-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Global Warming: How History Is Being Manipulated to Undermine
Calls for Action
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:16:28 +0000
From: Chris Keene <[log in to unmask]>
To: chris keene <[log in to unmask]>
http://www.hnn.us/articles/30148.html
10-16-06
Global Warming: How History Is Being Manipulated to Undermine Calls
for Action
By Spencer Weart
Mr. Weart is Director of the Center for History of Physics at the
American Institute of Physics.
<http://www.aip.org/history/climate/author.htm>
Informed people now understand that global warming is perhaps the most
severe challenge facing the well-being of human society in the coming
century. Only a dwindling minority of Americans now denies this (an even
smaller fraction believe that we are regularly visited by space aliens).
But those who deny it include powerful people, whose interests or
ideology are threatened by government regulation of the fossil fuels
that are the main source of the danger we face.
History is often used in these arguments. Its role can be direct, as
when global-warming denialists assert that not long ago scientists were
"spectacularly wrong" in claiming that not warming but a new Ice Age
threatened us. So writes, for example, the columnist George Will,
quoting from news magazines of the early 1970s. However, when people
checked the history they found that Will, following a practice common
among denialists, "cherry-picked" a few items that served his purpose
from a much larger body of evidence.1
<http://www.hnn.us/articles/30148.html#_ftn1> Here's the real history.
In the 1970s scientists discovered that climate can be catastrophically
variable; they didn't agree on what would come next; but they all agreed
that they knew too little at the time to make a confident prediction.
Any resemblance to the current strong scientific consensus is a fantasy.
A subtler historical fantasy is that the warnings of climate change are
a political plot of radical, anti-business environmentalists (so says
Michael Crichton's recent best-selling thriller). In the actual history,
concerns arose in the 1950s well before any environmentalist movement.
These concerns spread among scientists who were either apolitical or
supported by US military agencies. But the most important historical
story that people should know is how the concern gave rise to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The Reagan administration wanted to forestall pronouncements by
self-appointed committees of scientists, fearing they would be
"alarmist." Conservatives promoted the IPCC's clumsy structure, which
consisted of representatives appointed by every government in the world
and required to consult all the thousands of experts in repeated rounds
of report-drafting in order to reach a consensus. Despite these
impediments the IPCC has issued unequivocal statements on the urgent
need to act.
Yet perhaps the most important use of history can come through simple
explanation. Historians have often worked to illuminate current affairs
through their historical descriptions of social and political forces.
With a technical subject like the science of climate, history can also
clarify the subject itself. Such is the main use of a website
<http://www.aip.org/history/climate> I created to describe the history
of scientific work on climate change. With a quarter-million words and a
thousand references, it is the equivalent of a thick tome. Several
hundred visitors come to the site each day. Most are brought by a search
engine, either because they entered a general term like "history global
warming" or because they sought specific facts about a particular
scientist or technical point. Others come through links provided by
other climate Websites, blogs, or personal recommendations. What do the
visitors want, and do they get it?
A monitoring program shows that many visitors go away quickly, and I
presume they either found the specific fact they wanted, or decided the
site was too long and scholarly. But many stay for hours, and some read
every word. A visitor who reads extensively will come unexpectedly upon
a request to answer a brief survey. I've gotten only 400-odd responses
so far, but these exceptionally motivated readers are worth notice. The
majority of respondents are students, typically driven by class
assignments; and, indeed, the number of visits to the site exceeds a
thousand per day during term-paper periods. Scientists constitute the
second largest group of respondents. Most of the visitors, scientists or
otherwise, attempt to sort out a subject that they feel they should
understand. Some come in search of detailed textbook facts rather than
history, and are disappointed. But most say they got what they sought,
while others report, as an economist put it, "though I have not found
what I'm looking for, I'm enjoying the CO2 history essay, and finding it
helpful."
Not only students and scientists, but also many concerned citizens
(describing themselves, for example, as lawyer, physician, engineer, and
"unemployed") wanted enough information to formulate their own opinions.
Environmental activists, teachers and science writers --- and a few
industrial lobbyists --- came not only to inform themselves but also to
prepare for explaining or debating the subject. A farmer wondered how
warming was affecting the weather; a chemist in Britain wondered if a
rising sea level would affect a seaside home. Only a small fraction said
they came to find history as such. But a strong majority of respondents
said they were getting what they came to find, and many were
enthusiastic about the form of presentation.
History, as we all should know, is a great help for presenting complex
topics --- not just thoroughly but clearly, not just with balance and
nuance but with readability and even excitement. Technology lets us do
this better than ever. Historians should note that putting work on the
web, with appropriate attention to "marketing" through search-engine
placement and the like, can bring a real increase in the social utility
of their efforts.
1 <http://www.hnn.us/articles/30148.html#_ftnref1> See
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/.
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