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Breaking into Politics (1980-1988) |
- LINKS
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As the 1980s began, the question of global warming had become prominent
enough to be included for the first time in some public opinion polls.
A 1981 survey found that more than a third of American adults claimed
they had heard or read about the greenhouse effect. That meant the
news had spread beyond the small minority who regularly followed scientific
issues. When pollsters explicitly asked people what they thought of
"increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leading to changes in
weather patterns," nearly two-thirds replied that the problem was
"somewhat serious" or "very serious." |
|
Most of these people, however, would never have brought up the
subject by themselves. Only a small fraction of Americans understood
that the risk of global warming was mainly due to carbon dioxide gas
from fossil fuels. Meanwhile a survey of Canadians found that people
divided about equally among those who thought climate change was due
to some kind of industrial pollution, those who blamed nuclear tests,
and those who pointed to space exploration. (The last was no anomaly,
for a good many Americans surveyed in the 1990s still imagined that
nuclear power and the space program contributed to global warming.)
Most people suspected the issue was something they ought to be concerned
about, but among the world's many problems it did not loom large.
Even those who worried most about pollution were seldom concerned
with global affairs, directing their dismay at the oil spill or chemical
wastes that endangered a particular neighborhood.(75*) |
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Among climate scientists, concern continued to rise in the early and mid
1980s. Computer models of the climate were rapidly improving and
winning the trust of experts. The modelers now said they were quite
confident that a global warming of several degrees would come within
the 21st century. To an ordinary citizen, a change of a few degrees
might sound trivial. But the scientists understood that it was serious,
and science journalists passed along their predictions of sea-level
rise and other problems. (Later research confirmed the predictions.
For example, a 2004 study estimated that a rise of 3°C sustained
over centuries would suffice to melt the Greenland ice cap and put
the world’s coastal cities deep under water.)"Gloomsday Predictions
Have No Fault" was how Science magazine summarized the
report of one authoritative review panel. The report was noticed
even by the New York Times, although only deep on an inside
page.(76)
Studies of ancient ice,
from deep holes drilled in Greenland and Antarctica, backed up the
models. For they showed that over past glacial cycles, temperatures
and the CO2 content of the atmosphere had gone
up and down together in close synchrony. Meanwhile, British and
American groups announced that the global warming trend, after pausing
between 1940 and the mid-1970s, had resumed with a vengeance. On
average the world was hotter in 1980, 1981, and 1983 than in any
years as far back as good records went (to the mid-19th century).
Russian climate scientists in particular were convinced that global
warming was already manifest and urged their foreign colleagues
to acknowledge it.(77)
|
Full discussion in
<=Models (GCMs)
<=CO2
greenhouse
<=Modern temp's
|
When their scientific findings met with public
indifference, more and more climate scientists around the world concluded
that they should work to influence government policy. Along with the
traditional scientists' goal of extracting more funds for their own
field of study, most weather experts had come to feel that knowledge
of climate change would be vitally important for our civilization.
Some went further than urging governments to support research. Convinced
that the world faced severe global warming within their children's
lifetime, they felt called upon to pressure the world's governments
to take active steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. |
<=International |
These concerns were reinforced and complicated
by the ties that some scientists found with other environmentalist
issues. An outstanding example was the distinguished biologist George
Woodwell, who was a founder and board member of both the National
Resources Defense Council and the World Wildlife Fund. Like many biologists
and environmentalists, Woodwell decried the destruction of virgin
tropical forests. He worried that changes in human use of land could
be so socially disruptive "as to be equivalent to the drastic changes
in the human condition that a warming of the climate might lead to."(78) The proliferating slash-and-burn peasants
who cleared new fields were driving countless species toward extinction,
arousing public sympathies for a battle to "save the rainforests."
Activists who linked destruction of tropical species with greenhouse
warming could make better headway on both issues. Magazine and television
images of landscapes going up in smoke began to catch the public eye.
Here at last was an immediate, visible connection of CO2
emission with ruined nature (even though the scientific connection
to global warming was far from certain). Scientists associated with
the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Resources Institute, and
similar groups began to issue reports and lobby Congress about global
warming.(79) |
<=>Biosphere
|
The great majority of scientists remained
politically inactive. They felt they were doing their job by pursuing
research, building up the solid evidence that would tell governments
what to do. "I really don't have that much talent to try to influence
politicians," one climate scientist explained. "It's much better using
my talent, staying as anonymous as possible here, and try to publish
a paper... Because once you start getting in the political arena,...
you lose credibility."(80) These scientists might answer a phone call from a reporter
but they did not offer the confident and snappy answers that journalists
wanted. If pressed to offer policy guidance, they preferred to work
in government-sponsored study panels and answer questions posed by
administrators. Wouldn't official reports by government science agencies,
national academies, and international conferences eventually convey
information about what actions were appropriate? |
<=>International
|
A few scientists felt the world would take too little action on
climate change, and too late, unless they personally took the initiative
to stir up the public directly. These scientists had to learn some
tricks. A Senator might brush off an academic who came to speak with
him or his staff, but the Senator paid attention if he saw the scientist
on television. Scientists were generally uncomfortable talking with
the media. Experience showed how journalists might grab a simple phrase,
ignoring the details and qualifications that were inseparable from
an accurate scientific account. A few scientists struggled to get
a hearing by deliberately wielding public relations techniques, such
as crafting approximately accurate but juicy "one-liner" statements
that journalists could pick up. Colleagues who had a rigid sense of
scientific precision were disgusted. One respected scientist publicly
accused his colleagues of publishing "fiction" instead of sound science,
speculating that "some of us feel compelled to emphasize the worst
case in order to get the attention of the decision makers who control
the funding."(81) |
|
There was indeed an ethical dilemma here, as Schneider pointed
out when other scientists criticized his approaches to the public.
It was not easy "to find the balance between being effective and being
honest," he admitted. "But promoting concern over the negative connotations
of the greenhouse effect in this media age usually means offering
few caveats and uncertainties at least if you want media coverage.
Twenty-second spots on national television programs... do not afford
time for hedged statements; and if one is going to influence the public,
one simply has to get into the media."(82) |
|
To get a reasonably accurate story to the public, the essential
people were professional science writers. There were only a few hundred
of them scattered about the world, spending most of their time writing
up medical news and other topics remote from geophysics. But many
of them were thoughtful people who took their responsibilities seriously.
They worked to maintain a symbiotic relationship with leading scientists,
each side seeking respect and understanding even as they openly used
the other for their purposes. |
|
When it came to deciding what scientific
developments were news, American journalists tended to take their
cues from the New York Times. The editors of the Times
followed the advice of their veteran science writer, Walter Sullivan.
A lanky and amiable reporter, Sullivan had frequented meetings of
geophysicists ever since the International Geophysical Year of 1957,
cultivating a set of trusted advisers in many fields. On the subject
of climate, he began listening to scientists like Schneider and, in
particular, James Hansen, conveniently located at a NASA institute
in New York City. Hansen was energized by his group's computer studies,
which showed that warming was likely. In 1981, Sullivan persuaded
his editors to feature a story about climate change, based on a scientific
article that Hansen sent the reporter a few days ahead of its publication
in Science magazine. For the first time the greenhouse effect
made page one of the New York Times. Sullivan threatened
the world with unprecedented warming and perhaps a disastrous rise
of sea level. The newspaper followed up with an editorial, declaring
that while the greenhouse effect was "still too uncertain to warrant
total alteration of energy policy," it was "no longer unimaginable"
that a radical policy change might become necessary.(83) |
<=Aerosols
|
This was just one example of a process that
brought the perils of climate change into newspapers, magazines, and
even occasionally television in the early 1980s. The stories usually
rested upon statements by leading scientists including Schneider,
Broecker, Nobel Prize winner Melvin Calvin and others. Politicians,
ever alert to shifts in what the public was worrying about, took notice.(84) |
=>Government
|
The fossil-fuel industries, and other business interests, saw that
worries about greenhouse gases might lead to government regulations,
following the example of restrictions on smog and spray-can chemicals.
Concern also grew among political conservatives, who tended to lump
together all claims about impending ecological dooms as left-wing
propaganda. When environmentalist ideals had first stirred, around
the time of Theodore Roosevelt, they had been scattered across the
entire political spectrum. A traditional conservative, let us say
a Republican bird-watcher, could be far more concerned about "conservation"
than a Democratic steelworker (more recently, at the far end of the
traditional Left, Communist nations were the planet's most egregious
polluters). But during the 1960s, as the new Left rose to prominence,
it became permanently associated with environmentalism. Perhaps that
was inevitable. Many environmental problems, like smog, seemed impossible
to solve without government intervention. Such interventions were
anathema to the new Right that began to ascend in the 1970s. |
|
By the mid 1970s, conservative economic and ideological interests
had joined forces to combat what they saw as mindless eco-radicalism.
Establishing conservative think tanks and media outlets, they propagated
sophisticated intellectual arguments and expert public-relations campaigns
against government regulation for any purpose whatever. On global
warming, it was naturally the fossil-fuel industries that took the
lead. Backed up by some scientists, industry groups developed everything
from elaborate studies to punchy advertisements, aiming to persuade
the public that there was nothing to worry about. |
|
The message was easily accepted by many among
the public, including some who felt deep sympathy for the natural
world. Many still found it incredible that mere human industry could
seriously interfere with the awesome planetary forces, seeing these
as simply an "environment" that happened to contain and sustain living
creatures. Others had finally abandoned that viewpoint, only to take
up James Lovelock's radical "Gaia hypothesis." Named (in the spirit
of the times) after the Greek Earth-goddess, this hypothesis held
that the atmosphere was a "contrivance" maintained by the biosphere.
There was real scientific content in the idea. But supporters, pushing
ahead to assert that life on Earth necessarily and automatically maintains
an atmosphere suitable for itself, gave a spuriously scientific gloss
to the snug old confidence in the Balance of Nature. (However, some
suspected that Gaia would defend "her" balance simply by eliminating
humanity itself.) |
<=Biosphere
|
The most comforting ideas came from a respected
scientist, Sherwood Idso, who published arguments that greenhouse
gas emissions would not warm the Earth or bring any other harm to
climate. Better still, by fertilizing crops, the increase of CO2
would bring tremendous benefits. His book, Carbon Dioxide: Friend
or Foe? came down entirely on the side of Friend. In his opinion,
the increase of CO2 "is something to be encouraged
and not suppressed."(85) Along the way Idso attacked the "scientific
establishment" for rejecting his theories. His scientific and popular
publications stirred vehement controversy. |
<=Radiation math |
As environmental and industrial groups and their scientific fellow-travelers
hurled uncompromising claims back and forth across a widening political
gulf, most scientists found it hard to get a hearing for more ambiguous
views. "Our instincts are to fight scientifically fair and to openly
admit uncertainty, even when unscientific weapons are deployed," a
climate scientist remarked. "This mismatch often leads to an amplified
sense of 'scientific' controversy."(86) Journalists in search of a gripping
story tended to present every scientific question as if it were a
head-on battle between two equal and diametrically opposite sides.
Yet most scientists saw themselves as just a bunch of people with
various degrees of uncertainty, groping about in a fog. |
|
After Ronald Reagan became President in 1981, environmental issues
of every kind became a useful tool for opponents of the Republican
administration. Reagan and his supporters could be counted on to embarrass
themselves with a see-no-evil approach to any industrial activity.
