Subject: Global Warming

Are skeptics winning debate on warming?  
---------------------------------------   
By Scott Allen, Globe Staff, 04/28/97

Tiny minority has undue influence, book says

They are a handful of scientists bucking the tide, arguing
that global warming is unimportant - or maybe even
beneficial - in a time of mounting scientific concern that
the burning of fossil fuels is raising the Earth's
temperature.

But this band of scientific skeptics, most with ties to
the coal or oil industries and conservative organizations,
is winning the political debate, argues Ross Gelbspan in a
pointed new book, "The Heat is On: The High Stakes Battle
Over Earth's Threatened Climate."

Using a combination of industry funding, media access and
the support of the Republican-controlled Congress,
doubters such as Patrick Michaels of the University of
Virginia and Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology have convinced the public that
there is far more doubt about the theory of global warming
than really exists, argues Gelbspan, a former Boston Globe
reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner who has covered
environmental issues since 1972.

It is largely because of their efforts, Gelbspan contends,
that the Clinton Administration has taken no serious steps
to curb global warming despite alarming signs, such as
last week's flooding of Grand Forks, N.D., that human
pollution may have made the climate not only warmer, but
also more unstable.

"Americans don't know what is happening to the climate
[because] the oil and coal industries have spent millions
of dollars to persuade them that global warming isn't
happening," writes Gelbspan. 

The industry campaign has included recruiting scientists
to produce videos, news articles and expert testimony
challenging the theory of global warming.

     ("Dissenters deny charges 
     that they're shilling for 
     oil and coal industries.")

 (Globe staff photo of smoke stacks, by Tom Landers)

A group of utilities and coal companies (want) to
"reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact,"
by targeting a media campaign at "older, less-educated
men" and "young, low-income women," Gelbspan found.

But, even before the book hits store shelves this week,
scientists targeted by Gelbspan are crying foul.  They say
his book is little more than an attempt to intimidate
researchers who sincerely question the severity of global
warming.

"You are essentially telling people that if they express
themselves, they are likely to end up in a screed like
Ross's," said meteorologist Lindzen of MIT, whose own
research has concluded that the Earth's upper atmosphere
tends to offset warming on the ground.

Lindzen, who has served on the advisory board of the
Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank, called
Gelbspan "a relatively despicable person" who made him
look like an industry shill when he has received a tiny
amount of money from coal and oil interests, and nothing
in the past two years.

In reality, Lindzen said, the coal and oil industries are
reluctant to join the fight over global warming despite
the potentially devastating costs to them.

Some environmentalists, too, say that the reasons for
America's inaction on global warming have at least as much
to do with the national passion for fossil fuels than the
influence of a few scientific skeptics.  

Despite the 1970s energy crisis and war in the oil-rich
Persian Gulf in 1991, the US government has been reluctant
to adopt policies to encourage a switch to other fuels. 
Why would global warming be more likely to prompt action,
they ask? 

Yet, the doubters are remarkably prominent in news
accounts on global warming, especially considering that
they number perhaps a dozen compared to a 2,000-scientist
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that has
concluded that human activity appears to be changing the
Earth's climate.
 
Michaels, climatolgist for the state of Virgina who
publishes a coal-backed newsletter that regularly skewers
global warming concerns, is cited in the media almost as
much as Stephen Schneider of Stanford, a pioneering
climate change researcher who wrote the first popular book
raising concern about global warming.  A Nexis search of
US newspapers and magazines showed Michaels was cited 190
times to Schneider's 278 since 1980. 

The skeptics "are having an impact disproportionate to
their numbers," said Bud Ward, editor of the journalism
newsletter, Environment Writer.

"That may in part reflect the merits of their arguments,"
he said.  "More than that, it reflects their ability to
portray themselves as a bigger part of the opposition than
I think they in fact are."  

Gelbspan's book, which expands on a 1995 article in
Harper's Magazine, comes at a pivotal time in the debate
over what, if anything, should be done about climate
change.

Most nations are scheduled to meet in Kyoto, Japan, this
December to sign an agreement that would stabilize or cut
emissions of carbon dioxide and other so-called
"greenhouse gases."

President Clinton says he supports the concept, but the
Administration has been reluctant to name a reduction
target or set a deadline.  As a result, allies such as
Britain are pressuring the United States to do more. 
Britain wants to cut emissions 10 percent below 1990
levels by 2010.

Gelbspan's book argues that the the United States is
lagging, in part, because the skeptics are "draining the
issue of all sense of crisis" with false assurances that
global warming is, in the words of one critic, "pure media
hype."  That view, Gelbspan argues, perfectly serves the
oil and coal industries. 

Gelbspan produces documents showing that, beginning in the
late 1980s one large coal supplier, $400 million Western
Fuels Association, started recruiting global warming
skeptics to counter what the company called "what seemed
generally accepted about the potential for climate
change."

Besides funding Michaels' newsletter, Western Fuels also
spent $250,000 to produce a video, "The Greening of Planet
Earth," which argued global warming could be good by
extending the growing season.

