[quote=ewmayer;222563]As he notes, countries which embrace green-tech and take a (very modest - the "this will destroy the U.S. economy" is the usual industry-lobby hyperbole) hit to their bottom line in the short run will be the winners in the long run. Unless most of the world fails to do so,[/quote]Even in the latter case, the countries that do embrace green tech will have at least two substantial advantages over those which don't:

1) they will have lowered their dependence on imported fossil fuel (or have more potential export if they're an oil-exporter), and gained the security and economic benefits that go with that, and

2) they will have a head start in preparing for post-Peak Oil.

[quote=garo;222523]In other news, Jeremy Grantham lays out a beautifully argued essay in his latest quarterly missive.[/quote]Essay 4 in [URL]http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/JGLetter_SummerEssays_2Q10.pdf[/URL], I think

Barry Ritholtz precedes his quotation of Grantham with:

[quote=Ritholtz]Jeremy Grantham, who has long had investments in Timber and Natural Resources, puts a surprising smackdown on the Global Warming denialist crowd.

In the updated version of Bailout Nation, I specifically mention the same think tanks slavish devotion to ideology and disproven ideas (EMH, etc.). I find it encouraging Grantham calls them out as well.
[/quote]Gradually, one by one, they're coming to realize that the right-wing ideology, like the left-wing ideology, is insufficient by itself. This is progress. Anti-AGWers who can bring themselves to rationally contemplate the evidence will realize what's really going on.

Hmm... It makes sense that the financial crowd might take the lead in this -- it's harder to believe dollars are members of a worldwide conspiracy [I](in regard to AGW, that is :-)[/I] than to believe people are.

- - -

I note that Grantham hasn't been denying climate change:

[URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grantham_Research_Institute_on_Climate_Change_and_the_Environment[/URL]

[URL]http://www2.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Home.aspx[/URL]

- - -

BTW: How to profit?

1. Short-sell Florida beachfront. :-)

2. As a comment on the Ritholtz site says,
[quote]I’ve had a global warming portfolio now for years and there’s one category of investment that stands out: pest management. Warmer weather, more bugs, especially termites and bedbugs. I’m long ROL which has done pretty well vs. the SP 500 over the past 10, 5, and 1 years.[/quote]

[quote=cheesehead;222619]Essay 4 in [URL]http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/JGLetter_SummerEssays_2Q10.pdf[/URL], I think
[/quote]
Indeed. I presumed people would know how to get Grantham's quarterly missives :smile:.
[quote=cheesehead;222619]
Gradually, one by one, they're coming to realize that the right-wing ideology, like the left-wing ideology, is insufficient by itself. This is progress. Anti-AGWers who can bring themselves to rationally contemplate the evidence will realize what's really going on.
[/quote]

Who exactly are you referring to here? If it is Ritholtz or Grantham, rest assured that they never needed any coming around.

[quote]
Hmm... It makes sense that the financial crowd might take the lead in this -- it's harder to believe dollars are members of a worldwide conspiracy [I](in regard to AGW, that is :-)[/I] than to believe people are.
[/quote]
Far from it. Barry has posted recently about how most money managers he meets are totally heads up their asses in this. He also noted if they can't deal with facts in this sphere, how comfortable would one be to leave money in their hands. They might let their ideology get in the way of moneymaking.

[quote]
I note that Grantham hasn't been denying climate change:

[URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grantham_Research_Institute_on_Climate_Change_and_the_Environment[/URL]

[URL]http://www2.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Home.aspx[/URL]
[/quote]

I think you are understating a bit here. Grantham is the opposite of a denier. Or are you pre-disposed to seeing all money-managers as deniers?

[quote=garo;222783]I think you are understating a bit here.[/quote]That was my intent.
[quote]Or are you pre-disposed to seeing all money-managers as deniers?[/quote]No.