The greenhouse effect question now became strongly polarized along
political lines. You could usually guess whether someone thought global
warming was likely to happen, if you knew what they thought about
any sort of government environmental regulation. |
|
The fires of public interest were stoked
by Congressional hearings (promoted especially by Albert Gore, who
had taken an early interest in the topic). Also newsworthy was a 1983
controversy over an alarming report issued by the Environmental Protection
Agency, set against a calming report from the National Academy of
Sciences. It was largely thanks to this political skirmishing that
popular magazines and newspapers reported on the greenhouse effect
repeatedly during the early 1980s. |
<=>Government |
Far greater attention
went to other atmospheric changes. Air pollution remained a problem
in many cities, joined now by dire warnings about "acid rain." During
the 1970s, scientists had begun to report that rain carrying sulfates
emitted by power plants and other industries was devastating fish
and forests, and even the paint on houses, in certain vulnerable regions.
Coal-burning industries quieted local protests by building their smokestacks
hundreds of feet high, but that only spread the damage more widely.
In the 1980s, the problem stirred extensive political controversy
and even international recriminations. Images of moribund stands of
trees and decaying statues, attacked by sulfuric acid derived from
smokestacks thousands of miles upwind, argued that industrial emissions
could be a problem for everyone, everywhere. The excellent environmentalist
slogan, "Think globally, act locally," was no use when power plants
half a continent away sickened your neighborhood lake.(87) Some environmentalists proclaimed that acid rain would
eventually damage the entire planet. And this was not the worst global
threat. |
=>International
=>Other
gases
|
In 1980, scientists announced a new theory
for what had killed off the dinosaurs tens of millions of years ago:
an asteroid had struck the Earth and clouded the atmosphere for years,
freezing plants and animals. The theory fascinated the public, perhaps
less because it addressed dinosaurs than because it addressed extinction.
That struck a resonance with deep-set fears of nuclear war, which
had revived around the time Reagan took office. As one scientist remarked,
the asteroid theory "commanded belief because it fit with what we
are prepared to believe... Like everyone else... I carry within my
consciousness the images of mushroom clouds." The idea of global extinction
caused by a blast coming from the sky, he said, "feels right
because it fits so neatly into the nightmares that project our own
demise."(88) |
<=World winter |
On Hallowe'en 1983, a group of respected
atmospheric scientists held a press conference to make a carefully
orchestrated announcement about a different climate catastrophe. They
had come to fear that soot from cities torched in a nuclear war might
blacken the atmosphere as much as an asteroid strike. Years of cold
and dark might jeopardize the survival of all humankind. Didn't that
prove that launching a nuclear attack, even if the other side never
fired back, would be literally suicidal? So maintained a group of
well-known experts, including Western Europeans and Russians as well
as Americans, and most prominently Carl Sagan a chief spokesperson
for the group because his fame, much more as an astronomy popularizer
than as an atmospheric scientist, could attract television cameras.
The scientists' aim was frankly political. They meant to reinforce
a public movement that was just then calling on the United States
to reduce its inventory of bombs. Meanwhile the announcement added
another layer to public imagination of calamitous global climate change.
|
<=World winter |
Scientific discussions of climate catastrophe from an asteroid
strike or nuclear war are described more fully in a supplementary
essay on Wintry Doom |
|
Other scientists questioned the scientific
reasoning, and the Reagan administration heaped scorn on its critics.
Even before the scientific study was published, government scientists
among the authors felt pressure to keep a low profile. The pressure
backfired. Forbidden to include the words "nuclear war" in the title
of their paper, one of them came up with an evocative phrase
"nuclear winter." Sagan and others answered their critics in sharp
partisan debate. From the outset, a person's views on the climate
scientists' predictions could usually be guessed from the person's
views about nuclear disarmament. Newspapers, magazines, and even television
gave the battle close attention. From this point on, computer calculations
of the effects of dust and the fragility of the atmosphere were inescapably
entangled in high national politics.(89) |
<=Aerosols
|
While these issues were being thrashed out to exhaustion, public
interest in global warming flagged. Around 1984 the coverage of the
issue, as measured by numbers of books and magazine and newspaper
articles, dropped back.(90*)
The spell of unusually bad weather in the early 1970s was fading from
memory, and exclamations about an imminent catastrophe waned. Besides,
the Clean Air Act plus the ban on ozone-destroying chemicals suggested
to the public (as politicians intended) that the most urgent dangers
were well in hand. Anyway the news media rarely sustain a high level
of anxiety about any topic for more than a few years. Editors dislike
publishing article after article on the same subject in the absence
of striking new events, for repetition quickly bores the public. |
|
The attention of the minority who continued
to worry about planetary doom likewise turned to other problems. Such
movements, including fears of nuclear war, tended to rise and fall
in decade-long cycles. Back in the mid 1960s, when Cold War tensions
had dwindled, many committed activists had turned from their grueling
campaign against nuclear weapons to spend their energies on environmentalist
causes. Now, with the Reagan administration trumpeting its anti-Soviet
belligerence, many activists turned their attention from the environment
back to the Cold War. The "nuclear winter" controversy was a milestone
in the transition to agitation for a "nuclear freeze," a halt in production
of nuclear weapons.(91) |
=>Government
|
Fears of climate change could not hold a candle to fears of nuclear
war, nor even to the mounting public concern about peaceful nuclear
reactors with their risks of explosions and radioactive wastes. Climate
change did include some of the factors that are effective in rousing
public anxiety. People are not particularly afraid of risks that seem
familiar and within their personal control, feeling only too little
anxiety as they smoke or race a red light. Climate change offered less
comfortable risks. Dread of the unknown was fostered by a feeling
that great forces were at work, operating in a hidden fashion, mysterious
even to scientists. Worse, the threat was something new, and growing,
and far beyond anyone's personal control. However, nuclear energy
had similar factors in at least equal strength, plus many more hooks
digging into people's minds. Uncanny rays and poisons, menacing authority
figures (mad scientist, belligerent general, cold-blooded corporate
executive), images of Hiroshima, above all the actual existence of
nuclear missiles that might at any moment descend on your home
when such things came back to mind, they easily displaced abstract
worries about a few degrees of warming in the next century.(92) |
|
Although climate arguments faded from the news, they had left a
residue in the public mind. The idea that nuclear war might bring
global environmental disaster had been familiar for decades as a science-fiction
scenario. From the start it had brought to mind far older tales
the Ice-Winter at the world's end in Nordic myth, intertwined with
the Bible's apocalyptic rain of fire. Scientific calculations of "nuclear
winter" and other devastation now made it hard to dismiss such visions
as fantasy. We cannot observe the deep levels beyond logic where ideas
connect in the minds that make up the public, but we can guess at
what was happening there. Probably for many people the dread connected
with nuclear war, a complex of images and attitudes covering the entire
range from politics to paranoia, became loosely associated with feelings
about climate change. The idea that humankind itself might trigger
global atmospheric change as if in punishment for our transgressions
against the natural order was looking more than ever like a
sober possibility. |
|
This attitude was nailed down in 1985 when a British group announced
their discovery of a "hole" in the ozone layer over Antarctica. The
discovery could have been made years earlier if scientists had been
more on the lookout for ways that a small human production of chemicals
could ravage the atmosphere. The apparent culprit was again CFCs,
banned from American spray cans but still widely produced around the
world for a variety of functions. Inevitably a new controversy began,
for again industrial interest groups automatically denied that any
of their products could be hazardous. Reagan administration officials
reflexively backed the industries against hostile environmentalists.
|
|
This time the denials were short-lived. Within
two years experts were convinced. For the public, television showed
colorful maps displaying the lack of ozone. A few scientists warned
that the same chemicals that destroyed ozone could add to global warming,
but that was mostly overlooked. The immediate threat was the ozone
destruction, which would increase skin cancers and bring many other
biological harms. But many members of the public got ozone depletion
confused with global warming, as if the two problems were one. Ignorant
of the science, the majority only sensed obscurely that atmospheric
changes were looking more dangerous. |
<=>Other gases
|
The public took a strong
interest in the "ozone hole," forcing a political response. The outcome
was an international agreement, forged in Montreal in 1987, to gradually
halt production of ozone-destroying substances. If the agreement was
enforced, and if it was extended as industry produced new chemicals,
that would settle the ozone problem. It would only slightly retard
global warming, but the agreement proved that the world could take
effective action against an atmospheric threat if the threat
was sufficiently convincing, immediate, and well publicized. |
=>Government =>International |
The Summer of 1988 TOP OF PAGE |
|
While the public was
assimilating the lesson of the ozone hole the fact that human
activity could change elements of the atmosphere both seriously and
quickly scientists were assimilating the latest research. A
new breed of interdisciplinary studies was showing that even a few
degrees of warming might have harsh consequences, both for fragile
natural ecosystems and for certain agricultural systems and other
human endeavors. Gradually it was becoming apparent that even a degree
or two of warming could devastate many of the world's coral reefs,
that tropical diseases would invade new territory, and so forth. Still
more troubling, it seemed that the entire climate system could change
more rapidly than most experts had suspected. A mere couple of decades
might bring a shocking surprise. In particular, the circulation of
water in the North Atlantic might shift abruptly, which would bring
not warmth but severe cooling to the region. |
<=Simple models
<=Rapid
change
|
These research findings began to show up
sporadically in articles addressed to the science-attentive public.
Broecker in particular issued warnings, as when he wrote in Natural
History magazine that we had been treating the greenhouse effect
as a "cocktail hour curiosity," but now "we must view it as a threat
to human beings and wildlife." The magazine's editors went even beyond
that, putting a banner on the cover that read, "Europe beware: the
big chill may be coming." Might global warming bring a change in ocean
currents that would, paradoxically, make London as cold as Labrador?
(Broecker was annoyed, for in fact he had given little sustained thought
at that time to whether human activities might cause damaging changes
in ocean currents.)(93) The notion that a climate catastrophe might descend swiftly
was now on the world's public agenda. |
<=The oceans
|
The idea was not widely heeded, even by the small minority of people
who read about such matters. The risk that global warming would bring,
for instance, an oceanic change that could freeze Europe, was just
one small item among many futuristic concerns. Far more was written
about the potential threat of radioactive wastes from nuclear power
plants, the perils of genetically modified plants, the remote but
exciting possibility of bombardment by a giant asteroid, and so forth.
|
|
The most visibly outspoken climate expert
was James Hansen. In 1986 and 1987, he created a minor stir among
those alert to the issue when he testified before a Congressional
committee. He insisted that global warming was no vague and distant
possibility, but something that would become apparent within a decade
or so. His group of climate modelers claimed that they could "confidently
state that major greenhouse climate changes are a certainty." In particular,
"the global warming predicted in the next 20 years will make the Earth
warmer than it has been in the past 100,000 years."(94*) |
|
News reporters gave only a little attention
to Hansen's November 1987 Congressional testimony, and they did not
quote Broecker’s January 1987 statement at all, as newspapers
filled their columns with stories of a severe winter storm. A report
a few months later that the 1980s were proving to be the hottest years
ever recorded did make it into the New York Times (March
29) but only on an inside page. As the summer of 1988 began, global
warming remained below the threshold of public attention. Roughly
half the American public were not even aware of the problem. Those
who had heard about warming mostly saw it as something that the next
generation might need to worry about, or might not. |
<=Modern temp's
|
A shift of views had been prepared, however, by the ozone hole,
acid rain, and other atmospheric pollution stories, and by a decade
of agitation on these and many other environmental issues, and by
the slow turning of scientific opinion toward stronger concern about
global warming. Only a match was needed to ignite the worries. This
is often the case for matters of intellectual concern. No matter how
much pressure builds up among concerned experts, some trigger is needed
to produce an explosion of public concern. |
|
The trigger came in the summer of 1988. Already by June, heat waves
and drought had become a severe problem, drawing public attention
to the climate. Many newspaper, magazine, and television stories showed
threatened crops and speculated about possible causes. Hansen raised
the stakes with deliberate intent. "I weighed the costs of being wrong
versus the costs of not talking," he later recalled, and decided that
he had to speak out. By arrangement with Senator Timothy Wirth, Hansen
testified to a Congressional hearing on June 23. He had pointed out
to Wirth's staff that the previous year's November hearings might
have been more effective in hot weather. Wirth and his staff decided
to hold their next session in the summer, although that was hardly
a normal time for politicians who sought attention.(95) |
|
Their luck was good.
