"The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance." - Michael Crichton, Science writer and author 'State of Fear'.

The current furor over human-caused anthropogenic (AGW) global warming is a manifestation of environmental agendas that have continued for forty years. As has happened in the past, this has been aggravated by surprising low levels of science, mathematics, and energy literacy in the U.S. A retired school teacher commented to me after a speech on energy issues said, “Well I don’t think we really have any electrical supply problems. If I need more electricity I’ll just install more outlets.” An uninformed public is very vulnerable to the threats of gloom and doom some common over the past 40 years of environmentalism.

The challenge facing mankind described by Michael Crichton would also include distinguishing between good science, and political agendas, especially dangerous agendas. There are crucial differences. The current furor over anthropogenic (AGW) global warming is a manifestation of an environmental agenda found in many issues for the last forty years.

One of these is the well known nuclear energy controversy and its organized opposition. I have nearly 40 years experience in the nuclear industry, and nearly 30 years of advocacy experience in explaining and defending the technology. This experience includes hundreds of media (radio, television, and print) interviews, published op-eds, and speaking appearances. The nuclear industry and NW hydro electric facilities have been under attack by the same movement now opposed to fossil fuel energy use.

In warfare it’s commonly known that energy generating facilities are priority military targets once military targets have been removed. A major reason for the quick recovery of our Navy at Pearl Harbor was the fact that the Japanese did not destroy the electrical facilities around Honolulu and Pearl Harbor. For decades electrical energy has been essential to our freedom, prosperity, security and our way of life. This reality has escaped notice by too many people.

For many, the danger lies in the real possibility of rationing or abolishing fossil fuel energy both in electrical generation and transportation. Remarkably, Bill Clinton said on January 31 of this year that this is exactly what we should do, to cripple our economy and a time when many are saying a harmful recession is just around the corner. (http://tinyurl.com/3c74f2).

Coal now provides more that 50% of the electrical energy for the United States. Oil and coal provide more than 90% of the energy of the State of Hawaii, all of which is imported. These energy sources have helped produce the wealthiest, most free, most productive, the most prosperous nation in the history of nations.

The current cultural war about AGW is more than 20 years long. Fortunately, the recent flood of analysis shows the many weaknesses, uncertainties, and exaggerations in climate modeling. Policy makers are nearly 3 years behind the advances of the science, which are leading to policies on out of date evidence.

To proceed in the cultural war now raging about global warming, we need to know a little of the history behind the movement. The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) met in 1992 in Rio Janeiro. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change was formed at that time. A major power broker and organizer behind the UN global warming agenda in Rio was the Canadian Socialist Billionaire Maurice Strong. He said the following at the Rio conference: "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"

This statement is very clear, public, and unambiguous. It should serve as a warning to all involved with the global warming controversy. As in many political movements it is very likely that many supporters of AGW would not believe this and may not be aware of the founding of the movement.

There is a clearly stated political agenda within the UN and the forces behind the UN-IPCC climate change program. It describes an agenda which exists among many national and international leaders.

Consider the following statement by Gro Harlem Brundtland, who currently is the UN’s Special Envoy to Climate Change: “It is irresponsible, reckless, and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the situation: the time for diagnosis is over, the time to act is now.”

The statement was carried in an article by Brundtland in the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. (http://tinyurl.com/yqwerf).

There is a well known 3-step logic to the formation and flow of the alarmism. The first is to identify a pending catastrophe. The second is to identify the cause, and the third step is to get rid of the cause. In this case harmful warming is the pending catastrophe, the causes are the uses of fossil fuels, and the final step is simply to get rid of the CO2 sources.

This may seem reasonable if simple, but usually the situation is more complex. For example in getting rid of a risk, no matter how small, there may be large benefits, such as the use of electricity that we may lose in the process. In other words risk is not a zero sum game.

The Need to Communicate

While the science of global warming is advancing at a very brisk pace, we must realize that to best influence environmental and energy policy, considerable communication effort must be directed to the general public. The need to communicate directly with the public is paramount, which the nuclear industry did not do very well at all. The importance of the public communications activity was under appreciated by the industry.

A very dear price has been paid in not having an informed public in the U.S. Scientists need to appreciate this need to connect directly with the public. Publishing in peer reviewed journals is not enough. Most people in the public are very curious about these issues and are very receptive when they hear from knowledgeable people. Lots of media training and risk communications training is available, and many of the greens take the training.