An example of an anti-AGWer's public falsifiable prediction (I want to see more of these):

"Hurricanes, Global Warming or Cooling: The Weather Year of a Lifetime"

[URL]http://www.statecollege.com/news/columns/hurricanes-global-warming-or-cooling-the-weather-year-of-a-lifetime-458526/[/URL]

[quote=Joe Bastardi]I have always been an optimist, but somehow I feel like this is it, as far as the chance to really stand out in the weather.[/quote]... by which I think he means [I]in that sentence[/I] this is his chance to make a dramatic weather prediction that will "stand out", rather than meaning the chance that this year's weather will "stand out" in comparison to future years. His later sentences, except the next one, largely refer to the latter, though.

[quote]This past winter, now this summer and this hurricane season... well, I will never get a chance at hitting such major extreme weather events in the U.S. again.[/quote]Got that? He's predicting that never again in his lifetime will there be such major extreme weather events (U.S.) as there were in the past year (starting with winter 2009-2010).

It's potentially possible for that prediction to be disproved as soon as the end of hurricane season 2011. (It probably won't be that soon, though IMO.)

I'd welcome his dramatic prediction even more if we could see the specific numbers he provides to his paying clients (see below), but we can't.

[quote]I don't plan on dying anytime soon; it's just that as far as the overall pattern recognition skills I use to come up with my ideas go, they will never line up like this again.

I realize there may have been individual events that outstrip individual events of this past year: bigger hurricanes, higher record highs, lower record lows, a snowstorm that might be bigger for a place, etc. But in terms of the frequency of headline-grabbing weather, it won't happen again in my lifetime.

. . .

With wrestling, I would fight and often lose, but in the weather, I have had a better chance at winning. There was always the next mountain to climb, but I don't see, weather-wise, in my lifetime the chance of this kind of mountain to climb over a period of a year like this one.

This is what it must be like to be a boxer, when you know the big fights are done. I am not talking about a forecast service-forecast service fight, but the greatest year of weather in my lifetime. If you want to talk about winter being winter and summer being summer, this is the greatest I will ever see. It's sad to know that after this such a thing won't occur again, but the challenge is getting out there with these ideas sooner rather than later, and then seeing if they are correct.[/quote]I admire that last part: he's not afraid to publish his dramatic prediction, although in fuzzy terms ... and I understand that he wants to be paid for the specifics.

[quote]. . .

The coming cooling of the planet overall will return it to where it was in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.[/quote]Something I've wondered: How specifically would each individual anti-AGWer be willing to state a threshold for testing whether their belief was right or wrong?

For myself, as to a threshold for disproving the AGW hypothesis, right here I can only say that it's a matter of becoming less-and-less likely as time goes on. I'm [I]willing[/I] to state a numerically-testable threshold for myself, but I'd first have to do a bunch of statistics research, because my threshold would be in the form of a statistical measure. (I'd accept the same from anti-AGWers, of course.) While I generally understand most statistics I read, I'm very rusty at using specific statistical measures, and would need to study if I wanted to do more than quote someone else's numbers.

OTOH, I probably don't want to spend the time necessary to come up with my own personal threshold, so the best I could actually do is to find and quote (or adopt) someone else's threshold statistical measure. I'll try to do that soon.

Later, Bastardi says:
[quote]So it comes down to a forecast, and my attitude with my detractors is this: Let's see who is right the next 20-30 years. Global temperatures go up and down, and have been generally going up, while the oceans have been warm, but will dive over the next 18 months. Even the almighty climate models see it, as you see temperatures, relative to normal, cooling dramatically around the globe over the next nine months! (See the attached charts for more information.)[/quote]

Here's an anti-AGW theory:

There's been no change in Earth's atmosphere's "total infrared optical depth (TIOD)" for 61 years.

Apparently "the most plausible explanation of the above fact, the equilibrium atmospheric H2O content is constrained with the theoretical optimal TIOD. Our simulation results are summarized in . . . Fig. 2. . . . Apparently, increased total CO2 column amount is coupled with decreasing H2O column amount."

[URL]http://kirkmyers.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/miskolczi-destroys-greenhouse-theory/[/URL]

[URL="http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-Examiner%7Ey2010m2d9-New-research-into-greenhouse-effect-challenges-theory-of-manmade-global-warming"]http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2010m2d9-New-research-into-greenhouse-effect-challenges-theory-of-manmade-global-warming[/URL]

[URL]http://www.met.hu/idojaras/IDOJARAS_vol111_No1_01.pdf[/URL]

But why? Why should increasing CO[sub]2[/sub] shove out H[sub]2[/sub]O?