Outside the room, the temperature that day reached a record high.
Inside, Hansen said he could state "with 99% confidence" that a long-term
warming trend was underway, and he strongly suspected that the greenhouse
effect was to blame. Relying not only on his computer model work but
also on elementary physical arguments, he explained that global warming
was liable to bring more frequent storms and floods as well as life-threatening
heat waves.(96*) |
<=>Simple models
<=Models
(GCMs) |
Talking with reporters afterward, Hansen
said it was time to "stop waffling, and say that the evidence is pretty
strong that the greenhouse effect is here." Some news reports confused
Hansen's assertions, reporting that he was virtually certain that
the greenhouse effect was the cause of the current droughts.(97) The story was no longer a scientific abstraction about
an atmospheric phenomenon: it was about a present danger to everyone
from farmers to the owners of beach houses. |
= Milestone
|
The timing was right, and the media leaped on the story. Hansen's
statements, especially that severe warming was likely within the next
50 years, got on the front pages of newspapers and were featured in
television news and radio talk shows.(98*) Some respected scientists publicly rebuked Hansen, saying
he had gone far beyond what scientific evidence justified.(99) The problem, however, lay not so much with his explicit
statements as with his tone and the way the media reacted to it. |
|
The story grew as the summer of 1988 wore
on. Thanks to the heat and drought, reporters descended unexpectedly
upon an international conference of scientists held in Toronto at
the end of June. Their stories prominently reported how the world's
leading climate scientists declared that atmospheric changes were
already causing harm, and might cause much more, demanding vigorous
government action to restrict greenhouse gases. Meanwhile the heat
waves and droughts continued, the worst since the Dust Bowl of the
1930s, devastating many regions of the United States. Old people died
in cities, shops ran out of air conditioners, many communities imposed
water rationing, there were fears of a new Dust Bowl, and the level
of the Mississippi River fell so low that barge traffic was paralyzed.
On top of that came "super hurricane" Gilbert and the worst forest
fires of the century. Cover articles in news magazines, lead stories
on television news programs, and countless newspaper columns offered
dramatic images of sweltering cities, sun-blasted crops, and Yellowstone
National Park aflame. |
<=>International
![global warming cover](images/Newsweek-sm.gif)
July '88 cover
story
|
Reporters asked, were all these caused by the greenhouse effect?
Simply from endless repetition of the question, many people became
half convinced that human pollution was indeed to blame for it all.
The images triggered the anxieties that had been gradually building
up about our interference with weather. As one scholar who studied
these events put it, "Whether regarded as a warning signal or a metaphor
of a possible future, the weather unleashed a surge of fear that brought
concentrated attention to the greenhouse effect."(100) |
|
News reports often failed to explain that scientists never claimed
that a given spell of weather was an infallible reflection of global
warming. Schneider, who also testified in Congressional hearings and
was often quoted, suggested that "the association of local extreme
heat and drought with global warming took on a growing credibility
simply from its repeated assertion." He worried that the media exaggerations
would bring the public to dismiss climate science as unreliable when
the next cold, wet season arrived.(101) But Schneider, Hansen, and their fellows could only be
pleased that the issue had at last gotten into the spotlight. "I've
never seen an environmental issue mature so quickly," an environmental
advocate remarked, "shifting from science to the policy realm almost
overnight."(102) |
|
The number of articles on climate listed
in the Readers' Guide, which had held steady since the mid
1970s, took a quantum leap upward. Between spring and fall of 1988
the number of articles listed abruptly tripled, and over following
years remained at the new level. The number of American newspaper
articles on global warming jumped tenfold in 1988 over what was published
in 1987 (which was already well above the negligible number published
a decade earlier) and continued to rise in following years.(103*) For the first time, global warming showed up repeatedly
in the most widely read of all American media, the comic strips. In
the second half of 1988 the problem got a mention in such highly popular,
and normally scarcely topical, strips as "Kathy," "Calvin and Hobbes,"
"Little Orphan Annie" and even "Dick Tracy." Their creators could
take it for granted that readers understood their clever remarks about
warming. |
![calvin & Hobbes global warming](images/calvin.gif)
Calvin
|
A killing heat wave in China, a ghastly flood
in Bangladesh, and spectacular episodes of ocean pollution in Europe
gave climate worries a global reach. The Toronto meeting, and many
other avenues of communication among environmentalists and scientists,
helped spread concern internationally. In Germany, to take one case,
a subgroup of the German Physical Society had already prepared attitudes
with a 1986 report carrying the dramatic title, "Warning of the Impending
Climate Catastrophe." Although most scientists quickly backed away
from the apocalyptic tone, from then on the phrase "Klimacatastrophe"
permeated Germany's media and public consciousness. Attention mounted
steadily through 1988 and into the early 1990s.(104) |
=>International
|
In September 1988 a poll found that 58% of Americans recalled having
heard or read about the greenhouse effect. It was a big jump from
the 38% that had heard about it in 1981, and an extraordinarily high
level of public awareness for any scientific phenomenon. Most of these
citizens recognized that "greenhouse effect" meant the threat of global
warming, and most thought they would live to experience climate changes.(105) In other polls, a majority of Americans said that they
thought the greenhouse effect was "very serious" or "extremely serious,"
and that they personally worried "a fair amount" or even "a great
deal" about global warming. Fewer than one-fifth said they worried
"not at all" or had no opinion.(106*) |
|
Politicians could not overlook such strong
public concern nor could they overlook the heat in the capital
city itself, where the summer of 1988 was the hottest on record.(107) Congress saw a flurry of activity
as some 32 bills dealing with climate were introduced.(108) Whether or not attention could be
sustained at such a high level, global warming had finally won a prominent
and enduring place on the public agenda. |
=>Government
|
Now that nuclear war concerns were fading as the Soviet Union decayed,
people striving to reform the world could redirect their energies
toward environmental issues. The environmental movement, which had
found only occasional interest in global warming, now took it up as
a main cause. Groups that had other reasons for preserving tropical
forests, promoting energy conservation, slowing population growth,
or reducing air pollution could make common cause as they offered
their various ways to reduce emissions of CO2.
Greenpeace, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club, and many
other organizations made reduction one of their top priorities.(109) Adding their voices to the chorus
were people who looked for arguments to weaken the prestige of large
corporations, and people who wanted to scold the public for its wastefulness.
For better or worse, global warming became identified more than ever
as a "green" issue. In principle it could have been viewed instead
as a technical problem of global engineering (how should we manage
the planet's climate?). But pollution and weather disasters brought
in high economic stakes and potent imagery. Global warming was no
longer just a research question, but a subject of hostile political
maneuvering. |
|
In the long perspective, it was an extraordinary novelty that such
a thing became a political question at all. Global warming was invisible,
no more than a possibility, and not even a current possibility but
something predicted to emerge only after decades or more. The prediction
was based on complex reasoning and data that only a scientist could
understand. It was a remarkable advance for humanity that such a thing
could be a subject of widespread and vehement debate. |
|
Discourse hads grown more sophisticated in many way. That may have
been partly because of the steady accumulation of knowledge, and also
because the public in wealthy countries had become better educated
(a larger fraction of young people was now going to college than had
gone to high school at the start of the century). Furthermore, stable
times encouraged people to plan farther into the future than in earlier
eras. So too, perhaps, did the unexpected addition of decades to the
average lifespan. |
|
The debate was also made possible by the new relationship that
had grown between people and the atmosphere, indeed with all nature.
Global warming, along with the ozone hole and acid rain and smog,
had obscurely entangled the atmosphere in politics. The winds and
clouds had taken on (as one observer later mused) "a vaguely sinister
cast... It was perfect weather for postmodernists: inescapably self-referential."(110) In an influential New Yorker magazine article
and book, nature writer Bill McKibben announced "The End of Nature."
In 1900, nature had surrounded our towns and fields. People saw it
partly as a nurturing setting for humanity, and partly as a savage
"outside" to be tamed and civilized. By the 1970s, more
and more people had come to see nature the other way around, as a
preserve surrounded by civilization. Now the preserve itself had been
overrun. |
|
It was not just that our pollution invisibly invaded the atmosphere.
The feeling of contamination by radioactive fallout and acid rain
was bad enough, yet those seemed like reversible additions, superimposed
upon the old natural system. The greenhouse effect was different,
McKibben declared, for "the meaning of the wind, the sun,
the rain of nature has already changed." Now every cloud,
every breeze, bore the imprint of human hands. The taint was not only
around us but within us. People bowed to sadness and guilt as we realized
that we had "taken a hammer to the most perfectly proportioned of
sculptures."(111) |
|
After 1988 TOP OF PAGE |
=>after88 |
After the flood of global warming stories in the summer of 1988,
media attention inevitably declined as more normal weather set in.
It is typical of topics in the news that unless they regularly produce
something new and exciting, they will not linger for long near the
top of the list of concerns. Even for a potential danger, readers
will become discouraged or simply bored when nothing immediate is
done, and editors will look for something novel to cover. It was still
less likely that interest in climate change would remain high when
weather is notoriously fickle the winter of 1989 was a particularly
cold one. The climate change story also lacked an interesting enemy,
a devil (other than ourselves) to blame for the world's woes.(112) But even if an issue is no longer
in the forefront of everyone's mind, it can remain present. Although
press coverage of global warming sank after its peak in the summer
of 1988, it now fluctuated around a much higher average level than
in the early 1980s.(113) |
|
The issue had entirely caught the attention of one vital section
of the public the scientific community. It is impossible to
judge how far scientists altered their research plans because of aroused
public interest. Scientists were far more aware than the general public
of how the scientific findings of the past decade, the supercomputer
calculations and ice core measurements and data on rising global temperatures,
had raised the plausibility of greenhouse warming models. At a minimum,
the big step up in public interest suggested that anyone studying
the topic would get a better hearing when requesting funds, recruiting
students, and publishing. |
|
For whatever reason, climate research topics now became far more
prominent in the scientific community itself. Prestigious general-science
journals like Nature and Science, and popularizing
magazines like the New Scientist, had published perhaps one
or two significant climate articles per year in the early and mid
1980s. Now they began to publish one almost every week. The higher
level was sustained over the following years. This was probably a
main reason why the general press, whose science reporters took their
cue from scientists and their journals, continued to carry numerous
articles on climate change. |
|
In the specialized scientific
journals themselves, citations to topics like "greenhouse gases" and
"climate modeling" had held fairly steady at a low level through the
mid 1980s, but after 1988 they rose spectacularly. References to the
subject continued to rise ever higher through the 1990s. Citations
to climate change in social-science journals began to soar at the
same time.(114) Meanwhile scientific conferences proliferated, ranging
from small workshops to highly publicized international events, so
numerous that nobody could attend more than a fraction. |
<=>after88
<=>International
|
Environmentalist organizations continued to make global warming
a main focus, carrying on with sporadic lobbying and advertising efforts
to argue for restrictions on emissions. The environmentalists were
opposed, and greatly outspent, by industries that produced or relied
on fossil fuels. Industry groups not only mounted a sustained and
professional public relations effort, but also channeled considerable
sums of money to individual scientists and small conservative organizations
and publications that denied any need to act against global warming.(115)
This effort followed the pattern of scientific criticism and advertising
that industrial groups had used to attack warnings against ozone depletion
and acid rain (not to mention automobile smog, tobacco smoke, etc.).
Although those campaigns had been discredited after a decade or two,
fair-minded people were ready to listen to the global warming skeptics.
|
|
It was reasonable to argue that intrusive government regulation
to reduce CO2 emissions would be premature, given
the scientific uncertainties. Conservatives pointed out that if something
did have to be done, the longer we waited, the better we might know
how to do it. They also argued that a strong economy (which they presumed
meant one with the least possible government regulation of industry)
would offer the best insurance against future shocks. Activists replied
that action to retard the damage should begin as soon as possible,
if only to gain experience in how to restrict gases without harming
the economy. They argued hardest for policy changes that they had
long desired for other reasons, such as protecting tropical forests
and removing government subsidies that promoted fossil fuel use. |
|
The topic had become still more politicized. A study of American
media found that in 1987 most items that mentioned the greenhouse
effect had been feature stories about the science, whereas in 1988
the majority of the stories addressed the politics of the controversy.
It was not that the number of science stories declined, but rather
that as media coverage doubled and redoubled, the additional stories
moved into social and political areas.(116) Another study similarly found that
before 1988, some three-quarters of the articles on climate change
in leading American newspapers described the problem and its causes,
whereas by the early 1990s, more than half of the far more numerous
articles focused on claims about proposed remedies or on moral judgments.
Before 1988, the journalists had drawn chiefly on scientists for their
information, but afterward they relied chiefly on sources who were
identified with political positions or special interest groups.(117) Meanwhile the interest groups themselves, from environmentalists
to automobile manufacturers, increasingly advertised their views on
global warming. |
|
Both scientific and political arguments were thoroughly entangled
with broader attitudes. Public support for environmental concerns
in general seems to have waned after 1988. Along with the natural
exhaustion of all movements once they have achieved some of their
goals, the ignominious collapse of Soviet Communism greatly increased
the confidence of those who opposed government intervention in economic
affairs. Actually it was in the Soviet Union, more than anywhere,
that unrestricted pollution had shown that the horrifying predictions
of environmentalists could come true. People who sought to restrict
greenhouse gasesm, however, could not shake loose from the association
of restrictions with over-centralized command of the economy. |
|
Many believed that only good could come of
whatever the triumphant free-market economy produced, including greenhouse
gases. A few scientists sustained the old argument that the "enrichment"
of the atmosphere by CO2 would be a positively
good thing for agriculture and for civilization in general. Some thought
global warming itself would be all for the better. Russians in particular,
in their bleak winters, looked forward to an improved climate. At
the end of 1988, the senior Russian climatologist Mikhail Budyko told
an international conference of scientists that global warming would
make tundra regions fertile an argument received, an American
scientist recalled, like "swearing in the church." (Budyko did agree
however that whatever the effects of global warming in the 21st century,
over the longer term it could well be dangerous.)(118*) |
<=Biosphere |
The main argument offered against regulating
greenhouse gases was simply to deny that warming was likely to come
at all. A few scientists insisted that the statistics of record-breaking
heat since the 1970s were illusory. The most prominent of these skeptics
was S. Fred Singer, who retired in 1989 from a distinguished career
managing government programs in weather satellites and other technical
enterprises, then founded an environmental policy group. He got financial
support from conservative foundations and fossil fuel corporations.
Among other objections, Singer argued that all the expert groups had
somehow failed to properly account for the well-known effects of urbanization
when they compiled global temperature statistics. (119)
Other skeptics pointed to analysis
of satellite data that failed to show warming (debate continued all
through the 1990s before studies demonstrated that the satellite instruments
gave a poor measure of surface warming). Some conceded that global
temperatures had risen modestly, but held that the rise was just a
chance fluctuation. After all, for centuries there had been gradual
drops and rises of average temperature around the North Atlantic,
in particular. Why couldn't the next decades experience a cooling?
They entirely disbelieved the computer models that predicted warming
from the greenhouse effect. All of these arguments had at least some
validity, and the citizen with a taste for science could pick up the
ideas from occasional semi-popular articles. |
<=Modern temp's |
Especially well founded
were the doubts about computer model predictions. Different models
gave different predictions for just how a given locality would be
affected by global warming (or at any rate by "global climate change,"
the more general phrase that cautious writers were adopting). Still,
all the models agreed pretty well on the projected average
warming.. The main trend turned out to faithfully confirm the predictions
of old and simple hand-waving arguments. Yet when critics (like the
respected meteorologist Richard Lindzen) set a strict scientific standard,
demanding solid proof that no crucial effect had been left out, the
modelers had to admit that many uncertainties remained and they had
much work to do. |
<=Models (GCMs)
<=Simple
models |
The science remained ambiguous enough to leave scientists, like
everyone else, susceptible to influence from their deepest beliefs.
The wish to personally preserve and improve the world, often a strong
motivation for those who chose scientific careers, was not restricted
to supporters of environmental regulations. Journalists remarked that
the scientific critics of global warming were mostly strong political
conservatives, deeply opposed in principle to extensions of government
power. Their intense skepticism about global warming could seem, as
one journalist noticed, to grow less from research than from a "distaste
for any centralized government action" and an almost "religious" faith
that humanity would not be laid low.(120) Conservatives in return advised that the most strident
official and scientific warnings about global warming seemed designed
to promote government action, not only on behalf of the environment
but on behalf of empowering bureaucracies and climate researchers
themselves. Yet no scientists claimed that their chief concern was
political. What would ultimately matter was whether global warming
was truly a menace. |
|
The technical criticism most widely noted
in the press came in several brief "reports" not scientific
papers in the usual sense published between 1989 and 1992 by
the conservative George C. Marshall Institute. The anonymously authored
pamphlets came with the endorsement of Frederick Seitz, former head
of the National Academy of Sciences, an ageing but still highly admired
scientist whose expertise had been in solid-state physics. The reports
assembled a well-argued array of skeptical scientific thinking, backed
up by vocal support from a few reputable meteorologists. Concerned
that proposed government regulation would be "extraordinarily costly
to the U.S. economy," they insisted it would be unwise to act on the
basis of the feeble global warming theories and data.(121*) |
<=Solar variation
|
Opponents of regulation
made sure that the technical uncertainties described in the Marshall
Institute reports and elsewhere became widely known. In 1989 some
of the biggest corporations in the petroleum, automotive, and other
industries created a Global Climate Coalition, whose mission was to
disparage every call for action against global warming. Operating
out of the offices of the National Association of Manufacturers, over
the following decade the organization would spend tens of millions
of dollars. It supported lectures and publications by a few skeptical
scientists, produced slick publications and videos and sent them wholesale
to journalists, and advertised directly to the public every doubt
about the reality of global warming.(122)
The criticism fitted well with the visceral distrust of environmentalism
that right-wing political commentators were spreading. The scientific
criticism particularly influenced President George H.W. Bush’s
administration. Enough of the public was likewise sufficiently impressed
by the skeptical advertising and news reports, or at least sufficiently
confused by them, so that the administration felt free to avoid taking
serious steps against global warming. |
= Milestone
=>Government
|
Scientists noticed something that the public largely overlooked:
the most outspoken scientific critiques of global warming predictions
did not appear in the standard scientific publications, the "peer-reviewed"
journals where independent scientists reviewed every statement before
publication. The critiques tended to appear in venues funded by industrial
groups, or in conservative media like the Wall Street Journal.
Most climate experts, while agreeing that future warming was not a
proven fact, found the critics' counter-arguments dubious, and some
publicly decried their reports as misleading "junk science."(123) Other experts, Hansen for one, exclaimed
that "wait and see" was no way to deal with the "climate time-bomb."
Going beyond calls to limit greenhouse gas emissions, he concluded
that "governments must foster conditions leading to population stabilization."(124) On several points open conflict broke out between some
scientists, with acrimonious and personalized exchanges.(125) |
|
To science journalists and their editors, the controversy was confusing,
but excellent story material. The American media in the late 1980s
gave climate change substantial coverage, especially the New York
Times, which still largely set the agenda for other American
media. News magazines published many stories, although television
gave only light coverage. Many reporters took a skeptical view of
the administration's position. Outside a few deeply conservative media
like the Wall Street Journal and right-wing talk radio programs,
journalists tended to accept that greenhouse warming was underway.
Following the usual tendency of the media to grab attention with dire
predictions, a majority of the reports suggested that the consequences
of global warming could be cataclysmic, with devastating droughts,
ferocious storms, waves attacking drowned coastlines. In reality,
the worst consequences were expected for certain vulnerable developing
nations, but as usual the America media gave little attention to the
rest of the world. Many stories optimistically suggested that technological
progress would solve the problem. Journalists did not often emphasize
that citizens might have to make hard choices between conflicting
values. |
|
Seeking the excitement of conflict, as was their wont in covering
almost any subject, some reporters wrote their stories as if the issue
were a simple fight between climate scientists and the Republican
administration. Many other reports presented the issue as if it were
a quarrel between two diametrically opposed groups of scientists.
Journalists often sought an artificial balance by matching "pro" with
"anti" scientists, one against one.(126) |
|
When scratch surveys sought the real opinions
of climate scientists,, most of them revealed mixed feelings. A modest
majority believed that global warming was very probably underway.
It was only a small minority who insisted there was no problem, while
at least as many insisted that the threat was acute. Amid the publicized
controversy, it was hard to recognize that there was in fact a consensus,
shared by most experts global warming was quite probable although
not certain. Scientists agreed above all that it was impossible to
be entirely sure. The media got that much right, for most reports
in the early 1990s emphasized the lack of certainty. |
<=International |
Recognizing the need for a better representation of what scientists
did and did not understand, climate scientists and government bureaucrats
formed an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC’s
committees managed to forge consensus views that almost every expert
and official could accept, and published them as definitive reports.