Who Should Communicate

The communicators need to know the technical issues well, but appreciate that knowledge is not sufficient to connect with audiences, especially hostile audiences. For example reading aloud to an audience from a nuclear engineering text is not sufficient in imparting information to them.

If adversaries are to be discussed or involved, we need to know them as well -- their skills, values, beliefs, agendas, and tactics. Obviously this is not everyone’s cup of tea.

The Linear No-Threshold Theory

Some of those who obstructed the nuclear option were the regulators. Consider the Linear No-Threshold Theory (LNT) of radiation. It posits that adverse health effects extends to zero dose, that there are no doses below which no harm is observed, and no possible benefits occur. This is in violation of the laws of toxicology which tell us that it is the dose which makes the poison, that there are low doses below which no harm is observed.

Yet, regulations of radiation exposures are not established on the basis of observed health effects, but seemingly on the detection limits of radiation, which are incredibly low. The use of the LNT has been decried by many experts. For example, it has been found to be "a deeply immoral use of our scientific heritage," (Dr. Lauriston Taylor – U.S.). Similarly, the use of the LNT is "the greatest scientific scandal of the 20th Century," (Dr. Gunnar Walinder - Sweden).

Likewise, "The unjustified excessive concern with radiation at any level, however, precludes beneficial uses of radiation and radioactivity in medicine, science, and industry." Nobelist Rosalyn Yalow.

In spite of the costly over regulations based upon the questionable LNT there are many problems politically. Many elected officials have reported statements similar to this from a Washington State Congressman: “In my district it is political suicide to be rational on nuclear issues.” A number of State Legislators have said the same thing.

The Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory

The same lack of rational science is happening in many legislatures across the nation with regard to AGW. Scaring the voters means greater political influence and power. Here are some final bits of advice when dealing with communications activities.

First, never let your worst enemies publicly define you, your values, and beliefs. Second, never let your enemies to carry your messages to the public. Third, use of the internet, websites, blogs, and networking are pivotal and likely will lead to a reversal. Directories of Web sites and specialties are essential.

An Inside View

Two years ago I interviewed the founder of Greenpeace Patrick Moore. He’s had a decades long, ringside seat in some of the forces behind the global warming scare. He stated: “Too few Americans and far too few media people know anything about the environmental movement and it’s transformation over the past 35 years into something vastly different.”

Moore continued that “they (the greens) have become far more extreme and whose politics is little more than neo-Marxism in green garb.” Moore was quite specific and pointed out some of the characteristics of the environmental movement today:

Tend strongly to be:

• Anti-human
• Anti science and technology
• Anti-trade and anti-capitalism
• Anti-business
• Anti-civilization
• Invariably misleading

Moore pointed out that the greens have stopped more than 200 hydroelectric projects globally, and, I might add are promoting the dismantling of large existing dams in the United States. This is a very destructive agenda indeed. It leaves the people in those nations deprived of basic electrical energy and a continuing life in disease, despair, deprivation, and destitution.

Ethical Questions Raised

The effort to advocate the Hockeystick version of temperature of the Middle Age Warming Period, is not science, but a substitute for science, perhaps advocacy. A number of questions are raised by the problems surrounding Mann's Hockeystick including:

• 1) Why did the AGW supporters fail to critically review the new theory
• 2) What were the motives for removing the record of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age.
• 3) How and why did the editors and the peer review process fail at Nature Magazine
• 4) How and why did the editors and the reviewers at the IPCC fail to detect the errors in the Hockeystick papers?
• 5) What are we to think of the IPCC and its views of the other global warming issues?
• 6) What are we to think of the public education systems which have promoted AGW?
• 7) What are we to think of the mainstream media so sympathetic with the AGW global warming?
• 8) Can these people be trusted again?

Dr. David Deming of the University of Oklahoma stated (http://tinyurl.com/3yoz6v) in his Dec. 6, 2006, testimony to the US. Senate that “I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages.

The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."

Any attempt to destroy climate data which does not fit the climate modelers’ paradigms is simply dishonest. Dishonesty does not belong in any scientific discussion. In industry it would be career limiting, if not ending. To lie about or destroy historical climate information in the pursuit of a greater political goal is pure Machiavellianism, and should be dismissed as such.

Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasufu, recently retired Director of the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks observed in a classic understatement: “The so-called “hockeystick” figure in the 2001 ‘Summary Report of Policy Makers is still a matter of scientific debate and it is not appropriate to use it.” (http://tinyurl.com/yueg86).

Two individuals, Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre (M&M), under great difficulty and little cooperation from the authors of the Hockeystick, were able to reconstruct the temperature curve from the original proxy data of the authors using a corrected computer algorithm (http://tinyurl.com/37z7mq) and here (http://tinyurl.com/2mxg2y).

The process of replications is essential to the scientific process, normally quite simple with authors’ cooperation. In this case the authors were uncooperative. The world owes a great debt of gratitude for the intrepid, tenacious search and efforts to reconstruct the data and the computer algorithms used to construct the graph. See McKitrick Web site here. (http://tinyurl.com/awwva). McIntyre’s Webvsite is (http://www.climateaudit.org).

With great perseverance they determined that the computer algorithm used by the authors did not do what the authors claimed. M&M found errors in the data, that the computer algorithm used did not perform the analyses correctly as claimed, and by using the Monte Carlo method for generating random numbers, M&M showed that the computer algorithm could generate hockeystick shaped charts from a table of random numbers.

No actual temperature data were essential to get hockeystick shaped charts. This is not science but simple flagrant advocacy. See the statement by David Deming above.

This effort to advocate a particular temperature history which removed (ie ignored existing data) the Middle Age Warming Period 1000 years ago and removed the clear evidence of the Little Ice Age, is not science.

A great deal of disagreement emerged from the authors and their supporters after the withering analyses by M&M. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) became involved with the controversy and investigated the Hockeystick problems. The famous NAS Wegman report was issued about it, and it is here (http://tinyurl.com/yvmocx).

The Wegman report was in close agreement with the M&M analyses of the hockeystick, and not with the findings in the study by Mann. The NAS criticisms are numerous and profound and are summarized here (http://tinyurl.com/34qrad).

Conclusions

The scientific failings of leaders and dubious scientists supporting the AGW hypothesis have attracted attention from the science community from around the world. One of the major problems is the tremendous complexity of our climate and the driving forces behind it. Mankind simply does not understand how it works and we may never understand it.

Yet for the supporters of the AGW to suggest that they now understand our climate, that they know enough to support drastic energy policies crippling economies around the world is unsupportable. To even suggest that mankind is altering the climate significantly is unsupportable. To heap scorn upon those who appreciate this complexity and have pointed out some of the flaws in the hypothesis, has also been noticed as unscientific conduct.

To ration or eliminate the large sources of fossil fuel energy in our economy, at a time when these same political forces additionally oppose nuclear, and hydroelectric sources as well (more than 98 percent of our nation’s total), is quite dangerous to our future, and needs to be stopped.

The Way Forward

While there is wide use of energy in the Western world, many of the beneficiaries do not appreciate the relationship between that energy and the prosperity they enjoy. Energy is crucial for our freedom, liberty, prosperity, health, and well being. As we see from pronouncements by people such a the UN’s Maurice Strong (above), this effort takes on a very serious sense of urgency so that we’ll not suffer from the intended destruction. This message has to be carried forward by others, if the educational systems and media can’t.

Keep close track of the progress of climate science, keeping in mind there are advocacy groups willing to misrepresent that progress. Follow the climate science as it expands.

There is excellent work being planned to better understand the complexities of the climate and the forcing factors.

Great scientific climate work is being done and is being planned which will need analysis and spreading the word. To change local and federal policy a great deal of public communications is needed to convert climate findings, discoveries, and analysis into scientifically defensible public policy. This is essential for significant political influence.

The communications tools available today are much faster and far more effective than we had during the early days of the nuclear energy struggles. The websites, blogs, and networks, transfer billions of times more information very quickly than in those early days.

While the opposition has access to the internet as well, it won’t be theirs exclusively. To quote Arthur Robinson Ph.D.: “The [global] power to tax and ration energy is the power to control the world -- to have life and death control over every human being on the planet. No government should ever have this power.”

Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., a science and energy reporter for Hawaii Reporter and a science analyist for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, is retired and now lives in Eastern Washington. He has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level. His interest in the communications of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows. He can be reached via email at mailto:mike@foxreport.org

HawaiiReporter.com reports the real news, and prints all editorials submitted, even if they do not represent the viewpoint of the editors, as long as they are written clearly. Send editorials to mailto:Malia@HawaiiReporter.com

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