Indeed, is there any measurement that H[sub]2[/sub]O content in the atmosphere [I]has[/I] trended down for 61 years?

Note that Miskolczi says, in the PDF, that

[quote=PDF]The optimal conversion of F0+P0 to OLR would require that either TA ≈ 0 or TA ≈1. The first case is a planet with a completely opaque atmophere with saturated greenhouse effect, and the second case is a planet without greenhouse gases. For the Earth obviously the TA ≈ 0 condition apply[/quote]That is, he states that Earth is "a planet with a completely opaque atmophere[sic] with saturated greenhouse effect".

Trouble is, Earth's GHGs do [I]not[/I] cause a saturated greenhouse effect!

I've read a response to that century-old anti-AGW argument (scientific refutation of it began in the early 20th century), and will look for it and add a link here.

Edit: This isn't the one I'm looking for, but it's similar:

From [URL]http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm[/URL]

[quote]The greenhouse effect will in fact operate even if the absorption of radiation were totally saturated in the lower atmosphere. The planet's temperature is regulated by the thin upper layers where radiation does escape easily into space. Adding more greenhouse gas there will change the balance. Moreover, even a 1% change in that delicate balance would make a serious difference in the planet’s surface temperature. The logic is rather simple once it is grasped, but it takes a new way of looking at the atmosphere — not as a single slab, like the gas in Koch's tube (or the glass over a greenhouse), but as a set of interacting layers.[/quote]More, here: [URL]http://www.aip.org/history/climate/simple.htm#L_0141[/URL]

[quote]What happens to infrared radiation emitted by the Earth's surface? As it moves up layer by layer through the atmosphere, some is stopped in each layer. (To be specific: a molecule of carbon dioxide, water vapor or some other greenhouse gas absorbs a bit of energy from the radiation. The molecule may radiate the energy back out again in a random direction. Or it may transfer the energy into velocity in collisions with other air molecules, so that the layer of air where it sits gets warmer.) The layer of air radiates some of the energy it has absorbed back toward the ground, and some upwards to higher layers. As you go higher, the atmosphere gets thinner and colder. Eventually the energy reaches a layer so thin that radiation can escape into space.

What happens if we add more carbon dioxide? In the layers so high and thin that much of the heat radiation from lower down slips through, adding more greenhouse gas means the layer will absorb more of the rays. So the place from which most of the heat energy finally leaves the Earth will shift to higher layers. Those are colder layers, so they do not radiate heat as well. The planet as a whole is now taking in more energy than it radiates (which is in fact our current situation). As the higher levels radiate some of the excess downwards, all the lower levels down to the surface warm up. The imbalance must continue until the high levels get warmer and radiate out more energy. As in Tyndall's analogy of a dam on a river, the barrier thrown across the outgoing radiation forces the level of temperature everywhere beneath it to rise until there is enough radiation pushing out to balance what the Sun sends in.

While that may sound fairly simple once it is explained, the process is not obvious if you have started by thinking of the atmosphere from below as a single slab. The correct way of thinking eluded neary[sic] all scientists for more than a century after Fourier. Physicists learned only gradually how to describe the greenhouse effect. To do so, they had to make detailed calculations of a variety of processes in each layer of the atmosphere. [I](For more on absorption of infrared by gas molecules, see [URL="http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm#molecule"]this discussion[/URL] in the essay on Basic Radiation Calculations.)[/I][/quote]See what I mean when I've said that every anti-AGW argument I've seen (in enough detail) had a scientific flaw?

Note: I shouldn't have added that last sentence in my preceding post. It's the scientific merit of this particular case that counts, not some ripe-to-fall generalization of mine. My irritation got the better of me again.

The PDF does go on to consider atmospheres with multiple layers, and does indeed state:

[quote]We know that – because of the existence of the IR atmospheric window – the flux transmittance must not be zero and the atmosphere can not be opaque. The Earth’s atmosphere solves this contradiction by using the radiative effect of a partial cloud cover.[/quote]Is he saying that the cloud cover somehow always counteracts the error from assuming greenhouse saturation? That would be a bit too magical for me, but I'm out of my depth in interpreting much of the paper.

