In April 2016 Bill Nye, American TV personality, trusted expert, and self-declared âScience Guyâ, triggered a small scandal. According to The Washington Times, Nye had proposed that climate change dissent was made a criminal, even jailable, offence (Richardson 2016). âWas it appropriate to jail the guys from Enron?â Nye was quoted as saying, continuing âWas it appropriate to jail people from the cigarette industry who insisted that this addictive product was not addictive, and so on?â (Richardson 2016). His words raise some provocative questions. How should societies respond to individuals, groups, and industries that query widely held scientific opinions? Do those who do so deliberately mislead the public? Is it appropriate to compare climate change scepticism and denial with the deliberate and scandalous deception of stakeholder and regulatory authorities by Enron executives, a deception that ultimately led to the downfall of that once powerful corporation and the loss of jobs and pensions of thousands of its employees?
Nyeâs comparison of climate denial and cigarette industry campaigns is perhaps less controversial; both involve the blatant refutation of scientific evidence. Should, then, the protracted and sophisticated attempts of the tobacco industry and its imaginative, scrupulous, lobbyists be held legally accountable for denying the dangers of smoking? When, for instance, the Tobacco Institute in the early 1970s distributed Smoking and Health: The Need to Know, a âdocumentaryâ which successfully dispelled fears of contracting lung cancer from cigarettes (Proctor 2012: 89), should they have been prosecuted?
Likewise, when the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) launched a costly TV ad campaign entitled âWe call it lifeâ, asserting the importance of carbon dioxide for plant photosynthesis (âWe breathe it out, plants breathe it inâ), should it have been considered as engaging in criminal activity for distracting from the globally held and scientifically robust claim that carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases driving human-made global climate change? The timing of the campaign reveals its strategic nature. The CEI launched âWe call it lifeâ at precisely the time the former US Vice President Al Goreâs film An Inconvenient Truth sounded the alarm on anthropogenic climate change and drew attention from the media, policymakers, and the wider public. It comes as no surprise, then, that the CEI received substantial funding from ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute (Shakir 2006). Certainly, the experts and public relation specialists paid for by the CEI didnât adhere to the standards of good scientific practice . They werenât interested in providing or scrutinizing scientific evidence. But should the denial of scientific facts be considered a crime? For Nye the answer might seem to be straightforward: âIn these cases, for me, as a taxpayer and voter, the introduction of this extreme doubt about climate change is affecting my quality of life as a public citizen. (âŠ) So I can see where people are very concerned about this, and theyâre pursuing criminal investigationsâ (Richardson 2016). And his concern is understandable, stemming from the potentially catastrophic consequences of inaction and the dangers of climate change for hundreds of millions of people.
The problem with such a depiction, however appealing it might be to climate scientists and proponents of a robust global climate change policy, is that it overlooks the complicated and problematic relations between expertise and decision-making, and science and politics. The situation certainly might seem unambiguous: Scientific experts, sounding the alarm on global climate change, are desperately trying to speak âtruth to powerâ, but, unfortunately, power seems unwilling or incapable of listening. The âtruthâ on anthropogenic climate change is drowned out by deliberate political misinterpretation of data and facts, alternative theories that never meet the standards of good scientific practice, and, perhaps worst of all, false statements, studies, and reports that resemble scientific research.
But this depiction presupposes a clear-cut conflict between objective bearers of true knowledge on the one side and a group of interest-driven distorters or knowledge on the other. In this picture, scientific facts become politicized if and when they transgress the boundaries between the aseptic laboratories of scientific research and enter the battlefield of political ideas , intrigues, and interests. But what if the science itself is contested? Is it always easy to separate healthy and rigorous scientific questioning from politically motivated distortion? How can one reliably discern truth from error? How can it be decided which scientific expertise to trust? And, even more importantly, how might one tell unintentional error form the intentional misinterpretation of scientific data?
Investigating how think tanks are involved in these processes of translating or distorting scientific findings is the starting point of this book.
These questions concerned the American public half a century ago, when Herman Kahn, a staff member of the RAND Corporation and later a founder of the conservative âHudson Instituteâ, published a comprehensive monograph titled On Thermonuclear War. (Kahn 1960) The book was remarkable at the time for including a detailed expert analysis on how to deviate from the doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD) in order to win a nuclear confrontation. The book was widely discussed and frequently criticized for bringing the possibilities of nuclear war closer. When Kahn died in 1983, The New York Times cited in his obituary a critical Scientific American editorial accusing On Thermonuclear War to be âa moral tract on mass murder: how to plan it, how to commit it, how to get away with it, how to justify itâ (Treaster 1983).
