Seeds of doubt against climate science

[n2doc]

Industry and free-market advocates have joined forces to undermine tobacco research, and they're doing so again on global warming.

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
June 8, 2010


If some of the ongoing attacks on the credibility of climate science feel familiar, there's a reason. With their unattributed claims downplaying the severity of the problem and their vague allegations of scientific impropriety, the assaults are the latest in a long tradition of organized efforts by industry and free-market enthusiasts to undermine the credibility of science they don't like.

One early campaign was launched by tobacco companies. Seeking to prevent government regulation of its product, the American cigarette industry created the Council for Tobacco Research to generate research disputing the work of mainstream scientists. "Doubt is our product," said a 1969 industry memo, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public." Fighting regulation meant creating doubt about the health effects of smoking. The strategy proved enormously successful, helping prevent most regulation of tobacco products until 2009, nearly six decades after the carcinogenic properties of tobacco were established.

The strategy was expanded beyond the cigarette industry in part because of the efforts of physicist Frederick Seitz, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences who went on to direct R.J. Reynolds' biomedical research program. In 1984, he joined forces with astrophysicist Robert Jastrow and nuclear physicist William Nierenberg to establish the George C. Marshall Institute. Their goal was to defend Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative — better known as "Star Wars." For the rest of the decade, the institute defended SDI by exaggerating the Soviet threat and by attacking the credibility of SDI's opponents. One 1987 article by Jastrow was headlined "America has Five Years Left!" It warned that without action, Soviet superiority would soon lead to crushing defeat for the West.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the institute found a new enemy: environmentalists, who were viewed as "watermelons" — green on the outside, red on the inside. Nierenberg had paved the way for this target shift, working behind the scenes to weaken the conclusions of important government reports on acid rain and climate change in 1983 and 1984.

more
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-oreskes-20100608,0,4509442.story

[marmar]

1. The "Free Market" will be the death of us all.

nt