Here's one person's description of how he changed his view on anthropogenic global warming from denial to acceptance. It's in comment #152, from "Messier Tidy Upper", to one of Phil Plait's [I]Bad Astronomy[/I] ("BA") blog entries.

[URL]http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/08/03/new-study-clinches-it-the-earth-is-warming-up/#comment-287735[/URL]

[quote]. . .

Well, I'll start by saying no I wasn't bullied into changing my view but very gradually convinced. My personal experience here is as follows :

I've been interested in this issue for ages -- growing up in the late 1980's I initially felt concerned and alarmed by the Greenhouse Effect [I](Global Warming)[/I] issue.

Some years later -- after some of the over-hyped predictions from then hadn't quite materialised -- I encountered the geologist, skeptic and AGW denier Prof. Ian Plimer. I attended a few of Plimer's lectures against the reality of AGW -- some through an astronomy group. I spoke with him in person -- and he came across very well as a good, sincere bloke who is genuinely committed to science with a valid if un-orthodox perspective. I read Plimer's book [I]'Heaven + Earth'[/I] which, I can assure you, seems very scholarly and convincing. Thus, yes, I did become very strongly convinced by Plimer's case there that AGW is bunk.

With the zeal of a convert, I then argued this case to others -- incl. & esp. here on the BA blog. In doing so, I had to argue with a number of people who of course, disagreed vigorously and provided evidence against what is was saying. There were a number of passionate arguments with a number of posters over a long time. Very gradually, painfully, I found that what I was now convinced was true wasn't so much.

I was convinced that 1998 being the hottest year alone [I](which okay is what I then thought -- 2005 was almost certainly slightly hotter)[/I] just about ruled out the notion of dangerous Global Warming on its own -- that we had, in fact, been cooling down over the past decade. I still think it is a major point against AGW and will be happier when we have a much hotter, much more recent record hot year but I've had to accept that, yes, it is possible for 1998 or 2005 to have been record hottest years but yet the trend is still going upwards.

Plus that the selection of 1998 as a starting point is misleading and doesn't provide the full picture, that 1998 was an outlier and that a decade by decade comparison shows that the last period has indeed been unnaturally hot. Eventually, I had to accept that and acknowledge that the [I]'1998 = hottest year thus no AGW'[/I] argument while initially highly convincingly is misleading and wrong.

I've argued it was a natural process, a natural cycle and not caused by humans -- that it’s our Sun or Milankovitch cycles or lack of volcanic eruptions etc .. NOT us. But when you look at the evidence you find that these have been taken into account by the climatologists. That they don't add up to the full picture. The Sunspot cycle explains and follows our climate pattern to a large extent but then at a point in recent decades the relationship breaks down. The Sun should be causing the climate to cool but instead it warms. Why? The Milankovitch and other natural cycles say we should be cooling down -- but the upwards trend is still there. Why?

I still think there may be a natural component or two -- that some factors may explain a small part of Global Warming. But it is now clear that these cannot explain all the warming. That some natural factors, (eg. the solar cycle) are out of synch with rising planetary temperatures and cannot be the cause of them. That, when everything is taken into account -- & it has been by the climatologist’s involved -- natural processes and cycles are insufficient to cause the warming we have experienced. So I've had to acknowledge, slowly and painfully, that yes, Humanity [B]is[/B] behind at least a very large percentage of the Global Warming we've undergone.

I've also had to acknowledge that the climatologist conspiracy theory doesn't work. That all these individuals aren't frauds or charlatans but genuine scientists who have trained and understood the science aren’t all just working a con to gain grants and drive a political agenda. That the climategate emails can be explained as being taken out of context and misinterpreted. It has been very hard to convince me that things like [I]"hide the decline", "we can't find the warming and it’s a travesty we can't" & "don't tell them England has a Freedom of Information request"[/I] don't have the obvious negative readings they seem to have. That these don't add up to a disproof of the science of AGW & a proof of conspiracy. I've had to face the reality eventually that the science [B]is[/B] solid despite some nasty leaked emails. The words used by a few have been overblown, cherry-picked and taken to mean things that they just don't.

