Date: Wed, 24 Aug 1994 23:03:17 -0700 (PDT) From: Alexander Volokh Subject: CEI LIST - GREENHOUSE GAMBIT To: Recipients of the CEI List GREENHOUSE GAMBIT by Jonathan Adler, CEI director of environmental studies appeared in *The Washington Times*, 7/27/94 Most who live inside the Beltway may not be enchanted with this summer's sweltering heat, but to Vice President Al Gore it must come as a relief. After a frigid winter, the D.C. heat gives the vice president an excuse to talk about one of his favorite subjects, global warming, and how the world must mobilize to address it. Mr. Gore is unwavering in his belief that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pose "the world's most important environmental threat." Since 1986 he has claimed that "there is no longer any significant disagreement within the scientific community" about the menace of global warming. More recently, he has compared global warming skeptics with Tobacco Institute flacks who deny that smoking causes lung cancer. His greenhouse predictions are accepted by "the vast preponderance of serious scientists who have studied the evidence," Mr. Gore cries. If there is such unanimity within the scientific community, it should be relatively easy to demonstrate. Yet neither recent polls by Gallup nor Greenpeace could find the unanimous belief in a greenhouse apocalypse of which Mr. Gore speaks. In 1992, the Science and Environmental Policy Project asked atmospheric scientists to sign a statement saying the type of policies advocated by Mr. Gore "are based on the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuels and requires immediate action." It was signed by scientists from many prestigious institutions, including the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others. Presumably, Mr. Gore would argue that none of the signatories were "serious" scientists. Mr. Gore would have a harder time trying to discredit the late Roger Revelle, whom Mr. Gore credits with alerting him to the possibility of a human-induced warming. Revelle believed in a cautious approach to global warming policy and was not an advocate of extreme political measures. Shortly before he died he co-authored an article in Cosmos that made this view clear; the scientific evidence for greenhouse warming is "too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time." When this article was cited by Mr. Gore's opponents, he was understandably upset. The response of Gore partisans and staffers was to engage in a hasty campaign to discredit the article and with it Mr. Revelle's co-authors, Fred Singer and Chauncey Starr. At the suggestion of Mr. Gore's staff, one of Mr. Revelle's former associates, Justin Lancaster, attempted to have Mr. Revelle's name removed from the article when it was to be republished. Moreover, Mr. Lancaster publicly charged that "Revelle was not an author" of the article and that his name had been listed under duress. Mr. Lancaster even went so far as to suggest that Mr. Singer's purpose in listing Mr. Revelle as a co-author was "to undermine the pro-Revelle stance of [then] Sen. Gore." These claims prompted a libel suit by Mr. Singer against Mr. Lancaster, in which Mr. Singer was represented by the Center for Individual Rights, a public-interest legal group in Washington. The suit was settled recently and Mr. Lancaster issued a statement in which he "fully and unequivocally" retracted his claims against Mr. Singer. Concurrent with Mr. Lancaster's attack on Mr. Singer, Mr. Gore himself led a similar effort to discredit the respected scientist. Mr. Gore reportedly contacted "60 Minutes" and "Nightline" to do stories on Mr. Singer and other opponents of Mr. Gore's environmental policies. The stories were designed to undermine the opposition by suggesting that only raving ideologues and corporate mouthpieces could challenge Mr. Gore's green gospel. The strategy backfired. When "Nightline" did the story, it exposed the vice president's machinations and compared his activities to Lysenkoism: the Stalinist politicization of science in the former Soviet Union. Mr. Gore's strong language and heavy-handed tactics in the global warming debate fit into a larger pattern of attempts by Mr. Gore and his minions to manipulate the scientific process through political force. Unsatisfied with challenging opponents in open debate, Mr. Gore and his staffers have resorted to sullying reputations and destroying careers. Gore loyalists were reportedly responsible for removing scientists from both the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation because they failed to toe Mr. Gore's party line. Former FDA official Henry Miller claims similar events occurred at his agency shortly after Mr. Gore took office. Lysenkoism indeed. If there is an emerging scientific consensus in support of Mr. Gore's views, it is only because scientists are increasingly afraid of open opposition. If science is truly in Mr. Gore's court, strong arm tactics and extreme rhetoric would not be necessary. The scientific community would line up behind the vice president's pronouncements. The reality is that Mr. Gore does not speak for science, and his views of an imminent and "devastating" global warming are overblown. Climate change is an important issue, and that is ever more reason to leave it to science, and not the vice president's politics. _______ __________ ___________ / | / | | | |__________ | | | | \ | | \ _______ |__________ ___________ COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE 1001 Connecticut Ave. NW #1250 Washington, DC 20036 202-331-1010, fax 202-331-0640 cei@digex.com Permission to copy granted as long as these lines are left intact. To subscribe to the cei list, send a message to volokh@netcom.com. "The Virtual Hand: CEI's free-market guide to the information superhighway" is available for $5. CEI's monthly newsletter, "CEI UpDate," is free to contributors of $25.