The first IPCC report, released in 1990, rehearsed the usual ambiguous
warnings about the possibilities of global warming. This was nothing
exciting or surprising, and the report got hardly any
newspaper coverage.(127)Yet scientific opinion was shifting, although so gradually
that it would take a special event to make that appear as "news."
|
|
An opportunity came with the second IPCC
report, issued late in 1995. The somnolent public debate revived on
the news that the panel had agreed that the world really was getting
warmer, and that the warming was probably caused at least in part
by humanity. Although many scientists had been saying that for years,
this was the first formal declaration by the assembled experts of
the world. It was page-one news in many countries, immediately recognized
as a landmark in the debate. (Further warnings from the panel, such
as the possibility of climate "surprises," were less noted.)(128*) Better still for reporters, the report stirred up a
nasty controversy, for a few critics cast doubt upon the personal
integrity of some IPCC scientists. The principle target, a main author
of the report, remarked that he had to spend the better part of the
following summer dealing with journalists and e-mails.(129) |
<=International |
Even more newsworthy
was the international Kyoto Climate Conference, scheduled for December
1997. Here was where governments would make real economic and political
decisions on the use of fossil fuels. The administration of President
Bill Clinton made a bid for public support for a treaty, holding a
well-publicized conference of experts on climate change in October.
Editors saw a story line of conflict developing as they anticipated
the Conference. News reports were further stimulated by advertising
campaigns and other intense public relations efforts, funded by environmental
organizations on the one hand, by the Global Climate Coalition of
industrial corporations on the other. Television stories dealing with
global warming jumped from a mere dozen in July-September to well
over 200 in October-December. Most of the stories asserted that global
warming was underway, with barely a tenth including any expression
of doubts. Yet after the Conference the wave of attention faded away
as quickly as it had come, leaving little change in public opinion.
People mostly stuck to the positions they had adopted around 1988
if not earlier.(130) |
=>Government
<=>International |
...and After Kyoto
TOP OF PAGE
The increasingly unequivocal and occasionally
activist stance of many climate scientists continued to be opposed
by a few respectable critics. Some of them argued publicly that
the 20th century's global warming (if it existed at all) had come
only because the Sun had temporarily become more active. During
the 1990s they produced some fairly plausible data and theories
to back them up, but other experts felt the case was weak. A scholar
who reviewed nearly 1000 abstracts of technical articles, published
in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, found
that "none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."
In the minds of nearly all scientists (at least those not connected
financially to the energy industries), the case was as well proven
as anything in geophysics.(131)
Even some of the few contrarian scientists, if pressed, would admit
that whether or not rising CO2 levels had brought
warming already, eventually the greenhouse effect must be felt.
Some went on to claim that this would bring net benefits. In any
case the only reasonable policy, a prominent critic insisted, "is
to adapt to climate change."As the editors of Nature magazine
remarked in 2000, "The focus of the climate change debate is shifting
from the question of 'will there be climate changes?' to 'what are
the potential consequences of climate change?'"(132)
|
=>after88
<=Solar variation |
Skeptics continued to
insist in every available forum that adverse consequences were so
uncertain, and anyway so distant, that it would be economic folly
to restrict fossil fuel use anytime soon. But support for their arguments
was waning even among industrial leaders. Listening to the international
community of scientists (and perhaps some of their own in-house experts),
they concluded that any prudent business ought to lay plans for the
most likely contingency namely, a changing climate, with irresistible
public pressure for action. Prominent corporations began to pull out
of the Global Climate Coalition. By 2000 many publicists were abandoning
the claim that there was no global warming problem, and shifted to
arguments about the most business-friendly way to ameliorate it. More
efficient use of fossil fuels, alternative energy sources (not forgetting
nuclear), and changes in forestry and agriculture all held great promise.
|
<=>International
<=International |
In between episodes of debate, the issue
occupied little of the public's attention. Television weather news,
the only place where much of the public might get climate information
on a regular basis, preferred to avoid the issue altogether. It was
too complex, too highly politicized, and perhaps too depressing for
what were basically entertainment programs. As one reporter put it,
global warming was "not the kind of bad news people want to hear in
a weather forecast."(133) Most politicians likewise saw little to gain by stirring
up the issue. In the absence of manifest public concern, why pay attention
to such an issue (especially if it went against short-term industrial
interests)? Even Gore mentioned global warming only briefly during
his run for the presidency in 2000. |
=>Government
|
Occasionally science reporters would find
a news hook for a story. The press took mild notice when experts announced
that 1995 was the warmest year on record for the planet as a whole,
and when 1997 broke that record, and 1998 yet again. The impact was
muted, however, since these figures were averages, and the warming
happened to be most pronounced in remote ocean and arctic regions.
Some smaller but important places in particular the U.S. East
Coast, with its key political and media centers had not experienced
the warming that was evident in some other regions in the last decades
of the century. |
<=Modern temp's |
Reports of official
studies by government or international panels each had their day in
the limelight, but rarely more than a day. Stories made more of an
impression if they dealt with something visible, as when ice floes
the size of a small nation split off from the Antarctic
ice shelves.(134) Other chances to mention global climate change came in
stories about heat waves, floods, and coastal storms, especially when
the events were more damaging than anything in recent memory. In fact,
any of these widely reported incidents might have had nothing to do
with global warming. The most sensational stories had little scientific
significance in themselves. Yet for symbolically conveying what scientists
did believe, the incidents could be truer than any dry array of data.
For example, when tourists who visited the North Pole in August 2000
told reporters that they had found open water instead of ice, news
stories claimed that this was the first time the Pole had been ice-free
in millions of years. That was dead wrong yet by many measures
the Arctic Ocean icepack was in fact rapidly thinning.(135) |
<=Sea rise & ice
= Milestone
|
Science reporters tried to explain to the public that an average
warming of, say, three degrees did not mean that the thermometer would
be exactly three degrees higher, everywhere, every day. Some regions
might not be much affected. Others would suffer unprecedented heat
waves, as deadly as an outbreak of disease. Certain regions (nobody
could say which ones) would have more storms, or greater floods, or
worse droughts. Yet this was hard to make into a gripping story. Journalists
typically qualified a report about a current heat wave or flood with
the accurate comment that "scientists don't know whether this was
caused by global warming." The concerns were largely parochial. Media
in the United States would scarcely notice a record-breaking heat
wave or flood that stirred up fears of global warming in Germany,
and vice versa.(136) |
|
Most journalists continued to pursue their ideal of "unbiased"
coverage, which meant writing a "balanced" story by presenting
all sides of an issue. That put them in the odd situation of including,
in a story that might describe years of research by teams with dozens
of experts, a skeptical response by one of the few scientists who
scoffed at the idea that human activity was bringing global warming.
Such people often had ties to energy-industry lobbying groups, but
the articles often failed to note that. An analysis of articles published
between 1988 and 2004 in four influential US newspapers found that
more than half of the articles gave roughly as much attention to the
few contrarians as they did to the view accepted by the IPCC and all
the other rigorous scientific panels. Moreover, after the Kyoto meeting
the newspapers were more interested in conflicting political views
than in the growing scientific evidence. Three-quarters of the articles
'balanced' scientists' calls for strong action with the energy-industry
view that only voluntary action, if any, was needed. The scholars
who compiled this study concluded that the leading US newspapers had
misled the public about what scientists really believed, with 'biased
coverage... hidden behind the veil of journalistic balance."(136a)
Public understanding nevertheless kept up with
the main points of the evolving scientific consensus. Polls in the
1990s found that roughly half of Americans thought global warming
was already here and many of the rest thought it was coming. Fewer
than one in eight asserted that it would never happen. Citizens
now mostly believed that the scientists who publicly cast doubt
on global warming were unreliable, perhaps in the pay of industry.
Aside from the usual ten percent or so who were always ill-informed
about everything, American citizens had a vague idea of what greenhouse
warming meant. But most did not consider themselves well informed
quite rightly, since many well-educated adults still confused
the ozone hole with global warming, and thought climate change was
driven mainly by automobile exhaust chemicals, tropical deforestation,
or still less realistic technological forces.(137) |
|
Images of the next century or two, as portrayed
in science fiction books and other media, often took harmful global
warming for granted. An increasing number of people suspected that
they were already feeling effects in their daily lives, in the latest
record-breaking drought or strangely balmy winter. Even Alaskans,
quick to scoff at environmentalist claims, began to worry as the permafrost
supporting their roads softened and dog-sled racers complained that
it was getting too warm for their huskies.(138) When the IPCC issued its third report
in 2001, concluding that it was "likely" that greenhouse gases were
bringing a sustained warming, it scarcely seemed like news. |
<=>Modern temp's
|
While responsible science journalists labored
to explain exactly what the IPCC was saying, the brief stories in
many of the chief media focused, needless to say, on the report's
worst-case scenario the threat that future temperature rise
might be more dire than previous IPCC reports had suggested. Even
that drew only modest attention.(139*) Also widely overlooked
were warnings, buried in the report, about the risk of shocking surprises.
|
<=International |
If the models were wrong, it might be that
they were not too radical but too conservative, neglecting the risk
that a severe temperature shift might take only a few years. Evidence
of such calamitous shifts in the past had now convinced most experts
that sudden changes could not be ruled out. One entirely plausible
mechanism was a reorganization of ocean currents, bringing serious
change to neighboring regions. Many climate scientists worried that
in the course of some future decade Europe in particular would suddenly
grow too cold, even as other places grew too hot and dry. "The climate
system is an angry beast," Broecker said whenever he got a public
platform, "and we are poking at it with sticks."(140) |
<=Chaos theory |
An Academy panel reported in 2001 that "The
new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well
established by research over the last decade." They added that "this
new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider
community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers."(141) Stories about the risk of sudden climate shifts did show
up occasionally in newspapers and science magazines. People scarcely
noticed, for the stories lay amid the usual journalistic noise
warnings of future disasters from falling asteroids, genetic manipulation,
and a hundred other conceivable threats. Perhaps the scientists had
gone a step beyond what ordinary people were viscerally prepared to
believe. As a geologist once remarked, "To imagine that turmoil is
in the past and somehow we are now in a more stable time seems to
be a psychological need."(142) |
<=>Rapid change |
A larger flurry of attention came when the new president, George
W. Bush, made it clear that he would make no effort to impose the
limits on CO2 production that nations had agreed
upon at the Kyoto meeting. Europeans loudly expressed dismay, and
many American publications too published criticism, such as a major
cover story in Time magazine. Editorials soundly scolded
the policy as a surrender to business interests. So it was, and yet
Bush's approach was not far from what a majority of the American public
and Congress wanted. To be sure, most people thought something should
be done about global warming — but not if that would mean spending
money changing anything much.(143) |
|
The world's image makers had failed to give the public a vivid picture
of what climate change might truly mean. Nothing happened like the
response to the risks of nuclear war and nuclear power from the 1950s
through the 1980s, when hundreds of novels and movie and television
productions, some by top-ranking authors or directors, had commanded
the world's attention. Global warming did show up in several substantial
science-fiction works, including a few good novels and the 2001 Stanley
Kubrick/Steven Spielberg movie "AI," which set its final
scenes in a future drowned city. In most of these works, however,
global warming was merely incidental background, only one of many
evil consequences of a civilization fallen into decay. The conservationist
writer Bill McKibben lamented that global warming "hasn't registered
in our gut." It wasn't just that it was a scientific issue,
although for many people that was enough to repel thought. Global
warming, as many pointed out, was so slow-rising that it tended
to merge into the everyday backdrop of alarums about countless problems
that might never materialize. Operating over centuries of time and
continents of space, it had a scale that people could scarcely grasp.