I still wish there was an enquiry or two more -- and more visible independent from the bodies involved with more clearly neutral judges. I still think some of the content of the emails is disturbing and that the CRU scientists are far from above reproach. For instance, I think the [I]"change the meaning of peer review"[/I] attempt -- which I now get was NOT actually successful -- was a deplorable and disgraceful thing to say that reflects very badly on the individuals involved. That the threat to delete emails and the loss of raw data is very worrying. I am a huge believer in science needing to be open to scrutiny and that information should be made public and available for everyone to see. But I now accept that [B]this doesn't invalidate the whole science itself.[/B] That the rising temperatures, the melting glaciers, the biological indicators all point conclusively to undeniable evidence that our planet is indeed warming.

I've also, perhaps most painfully had to accept that Ian Plimer's book is NOT an entirely valid and comprehensive and conclusive disproof of AGW. A couple of posters here have pointed me to a number of reviews that show instead that it is badly flawed and not what it seems. Plimer isn't telling the whole story at best. He comes across as very sincere and armed with compelling evidence all well sourced and cited but a lot of things in the book are wrong or misinterpreted. A lot of the studies he cites don't mean what he claims they mean & the arguments made in his book don't actually stand up to further scrutiny -- as I've noted in the paragraphs above.

There's more I could say, these are just some of the main points & I might see if I can find some of the more powerful comments here and reference them for you. I'll also note again Peter Sinclair's [I]"Climate Denial Crock of the Week"[/I] videos which I found among the final straws that broke the camel of my former [I]"AGW = bunk"[/I] belief.

I'll stress again, it wasn't any one single thing that finally convinced me but instead a cumulative process of many things and eventually being forced to concede argument after argument that was no longer tenable.

I'll also note that name-calling and being rude to me never worked. providing the evidence and arguing calmly, logically and politely eventually did.

Finally, I know this blog has changed a lot of people's minds on various things and even changed people's lives sometimes quite dramatically. All for the better. Mine is one of one of those -- and I will say [B]Thanks[/B] for that to the BA and to some of the commenters here.[/quote]Regarding his comment, "I still think there may be a natural component or two -- that some factors may explain a small part of Global Warming. But it is now clear that these cannot explain all the warming." -- [I]The AGW hypothesis does [U]not[/U] say that the anthropogenic GHGs are the only factor in global warming[/I]. Any real climatologist knows quite well that there are many natural factors in addition to the anthropogenic GHGs, and never contends that anthropogenic GHGs are the [I]only[/I] factor.

What the AGW hypothesis says is that anthropogenic GHGs have become the principal forcing factor in the recent (50-100 years) global warming.

Anti-AGWers sometimes get confused about the distinction between a principal forcing factor and [I]the only[/I] factor. (And there are folks who happily encourage that confusion.) That's why there are all those silly arguments about solar variation, water vapor, Milankovitch cycles, and Ice Age cycles -- the mistaken idea that the AGW hypothesis denies or ignores any of those other factors.

Here's a list of 10 recent measurements that are consistent with the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis.

Almost all of them contradict one or more anti-AGW hypotheses or arguments.

(My standing challenge to anti-AGWers, never yet met: show me a hypothesis that explains all these facts as well or better than the AGW hypothesis, but incorporates no significant effect from anthropogenic greenhouse gases.)

The following items are mostly my wording (except where I show an exact quote) adapted from "10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change" at [URL]http://www.skepticalscience.com/10-Indicators-of-a-Human-Fingerprint-on-Climate-Change.html[/URL]

(Note: This also would be a response to some earlier challenges to me, that I initially did not meet well, to list "multiple independent lines of evidence for man-made global warming".)

Here's a chart of the ten items: [URL]http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/Human_Fingerprints_1024.jpg[/URL]

1. Humans are currently annually emitting over 30 billion tons of CO[sub]2[/sub] (the most significant greenhouse gas at present), from combustion of fossil fuels. I quoted a more specific figure somewhere earlier in this thread. This is many (about 100, IIRC) times the total natural emission from volcanoes, for instance.

