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Sellout Scientists:
Industry-funded Skeptics Undermine Global
Warming Consensus
by Ross Gelbspan
Even as global warming intensifies, the evidence is being denied with a ferocious disinformation campaign. This campaign is waged on many fronts: in the media, where public opinion is formed; in the halls of Congress, where laws are made; and in international climate negotiations. In their most important accomplishment, global warming critics have successfully created the general perception that scientists are sharply divided over whether it is taking place at all.
Key to this success has been the effective use of a tiny band of scientists -- principally Drs. Patrick Michaels, Sherwood Idso, Robert Balling, and S. Fred Singer -- who have proven extraordinarily adept at draining the issue of all sense of crisis. Deep-pocketed industry public relations specialists have promoted their opinions through every channel of communication they can reach. They have demanded access to the press for these scientists' views, as a right of journalistic fairness.
Unfortunately, most editors are too uninformed about climate science to resist. They would not accord to tobacco company scientists who dismiss the dangers of smoking the same weight that they accord to world-class lung specialists. But in the area of climate research, few major news stories fail to feature prominently one of these handful of industry-sponsored scientific "greenhouse skeptics."
If the public has been lulled into a state of disinterest, the effect on decision makers has been even more effective. Testimony by industry-sponsored skeptics contributed to the defeat of proposals to increase the cost of fossil-fuel generated power, to cut the climate research budget, and to discredit the scientific findings of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which represents the consensus of 2,500 scientists.
The rise to prominence of most of these greenhouse skeptics is spelled out in several reports of the Western Fuels Association, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit consortium of coal utilities and suppliers. In its 1994 annual report, Western Fuels declared that "there has been a close to universal impulse in the [fossil fuel] trade association community here in Washington to concede the scientific premise of global warming... We have disagreed, and do disagree, with this strategy."
To counter it, the group said it would support the work of those who challenged the findings of the world's leading scientists. Among them: Dr. Pat Michaels, associate professor of climatology at the University of Virginia; Dr. S. Fred Singer, also of UVA; and Dr. Robert Balling, director of the climatology program at Arizona State University.
Dr. Pat Michaels calls his industry-funded publications serious journals of climate science. However, he ignores the fact that all research sponsored by the federal government is subjected to the exacting requirements of scientific proof through a system of review by other experts. By contrast, Michaels' research is frequently published in industry journals without undergoing this kind of rigorous scientific scrutiny. Michaels has even referenced articles by E. Keith Idso, son of greenhouse skeptic Dr. Sherwood Idso, which were later published in the New American, the newsletter of the John Birch Society. (World Climate Review, Volume 1, Number 4.)
Witness this passage by Michaels in the Fall 1994 issue of World Climate Review: "The fact is that the artifice of climate-change-apocalypse is crumbling faster than Cuba... There is genuine fear in the environmental community about this one, for the decline and fall of such a prominent issue is sure to horribly maim the credibility of the green movement that espoused it so cheerily."
In the winter 1993 issue, he wrote of government-sponsored climate research scientists: "The fact is that virtually every successful academic scientist is a ward of the federal government. One cannot do the research necessary to publish enough to be awarded tenure without appealing to one or another agency for considerable financial support... Yet these and other agencies have their own political agendas."
By attacking these scientists as politically motivated, Michaels succeeded in having his testimony judged as credible by the House Science Committee, and was able to help secure funding cuts for programs to study the global climate.
In May 1995 testimony under oath to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, Michaels revealed under oath that he had received more than $165,000 in industry and private funding over the previous five years. Not only did Western Fuels fund two journals that he edited -- his World Climate Review and its successor newsletter World Climate Report -- but it provided a $63,000 grant for his research. Another $49,000 came to Michaels from the German Coal Mining Association and $15,000 from the Edison Electric Institute. Michaels also listed a grant of $40,000 from the western mining company Cyprus Minerals, the largest single funder of the anti-environmental Wise Use movement.
It is quite extraordinary that with such ties, Michael's testimony at congressional hearings chaired by Rep. Robert Walker (R-Pa.) and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) was accorded more weight than that of four internationally renowned climate scientists.
The case of Dr. Robert Balling is equally intriguing. A geographer by training, much of Balling's research focused on hydrology, precipitation, water runoff and other Southwestern water and soil-related issues until he was solicited by Western Fuels. Balling has since emerged as one of the most visible and prolific of the climate-change skeptics.
Since 1991, Balling has received, either alone or with colleagues, nearly $300,000 from coal and oil interests in research funding, which he also disclosed for the first time at the Minnesota hearing. In his collaborations with Sherwood Idso, Balling has received about $50,000 from Cyprus, $80,000 from German Coal and $75,000 from British Coal Corp. Two Kuwaiti government foundations have given him a $48,000 grant and unspecified consulting fees and have published his 1992 book, "The Heated Debate," in Arabic. The book was originally published by a conservative think tank, the Pacific Research Institute, one of whose goals is the repeal of environmental regulations.
Among the skeptics, Professor S. Fred Singer stands out for being consistently forthcoming about his funding by large oil interests and conservative groups. Singer is director of the Science and Energy Policy Project at the University of Virginia. During a 1994 appearance on ABC's "Nightline," Singer did not deny having received funding from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon (to whose newspaper, the Washington Times, he is a regular contributor and whose organization has published three of his books). Nor has he apologized for his funding from Exxon, Shell, ARCO, Unocal and Sun Oil. Singer's defense is that his scientific position on global atmospheric issues predates that funding and has not changed because of it.
And it is true that Singer held firm to a similar position on another environmental controversy -- despite overwhelming evidence against his position. Singer once warned the oil companies that they face the same threat as the chemical firms that produced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), a class of chemicals that was found to be depleting the earth's protective ozone layer. "It took only five years to go from... mandating a simple freeze of production [of CFCs] at 1985 levels, to the 1992 decision of a complete production phase-out -- all on the basis of quite insubstantial science," Singer wrote.
Contrary to his assertion virtually all relevant researchers say the link between CFCs and ozone depletion rests on unassailable scientific evidence. As if to underscore the point, the three scientists who discovered the CFC-ozone link were awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry. But that did not faze Singer, who proceeded to attack the Nobel committee in the Washington Times. Singer's tantrum against the Nobel committee would be laughable -- except that his views are influential, especially with conservative politicians. Based in part on Singer's work, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) are making an effort to withdraw U.S. participation in the Montreal Protocol, the international compact that mandates an end to production of the chemicals that destroy the ozone layer. Despite the remarkable international consensus on the Montreal Protocol, DeLay used Singer's pronouncements to attribute it merely to "a media scare."
[Excerpted with permission from The Heat is On, by Ross Gelbspan, published by Addison Wesley Longman, May 1997.]
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