And if you did begin to accept climate change as an immediate problem,
you might well feel obliged to change your pattern of consumption
— a conflict that for many people was enough to raise mental
barriers to further consideration.(144*)
|
|
After 2002, nevertheless, a small number
of more-substantial works began to appear. Non-fiction reports by
journalists drew increasing attention. A work by the well-known novelist
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (2003), portrayed a future
world where civilization had been brought down partly by global warming.
In one scene the protagonist looks out over the wrecks of buildings
half submerged in the ocean, draped with vegetation and seabirds.
Also widely noted was a huge and impressively disturbing mural by
Alexis Rockman, "Manifest Destiny" (2004). It showed much
the same scene, a future Brooklyn half-submerged, given over to wildlife
with no humans in sight. However, Atwood's novel featured global warming
as only one of many harms of technology — less central than
artificial manipulation of organisms, an issue that had long preoccupied
Rockman too. Atwood's novel resembled hundreds of earlier tales of
a Last Man after the collapse of civilization, while Rockman acknowledged
a link to similarly elegiac vine-covered ruins in 19th-century paintings.
In such productions, global warming appeared as a manifestation of
irresistible historical forces. |
![Alexis Rockman Manifest Destiny](images/Rockman-sm.jpg)
After
global warming?
|
The chance
for human choice did appear plainly in a couple of significant works
that came out in the spring of 2004: Forty Signs of Rain,
by a top science-fiction author, and "The Day After Tomorrow,"
a special-effects spectacular from a popular movie director. These
were the first fictional works centered on global warming to reach
a wide public. Both included government figures who looked much
like members of the Bush administration, denying any possibility
of danger. Such denials were a standard plot element in science-fiction
disaster fables, and these works continued in that mode with cataclysms
beyond anything that scientists thought likely in the near future.
(The movie featured an instant ice age, which was flatly impossible.)
It is an open question whether such dramatic works would mobilize
action against global warming, as they intended, or whether their
horrific phantasms would only push audiences toward discouragement
and denial.(145*)
Political cartoonists could come up with realistic and effective
images in direct reference to immediate political choices. They
might comment on a bill before Congress, for example, with a sketch
of a withered desert landscape under a scorching sun. Television
similarly showed parched crops or smog-shrouded cities. Calls for
action against the threats of rising sea level and worsening storms
got a visible face in television clips of advancing waves and hurricanes,
and in political cartoons that showed buildings half underwater,
whirling tornadoes, or both together.
These were strong images, but limited by their familiarity. After
all, drought, flood and storm images had long been associated with
ordinary weather problems. The public saw no convincing and humanized
stories of travails that climate change might realistically bring
upon us — the squalid ruin of the world's mountain meadows
and coral reefs, the impoverishment caused by crop failures, the
invasions of tropical diseases, the press of millions of refugees
from inundated coastal regions. And global warming never produced
a single dominant symbolic event, like the Hiroshima bombing and
the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear reactor accidents that
had mobilized action against nuclear energy. As a pair of communications
experts explained, "in the absence of a symbol for the greenhouse
effect, the media... is limited in its interest and its impact."
Nor did any widely seen story describe sensible steps to restrain
greenhouse gas emissions. Technical solutions were scarcely likely
to attract a paperback publisher or movie producer. |
= Milestone
<=The oceans
<=Rapid change |
"It's a century-scale story," explained a science
reporter whose beat included global warming, "and newspapers
are dealing with a day or an hour kind of scale... to get them to
think about something important that may happen three generations
from now, in terms of its full flowering, is almost impossible."
Now that environmental cleanups seemed to be going well enough in
the nation, with environmental cleanups underway for other problems,
few Americans spent much time thinking about the greenhouse effect.
Polls of Europeans from Portugal to Russia found generally similar
opinions, although often with somewhat greater concern. Asians were
much less concerned about these and other environmental
issues.(146)
In the early
years of the new century, however, the divergence between West European
and American opinion became large enough to cause political friction.
Polls in the United States showed that concern for global warming
was declining, as it was for environmental issues in general. Adding
to the divergence was a heat wave that assailed Europe in the summer
of 2003, causing huge crop losses, forest fires, and tens of thousands
of excess deaths. A few such calamities may have happened in earlier
times, especially during the so-called "Medieval Warm Period,
but experts concluded that the 2003 heat wave surpassed anything
in the historical record (for example, the 2003 grape harvest was
the earliest ever). It made a gripping story, although it still
lacked the concentrated symbolic heft of a Hiroshima or Chernobyl.
The European and some other foreign media covered such climate
change stories much more extensively than most media did in the
United States (oil interests were also less powerful in Europe and,
still less, in Japan). The veteran American environmental journalist
Ross Gelbspan bitterly accused his colleagues of being duped, bought
out, or intimidated by fossil-fuel interests. He warned that even
if some business and government leaders now admitted that global
warming was likely, they would fight to suppress any suggestion
that people could take practical steps. By the early 2000s, journalists
had finally agreed that global warming was real. But Gelbspan believed
they had moved into "'stage-two' denial of the climate crisis,"
ignoring or denying that actual solutions were available.
|
= Milestone
<=Solar variation |
Coverage of climate change in major US newspapers had declined in
the mid 1990s, but it soon revived and by 2005 was climbing higher
than ever. In 2004 the American public sawextensive cover-story articles
in respected journals like Business Week and National
Geographic, stoutly declaring that global climate change was
a serious and immediate problem. (The former magazine proposed practical
steps that industry could take or was already taking, while the latter
tended simply to describe warming as inevitable). Meanwhile several
well-written books, varying from grave to impassioned, along with
dozens of well-maintained Websites, attempted to explain the situation.
Far more widely noticed, however, was a best-selling thriller, State
of Fear. The author, Michael Crichton, built his plot on the
fantasy that fear of global warming was a deception propagated by
evil conspirators and their dupes. As in his earlier novels, Crichton
repeated a theme beloved of right-wing populists: all experts, and
particularly scientists, were arrogant, wrong-headed and untrustworthy,
if not actively corrupt. In State of Fear he went beyond
his typical thriller, even at the risk of reducing his normal huge
paperback market and movie deal, by inserting page after page of dreary
preaching, with elaborate data selected to back
up his misleading conclusions.(147*)
This was in line with a proliferation of Web pages denying there
was any likelihood of global climate change, pages maintained not
just by paid lobbyists but by independent information hounds. These
so-called “contrarians,” dedicated to their viewpoint,
made plausible-sounding arguments (which tended to change every
few years) by picking out recent bits of anomalous data and theoretical
perplexities. After all, the best scientists always had points of
disagreement, and they always would, new disputes at the outside
edge of what they knew. Few people realized that the concept of
global warming itself had originally flatly contradicted scientists’
beliefs — that it had been scoffed at or ignored, and won
grudging acceptance only through a century of detailed scrutiny
of many thousands of observations and theoretical
studies.
|
|
Some of the
statements on the Web, radio talk shows, and in other American media
began to resemble diatribes against conspiracies on a variety of other
subjects. Such arguments also appeared in Western Europe, Japan, and
especially Russia, but Americans were especially prone to openly distrust
science. Populist American politicians, geographically and socially
dispersed, sometimes scornful of intellectuals, often sympathetic
to the views of energy corporations, were more inclined than foreign
elites to swallow unscientific views. Remarkably, the science-fiction
novelist Crichton got an appreciative hearing as a "climate expert"
on visits to Congress and the White House. Such antics widened the
divide between the United States and most other nations around the
world. The Bush administration's defiant refusal to join in practical
steps to address global climate change antagonized many foreigners,
while adding to political polarization within the United States itself.
|
<=>Government
=>International
|
Outside Washington, however important groups were stirring—even
among the President's supporters. One turning point was a 2002 meeting
in Oxford, England, where leaders of evangelical church organizations
convened with scientists who shared their religious beliefs. Devout
Christian scientists such as John Houghton, a lay preacher and co-chair
of the 2001 IPCC scientists’ panel on climate change, convinced
church leaders that they were called upon to protect God’s creation
from greenhouse warming. In February 2006, a group of important American
evangelical leaders issued a statement calling for government controls
on emissions, backed up by television and radio advertisements. |
|
Some corporate leaders were also
speaking out. Across the Atlantic some firms, notably oil giant BP
under the farsighted leadership of John Browne, had already decided
(as Browne put it in 1997), that “it falls to us to take precautionary
action now.” Starting around 2005, an increasing number of leading
American corporations like General Electric and Wal-Mart also pledged
strong efforts to limit their emissions. Executives not only hoped
to improve public relations, but feared future lawsuits for causing
harm; they also didn’t want their companies to be caught unprepared
by emission regulations, which increasingly seemed inevitable; they
even suspected that their profits could suffer directly from the effects
of climate change. Meanwhile powerful investors, from state pension
funds to Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase,
were beginning to weigh global warming risks before investing in a
company. After all, business magazines like Fortune were warning of
imminent “droughts and floods not seen since ancient times.”
Political leaders sensed how the wind was blowing. Even some staunch
Republicans, like California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, pushed
their states or cities to curb local greenhouse gas emissions. A surprising
number of political units pledged they would meet the Kyoto
goals.(147a)
Since the late 1980s, a large majority of Americans
had told poll-takers that they personally worried about global warming.
The fraction who claimed they worried about it "a great deal"
— roughly a third — held steady. This declined somewhat
in the early 2000s, however, in parallel with declining concern
about other environmental issues, and by 2004 a bare majority in
the United State expressed worry about global warming. The public
grew familiar with stories about threatened polar bears and the
unprecedented melting of the fabled "snows of Kilimanjaro,"
but it all seemed remote from daily cares.
|
<= Government
|
Attention in
the American press revived in the summer of 2005 during the worst
Atlantic hurricane season on record, capped by the devastation that
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita wrought on New Orleans and neighboring
coasts. Just then, new scientific evidence was suggesting that global
warming increased the destructive power of such storms. "Are
We Making Hurricanes Worse?" asked the cover of Time
magazine. The magazine concluded that we probably were. Some insurance
companies, suspecting that global warming was already increasing their
risks, began to refuse coverage for seashore homes. Meanwhile scientific
reports on changes in ocean currents and ice sheets spurred fears
that, sooner than anyone had expected, the world might pass a "tipping
point" — making climate disaster unavoidable.(147b*) |
<=Sea rise
<=Rapid change
|
"Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us,"
declared one reporter. Another mused that "global warming has
the feel of breaking news these days." Journalists began to worry
that they had given too much political-style "equal time"
to the dwindling remnant of contrarians. In November 2005 alone, PBS
public television stations, the Turner Broadcasting System, and even
the right-wing Fox News Channel were all persuaded to run specials
stating plainly that global temperatures would rise, and a still larger
audience saw movie idol Leonardo DiCaprio explain the problem on the
Oprah Winfrey Show. The Weather Channel added reports on climate change
as a "niche" market. In the spring of 2006, people could
see a thorough analysis of the danger in two widely read books by
science journalists, a week-long series of reports on ABC television
and radio, and a special issue of Time magazine ("Be
worried," the cover advised. "Be very worried.") Meanwhile
a series of advertisements by the environmentalist National Resources
Defense Council won the support of the nonpartisan Ad Council, worth
many millions of dollars in donated air time. But the greatest media
attention, including numerous radio and television interviews and
magazine cover stories, went to a low-budget documentary film. The
film, "An Inconvenient Truth," told the global warming story
through a convincing illustrated lecture that Al Gore had given many
hundreds of times over the years.(147c*) |
|
Public concern did not soar along with the increased media attention.
