Is Climate Denial Corporate Driven, or Ideological?

This...this is an interesting question.

Time was when defending climate research was all about finding out which conservative think tanks were being funded by Exxon Mobil. Or more recently, by the Koch brothers. And there's certainly a lot of special interest influence out there. But Mc Cright and Dunlap argue that we should focus on the power of conservative, free market and anti-regulatory ideology first and foremost. In other words, the corporate funding, when it occurs, may be more a symptom of what's going on than the root cause.

Why? Well, first, Dunlap and Mc Cright note that “conservative think tanks increased their opposition to climate science and the IPCC, even as major portions of industry were reducing theirs.” And I don’t think there’s any denying it: Corporate views on climate change have grown considerably more diverse, with many leading companies, like General Electric, now calling for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Just look at what happened yesterday: The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell called for climate action because the “clock is ticking.”

Meanwhile, right wing resistance has gotten increasingly shrill, especially after “Climate Gate,” and attacks on climate scientists have only grown more vicious.

A second leg of the argument takes an international focus: Climate denial, say Mc Cright and Dunlap, seems to thrive in nations that “have or have had conservative governments and in which conservative think tanks are firmly planted.” That would include the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and Denmark. And then their third argument is to look at “skeptic” scientists: While this isn't uniformly true, they tend to be political conservatives. Indeed, Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway have written that “market fundamentalism” underlies the ideology of the scientists they discuss in their book Merchants of Doubt, like Frederick Seitz.

Or maybe they are just drawing their own conclusions from the information they have.

They must not be very good at interpreting said information, then.

edited 19th Jan '11 3:04:12 PM by EnglishIvy

Yes

@Ivy: How would you know how to correctly interpret the data, without being a practicing climatologist?

I see how this argument will go. "I don't, but nearly all climatologists interpret it this way." Then discussion of how we know the teaching magisterium of scientists is true. Then the question of which fields are sciences and therefore possess the magisterium vs. which are pseudosciences.

If you've made this apparently clairvoyant prediction, then why bother bringing it up? Out of spite?

edited 19th Jan '11 7:23:51 PM by Aprilla

"They must not be very good at interpreting said information, then." - English Ivy

That's your opinion. Whatever the case, it's most certainly not the same thing as being paid off by corporations.

I hate that cliched accusation. That people can't even question this without being accused of being paid off gives a witch-hunt vibe to this subject, and actually makes me MORE inclined to doubt the established findings, not less.

Sadly, the "skeptics" routinely accuse climate scientists of being paid off also.

It's a witch hunt but it's not clear who the victims are.

edited 19th Jan '11 7:30:27 PM by storyyeller

The models projecting how climate change will affect the world's climate are quite complicated, but the principles predicting that global warming will occur if we increase the levels of greenhouse gases at the rate we are doing are quite simple, and can be understood with education at a high school level (provided your high school is decent and you pay attention and properly absorb the information, which most people don't.) We would need additional information on top of the models we already have to explain how climate change could not occur.

I think the question in the OP is a false dilemma. Corporate driven climate change denial is mainly idealogical, for the same reasons as non-corporate climate change denial. Properly addressing climate change requires commitments that are inconvenient for nearly everybody, while the effects are not immediately apparent. Industries face greater inconvenience than most, while conservatives have greater attachment to the status quo, but from nearly all quarters it boils down to similarly motivated skepticism.

Why? Well, first, Dunlap and Mc Cright note that “conservative think tanks increased their opposition to climate science and the IPCC, even as major portions of industry were reducing theirs.” And I don’t think there’s any denying it: Corporate views on climate change have grown considerably more diverse, with many leading companies, like General Electric, now calling for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Just look at what happened yesterday: The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell called for climate action because the “clock is ticking.”

I would bet that sometimes, some people may lie in bed, and suddenly, in a moment of clarity, realize that their original intentions...have Gone Horribly Right.

@Aprilla: Because it's the central question whenever laymen debate science.

You mean which supposed authority to bestow one's credulity upon? Unless people are willing to invest the time in learning enough basics to make informed choices (as Desertopa said, if you paid attention in high school you would have all the necessary fundamentals), they ought to keep their mouths shut on the topic. Of course that isn't how things work.

However, there are ways to tell good science from bad: that is peer review and reproducibility. When one examines denial of climate change, one finds a distinct lack of actual science involved. I don't see Sarah Palin's climatology degree anywhere.

By pulling the "science as religion" card, you're playing a reduction to absurdity argument on the fundamental unreliability of knowledge, which is only useful if you plan to become a solipsist.

edited 19th Jan '11 9:46:26 PM by Fighteer

I don't know, I think it is kind of a legitimate argument.

I mean, normally, it's kind of stupid to doubt hard research. But we laypeople rarely have cookie-cutter factoids laid out in: "this study, done by these people, overseen by this organization, came up with these results," when it comes to global warming. At least, not in an easy way to trust. And since there don't appear to be any unquestionable ways to test what is and isn't true, the matter becomes impenetrable.

I think I will agree that the question is futile, in that I am not going to be able to piece together the bloated, fragmented body of evidence for or against any one side of this massive issue. I will also say that when information is this hard to make any sense of, I also feel that we can hardly be sure of any side of the argument.

But then, that is from the perspective of laypeople. In some ways, you probably shouldn't expect fantastic things from laypeople.

Now if anyone here has come across a highly concise and trustworthy source that manages to cut through the endless politicking and natter, I really wouldn't mind reading it, especially if whoever comes forth with one could defend its credibility. I for one must regrettably admit I have no such source.

One bit about the Climate Change debate that bugs the crap out of me is the argument that man's role in the change is what should ultimately determine our interest in the subject.