This annual total is more than the [I]measured[/I] annual increase in CO[sub]2[/sub] resident in the atmosphere. (Natural sinks are absorbing a portion of that anthropogenic CO[sub]2[/sub], but not all of it.)

This measurement contradicts anti-AGW arguments that humans don't emit enough CO[sub]2[/sub] to make a difference in the atmosphere.

2. Certain metabolic pathways in plants preferentially incorporate lighter/heavier isotopes of carbon. Measurements of the isotopic ratios of carbon in atmospheric CO[sub]2[/sub] find that the ratio has been shifting toward the ratio found in plants (origin of fossil fuels) and away from the ratio found in other natural sources of CO[sub]2[/sub].

This measurement contradicts anti-AGW arguments that the increase in atmospheric CO[sub]2[/sub] is coming from natural (non-fossil-fuel) sources.

3. Measurements of the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere find that it is "falling in line with the amount of carbon dioxide rising, just as you'd expect from fossil fuel burning which takes oxygen out of the air to create carbon dioxide".

This measurement contradicts anti-AGW arguments that the increase in atmospheric CO[sub]2[/sub] is coming from natural (non-fossil-fuel) sources.

4. Measurements of the isotopic ratio of carbon incorporated in growing coral, going back several centuries, show that it is shifting (sharply, recently) toward the ratio characteristic of fossil fuels.

This measurement contradicts anti-AGW arguments that the increase in atmospheric (and oceanic) CO[sub]2[/sub] is coming from non-biologic sources.

5. "Satellites measure less heat escaping out to space, at the particular wavelengths that CO2 absorbs heat, thus finding [I]'direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth's greenhouse effect'[/I]."

This measurement contradicts anti-GW arguments that the greenhouse effect is not increasing.

6. Measurements of the spectrum of downward long-wave IR coming to the earth's surface finds "more heat returning at CO2" [and other GHG] "wavelengths, leading to the conclusion that [I]'this experimental data should effectively end the argument by skeptics that no experimental evidence exists for the connection between greenhouse gas increases in the atmosphere and global warming.'[/I]"

This measurement contradicts anti-GW arguments that increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases cause no global warming.

7. Measured nighttime minimum temperatures are rising faster than measured daytime maximum temperatures, which is what would be expected from the greenhouse effect.

This measurement contradicts anti-AGW arguments that global warming is due only or primarily to increased solar radiation (which would increase daytime maximums faster than nighttime minimums), not the greenhouse effect.

8. Measurements of stratospheric temperatures show that they're decreasing, which is what would be expected from the greenhouse effect.

This measurement contradicts anti-AGW arguments that global warming is due only or primarily to increased solar radiation (which would increase temperatures of all atmospheric layers).

9. Measurements of the height of the tropopause (boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere) show that it is rising, which is what would be expected from tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling due to the greenhouse effect.

(I don't know of a specific anti-AGW argument or hypothesis that this contradicts -- but it is consistent with the AGW hypothesis.)

10. Satellites have measured that the ionosphere is cooling and contracting, which is what would be expected from greenhouse warming.

This measurement contradicts anti-AGW arguments that global warming is due only or primarily to increased solar radiation (which would increase temperatures of all atmospheric layers).

A book review, from [I]American Scientist[/I], September-October 2010:

[URL]http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/2010/5/manufactured-ignorance[/URL]

[quote][SIZE=3]BOOK REVIEW[/SIZE]

[SIZE=5][B]Manufactured Ignorance[/B][/SIZE]
Robert Proctor

[B]MERCHANTS OF DOUBT: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.[/B] Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. x + 355 pp. Bloomsbury Press, 2010. $27.

Historians a thousand years from now may wonder what went wrong: How, after scholars had so thoroughly nailed down the reality of anthropogenic climate change, did so many Americans get fooled into thinking it was all a left-wing hoax?

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway give us some very good--if disturbing--answers in their fascinating, detailed and artfully written new book, [I]Merchants of Doubt.[/I] In it they show how a small band of right-wing scholars steeped in Cold War myopia, with substantial financing from powerful corporate polluters, managed to mislead large sections of the American public into thinking that the evidence for human-caused warming was uncertain, unsound, politically tainted and unfit to serve as the basis for any kind of political action.

