Prof. Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California-San Diego Science Studies Program, lectures on the history of the global warming disinformation campaign, led by corporate-funded policy operatives and ideologically-driven scientists, who employed the “tobacco strategy” to manipulate public opinion to create an exaggerated sense of uncertainty about scientific evidence on global warming and climatic disruption. (See especially from 26:00 forward in this 58-minute video.)
Naomi Oreskes is a Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego. She is the author of the Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, peer-reviewed paper that analyzed 928 peer-reviewed papers on the topic of climate change and found that all of them agreed that human greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for the majority of the recent changes in the earths climate.
Guide to the Oreskes lecture to help find specific sections:
00:00 Introduction
02:00 Frank Luntz
03:40 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report
05:30 Early climate science, John Tyndall (1850s), Svante Arrenhius (1890s), G.S. Callendar (1930s), Gilbert Plass (1950s)
10:30 1957 Suess & Revelle; “Big Greenhouse” in Time Magazine
14:00 1964/65 NAS Science Advisory Committee; President’s Science Advisory Committee
17:30 1970s NRC; JASON; “Charney Report”
23:30 1988 IPCC formed; US National Energy Policy Act; George H. W. Bush signs U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change
DENIAL
26:00 Why is there denial? Where did it come from?
29:15 1984 George C. Marshal Institute founded by William Jastrow (added William Nierenberg, Frederick Seitz; S. Fred Singer later).
Original goal: Cold War, defend Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative against criticism from other physicists.
Tactics: Create uncertainty; threaten PBS stations with lawsuits under “Fairness Doctrine”.
36:00 1990, cold war over, switch to other areas [global warming, CFC-ozone, tobacco]
39:00 1995 IPCC Second Assesment Report, personal attacks on Ben Santer
42:00 1995 Connection with tobacco, Seitz, tactics
Create doubt, do not publish science, but in popular literature, op-eds
53:30 Why? In each case, political views [NO REGULATION, EVER] masked as arguments about science.
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