Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes

Author:Naomi Oreskes [Oreskes, Naomi]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Bloomsbury Press
Published: 2010-06-03T05:00:00+00:00

Today, as we experience 101°[F] temperatures in Washington, DC, and the soil moisture across the midwest is ruining the soybean crops, the corn crops, the cotton crops, when we’re having emergency meetings of the Members of the Congress in order to figure out how to deal with this emergency, then the words of Dr. Manabe and other witnesses who told us about the greenhouse effect are becoming not just concern, but alarm.55

Hansen was the star of the show. He testified about some new research at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, showing that there had been a warming since 1980 of just about half a degree Celsius—or one degree Fahrenheit—relative to the 1950–1980 average. The probability that this could be explained by natural events was only 1 percent. “The global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect,” Hansen told the committee.56

His team had also modeled the increase of carbon dioxide and other trace gases according to three “emissions scenarios.” The scenarios were not intended to be predictions of the actual course of human carbon emissions; they were what-if scenarios bracketing likely rates of future emissions and their consequences. One scenario imagined rapid reduction of fossil fuel use after 2000, which reduced future warming. The other two—more realistic scenarios—raised the Earth’s global mean temperature rapidly. Within twenty years, it would be higher than at any time since the warmest previous interglacial period then known, which ended about 120,000 years ago.57

This time, major newspapers across the country covered the hearings. The New York Times put Hansen’s testimony on the front page; suddenly he was the leading advocate for doing something about the global warming.58 Some colleagues, uncomfortable with all the media attention—and maybe a bit jealous, too—attacked Hansen for going too far, thinking he had discounted the significant uncertainties that still remained. On the other hand, Hansen had captured attention as no one else had. Moreover, most of the scientific community did believe that one could not endlessly raise atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases without a climatic response. It was basic physics. Still, Hansen’s claim of detection was unexpected, and seemed perhaps premature.59

During the five-year interregnum between the release of the Nierenberg report and Hansen’s powerful testimony, atmospheric scientists had been busy with other things. They had discovered the Antarctic ozone hole, investigated it, and explained its cause. They had also demonstrated the existence of global ozone depletion through the work of the Ozone Trends Panel. Certain scientists, including NASA’s Bob Watson, began to think that something like the Ozone Trends Panel was needed for global warming, too. This became the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Bert Bolin, the man who had first warned about acid rain in Europe, thought that Hansen’s temperature data hadn’t been “scrutinized well enough,” and accepted the task.60 He divided the panel into three working groups. The first would produce a report reflecting the state of climate science. The second would assess the potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts.

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