There are always dissenters from scientific consensus, and sometimes those dissenters turn out to be right. But dissenting claims on climate frequently go beyond normal scientific debate and accuse climate scientists of outright fraud. In one early episode, Singer and Seitz cast a series of last-minute changes in the IPCC's 1996 report, its second, as some sort of conspiracy to manufacture "a catastrophe -- the greatest global challenge facing mankind" (Singer's words, not those of the IPCC). That attack eerily presaged the attacks of recent months.
One of the fruits of this effort can be seen on Senator Inhofe's minority page of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works website. It contains a phony list of 650-some scientists, co-curated by Singer, who "dissent over man-made global warming claims." Just 52 people wrote the 2007 IPCC report, the page claims. Never mind that the 52 were merely co-authors of summaries to which thousands of named scientists contributed. Or that the 650 are largely scientists who disagree over specifics, not fundamentals. In the logic of the list, unless everyone agrees on every number, everyone must be wrong; and if natural effects exist, man-made ones cannot. This is the Tobacco Strategy. (Full disclosure: the institution I work for includes about two dozen scientists on the list, many of whom have angrily -- and unsuccessfully -- demanded to be removed.)
Why do so many people listen to them?
Do these folks really believe what they are saying? Or maybe the bigger question is: why do so many people listen to them? The answer may lie in the fact that the causes against which Singer and others have taken up arms are not just about science; they invite government regulation and limits on free enterprise -- violations of conservative American ideals. Many conservatives may oppose environmental causes, but it is not that they hate the planet; they hate the political solutions that liberals propose for protecting it. This April, a USA Today reporter asked a newspaper editor in Muleshoe, Texas, if the locals were worried about global warming. The editor replied: "Let's put it this way: Rush Limbaugh has a lot more fans around here than Hillary Clinton."
On a deeper level, there is the somewhat less partisan belief that man will always advance with the help of technology. The idea that we could be messing up nature on a grand scale by making "progress" is heresy to many. The Climate War quotes Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who says that the entire environmental movement "is based on a bias against human power over nature. What gives us power over nature? Energy."
The fact remains that support for climate science has waned across the board. In 2006 more than 90% of Democrats - now down to 75% -- saw solid evidence for global warming, along with a healthy 60% of Republicans (compared with 35% today).
So we are back to the question: what happened? Pooley's book, which tracks the constant strategizing and horse trading over climate policy among a small, influential cast of politicians, business leaders, environmentalists, and lobbyists, may help explain. In the background, the world economy is crashing, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are looking equally endless. People can worry about only so much bad news at one time. Sociologists call it the "finite pool of worry." After a while, you have to tune something out.
The "true believers" in Pooley's book, like Al Gore, may be partly to blame, framing climate change mainly as a horrible danger, not as a challenge to develop a more sustainable path for humanity. Pooley quotes a 2004 essay, "The Death of Environmentalism," by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus: "Imagine how history would have turned out had [Martin Luther] King given an 'I have a nightmare' speech instead," they say. They have a point.
