 5/14/2007

If we discovered that some senior politicians had, say, personal interests in munitions or military contracting, it would certainly be legitimate to question their motives for supporting a war. Politicians perhaps should be thought guilty until proved innocent. Same goes for Gore.

But, on it's own, an expose of such a personal interest, wouldn't provide a complete refutation of the case for war. If all people with a connection to the military-industrial-university complex were ruled out of commenting on foreign policy debate, most expertise in the field would have been silenced. Although us 'isolationists' might welcome it at first, that approach presumably has dangers too.

In major political debates today in the real world it is frankly "normal" to find vested interests at work on both sides of an argument. In debating say free trade versus protectionism it wouldn't even occur to us to think otherwise.

Yet somehow or other in the Anthropic Global Warming (AGW) debate this "motivational realism" goes out the window. Both sides accuse the other of pandering to vested interests, ...and they are both right. But being right

And it's not wholly wrong for vested interests to blow their own trumpet either. I have come across leftist greenies here in Australia who accuse AGW skeptics of being fronts for the fossil fuel industry. As coal exporting is Australia's largest foreign exchange earning industry, and one of the largest taxpayers, I like to ask them how they intend to finance the many government programs they favour if the 'evil' coal industry is shut down. And there are fossil fuel related interests that own no stock in the coal companies either. Unionists, mayors and even government revenue eaters. The greens might find that without revenue from coal companies, governments might not even be able to afford all those state owned wind farms they want.

Leftist greenies often accuse AGW skeptics, especially AGW skeptical scientists, of being petroleum industry shills. This may or may not be the case.

The idea of scientists working as "shills" is presumably not without precedent. Still it is hard to dig up examples which are not open to wider interpretation. Even in "long dead" issues it is difficult to prove or disprove scientific misbehaviour.

Perhaps the most celebrated case is that of R.A. Fisher, one of the leading pioneers of statistics. He worked as a consultant for the tobacco industry for years and in his academic work strongly opposed the tobacco - cancer link. He may have been wrong, but was he corrupt? Or, as some have suggested, just strongly opposed to any attempts to use science to endorse any kind of puritanism?

It's a lot easier to find instances of scientists falsifying their data outright for academic advancement than for corporate shilling.

AGW opponents aren't the only ones to eager to find vested interest at work on the other side of the argument. Nobel prize winner Kary Mullis in his book "Dancing Naked In the Mind Field" has a chapter called "Whatever happened to the scientific method?" (online here) where he argues that AGW opponent science is an example of "public choice" vested interests at work. He might be right. But it doesn't invalidate the science. Kary Mullis himself has profited handsomely from his invention of PCR. It's made him a multi-millionaire. PCR is the underlying technology used in modern genetic engineering. We wouldn't use evidence of Mullis's business success from PCR as evidence that the underlying science was invalid. In fact the opposite conclusion is probably more correct.

Mullis's hypothesis is a valid one for say public choice economists to investigate. But it doesn't apply in all cases.

One of the more "alarmist" AGW opponent scientists is James Lovelock of "Gaia hypothesis" fame. Lovelock is almost a textbook example of an "independent scientist" should look like. He finances his own research with royalties and fees he has earned from his numerous inventions. He is independent of the corporate and government sponsored science Mullis is skeptical of. Yet Lovelock, who still manages to outrage the greens over his pro-nuclear advocacy, is a firm supporter of the AGW hypothesis. If anything, he is indeed "more alarmist" than most.

If Al Gore were as pure as the driven snow, or if he disappeared tomorrow, the scientfic AGW argument would still be with us. So would the public policy question as to what to do about it. Al Gore didn't invent the internet, and he didn't invent global warming either.

Gus diZerega - 5/13/2007

Keith-
That is irrelevant with respect to the scientific case for or against global warming and its causes. No one on this list has cited Gore as more than a very effective popularizer. What he did as a senator or even now is truly utterly irrelevant except as grounds for assessing his personal character, something I truly have little interest in.

I know I am breaking my pledge by responding - but I think Keith asked a reasonable question. I at least will not address issues of people's good or bad character with respect to global warming.

Keith Halderman - 5/13/2007

Here is a basis for rational discussion why don't we investigate Al Gore's voting record in the Senate and see if Cockburn is right about Gore favoring nuclear power and clean coal. Why is when somone accuses an opponent of Global Warming hysteria of being a tool of the oil companies that is rational discussion but if someone points out Al Gore's conflict of interest it is irrational?

Gus diZerega - 5/13/2007

I'd write something beyond this if I though you were open to rational discussion rather than character assassination. But I do not believe you are.