Their story begins with what they call the "Tobacco Strategy," the campaign launched in the mid-1950s by cigarette makers to refute and ridicule the evidence linking smoking to mass suffering and death. One might suppose the strategy is connected to global-warming denial purely by analogy--a case of yet another powerful industry trying to stave off regulation by obfuscating--but Oreskes and Conway show that key climate-change denialists actually became masters at doubt-mongering while working for the tobacco industry.

Frederick Seitz, for example, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences and ex officio member of the President's Science Advisory Committee, in 1979 was hired by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, makers of Camel cigarettes, to head their Medical Research Committee. A solid-state physicist with Manhattan Project credentials, Seitz was assigned the task of handing out $45 million in research grants to buttress the prestige of tobacco--grants that, as he would later admit, steered clear of anything that might impugn tobacco. "They didn't want us looking at the health effects of cigarette smoking," he said in a 2006 interview. Seitz was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars over the six years during which he served in this capacity. It was not long thereafter that he and a crew of Cold Warrior colleagues also began denying the reality of human-caused climate change.

And deny they did, with a vengeance. In 1984 Seitz, Robert Jastrow and William Nierenberg founded the George C. Marshall Institute, which basically did for climate change what the Tobacco Institute had long been doing for cigarettes. Seitz and his colleagues claimed that global warming was caused by natural variations in solar flux, just as acid rain was caused by volcanic eruptions. They argued that any warming caused by greenhouse emissions is swamped by natural climate variations. The Marshall Institute on its Web site claims even today that there is no global climate-change consensus, and that there may actually be "benefits" from having more CO[sub]2[/sub] in the atmosphere (higher agricultural productivity is one fantasy). Seitz and his cohorts, joined by another Cold Warrior physicist, Fred Singer, gained enormous media attention from journalists taken in by the bluster. Their claims also found sympathetic ears among higher-ups in the Reagan and Bush administrations.

Why were Seitz and company so adamant in their opposition to the reality of global climate change? Oreskes and Conway show that climate change was really a surrogate for larger fears of a regulatory state--a state seen as increasingly willing to curtail free-market liberties in the name of environmental protection. To counter an imagined Soviet missile threat, Seitz and his clique had defended President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, a multibillion- dollar effort to weaponize space. In fact, the original purpose of the Marshall Institute was to defend Reagan's hawkish--and much criticized--plan to erect a high-tech missile shield in orbit. When the Soviet empire collapsed in 1989, these Cold Warrior physicists moved on to attack a new enemy, environmentalism, which they saw as furthering the same anti-American agenda. Environmentalism (and in particular climate science) was conjured up as the latest in a long line of threats to liberty--"a green tree with red roots," as conservative journalist George Will once put it.

All of which helps explain why these free-market fundamentalists, steeped in Cold War oppositions (market economies versus command economies, the individual versus the state, the free world versus Big Brother), attacked any and all efforts to trace environmental maladies back to corporate chemicals. Chlorinated fluorocarbons were not really eating away at the ozone layer, and the sulfates being belched from coal-fired plants were not causing forest-harming acid rain; even secondhand cigarette smoke was not causing any provable harm. This tobacco connection is significant. Oreskes and Conway show that Singer, Seitz and a number of other climate-change denialists served as advisors to the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, a Philip Morris front run by APCO Associates to challenge the evidence linking secondhand smoke to disease.

Of course, efforts of this sort don't come cheap. Oreskes and Conway describe an elaborate network of extremist scientists, all with links to well-endowed "think tanks" such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Trade associations such as the Electric Power Research Institute, the Global Climate Coalition and the Tobacco Institute have provided funding as well. Denialists also have at their disposal polluter-friendly media outlets such as the [I]Washington Times,[/I] Fox News and the [I]National Review[/I]. Additional assistance comes from libertarian talk radio and Web sites fronting for one or another well-oiled interest.

