John Kerry (1943):
You can be certain and be wrong.
(Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W Bush, Ron Suskind, New York Times, 2004, emphasis added)
Joseph Stalin (1878 – 1953) — in response to Beria's doubts about the ideological soundness of their atomic weapons' scientists:
Leave them in peace.
We can always shoot them all later.
(p 269)
John Grant:
[A] 1997 survey found that 40% of US scientists believed they could communicate with God and that He was capable of answering their prayers. …
[Reassuringly] 87% of the US adult population believed the same thing, so a scientific education is … not entirely wasted.
(p 85, emphasis added)
Reality is not affected by human preferences …
(Corrupted Science, 2007, p 237)
October 13, 2012
Paul Barnett
Green Army: Persons of Interest
October 12, 2012
Guy Pearse
Green Army: Persons of Interest
(World Coal Association)
Coal in Electricity Generation in 2012
| Mongolia | 95% |
| South Africa | 93% |
| Poland | 83% |
| China | 81% |
| India | 71% |
| Australia | 69% |
| Israel | 61% |
| Indonesia | 48% |
| Germany | 44% |
| UK | 39% |
| USA | 38% |
| Japan | 21% |
(World Coal Association)
Guy Pearse:
[Australia is] the world's third-biggest carbon exporter (behind Saudi Arabia and Russia).
(On Borrowed Time and Borrowed Carbon, Goodbye to All That?, 2010)
[Since] 2000, the Lavoisier Group has co-ordinated the local fight against the science.
(p 34)
Harold Clough [Lavoisier Group, 28 August 2000]:
[The Kyoto Protocol is the] most serious challenge to our sovereignty since the Japanese fleet entered the Coral Sea on 3 May 1942.
(p 24)
Lavoisier Group:
[There's] an understanding in the [Howard] Cabinet that [climate] science is all crap.
(Quarry Vision, 2009, p 44)
Carbon Tracker / Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment:
… 60–80% of coal, oil and gas reserves of listed firms are unburnable.
[The] top 200 oil and gas and mining companies have allocated up to $674 billion in the last year for finding and developing more reserves and new ways of extracting them.
(Unburnable Carbon 2013: Wasted capital and stranded assets, p 4)
October 9, 2012
Merchants of Doubt
Naomi Oreskes
DDT does
[In fact,] there is substantial scientific evidence that a good deal of harm — both to humans and the other species [—] has been avoided.
(p 229, emphasis added)
The network of right-wing foundations, the corporations that fund them, and the journalists who echo their claims have created a tremendous problem for American science.
[Of] the fifty six "environmentally skeptical" books published in the 1990s, 92 percent were linked to these right-wing foundations (only thirteen were published in the 1980s, and 100 percent were linked to the foundations).
Scientists have faced an ongoing misrepresentation of scientific evidence and historical facts that brands them as public enemies — even mass murderers — on the basis of phony facts. …
[The] Soviet Union routinely engaged in historical cleansing, erasing real events and real people from their official histories and even official photographs. …
The right-wing defenders of American liberty have now done the same.
(p 236)
[Pollution is a "negative externality", which imposes costs] on people who [do] not benefit from the economic activity that produced them.
DDT imposed enormous external costs through the destruction of ecosystems; acid rain, secondhand smoke, the ozone hole, and global warming did the same.
[These are] all market failures [requiring government] intervention [to address them.]
This is why free market ideologues and old Cold Warriors joined together to fight them.
(p 237)
[Cold Warriors like] Fred Seitz and Fred Singer, Robert Jastrow and Bill Nierenberg, and later Dixy Lee Ray … joined forces with the [worshippers] of the free market:
(p 238)
[Science is showing] that certain kinds of [freedom] are not sustainable — [such as] the liberty to pollute.
[It is] showing that Isaiah Berlin was right: liberty for wolves does indeed mean death to lambs.
(p 239)
[On the issue of persistent pesticides,] science and democracy worked as they were supposed to.
Independent scientific experts summarized the evidence.
Polls showed that the public supported strong legislation to protect the environment.
… Nixon supported the creation of the EPA not because he was a visionary environmentalist, but because he knew that the environment would be an important issue in the 1972 presidential election.
Our leaders acted in concert with both science and the will of the people.
(p 222)
Brown & Williamson Tobacco:
Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the "body of fact" that exists in the mind of the general public.
(Memo to R A Pittman, 21 August 1969)
Frank Luntz (1962):
[A] compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth. …
Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.
Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.
(Republican Candidate Briefing, 2002)
Charles Krauthammer (1950):
With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism …
[The] Left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: metamorphosis from red to green.
Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will [soon] be regulating practically everything …
Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life …
(Washington Post)
Thomas Sowell (1930) [Hoover Institution]:
[There] has not been a mass murderer executed in the past half-century who has been responsible for as many deaths … as the sainted Rachel Carson.
(Jewish World Review, 7 June 2001)
Tina Rosenberg (1960):
Silent Spring is now killing African children because of its persistence in the public mind.
(New York Times Magazine, 11 April 2004)
Pete Du Pont (1935):
[Environmental] controls were [considered] more important than the lives of human beings.
(Wall Street Journal Online, 21 February 2007)
John Tierney (1953) [Science Columnist]:
[Silent Spring was a] hodgepodge of science and junk science.