In a series of Gallup polls held every spring, the 2006 results
differed little from earlier ones. For a decade, large majorities
in the United States, as in most other developed nations, had told
poll-takers that their government should participate in the Kyoto
agreement. But most American citizens, unlike scientists, did not
think vigorous action was a top priority. Many citizens offered
"no opinion" about Kyoto. If asked a general question
about environmental problems, most would bring up neighborhood concerns
such as polluted drinking water, toxic waste or local smog —
even though these were much improved, thanks to government actions
since the 1970s. Only a minority saw global warming as an urgent
challenge requiring personal sacrifice, something that would affect
them seriously in their own lifetime.
Global warming was beginning to resemble nuclear war, which many
people had met with simple denial. This potent psychological mechanism
was well illustrated by a child who demanded that her father turn
off a television documentary about climate change because it scared
her. In any case most people, scarcely understanding the causes
of climate change, could not name specific practical steps to forestall
it — after all, for decades corporate publicists had declared
that restricting emissions would cost vast sums for little benefit.
Citizens were more likely to scrupulously eschew spray cans, which
in fact no longer used CFCs, than to improve the insulation of their
homes, even though within a few years the lower fuel expense would
repay their investment.(148*)
|
|
A 1998 study using focus groups dug deeper, catching what had probably
been the general feeling of Americans since 1988, and perhaps long
before. Most felt confused, believing the scientific community had
not reached a consensus. While the great majority of citizens said
they thought global warming was underway, few felt really sure of
that. Some people hoped that new technologies would somehow fix any
problems. Others, following the movement away from technological optimism,
vaguely foresaw a general apocalyptic environmental collapse. Almost
everyone thought that nothing they personally could do would help.
|
|
Many people were convinced that not only climate changes but
all environmental harms were the fault of social decline
a rising tide of selfishness, greed, and corruption. (In one week
of unusual warmth during November 1989, I heard two people separately
say that the Earth was paying us back for the harm we humans were
doing to it.) People saw a generalized "pollution," the material
and moral evils intertwined. Some, including prominent scientists,
wondered if we had invited divine retribution. Most Americans believed
they were personally powerless to halt the moral deterioration,
and therefore saw the problem of global warming as insoluble. Anxious
and baffled, "people literally don't like to think or talk about
the subject," the authors of the study concluded. "Their concern
translates into frustration rather than support for action."(149*)
|
|
What can people do about global warming, and what
should we do? See my Personal Note and Links. |
|
|
RELATED:
Home
Government: The View from Washington, DC
The Modern Temperature Trend
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Supplements:
Wintry Doom
Ice Sheets & Rising Seas
Reflections on the Scientific Process
75. 38% had heard, half ignorant: Opinion Research
Corporation poll, May 1981, USORC.81MAY.R22. 5% Not at all serious, 16%
Not too serious, 28% Somewhat serious, 37% Very serious, 24% Don't know:
Opinion Research Corporation poll, April 1980, USORC.80APR1.R3M. Data
furnished by Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, Storrs, CT. Canadian
survey (10% nuclear, 12% people/pollution/urbanization, 14% space exploration):
Harrison (1982), p. 731. For 1990s surveys
and a valuable general discussion see Thompson
and Rayner (1998), pp. 270-73. BACK
76. Wade (1979); New York
Times, Nov. 5, 1979, p. IV:16. These refer to National
Academy of Sciences (1979); the conclusion was reinforced by National Research Council (1982). Greenland: Gregory
et al. (2004). BACK
77. Russians: see Weiner
(1990), p. 101.
BACK
78. Woodwell (1978), p. 34,
see p. 43.
BACK
79. Ingram and Mintzer (1990).
BACK
80. Manabe, interview by Weart, Dec. 1989.
BACK
81. Rasool et al. (1983); the
stimulus was Hansen et al. (1981).
BACK
82. Schneider (1988), p. 114;
see also Schneider (1989), ch. 7; Nelkin (1987).
BACK
83. Sullivan, "Study finds warming trend that could raise
sea levels," Aug. 22, 1981, p. 1, and editorial, Aug. 29, 1981, p. 22. The Washington
Post also carried an editorial. Hansen, interview by Weart, Nov. 2000,
AIP. BACK
84. Among other sources for this section, I draw on a talk given
by J. Jensen in April 1991.
BACK
85. Idso (1982); popularized
as unproven but possible by a science journalist, Gribbin
(1982), ch. 9; "encouraged" Idso (1984), p. 22; see also
Idso (1989).
BACK
86. Mahlman (1998), p. 97.
BACK
87. McKibben (1989), p. 37.
BACK
88. Levenson (1989), p. 32.
BACK
89. Badash (2001) (Turco's
term "nuclear winter" on p. 87); also Poundstone (1999), pp.
292-319; Schneider (1988).
BACK
90. Magazines and newspaper article counts: Ingram et al. (1990). Books: my counts from the Library
of Congress catalog, under "climate" call number QC981, which includes
both popular and technical works.1975-77: 73 books. 1979-81: 97. 1983-1985:
71. BACK
91. Weart (1988), pp. 262-69,
299-302, 323-327, 375-87.
BACK
92. Ungar (1995), includes
discussion and references on dread factors and waves of public concern; Weart (1988), passim.
BACK
93. Another example: James Gleick, "Instability of climate
defies computer analysis," New York Times, March 20, 1988. Broecker (1987), quote p. 82; on annoyance Broecker (1991), p. 88. BACK
94. The 1986 hearings, held by Republican Senator John
Chafee, "transformed the priority of the greenhouse issue, making it more important in policy
decisions" according to Pomerance (1989), pp. 262-63; quotes:
Hansen et al. (1987), prepared for testimony to the United States
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, 9 Nov. 1987.
BACK
95. Pool (1990), quote p. 672.
Also Hansen, interview by Weart, Nov. 2000.
BACK
96. Hansen (1988); Hansen et al. (1988) gives the scientific basis, predicting
global temperatures in the 1990s would be indisputably above 1950s levels.
In 2000 Pat Michaels claimed that time had shown Hansen"s 1988 prediction
of temperature increase was exaggerated by 450%, a claim later picked
up by novelist Michael Crichton and others. In fact Hansen had presented
three scenarios, including a worst-case one (no volcanic eruptions to
hold down temperature, accelerated emissions, etc.) and two more likely
ones. Michaels et al. spoke only of the worst-case scenario and did not
mention Hansen’s predictions of what was likely, which have turned
out to be correct. BACK
97. Philip Shabecoff, "Global Warming Has Begun, Expert
Tells Senate," New York Times, June 24, 1988, p. 1. See Hansen, interview
by Weart, Nov. 2000, AIP, and Stevens (1999), pp.
131-33; Weiner (1990), pp. 87-97. BACK
98. E.g., Howard Koppel's "Nightline" ABC-TV. The following
day (24 June) I heard worries voiced by a number of callers to a radio talk show (Jim Althoff,
WKING). Hansen was mentioned or quoted more than twice as often as anyone else on the issue
during 1985-1991 according to Lichter (1992).
BACK
99. Criticism by scientists: Kerr
(1989); Kerr (1989).
BACK
100. Ungar (1992), p. 491
and passim.
BACK
101. Schneider (1988), p.
113.
BACK
102. Michael Oppenheimer quoted in New York Times
8/23/88 as quoted in Stevens (1999), p. 133.
BACK
Calvin & Hobbes strip.
Calvin continues: "They say the pollutants we dump in the air are
trapping in the sun's heat and it's going to melt the polar ice caps!
Sure, you'll be gone when it happens, but I won't! Nice
planet you're leaving me!" Mom: "This from the kid who wants
to be chauffeured any place more than a block away." Calvin: "Hey,
nobody told me about the ice caps, all right?" From Bill Waterson,
Yukon Ho! (1989), copyright © 1988 Bill Waterson.
BACK
103. My counts of Readers' Guide. Annual number
of articles about global climate change printed in major U.S. newspapers (Los
Angeles Times, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, Wall
Street Journal) was zero in 1979-1980, rising to roughly two per newspaper
per year through 1987, then from 1987 to 1988 jumped to some twenty per newspaper.
Ingram and Mintzer (1990), p. 4; see also Trumbo
(1996), p. 276; Wilkins (1993), pp. 75-76 (newspaper stories rose from
73 in 1987 to 574 in 1990); between 1986 and 1990 there was a fivefold jump
in climate change articles in three German news publications, O'Riordan
and Jäger (1996), p. 27; see Beuermann and
Jäger
(1996), p. 192; Ungar (1995), pp. 446-47.
BACK
104. Weingart et al. (2000).
BACK
105. 1988: Kane, Parson poll for Parents
Magazine,
USKANE.88PM7.RO98 and R11, data furnished by Roper Center for Public Opinion
Research, Storrs, CT. By 1989, another poll found that 79% of the public had
heard of the greenhouse effect: survey of public by Research Strategy/Management
Inc., 'Global Warming and Energy Priorities,' Union of Concerned Scientists,
11/89, as reported in W. Kempton, "Global Environmental Change," 6/91.
BACK
106. Sept. 1988 poll of voters by Market Opinion Research
found 53% considered the greenhouse effect "Extremely serious" or "Very serious" and another
25% "Somewhat serious." USMOR.ATS9.R11. May 1989 Gallup poll, worries on various issues:
35% Great deal about global warming, 28% Fair amount, 18% Only a little, 12% Not at all, 7%
No opinion. USGALLUP.051589.R3J. Data furnished by Roper Center for Public Opinion
Research, Storrs, CT.
BACK
107. The seven days of temperatures 100°F or higher
exceeded anything seen before or in the following decade. Doe
(1999).
BACK
108. Ingram and Mintzer
(1990), p. 4. N.b. The lower Congressional activity count cited in my "government" essay is
based on Balco's simple computer word search.
BACK
109. Sarewitz and Pielke
(2000), pp. 57-58.
BACK
110. Burdick (2001).
BACK
111. McKibben (1989),
quotes p. 48, 86.
BACK
112. Ungar (1992), pp.
493-94.
BACK
113. Trumbo (1996).
BACK
114. Chambers and Brain
(2002). The authors point out that this may partly reflect a greater likelihood of putting
terms like "climate change" in the titles of papers that dealt with narrow problems.
BACK
115. Gelbspan (1997), esp.
ch. 2.
BACK
116. Wilkins and Patterson
(1991), pp. 169-70.
BACK
117. Trumbo (1996), pp.
278-29; see also Wilkins (1993), p. 78.
BACK
118. McGourty (1988).
Budyko spoke even more strongly about the benefits in my 1990 interview with him, AIP, and I
have heard other informed Russians say global warming would be a good thing for their country.
BACK
119. On Singer see, e.g., Lancaster (1994); Stevens
(1999), ch. 14; Singer (1998). See his Science and Environmental Policy Project site.
BACK
120. "distaste": Royte
(2001).
BACK
121. The conservative political connections of
the Marshall group (Seitz, William Nierenberg and Robert Jastrow) had
been shown earlier when they lent their names to support of President
Reagan's anti-missile program ("Star Wars") even as many other respected
physicists attacked the scheme as technologically infeasible. The first
and most important Marshall report emphasized the argument that recent
warming was due to solar activity, which was expected to diminish and
cool the Earth in later decades, see this site's solar
essay. Seitz et al. (1989); Seitz (1990);
Seitz (1992), p. 28; on this and similar
criticism see Stevens (1999), ch. 14, and Hertsgaard
(2006). BACK
122. Information on the Coalition compiled by the
Center for Media & Democracy, Madison, WI.
See in particular here
and here.
BACK
123. "junk": Roberts (1989).
BACK
124. Hansen and Lacis
(1990).
BACK
125. See, e.g., Lancaster
(1994) and references therein.
BACK
126. Lichter (1992); Wilkins (1993); also Anderson
(1992). Here and below I also use my own observations of popular media and scientific
publications and meetings.
BACK
127. The New York Times put the news on p. 6
(May 26, a Saturday). BACK
128. "Unlikely to be entirely due to natural causes"
was the phrase quoted from a preliminary draft, by William K. Stevens
in the New York Times, Sept. 10, 1995, p. 1, see also Nov. 18,
p. 1. The less dramatic final negotiated statement ("the balance of evidence
suggests that there is a discernible human impact") was more widely noted
than the scientific report, which said, "the observed warming trend is
unlikely to be completely natural in origin," IPCC
(1996), p. 5. BACK
129. B. Santer, in an attack that began with an
op-ed by F. Seitz in the Wall Street Journal (June 12, 1996). See Edwards
and Schneider (2001); Masood (1996); Stevens (1999), ch. 13. BACK
130. Krosnick et al. (2000),
TV counts p. 241, doubts in 15 percent of newspaper stories and 8 percent of television, p. 242;
Mahlman (1998), pp. 101-103.
BACK
131. Study of papers: Oreskes
(2004). BACK
132. Admission: e.g.,Singer
(1998), p. 71. The admission that warming will come is implicit in
the book, but he said it explicitly in a throwaway remark in a physics
dept. colloquium I attended at the University of Maryland, College Park,
24 Nov. 2000. Prominent critic: Michaels and Balling
(2000). Nature (2000). BACK
133. Seabrook (2000), p.
53. According to one weather report producer, angry responses from viewers
who doubted the risk from global warming made him "hesitant to do
more on the air. We hate to run things that turn off viewers." Linda
Baker, "Just Say It's Sunny," Salon.com (viewed April
4, 2004; no longer online). BACK
134. E.g., New York Times, March 2, 1995, p.
16. BACK
135. John Noble Wilford, "Ages-old icecap at North Pole
is now liquid, scientists find," New York Times, Aug 19, 2000, p. 1.
BACK
136. Ungar (1995), p. 453.
BACK
136a. Newspapers covered: New
York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times.
Boykoff and Boykoff (2004), p. 134. See also
Mooney (2005), pp. 252-253.
BACK
137. E.g., Bostrom et al.
(1994); Read et al. (1994); Kempton (1991), and see Gallup and other references cited below.
BACK
138. I heard some of these stories on visits to Alaska.
"Greenhouse-effect skeptics become believers," Juneau
Empire Online, March 18, 2001.
BACK
139. One news magazine gave a cover story, Shute (2001), but others (like the New York Times)
put it in back pages. The impact was blunted partly because some conclusions
had been leaked piecemeal in advance. BACK
140. This particular version (one of many) of the
quote is from the Desert
Research Institute Newsletter, Spring 1999. The earliest I've noticed
was, "far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth's climate system
is an ornery beast which overreacts even to small nudges,"Broecker
(1995). BACK
141. National Academy of
Sciences (2002), p. 1 (draft published in 2001).
BACK
142. Eldridge Moores (on why people failed to prepare for
great earthquakes), in McPhee (1998), p. 605.
BACK
143. Time (2001), including
polls.
BACK
144. For nuclear productions see Weart
(1988). Examples of science fiction based on devastating climate change
are Ready (1998), well-meaning but scarcely
noticed; Turner (1989), a story of civilization
collapsing under the pressures of war and economic forces as well as global
warming (noted fairly widely for its literary quality); and, by two of
the field's major authors, Silverberg (1994)
(little noted), emphasizing the greed, stupidity and ambitions that were
bringing vast destruction through ozone as well as global warming, and
Sterling (1995), where colossal storms mingle
with stormy political conspiracy. The polar ice caps melted to set the
scene for a highly touted and financially disappointing action movie,
"Waterworld" (1995) directed by Kevin Reynolds, starring Kevin
Kastner and Dennis Hopper. The Hugo-award-winning Robinson
(1994) may be the most outstanding science-fiction work of the '90s
that included disastrous global warming (in the form of sea-level rise
speeded up by methane eruptions, which I discuss here),
but only in the background. Bill McKibben, "Imagine That," Grist.org,
April 21, 2005, (accessed June 7, 2005) .BACK
145. Atwood (2003),
start of ch. 5. For Rockman see, e.g., Stevens
(2004), Weart (2005). [Disclosure: by an
odd coincidence, my daughter Kimi was one of Rockman's assistants while
this painting was made.] I review the "last man" and "ruined
cities" themes in Weart (1988), pp. 19-20,
220-221. The masterpiece of the genre is Max Ernst's superb "Europa
nach dem Regen" ("Europe after the Rains," 1942), which
uses the titular climate change as a metaphor for the destructive forces
of war and politics. Robinson (2004) is the
first volume of a planned trilogy. "The Day After Tomorrow"
(2004) was directed by Roland Emmerich, his third summer "blockbuster"
movie in which New York City is wrecked (respectively by aliens and Godzilla).
Its receipts put it among the top100 all-time US movies. Anthony Lane,
the New Yorker movie critic, wrote (June 7, 2004, p. 103), "The
very silliness of 'The Day After Tomorrow' means that global warming will
become, in the minds of moviegoers, little more than another nonspecific
fear about which they must uncomprehendingly fret." BACK
146. "in the absence," Wilkins
and Patterson (1991), p. 176. "Century-scale," Andrew Revkin
on "Living on Earth," National Public Radio, Sept. 10, 2004.
BACK
147. Gelbspan (2004),
p. 83, see chap. 4. Newspaper coverage: Boykoff
and Boykoff (2004), figs. 2,4. Carey (2004);
Appenzeller (2004) (a giant 74 pages). Nat’l
Geographic editor Bill Allen wrote in his editorial that "some
readers will even terminate their memberships," but he couldn’t
look himself in the mirror if he didn’t print the article. He later
told a reporter that some readers did indeed cancel. An especially well-received
book was Speth (2004). For other books and
Websites see my links page. At year-end Crichton
(2004) was no. 3 on the NY Times Book Review best-seller list and
no. 2 worldwide in sales on Amazon.com. For an analysis of Crichton’s
errors see realclimate.org.
Some of his earlier books, e.g., The Andromeda Strain (1969)
and Jurassic Park (1991) also criticized established scientists.
BACK
147a. Evangelical appeal: christiansandclimate.org;
Kintisch (2006); Haag
(2006). Jim Carlot, “J.P. Morgan Adopts ‘Green’
Lending Policies,” Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2005, p. B1; Aston
and Helm (2005); Michael Barbaro and Felicity Barringer, “Wal-Mart
to Seek Savings in Energy,” New York Times, Oct. 25, 2005, p. C1;
Linden (2006), p. 136; and other articles in
these and other business media. “It falls to us...,” Browne,
speech at Stanford University, May 19, 1997, at stanford.edu
and other Websites. BACK
147b. Lonnie Thompson's report from
Kilimanjaro made the front page of the New York Times: Andrew
Revkin, "Glacier Loss Seen as Clear Sign of Human Role in Global
Warming," Feb. 19, 2005. The term "tipping point," popularized
in 2000 in a book of that title by Malcolm Gladwell, was popularized for
climate by, i.a., Lindsay and Zhang (2005)
and Kluger (2006), see also Kluger
(2005); New York Times, Sept. 28, 2005; Juliet Eilperin,
"Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change," Washington
Post (page one lead), Jan. 29, 2006 — the same day the New
York Times led with a story of administration attempts to silence
James Hansen's warnings (see essay on "Government").Gabrielle
Walker reported in 2006 that "In 2004, 45 newspaper articles mentioned
a 'tipping point' in connection with climate change; in the first five
months of this year, 234 such articles were published." (Nature
441, p. 802). BACK
147c. "Unexpectedly:" Kluger
(2006), p. 35, part of special report, pp. 34-42. "Breaking news":
Andrew Revkin "Meltdown," New York Times (Week in Review)
April 23, 2006. "Global Warming: The Signs and the Science,"
PBS (South Carolina ETV and Stonehaven Productions), Nov. 2, 2005; "Earth
to America!" starring many well-known figures, Turner Broadcasting
Sytem (TBS), Nov. 20, 2005; "The Heat Is On," Fox News Channel,
Nov. 13, 2005 (internet searches will turn up reports on how Fox chairman
Roger Ailes was persuaded to show this); "Global Warming 101"
with Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey Show, Oct. 28, 2005. Books: Among
Amazon.com's 200 top-selling books in March 2006 were Flannery
(2006) and Kolbert (2006), the latter previously
published in the New Yorker [Kolbert (2005)];
some commentators hoped one or the other would serve like Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring (1962), which spurred action against pesticides
and environmental pollution in general. Also, for example,Vanity Fair
"Green Issue," no. 549 (May 2006); ABC reports on "Good
Morning America," "Nightline," "World News Tonight,"
ABC news radio, etc., week of March 16, 2006. "An Inconvenient Truth,"
dir. Davis Guggenheim, Participant Productions, 2006, plus an illustrated
book, Gore (2006). I saw an early version of
the talk in the 1990s, where Sen. Gore illustrated the soaring of CO2
in the atmosphere by standing on a chair. BACK
148. Poll of voters by Mellman Group for World Wildlife
Fund, 9/97, see panda.org
(N.b. by the time you see this, these sites may be offline and you may
need to contact the organization or an internet archive to get the text.)
Gallup polls of general public 11/97, 4/99, 4/01, 3/02, etc. (I saw these
on Gallup’s Website but they are now available only for a price.
You can get some recent information by using a search engine to locate
news reports.) For analysis, see Kempton (1991); Bostrom et al.
(1994) (spray cans); Read et al. (1994);
non-U.S. polls: O'Riordan and Jäger (1996),
using a 1995 report by W. Rudig; also Bord et al.
(1998); see also Stamm et al. (2000) and other articles in the same issue.
There are many more recent polls, e.g., a Fox News poll of US voters in
November 2005 found 16% called global warming "A crisis," 44%
a "Major problem," 22% a "Minor problem," 12% "Not
a problem" and only 6% "Don't know" (see foxnews.com),
cf. 1980 poll in note 75. For Gallup and other recent
US polling see pollingreport.com
and americans-world.org.
In a 2003 US poll by Howard J. Herzog et al., "global warming"
fell well below water pollution, toxic waste, etc,. among environmental
problems rated for importance: Nancy Stauffer, "Climate Change,"
MIT Engineering Systems Division ESD Reports 1, no. 2 (Summer 2005), at
esd.mit.edu.
Child’s denial: White (2005); on nuclear
denial cf. Weart (1988), esp. pp. 149-51. BACK
149. Immerwahr
(1999); summary in Showstock (1999); here
I also draw upon Thompson and Rayner (1998), pp. 270-73; on pollution,
see Weart (1988), pp. 188-190; an early and widely read statement
of global warming concern connected with a call for "a simpler life" was
McKibben (1989). BACK
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