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The “truth”
about climate change is just that – the climate is changing.
Always has been, and always will.
So it comes as
no surprise that, despite recent protests challenging whether
scientists in the 1970s did, in fact, warn of global cooling,
the climate change phenomenon has haunted the imagination of
scientists, policymakers, environmentalists and, now, lawyers.
“Global warming”
as a scientific concept is now in the philosophical ascendancy,
with public debate raging over whether human activity is a cause
of the phenomenon. It wasn’t always so. Contrary to the
Monday-morning global warming quarterbacks who now assert that
“global cooling” wasn’t really a massive, legitimate concern
among the world’s scientists, the 1970s and 80s were filled with
dire predictions from many of the same sources that would go on
to offer an opinion about today’s global warming concept. A 1976
BusinessWeek article summarizes the state of affairs in that
decade:
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Climatologists have advanced a number of theories to
explain why the world's climate is getting worse.
The dominant school maintains that the world is
becoming cooler, resulting in a loss of arable land
at the higher latitudes and major shifts in rainfall
patterns. A second school believes the world is
warming, with equally serious consequences. |
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--Business Week, "The world's climate is getting
worse" August 2, 1976 |
In the 1970s,
major news publications, like TIME, Newsweek and National
Geographic, and significant scientific journals published
reports about global cooling. The reports warned that global
cooling – a “new ice age” – would devastate food supplies, slash
growing seasons across the globe, and would result in widespread
famine. Leading scientific organizations, from the National
Academy of Sciences to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s Center for Climatic and Environmental
Assessment, warned of unknown dangers related to the cooling
phenomenon.
So serious was
the threat that innovative thinkers developed plans to melt
Arctic glaciers by covering them in black soot. Additional plans
were offered to divert arctic rivers in the hope that water
flows would spread the cooling effect over a broader area. No
less a scientific luminary than Carl Sagan, the world-famous
physicist who hosted the popular 1980s science series Cosmos,
suggested the burning and clear-cutting of forests might lead to
a new ice age. His suggestion: the intentional release of
greenhouse gas emissions to counteract the cooling.
Needless to say,
the Great Debate continues. Esteemed scientific bodies with
acronym monikers float reports and analysis suggesting both
cooling and warming. Within the past six months, according to
experts, the globe has experienced record-setting warming and
record-setting cooling (enough to offset the past 100 years of
warming, according to meteorological measures). So, what’s a
person to do?
According to
former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, “the debate is over.” He
believes – along with a large number of his co-Nobel Prize
recipients who participated in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) report – that his version of human
causation-driven global warming has carried the day. All
mounting evidence to the contrary has been pilloried as
corporate-driven falsehoods designed to maintain the status quo.
Some top
scientists, however, beg to differ. Whether under the auspices
of academia, or in government, many scientists are pointing to
faulty computer models that “predict” global warming calamity.
Add to that, global cooling is back on the table, thanks in
large part to the world’s four top climate monitoring centers,
which registered record cold over the past few months. And let's
not forget, many IPCC-reporting scientists vocally disagree with
the conclusions in the final report that greenhouse gas
emissions are responsible for current global warming trends.
Isn’t this
exactly what is supposed to happen? Aren’t we supposed to have
public debate over the big issues, with competing viewpoints and
evidence introduced to influence not only public opinion, but
also (and especially) the opinions of our government lawmakers
and regulators?
Not according to
the lawyers representing the Alaskan Eskimo village of Kivalina.
If they have their way, there will be no dispute, no
counterarguments, no public debate on global climate change. In
short, there will be silence – at the point of the proverbial
gun held by the U.S. courts.
The Kivalina
lawyers have alleged the 24 energy producers they’ve sued are
engaged in a robust, clandestine conspiracy to promote ‘bad
science’ and to cover up their global warming liability. Every
industry trade group, business association, and public policy
organization that expresses any opinion, cites any scientific
evidence, or dares to question the assumptions of the Al
Gore-driven global warming model is part of the conspiracy. As
such, the company-defendants and the organizations are
potentially liable. Legally liable. Subject to damage awards.
Subject to court-ordered cease-and-desist orders. Subject to
court-enforced silence.
And why is
silence so important to the lawyers? The give-and-take of public
debate on the science and policy of global climate change gets
in the way. After all, you can’t declare unconditional victory
when the other side remains vocally in the mix.
As the venerable
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote decades ago, “[The
Founding Fathers] believed that freedom to think as you will and
speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and
spread of . . . truth . . . the remedy to be applied is more
speech, not enforced silence.”
With
mega-lawsuits, pending legislation, and a daily news barrage on
climate change, this is the best time for public debate. The
more information available - good and bad - the better the
chance for responsible long-term policymaking. The less
information available - good and bad - the chances increase
dramatically that knee-jerk, short-term policies will intervene.
The climate change stakes are huge - hundreds of billions in
potential damages, millions of jobs lost and new jobs created,
the future of "energy independence" for the U.S., and the
development of environmental policies that address the "whole
picture." In this case, with this issue, silence is not golden. |