Kahnâs alarming analysis was widely condemned. According to some of his numerous critics, his advice could have threatened the lives of vast numbers of human beings. However, although Herman Kahn was never sued or publicly shamed for his writings, his controversial advice contributed to discrediting âmegadeath intellectualsâ1 (Menand 2005). So, whatâs the difference between his proposals on the use of so-called doomsday devices, technologies, that is, that could destroy all human life on earth, and more recent warnings of the continued use of fossil fuel-based technology, which might bring equally unpleasant consequences? Was it that the use of nuclear weapons posed an immediate threat, that the horrors of thermonuclear war threatened the readers of Kahn rather than their children or grandchildren? Or was it the iconic image of the mushroom cloud that spurred emotional reaction to Kahnâs cool, distanced, and scientific analysis? The risks of a nuclear war were arguably more tangible than the risks of a changing climate. Certainly, climate scientists have to overcome great obstacles when âsounding the alarmâ on anthropogenic climate change. Is this why the âscandalâ surrounding Bill Nye failed, in the end, to make major headlines and was soon displaced by other news stories? Distrusting the predictions of some scientists is, in the end, different from ignoring the obvious threats of nuclear weapons, or the proven dangers of smoking. Isnât it?
One obstacle for climate change policy proponents is that many believe climate change to be a problem that concerns people âsomeday in the futureâ. While the devastating consequences of atomic bombs were entirely foreseeable, predicting and pinpointing the impact of climate change are far more difficult. Unable to âproveâ that a single extreme weather event , such as Hurricane Katrina of 2005 or Hurricane Harvey of 2017, was caused by climate change, scientists have to turn to probabilities and models to explain the complex interplay of increasing water temperatures and atmospheric water vapour and pointing out that âthe strongest storms will become more powerful this centuryâ (Hansen 2009: 253).
Nevertheless, scientists feel they have a moral obligation as a scientist to inform the wider public of the potential consequences. In 2009, for example, renowned climate scientists James Hansen published a book which aimed at telling â[t]he truth about the coming climate catastrophe and our last chance to save humanityâ. The bookâs somewhat sensational subtitle Storms of My Grandchildren encapsulates its urgent and deeply personal message. As Hansen explains: âI did not want my grandchildren, someday in the future, to look back and say Opa understood what was happening, but he did not make it clearâ (2009: XII).
His sentiment of ethical responsibility is one reason for the growing frustration of the international community of climate scientists, activists, and commentators such as Bill Nye, with climate sceptics and deniers. Yet it is no coincidence that the âscandalâ took place in the US. As we will see in the course of this book, climate science is particularly contested in the US where political camps disagree sharply over climate politics. And while climate science is an international undertaking, driven mainly by an international community of climate scientists and international bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate politics and consulting on the issue still take place at a predominantly national level.
In 2014, the year before the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP 21), the comprehensive âThe GLOBE Climate Legislation Studyâ found that despite a general trend towards more ambitious national climate politics, some industrialized countries (most notably, the US, Australia, and Japan) had taken a step back (e.g. by lowering their emission reduction targets) in order to stimulate short-term economic growth (Nachmany et al. 2014). Likewise, despite the attempts of international community of scientists to target a global audience, awareness, acceptance, and attitudes towards climate science differ considerably between countries. Climate change denial thrives particularly in the US.
This differentiation reveals how climate change is a highly political issue that requires the commitment of policymakers. The publication of scientific research simply isnât enough. We know that the Earthâs climate is changing because scientists, such as James Hansen, have carefully gathered and analysed data. They have not only discovered changes in global climatic patterns but also attribute these changes to human activity, primarily the massive increase of carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels . Yet despite the lack of any real disputes within the community of climate scientists, the recipients of climate knowledge âpolicymakers, journalists, activists, and citizensâstill doubt its validity. This situation might seem particularly puzzling since scientific research isnât challenged or contested by other scientists. Since we are said today to live in âknowledge societiesâ (Stehr 1994)âsocieties, that is, that are increasingly reliant on (scientific) knowledgeâthis apparent neglect of a scientific consensus needs further explanation.
It may well be, in fact, that the answer lies, at least partly within this depiction of modern societies. As Robert Proctor points out, actively spreading ignorance , raising doubt , and questioning scientific findings become a particularly valuable âstrategic ployâ in social and political contexts used to looking for scientific expertise to plan and/or legitimize political action (Proctor 2008: 8â9).
Gone are the days when the Machinery of Government Committee (referred to as âHaldane Commissionâ after its chairman, the Viscount Haldane of Cloan) which was tasked with developing guiding principles for British research policy could state: âIt appears to us that adequate provision has not been made in the past for the organised acquisition of facts and information, and for the systematic application of thought as preliminary to the settlement of policy and its subsequent administrationâ (The Machinery of Government Committee 1918: 6). This Commission not only held policymakers accountable for acquiring the best information but also proposed far-reaching competences for researchers to decide on the public funding of scientific research. The context of science in society has changed drastically since then. Scientific expertise can still provide guidance, raise awareness, and offer solutions. But, as will be shown, expertise is also now regarded as a service, demanded and paid for by policymakers and interests groups who seek legitimization for their convictions and preferences.
This becomes particularly evident in climate politics. Controversies here arise not only b...