Oreskes and Conway lament the fact that climate-change denialists have been so successful in getting their message out. Legitimate climate scientists publish corrections or refutations, but these usually appear in publications read chiefly by other scientists. The doubt-mongers, however, are often able to effectively exploit the "balance bias" of the mainstream media. Newspapers often take the position that a good story has "two sides." Controversy sells, which makes it easy to overlook settled facts. In one study of U.S. media, Max and Jules Boykoff found that more than half of all stories on global warming from 1988 through 2002 gave equal time to denialists, with another 35 percent giving space to them while recognizing the consensus view. This helps explain why the U.S. Senate in 1997, only three months before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized, resolved to block its adoption by a vote of 97 to zero. Oreskes and Conway put it grimly: "Scientifically, global warming was an established fact. Politically, global warming was dead."

Oddly enough, that ignorance seems to be continuing, or even growing, despite the presence of a more science-friendly president in the White House. A number of national polls indicate an increase in public disbelief in the reality of global warming in recent years. Oreskes and Conway lay part of the blame on the Internet, which they describe as "an information hall of mirrors" where disinformation can flourish without hindrance--"pluralism run amok." A particularly snowy winter seems to influence public opinion, but so do the utterances of some media ideologues. Glenn Beck, "the second most popular television personality in America" according to a 2010 Harris poll, often regales his viewers with gems like this: "I see the issue of global warming as nothing but trying to entangle us and the rest of the world into one world government."

There is much in this book to outrage anyone who cares about the future of the planet, human health, or scientific integrity. We find an excellent account of revisionist attacks on Rachel Carson (now blamed for deaths from the banning of DDT), and a good explanation of the links between recent authors of antienvironmentalist screeds and right-wing think tanks. There is an interesting discussion of the politics of type I error (thinking an effect is real when it is not) versus type II error (missing effects that are really there). Some statisticians say that the latter are not really errors at all, just "missed opportunities." Lots of tobacco-industry conniving is exposed, and the science and politics behind the discovery of ozone depletion, acid rain and climate modeling are clearly explained.

The authors also point to a certain irony in the fact that libertarians are now using tricks once pilloried by one of their traditional heroes--the great George Orwell. Orwell's is one of the most powerful literary voices ever to speak out against fact-crushing authoritarianism. He coined such expressions as "memory hole" and "newspeak" to designate the means by which totalitarian regimes suppress the truth. Oreskes and Conway point out that the "right-wing defenders of American liberty" have resorted to similar tactics, seeking to ambush facts judged inconvenient for their corporate paymasters.
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[quote]There are other books treating the history of manufactured ignorance: Think of David Michaels's [I]Doubt Is Their Product[/I] (2008), Ross Gelbspan's [I]The Heat Is On [/I](1997), James Hoggan's [I]Climate Cover-Up[/I] (2009), Chris Mooney's [I]The Republican War on Science[/I] (2009), David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz's [I]Deceit and Denial[/I] (2002), my own book [I]Cancer Wars[/I] (1995)[I],[/I] and a book I coedited with Londa Schiebinger--[I]Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance [/I](2008). But Oreskes and Conway's book is the most powerful exploration to date of how climate-change denialists managed to infiltrate high ranks of the Republican establishment and to block the translation of scientific facts into intelligent action.

Of course what's really at stake in most environmental science defiance is the proper role of government in limiting the right to pollute. The Seitz-Singer-Nierenberg crew are not so much antiscience as antigovernment and pro-unfettered business. Ever since the "Reagan Revolution" of the 1980s, libertarian ideologues have managed to convince large numbers of Americans that government is inherently bad--worse even than carcinogens in your food or poisons in your water. So for followers of this line of thinking--expressed in some recent Tea Party activities but more potently in many of the trade associations and "think tanks" established by major polluters--the view seems to be that if science gets in your way, you can always make up some of your own. The foolishness of such myopia is now evident in the oil spreading throughout the Gulf of Mexico--vivid proof that, as Isaiah Berlin once observed, liberty for wolves can mean death to lambs.

[I]Robert N. Proctor is professor of the history of science at Stanford University. He is the author of several books, including [/I]Golden Holocaust: How Cigarette Makers Engineered a Global Health Catastrophe [I](forthcoming from University of California Press).[/I][/quote]