Nature attacks Heartland Institute on climate science
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0282
Armed with both an editorial and a news feature, Nature this week has fired a broadside at the Heartland Institute, the Chicago free-market think tank that bedevils climatologists.
Consider not just the content but the tone of this opening paragraph from the international science weekly’s editorial
It would be easy for scientists to ignore the Heartland Institute’s climate conferences. They are curious affairs designed to gather and share contrarian views, in which science is secondary to wild accusations and political propaganda. They are easy to lampoon—delegates at the latest meeting of the Chicago-based institute in Washington DC earlier this month could pick up primers on the libertarian writings of Russian–American novelist Ayn Rand, who developed the philosophical theory of objectivism, and postcards depicting former US vice-president Al Gore as a fire-breathing demon. And they are predictable, with environmentalists often portrayed as the latest incarnation of a persistent communist plot. “Green on the outside, red on the inside,” said one display. “Smash the watermelons!”
The editors call Heartland’s views and efforts “absurdities” and declare that “the fight is, in fact, a violent collision of world views.” Here they refer to the news feature on Heartland in the same issue:
Despite criticizing climate scientists for being overconfident about their data, models and theories, the Heartland Institute proclaims a conspicuous confidence in single studies and grand interpretations. A 2009 report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change , which the institute supports, is well sourced and based on scientific papers. Yet it makes many bold assertions that are often questionable or misleading, and do not highlight the uncertainties. Many climate sceptics seem to review scientific data and studies not as scientists but as attorneys, magnifying doubts and treating incomplete explanations as falsehoods rather than signs of progress towards the truth. As the News Feature points out, although the sceptics feel that they have already won the political battle in the United States, their attacks on science will continue.
Scientists can only carry on with their work, addressing legitimate questions as they arise and challenging misinformation. Many climate scientists have already tried to engage with their critics, as they did at the Heartland event. The difference, of course, is motive. Scientists work to fill the gaps in human knowledge and to build a theory that can explain observations of the world. Climate sceptics revel in such gaps, sometimes long after they have been filled.
The subheadline on Jeff Tollefson’s news feature asserts that though Heartland is “a major force” among climate skeptics, it “just can’t win the battle over science.”
Tollefson reports that Heartland and its leader, Joe Bast, provide “fodder for politicians and conservative commentators bent on preventing government regulation of carbon emissions,” that the institute plans to spend $1.8 million on its climate program this year, and that speakers at Heartland’s recent conference in Washington, D.C., questioned “the modern temperature record, palaeoclimate reconstructions and simulations of future conditions.”
The article names two forms for Bast’s “assault on climate research.” One is “challenging the credibility of the science.” The other is “disputing the claim that there is a scientific consensus on climate change.” Tollefson says that Bast “does not necessarily deny that humans are having an influence on the climate, but ... does question the forecasts of catastrophic impacts and the rationale for curbing carbon emissions.”
Tollefson charges that skeptics supported by Heartland mine the scientific literature for “nuggets of contrary evidence and doubt—often the kind of uncertainties that scientists readily acknowledge in their publications” and that they ignore “mountains of evidence about the adverse effects of global warming,” instead stringing together “a confident story that makes rising carbon dioxide concentrations seem entirely beneficial.” He describes two of what he alleges have been Heartland’s misrepresentations—one concerning scientific findings, the other concerning surveys seeking to determine climate scientists’ actual views.
Tollefson emphasizes, however, that despite the confidence seen at the recent conference, Bast “hesitates when asked about the future.” Tollefson quotes Bast:
‘We’ve won the public opinion debate, and we’ve won the political debate as well,’ Bast says. ‘But the scientific debate is a source of enormous frustration.’
And Tollefson’s closing implies a prediction that Bast and Heartland will lose in the end:
Bast seems to believe that the foundation supporting climate science is collapsing, but with a little prodding, he will talk about his fears, too. Harking back, Bast says he racked up frequent-flier miles throughout the 1990s fending off large government subsidies for sports stadiums all around the country. By the time he made the rounds once, the whole debate would start again. In the end, the stadium projects went forward with taxpayers’ money.
‘They wore me down,’ says Bast, ‘and the same thing may happen with climate change’.
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are published in ‘Science and the media.’ He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.
