UC San Diego History and Science Studies Professor, Dr. Naomi Oreskes, the co-author of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming was featured on the OpEd page of the Los Angeles Times this week.  “The verdict is in on climate change” is a logical and articulate presentation why, in this case, the seemingly reasonable act of maintaining an open mind is, in fact, unreasonable.  Click here to get the full impact in her words.

In Merchants of Doubt, Dr. Oreskes describes how denial-for-hire “experts” have been involved in a continuum of anti-science campaigns stretching back over 50 years to a time when cigarettes were supposedly healthy.  Their tactics have centered on nurturing doubt to forestall action.  The jury is still out; two sides to every story; don’t rush to judgment are their common themes.

The remarkable scientific advances of the past two centuries are based upon a process of research, followed by scientific writing, followed by peer review.  Modern scientific truths are not based on opinion polls or the forcefully stated positions of hired guns from unrelated fields.  The fact that not every scientist within a given field is in agreement does not negate the validity of the peer reviewed conclusions held by the vast majority.  Imagine that you had a child with a life-threating medical condition.  Your doctors agree on the recommended course of action.  In doing so they reveal that their conclusions are held by 90% of the physicians in their specialty.  Would you not take action because their conclusions were not universally held?  Would tell your child, “The jury is still out?”  Would you wait?

Click here for my 2010 review of Merchants of Doubt.  Buy a copy for yourself and for all of your smart friends who read.  

The focus of the Climate Club dinner held in April was a discussion with scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) about the challenges they face dealing with aggressive attacks on their work on climate change.  The organizer of the event, John Lormon, noted that “The science community is generally not organized or culturally equipped to respond to politically motivated attacks on their findings.  If these attacks are successful in challenging the credibility of the science, they can be used to establish claims that can negatively impact California’s economy and jobs”. 

Those in attendance were of diverse backgrounds, but by the end of the evening I sensed a common denominator of extreme frustrated concern.   What we learned from SIO Professors Richard Somerville, Ray Weiss, Ralph Keeling and Andrew Dickson was made doubly disturbing by their personal testimony.  It is one thing to discuss climate change denial in the abstract.  It is another to hear the stories of deceit and distortion directed at the life’s work of serious scientists whose only motivation is to “do science” honestly and objectively.  This is not a story of competing theories, but rather one in which established science is ignored or misrepresented.  The complexity and scope of climate change denial is of enormous magnitude.   As the evening ended I was saddened with the sense that none of us saw a clear path of response.   The following month Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway published a book which beams light on the path.

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming will, I guarantee, make you angry.  Oreskes and Conway pinpoint the scientists-for-hire, think tanks and foundations which thread from one denial campaign to another beginning with the tobacco industry’s multiple decade stall on the linkage between smoking and cancer.  The stage is filled with many of the same players who challenged the science behind acid rain, ozone depletion and now global warming.  What is amazing is that denial-for-hire has become a robust industry.  Huge funding from the tobacco industry, oil and others hides behind the artifice of educational foundations and even attorney-client privilege.  Some big-name national commentators have set up “foundations” so that they can receive funding from special interest groups and maintain deniability that they are not journalists for hire. 

Go to Amazon.  Buy the book.  If you already own it, buy copies to give to your smart friends.  Thought leaders everywhere need to know this story.  You can make a difference.

Naomi Oreskes is a professor of history and science studies at the University of California, San Diego.  There have been many reviews written about this important book.  Here’s one by Jesse Kornbluth.

In his blockbuster best seller of 2008, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” Tom Friedman describes “the astonishing expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization” which challenges our planet’s capacity to provide for the basic elements of food, air and water.  Simply, the rest of the world wants what we have and they want it now. 

Less walking:

China is now the number one car market in the world.  First time buyers account for 70% of purchases in China.  On the other hand, the auto fleet in the United States is shrinking. For the first time since World War II, more used cars were scrapped than new cars sold in 2009. 

More talking:

The number of mobile phone subscriptions worldwide is projected to reach 5 billion this year.  Ten years ago only 10% of Russians had a cell phone.  Today there are more Russian cell phone accounts than there are Russians.

Looking and feeling marvelous:

In five years toothpaste consumption in India has increased by over 40%.  Cosmetics maker Avon Products saw Latin American sales rise 29 percent while North American sales fell 7 percent during the most recent quarter.  South Korea is the leading consumer of Spam outside to the United States.  Over 40 percent of the Spam sold in South Korea is in the form of gifts and it is the only country in the world that sells Spam in boxed gift sets.

OK.  The Spam item is silly, but the point is that there are significant changes in global consumption which are happening at an alarming rate.  The politicized arguments about global warming have become distractions to the indisputable fact that a larger global population is consuming at an ever expanding rate.  On this we all agree.  The solutions which address this all consuming consumption are the same as those put forth to address global warming.  Let us focus on those truths we all support and acknowledge that this planet is not too big to be permanently ruined by man.

Understanding the concepts of clean technology finally gives you the chance to use every math, science and economics course you struggled through.  In many respects it is like learning a new language.  Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman and The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan are two great reads which provide the building blocks of knowledge for much of clean technology. 

If you have found your way to this blog, you probably have read Friedman’s book.  Subtitled “Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America”, Hot Flat and Crowded pinpoints where we are and, in Friedman’s mind, where we should be going.  Go to Amazon.  Buy the book.  If you already own it, buy copies to give to your smart friends.  It’s less than $10.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is an enlightened dissertation about everything we eat.  Pertinent to the understanding of clean technology is the first 119 pages about the industrialization of agriculture and the dominant position of corn in our economy and diet.  It’s also less than $10.  Read it and buy it for your smart friends who eat.

Both of these books are huge bestsellers for a reason.  Let us know what other books should be on our list to read and give.

AMAZON Link to Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America

AMAZON Link to The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals