Environmental Science and Skeptical Challenges

While there is nothing wrong, generally speaking, with maintaining a skeptical attitude toward information (asking questions is, after all, a necessary part of science), public and professional skepticism about issues as wide-ranging as climate change can sometimes be an obstacle to taking constructive action.

In the last few years, most people have accepted that climate change is one of the most, if not the most, important environmental issue of our time. (see poll). However, this has been the opinion of many scientists for a decade or more. In part, public skepticism may be the result of the perception that environmentalists - "tree-huggers" - care more about nature than people or the economy, and that their "doomsday warnings" in the past have been overblown (see below for examples such as The Population Bomb).

This page is mostly about the debate itself. See also Global Warming page for more data.

Excellent video overview of our current status: Human growth has strained the Earth's resources, but as Johan Rockstrom reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior. His research has found nine "planetary boundaries" that can guide us in protecting our planet's many overlapping ecosystems. TEDtalk

Excellent Grist summary of pro's and con's.

Skeptical Science does a good job of tracking the "debate."

BBC debate between Bellamy and Monbiot 2010.

The debate summarized/visualized. related, a phone app

The MIT Climate Collaboratorium allows you to come up with plans, or vote on existing ones.

Global Warming Skeptics

Lying with charts in UK Daily Mail (see also a Wall St Journal story published at the same time. 2/12

Climate Deniers elected to Senate11/10

Representative website: http://www.friendsofscience.org/

Conservative think tanks have had a huge impact on global warming debate. The Heritage Foundation hosts the authors of Eco-Freaks video.

Sen. Inhofe's (Former longtime Chair of Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works) list of 400 examined. Much of the Senator's information is actually produced by his staffer Marc Moreno.

The Usual Suspects: Willie Soon co-authored a bogus polar bear study along with other long time climate deniers: Sallie Baliunas, David Legates and Tim Ball. Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas have a documented history of receiving money from oil interests.Link. More venerable/formidable, Seitz and Singer.

Bill McKibben's analysis of skeptics' success.

The Deniers (book review by Kevin Kelley)

GreenMan Blog debunks Climate Denial, and features video, including Crock of the Week (Soundbites and rebuttals).

Just for fun, with any of the above, you can play Climate Skeptic Bingo.

Psychology of deniers.

Global Warming Proponents

Short list of organizations (some surprising) that acknowledge AGW (Anthrogenic Global Warming).

TEDtalk by Paul Gilding, author of The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World. 3/12

Mark Hertsgaard has a new book, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth Excerptreplay of live video chat 1/11

NASA visualization of temperature change since 1880. 1/12.

The so-called Himalayagate scandal is just another example of trying to discredit climate change based on small errors and outright distortion. Now it turns out the mountains are losing ice quickly. 3/12

Interesting article on attitudes towards slavery paralleling climate denial.

Skeptic often claim that scientists are paid off to support AGW (it's never clear who would pay them to lie), and that skeptic science is suppressed. The latter refuted here. 2/12

New ice island breaks off (audio) 8/10.

Climate models reliable.

255 members of National Academy of Sciences rebuke climate skeptics, especially the attacks on legit scientists. 6/10 Full NAS site

New Scientist comprehensive site

PBS multimedia

Climate Connections NPR and National Geographic team up to provide great info on climate change.

The Climate Desk, a unique journalistic collaboration dedicated to exploring the impacts—human, environmental, economic, and political—of a changing climate. Climate Desk participants include Mother Jones, Slate, Wired, The Atlantic, PBS’s Need to Know, Grist, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

NASA's Goddard Center, global temperature data 1/10.

UCSC research

New Interactive maps and images 4/10

Real Climate.org info from actual climate scientists.

Climate Watch Blog, with special focus on California (see recent reports)

The coming Mega-Drought pdf 10/10

Video

The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See Great video on global warmingPart II How It All Ends is slightly refined version of Part II?***

Climate models have been used by denialists to debunk climate change. Here you can understand how these models actually work. 8.08

CNN reporter tells Bill Nye that he doesn't understand climate change 7.12

Comedian David Mitchell on climate deniers.

UC Historian of science Naomi Oreskes recently gave a talk(video) based on her new book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. review/summary Link also to 2007 talk. Original article in Science Magazine 2004. Review/summary of book at Grist.

Three new PBS shows on energy and climate: EARTH: The Operators' Manual, Energy Quest USA and Powering the Planet.

The Story of Cap and Trade and some analysis.

Rob Dunbar hunts for data on our climate from 12,000 years ago, finding clues inside ancient seabeds and corals and inside ice sheets. His work is vital in setting baselines for fixing our current climate -- and in tracking the rise of deadly ocean acidification. TEDtalk

What we know About Global Warming 10 min 1/10 from Climate Progress

The Skeptical Environmentalist and The Sierra Club: Lomborg and Carl Pope Tackle Climate Change Commonwealth Club debate10/10

Copenhagen talks YouTube channel

UCTV has a wide range of videos on global warming and its effects.

Gov. SCHWARZENEGGER 09.26.08 "Keeping California Cool" Commonwealth Club talk on CA taking the lead on global warming.video Realplayer audio

TEDtalk on solutions by David Keith (video)

Photographer James Balog shares new image sequences from the [Extreme Ice Survey, a network of time-lapse cameras recording glaciers receding at an alarming rate, some of the most vivid evidence yet of climate change.TEDtalk 9/10 update audio)

Gore talk at TED conference (video) . 2008 Followup

Heat PBS Frontline documentary 2008 (full video)

James Hansen 2008 Q&A. 60 Minutes interview on being gagged by Bush Admin.

In Carbon Nation, "director Peter Byck covers an impressively wide range of ground within his film's compact running time as he introduces us to a stirring cross-section of pioneers, researchers and innovators committed to helping the world reduce its carbon footprint."

Hot Politics FRONTLINE and the Center for Investigative Reporting go behind the scenes to explore how bi-partisan political and economic forces prevented the U.S. government from confronting what may be one of the most serious problems facing humanity today. 2007. Heat 2008 on energy and Global Warming.

Books

Michael Lemonick's Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, Rising Seas, and the Weather of the Future (audio interview and excerpt). 2012

Prof. Michael Mann’s new book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars,” S&E Stacks QC903 .M36 2012 is part of a series of attempts to answer the question of why global warming has become a political flash point. Mann has devised an analogy “the Serengeti strategy,” he and others have become targets because their findings challenge the entrenched fossil-fuel industries. review, audio interview, student interview (text), video interview.

The Climate War by Eric Pooley, deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, profiles heavyweights in this saga -- including two members of the Nicholas Institute Board of Advisers, EDF President Fred Krupp, and Duke Energy Chairman and CEO Jim Rogers, among other leaders in the now years-long campaign to bring climate policy to Washington. NYT review and Grist review audio interview 30 min. Climate One interview and video excerpts.

How to Cool the Planet on geo-engineering. Video overview from Hack the Planet. See also another scheme.

Award-winning journalist Christian Parenti argues in his new book Tropic of Chaos excerpt that global warming is leading to social and environmental catastrophe.(video interview)

The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism by John Cook.

Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand, by Haydn Washington and John Cook examines the phenomenon of climate change denial. It looks at the many techniques of literal denial, where "skeptics" deny the evidence for man-made global warming. It exposes denial within governments, who make a lot of noise about climate change but fail to back it up with action. And it examines the denial within most of us, when we let denial prosper. This book explains the climate science and the social science behind denial.

The Carbon Age by Eric Roston, Duke Univ.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded. Thomas L. Freidman, author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, and The World Is Flat, explains how America can lead the green revolution in the 21st century (audio and video too).

2006 Overview and review of several books (NY Review of Books) by Jim Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Here is a followup discussion with the author. 60 Minutes interview (video).

Before the Lights Go Out lays out the reality, in polls: Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of clean energy, even though they remain bitterly divided over the impending doomtastrophe of climate change. Koerth-Baker says we can’t capitalize on the first if we keep muddying it up with the second.

The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back - and How we Can Still Save Humanity (2006) is a book by James Lovelock.

Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning by George Monbiot
review

The Heat is On by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ross Gelbspan see on skeptic scams Newer book is Boiling Point; here's an excerpt. Here's a video of the author at the World Affairs Council, moderated by Hertsgaard (Sponsored by Exchange, founded by a slug, and others).

Bill McKibben The End of Nature

Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition, by Alastair McIntosh

Soul of a Citizen by Paul Loeb tells many stories of activism. The first excerpt here is on the powerful journey of evangelical global climate change activist Rich Cizik. The second is on Gandhi, King and the traps of the perfect standard. The third is how a self-described party girl became a global warming activist. See also his anthology The Impossible Will Take a While. Audio and video interviews (Realplayer) Here's a sort of Overview.

The WWF UK published earlier this year a report entitled [http://www.wwf.org.uk/wwf_articles.cfm?unewsid=2224 Weathercocks and Signposts]: The environment movement at a crossroads (WWF UK, 2008). Starting from the premise that, "it is now beyond serious doubt that a proportional response to climate change will entail fundamental shifts in both policy and lifestyles in the very short term, it recognises "that environmental challenges will not be met while maintaining a narrow focus on the happy coincidence of economic self-interest and environmental prudence. By constructing an argument for a "radically different approach, they make the case that in order to ameliorate our consumptive tendencies, because even if they're "green," it won't be enough, they are challenging our consumer lifestyles at the root, our values, and seek to shift mainstream society away from consumerism. The second report, Death of Environmentalism,(Shellenberger & Nordhaus, 2004) and the subsequent book, Breakthrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (Nordhaus & Shellenberger, 2007), criticises the environmental movement for its preoccupation with "eco-tragic narratives, eco-apocalypse, limits to growth, and an inability to paint a compelling vision of the future based on a set of values consistent with human aspirations." (O'Rourke diss on ecotopian transition towns)

Audio

Debateincludes Tim Flannery, author of “The Weathermakers”; Professor Joseph Alcamo, United Nations Environment Program chief scientist; James Inhofe, US Senator from Oklahoma and more 7/11

Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, sorts fact from fiction regarding climate change. PBS 8/10.

"Climategate" and video response has damaged the credentials of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and decades of science on global warming. But as scientists push back against efforts to dismiss the threat of global warming, some media watchers say journalists aren't balancing their coverage of climate change with the scientifically-sound other side of the story - that the impacts of a warming world could be worse than the IPCC predicts. LOE.org talks with media experts and scientists about the fallout of the hacked email scandal, and how to repair damage. (12:00)3/10 text and audio. Greenpeace tracks major players back to Koch Industries, an oil co, the second largest privately held co in US. Guardian UK article on Greenpeace research. Article and video on lack of press coverage on vindication. UPDATE: one victim contemplated suicide.

NPR/PBS audio series on CA water supply and Global Warming.

The Weather Makers author Tim Flannery interviewed on Democracy Now (audio) A more recent book is Now or Never audio interview

Bjorn Lomborg, Author, Cool It; Skeptical Environmentalist (who has since been outed as being a paid hack and somewhat changed his position?) debates Carl Pope, Chairman, The Sierra Club. 11/10.

Earthbeat Radio is the only hour-long broadcast of any kind in America dedicated entirely to the global warming crisis.podcasts(ended 2011?).

On the Debate and Public Relations

Infograpic: Which Makes More Sense?

In Kill the Messenger McH Stacks P95.8 .A76 2011 Maria Armoudian asks, What role do the media have in creating the conditions for atrocities such as occurred in Rwanda? Conversely, can the media be used to preserve democracy and safeguard the human rights of all citizens in a diverse society? How will the media, now global in scope, affect the fate of the planet itself, including climate? review, video talk author interview 8/11.

Prof. Michael Mann’s new book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars,” S&E Stacks QC903 .M36 2012 is part of a series of attempts to answer the question of why global warming has become a political flash point. Mann has devised an analogy “the Serengeti strategy,” he and others have become targets because their findings challenge the entrenched fossil-fuel industries. review, audio interview, student interview (text), video interview.

Advertising & the Perfect Storm: Global Warming, Peak Oil & Consumer Debt presented by Sut Jhally. (video)

The Global Warming Reader, edited by Bill McKibben, pulls together seminal texts of the climate change debate with the goal of creating a complete picture. Selections range from a 19th-century treatise to images from Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and include a few unexpected gems like Senate floor statements from climate change denier James Inhofe (R-Okla.).

UC Historian of science Naomi Oreskes recently gave a talk(video) based on her new book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Link also to 2007 talk. See above in video section for more links.

Gender aspects of climate

PR Watch Climate Change Portal tracks current developments as well as skeptics and their funding, as does:

Climate Science Watch

Mark Hertsgaard's political analysis

Al Gore critique of media and current policy and PBS Newshour discussion. 5/11

The Skeptical Environmentalist and The Sierra Club: Lomborg and Carl Pope Tackle Climate Change Commonwealth Club debate10/10 Video.

Why We Disagree about Climate Change (2009) Mike Hulme is founding director of the UK's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia. audio of talk based on book

Union of Concerned Scientists in-depth study on how skeptics have spun the debate, using tobacco company tactics (and even personnel/PR firms). 2007

Stanford Statistical study of climate scientists shows how skeptics have little expertise. 6/10

"The Truth About Denial" Newsweek 2007 nice overview of background, including treaties.

Michael Specter's new book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet and Threatens Our Lives,(NYT review) dives into a worrisome strain of modern life TEDtalk video. NPR interview and short excerpt

James Hoggan writes for deSmog blog, and co-authored Climate Coverup: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. Here he is interviewed in a video segment about Koch Industries, (More at Opensecrets.org) a larger funder of climate skeptic PR than even Exxon.

DeSmog Blog overview cites a 2003 study that shows US press’s adherence to balance actually leads to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to global warming and resultant action. Also "University of California, San Diego science historian Dr. Naomi Oreskes had published an analysis in Science in which she had combed through 928 peer-reviewed climate studies published between 1993 and 2003 and found not a single one that disagreed with the general scientific consensus."

TV Weathermen have had a great deal of undue influence on the debate. TOTN SciFri panel discusses 7/10

Excellent collection and refutation of skeptics' arguments ****

Study shows that worries about economy affect environmental thinking. 7/10

UCSC graduate Maxwell Boykoff has worked in North America, Central America, South Asia and Europe. He was a Peace Corps volunteer when Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras, where he continued to work for a week before being evacuated by helicopter. This sparked his research in climate change policy at UCSC,the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, Colorado-Boulder Environmental Change Institute (ECI) as well as the Oxford University Centre for the Environment. He co-authored an important study on how press misrepresented climate change.

Sourcewatch shows where funding comes from. Climate Change Portal ****. See also Integrity in Science.

PRwatch article on corporations altering Wikipedia including Chevron deleting the entire article on bio-diesel, and Exxon rewriting the history of the Valdez oil spill.

Argument map on global warming based on Copenhagen conference **** another dynamic map

Info-mural/argument maps by Robert Horn at Stanford.

Censoring Science: Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming by Mark Bowen.

Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity by James Hansen of NASA.

Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth's Climate by Stephen H. Schneider. Click here for Stephen Schneider's video interview about Science as a Contact Sport, how to find reliable information about climate change and what we can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are warming our planet. Sadly, Dr. S passed away in July 20120, a remembrance.

Energy Sec. Stephen Chu weighs in. 3/10

Attempts to intimidate Climate Scientists Link. Update: Death threats against Australian scientists 6/11). UPDATE: moved to secure locations. 10/11. Attempt thwarted by newspapers 5/10, defense of Michael Mann, famous for the "hockey-stick" graph. Here he is completely vindicated. Several different investigations have cleared everyone in so-called Climategate scandals. Related videos.

Newsweek article (editorial?) on better behavior in the debate. 2/10

Hot Politics 2006 PBS Frontline documentary on the PR and politics (includes timeline and links)

Sourcewatch.org is an excellent site for finding out whether a person or organization is credible or not.

A new video on cap and trade from Annie Leonard, creator of the fine anti-consumerism video/book The Story of Stuff. David Roberts of Grist says, "It’s being billed as a definitive debunking of cap-and-trade, but it’s more like a perfect representation of all the confusion and misplaced focus that plagues the green left right now."More analysis

Rough draft of a dynamic map of how the global warming debate has been influenced by powerful economic and political players.

Oil and Gas Interests Set Spending Record for Lobbying in 2009. NYT

Follow the oil money in politics. Also a dynamic map ***

Opensecrets.org tracks political contributions. Interactive network map ***

A fun video history of oil company propaganda

Unfluence is another way to track who in general is financing politicians. Also a dynamic map

Freeman Dyson vs Alun

Paul Loeb argues that the corporations have merely recycled their tactics that worked so successfully for the tobacco companies for so long: create the impression that the science is in doubt. He has a link to a 66 page report

NPR interview with New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin about coverage of climate change.

Fox News Attacks Global Warming from Brave New Films (partisan)

Columbia Journalism Review article on influence of conservative pundits.

Climate Change Lobbying and Media Use (video of talk). Link 1/09. Dan Weiss talked about using paid media as an advocacy campaign tool.

Interesting short editorial on why different metaphors lead to different POV/strategies.

Scholarly analysis on the role of "think tanks" on debate. 2003

On US/UK press coverage.

General works on Corporate Public Relations and Examples

See also Public Relations page

Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber excerpts.

In Kill the Messenger McH Stacks P95.8 .A76 2011 Maria Armoudian asks, What role do the media have in creating the conditions for atrocities such as occurred in Rwanda? Conversely, can the media be used to preserve democracy and safeguard the human rights of all citizens in a diverse society? How will the media, now global in scope, affect the fate of the planet itself, including climate? review, video talk author interview 8/11.

Toxic Sludge is Good for You by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton Common Courage Press, 1995 book excerpts video online video preview Full preview version

Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business by Roland Marchand Long excerpt from Ch 1

PR!: A Social History of Spin By Stuart Ewen. Basic Books, 1998 UCSC McHenry HM263 .E849 1996

Greenpeace study: "Exxon's Weapons of Mass Deception" Excerpt

Grist editorial/overview on history of fear, uncertainty and denial tactics.

Tactics: Greenwashing and Astroturf

NPR story on how products pretend to be green. (Audio).

Stop Greenwash.org from Greenpeace. Greenwashing discussed in Earthbeat Radio segment (audio).

Greenwash Watch on Guardian UK newspaper.

A Brief History of Greenwash

Brief article on greenwash with links

Big Box stores greenwash editorial

Chevron makes fake 60 Minutes segment.

To counter greenwash such as Chevron's We Agree ads and consumption, see technique of Culture Jamming.

"Astroturf" is the creation of a fake grassroots organization. Here's an example of one by coal industry using stock photos. In a new documentary Australian filmmaker Taki Oldham went undercover to investigate astroturfing (trailer)(warning: could be interpreted, presumably, as partisan).

Third Party technique defined by one public relations (PR) executive as, "putting your words in someone else's mouth." This can involve think tanks or front groups/astroturfing.

See PRwatch article on corporations altering Wikipedia including Chevron deleting the entire article on bio-diesel, and Exxon rewriting the history of the Valdez oil spill.

Course Themes

Ecological and Social Utopias

Literature, Art, and the Environment

Environmental Science and Skeptical Challenges

Activism and Entrepreneurship