Lindzen, whom Gelbspan calls the most academically
accomplished skeptic but an ideological extremist, appears
in the video, as does Sherwood Idso, a physicist whose
writings have appeared in a magazine published by the John
Birch Society. 

In addition, Western Fuels began using the skeptics as
expert witnesses in state legislatures as well as
Washington D.C.  

The skeptics bristle at the idea that industry support
affects their work. 

"It is completely irrelevant as to who supports the work
of these people," said Virginia atmospheric scientist S.
Fred Singer, who says he gets no more than 10 percent of
his income from the coal and oil industry.  

And Michaels scoffed at the idea that the coal and oil
industry could counter the $2.3 billion spent annually on
climate research by the US government.  

"If three guys at about $25,000 a year [in income from the
fossil fuel industry] can beat back $2.3 billion, those
guys must have an awfully cogent argument," said Michaels
in 1995, referring to himself and two other global warming
critics. 

However, Gelbspan points out that Michaels didn't disclose
the industry backing for his newsletter until Environment
Writer published the information.  Gelbspan believes the
oil and coal industry has spent millions to promote the
skeptics' views, including everything from Mobil's paid
opinion pieces in major publications to direct public
relations campaigns.

The doubters' views have been further amplified by their
allies in the Republican-controlled Congress, who have
called them to testify on an equal footing with leading
federal climate change researchers. 

After hearing from Michaels, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
(R-Calif.), Chairman of the House Science Subcommittee,
said he felt most of the concern about global warming was
based on "unjustified scare scenarios."  He later
recommended deep cuts in US spending on climate research.

Yet, outside Congress, the international science community
increasingly agrees that global warming is both real and
worrisome.

The 2,000-scientist Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change concluded in 1995 that a 1-degree Fahrenheit
increase in global temperatures over the last century is
at least partly the result of human fossil fuel burning. 
If nothing is done, the average temperatures could rise
another 3.6 degrees by 2100, the group concluded. 

This year, 2,000 economists, including six Nobel
laureates, signed a statement arguing that the threat of
global warming is serious enough to warrant "preventive
steps."

Jerry Mahlman, an atmospheric scientist and director of
the Geophysical Fluid Laboratory at Princeton University,
told the House Science Committee flatly that global
warming is a "harsh and inexorable reality." 
  
Still, the skeptics correctly point out that there are
huge uncertainties remain about how the climate system
works.  For instance, a study this month suggests that
global warming causes earlier spring, meaning more green
plants that then offset global warming.  As a result,
skeptics play a vital role in forcing climate researchers
to prove their point.

"Skepticism is part of science...  It is the pruning that
keeps the Tree growing straight," said Benjamin D. Santer
of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California,
author of the part of the 1995 IPCC report that found
human influence on the global climate.

What frustrates Santer and other scientists about some
prominent global warming skeptics is that they often
bypass the checks and balances of science, making
sensational charges without subjecting their work to
rigorous review.

While other climate researchers publish their works in
scholarly journals such as Science, where papers are
reviewed by other scientists before being published,
skeptics are more likely to use letters to the editor,
special interest publishing houses and other non-reviewed
outlets for their findings.

For instance, Singer's major coup came in 1991 when he
persuaded the aging Roger Revelle, father of climate
change theory, to sign a paper downplaying the risk of
rising temperatures.  The article was published in the
journal of the Cosmos Club, an obscure private
organization, amid questions from Revelle's family about
why the ailing man would sign such a document.  He died
shortly afterward. 

Likewise, Michaels' World Climate Report newsletter is a
journal without independent scrutiny of his work. 
Prominent climatologist Thomas Wigley of the National
Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, said that
Michaels made so many factual errors in congressional
testimony that, were he to submit it for publication, "I
would have to recommend its rejection."

Not all the skeptics avoid academic scrutiny.  Santer said
Lindzen's academic writings are influential.  Singer is
regarded as a "qualified atmospheric scientist" by
prominent Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, who has been
heavily involved in global environmental issues.

But, on balance, said William Moomaw, a Tufts University
professor of international environmental policy, "The
skeptics have brought very little science to the table." 

So why are they playing such an important role in the
global warming debate?

Partly, said Ward, it reflects American journalist's
tendency to accentuate extremes in their effort to get
both sides of the story.  "In this area of journalism,
balance is the enemy of accuracy," Ward said.

And, in a way, the skeptics are just doing what
environmentalists do everyday: trying to influence public
opinion.

Willett Kempton, co-author of the book Environmental
Values in American Culture, said it seems to work,
especially among people who pay attention to the news.  

"The people who think of [global warming] as more
speculative tend to be the more educated, more newspaper
reading, more critical thinkers," said Kempton, a
University of Delaware professor.  

(AP File Photo:  "Vice President Al Gore displays chart
showing atmospheric temperature changes during address at
environmental meeting last month.")

This story ran on page c1 of the Boston Globe on 04/28/97.