I mean, if an asteroid the size of Texas were headed to this planet, it almost certainly would not be mankind's doing. I hope we'd still send Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, and Steve Buschemi to take it out, however.

edited 20th Jan '11 2:57:37 AM by UnabashedFornicator

I am not going to be able to piece together the bloated, fragmented body of evidence for or against any one side of this massive issue.

Certainly, it may be true that observed climate change patterns have little or nothing to do with humanity and are part of a natural ecological cycle. If that's true, then we're basically fucked, because predictions show things getting pretty hot this century. So, maybe we owe it to our grandkids to at least take a shot at fixing our contribution to the problem.

The real problem is politically driven ennui - that is, pundits unwilling to stick their necks out for the kinds of major overhaul that are truly needed and will have actual down the line benefits, regardless of whether climate change is manmade or not. Politicians suck at thinking long-term.

edited 20th Jan '11 6:58:56 AM by Fighteer

All I can say is that climate change theory advocates are overwhelmingly scientists, while climate change deniers are overwhelmingly politicians, industrial spokespeople, and religious leaders. (And bad sci-fi writers.) That's reason enough for me to look askance at the denial side.

edited 20th Jan '11 7:59:04 AM by Filby

Well I find the issue also lies in the divide between scientists and laymen. Scientists and those involved heavily in science, are going to be more aware of what is happening and do certain things (Such as many scientists not liking IPCC because it's a political, not a scientific, organisation, but would never doubt climate change science or be in denial of global warming).

I mean really, if you have no university education, or do have it but it is not related at all to science, what more tools have you to determine the validity of the statements about climate change? Basically nothing at all. It's not like it's much of a difference if a university professor tells you there is global warming and then a politician tells you there is not, you've no academic background to discern between the two. Your choice becomes somewhat random or at least, uninformed.

Normally science doesn't have to care that much about what lay people think because it doesn't usually swerve into politics. But something that is now affecting all of humanity, and most of humanity doesn't even know what the scientific method is.

Or, to put it a different way, science is great when it provides me with cool gadgets and makes my lifestyle easier, but when it calls upon me to actually change my own lifestyle voluntarily, suddenly it's a political issue because "who knows if those scientists are right about anything?"

Look at how hard we have to work to get people to stop drinking straight Coke, for crying out loud, while wondering why their kids are the same proportions as a bowling ball!

Here's a great summary of the facts.

But yes, it's ideological at heart, because the core question is whether the opinions of people who don't know anything about a topic should be given equal weight with those of people who do know about it.

I'd risk a claim that a layman may consider the issue overhyped. You know, environmentalism is "fashionable", or, as I'm told it is said nowadays, "hip". Barely anyone you'd ask would be in favour of severe deforestation, but many more would say they find Greenpeace activists annoying. So if you're skeptical towards "fashionable" movements or ideas and have poor orientation, or desire to be oriented, in the more technical details of sciences and philosophies, you're as well likely to be skeptical of the anthropogenic global warming.

^ Or, in other words, it's been unfortunately associated with annoying tree-hugging hippies?

And what the hell are solipsism and magisterium?

(Normal English, do you speak it?)

Solipsism is the belief that nothing exists (or nothing is knowable) except yourself. Basically, everything you perceive is, or might be, an illusion.

You run into this, for instance, with the common Intelligent Design argument that "secular scientists" and "ID scientists" disagree about the age of the earth because of their different starting beliefs. But if different starting beliefs can lead to such widely disparate conclusions—that the earth is thousands of years old or that it's billions of year old—how can we be sure about anything?

A magisterium is an intellectual elite, and the word has no business being in this conversation.

edited 20th Jan '11 12:41:54 PM by jewelleddragon

The solipsist argument comes into play when you take the position that all knowledge is fundamentally based on belief, which includes things like the belief in the knowability of facts. Taken a step further, it's all merely sensory impressions filtered through your brain, which may or may not correspond to anything factual. In essence, the Lotus-Eater Machine principle. My reason for bringing this up is that, per reductio ad absurdum, any claim to doubt scientific findings on the sole basis of the unknowability of true facts effectively means that you subscribe to a solipsistic worldview and there's no point in debating anything with you.

Of course, I can't know that there's really a human being at the other end of this Internet conversation, nor that what I see in front of me is a computer connected to the internet and not just a bunch of random sense impressions that my mind has been trained to interpret as such, nor that I really have a mind at all. So you see how stupid this is.

In order to have any kind of meaningful conversation, one must allow for common elements such as that an external world exists and has definable, knowable properties, even if we don't necessarily know all of them. Then the search comes for a paradigm which gives the most useful information about said world, and that paradigm to date has been the scientific method, hands down. So, to argue against climate change on the basis that Science Is Wrong betrays a dangerous level of ignorance - dangerous because you may ignore the onrushing freight train because you're busy debating the nature of the sound it makes.

edited 20th Jan '11 1:07:54 PM by Fighteer

Yep. And then there's the idea that some people make a lot of cash on anti-global warming activism. To how big an extent the latter is justified, I won't guess. I don't know the details, but I guess Al Gore-types make cash on their documentaries, and there's a lot of opportunity for shady dealings e.g. on carbon dioxide limits. If we assume global warming to be an immediate threat, then it, at worst, is a Necessary Evil, but if we are unconvinced of this, then it may appear to be a scheme to make cash off the conned masses' fears.

edited 20th Jan '11 1:05:02 PM by lordGacek

Except science research is a field where you can at best live somewhat comfortably, making a hundred or maybe two hundred grand a year.

And when you get grant money, the university deducts its amount from what it pays you.

Read this blog post by Gavin Schmidt, along with the 100 or so comments, for some insight into how funding actually works in the science world.