(New York Times, 2007)
Millions of people around the world suffer the painful and often deadly effects of malaria because one person sounded a false alarm …
That person is Rachel Carson.
(Dangerous Legacy, Competitive Enterprise Institute, 21 April 2009)
Angela Logomasini:
Carson was wrong, and millions of people continue to pay the price.
(San Francisco Examiner, 28 May 2007)
Rachel Carson Was Right
DDT does
- cause cancer …
- affect human health, and …
- cost human lives. …
[In fact,] there is substantial scientific evidence that a good deal of harm — both to humans and the other species [—] has been avoided.
(p 229, emphasis added)
An Orwellian Problem
The network of right-wing foundations, the corporations that fund them, and the journalists who echo their claims have created a tremendous problem for American science.
[Of] the fifty six "environmentally skeptical" books published in the 1990s, 92 percent were linked to these right-wing foundations (only thirteen were published in the 1980s, and 100 percent were linked to the foundations).
Scientists have faced an ongoing misrepresentation of scientific evidence and historical facts that brands them as public enemies — even mass murderers — on the basis of phony facts. …
[The] Soviet Union routinely engaged in historical cleansing, erasing real events and real people from their official histories and even official photographs. …
The right-wing defenders of American liberty have now done the same.
(p 236)
[Pollution is a "negative externality", which imposes costs] on people who [do] not benefit from the economic activity that produced them.
DDT imposed enormous external costs through the destruction of ecosystems; acid rain, secondhand smoke, the ozone hole, and global warming did the same.
[These are] all market failures [requiring government] intervention [to address them.]
This is why free market ideologues and old Cold Warriors joined together to fight them.
(p 237)
[Cold Warriors like] Fred Seitz and Fred Singer, Robert Jastrow and Bill Nierenberg, and later Dixy Lee Ray … joined forces with the [worshippers] of the free market:
- to blame the messenger,
- to undermine science,
- to deny the truth, and
- to market doubt.
- its lies,
- its deceit,
- its denial of the very realities it had created. …
(p 238)
[Science is showing] that certain kinds of [freedom] are not sustainable — [such as] the liberty to pollute.
[It is] showing that Isaiah Berlin was right: liberty for wolves does indeed mean death to lambs.
(p 239)
Science and Democracy
[On the issue of persistent pesticides,] science and democracy worked as they were supposed to.
Independent scientific experts summarized the evidence.
Polls showed that the public supported strong legislation to protect the environment.
… Nixon supported the creation of the EPA not because he was a visionary environmentalist, but because he knew that the environment would be an important issue in the 1972 presidential election.
Our leaders acted in concert with both science and the will of the people.
(p 222)
October 2, 2012
Self-Regulation
Independent Media Inquiry
Of the 25 countries deemed to have the greatest freedom of the press, 21 have systems of self-regulation.
(p 221)
[There] is general agreement in the codes on the values and standards that publishers and journalists should observe. …
On the other hand, there are few effective institutional measures for enforcing the codes. …
An ombudsman could be an effective accountability mechanism.
[However, few have been appointed, and fewer still given sufficient power to be effective.]
(p 203)
[There is a clear impression that the Australian] media will not tolerate, let alone finance, an effective industry regulator.
The principal basis for resisting reform is that it is an attack on a free press. …
[Given that the media] accepted the idea of press regulation by having set up the [Australian Press Council; it follows logically] that that regulation should be effective. …
[It is questionable whether] the effect on freedom of the press is any different in substance [if] the underpinning for the complaints body is statutory or, as with the APC, contractual.
The real objection to statutory backing is about how the power might be misused in the future …
(p 244, italics added)
[The Australian Press Council] accepts that to implement the reforms [necessary for it to] become an effective regulator, government … support is required [in the areas of:]
Paul Chadwick [Media Ethics Commentator, 1996]:
[Media] concentration has reached the point where no legislature would have the courage to enact a statutory scheme of journalism ethics and then to enforce it against the largest media outlets.
(p 209)
Alan Rusbridger [Editor In Chief, The Guardian, Orwell Memorial Lecture, 2011]:
The simplest explanation [for the lack of action] is a combination of fear, dominance and immunity.
People were frightened of this very big, very powerful company and the man who ran it. …
[News International] had become the untouchables of British public life.
(p 210)
British Parliamentary Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport:
[We] believe that statutory regulation of the press is a hallmark of authoritarianism and risks undermining democracy.
[Self-regulation] must be seen to be effective if calls for statutory intervention are to be resisted.
(February 2011)
Of the 25 countries deemed to have the greatest freedom of the press, 21 have systems of self-regulation.
(p 221)
[There] is general agreement in the codes on the values and standards that publishers and journalists should observe. …
On the other hand, there are few effective institutional measures for enforcing the codes. …
An ombudsman could be an effective accountability mechanism.
[However, few have been appointed, and fewer still given sufficient power to be effective.]
(p 203)
[There is a clear impression that the Australian] media will not tolerate, let alone finance, an effective industry regulator.
The principal basis for resisting reform is that it is an attack on a free press. …
[Given that the media] accepted the idea of press regulation by having set up the [Australian Press Council; it follows logically] that that regulation should be effective. …
[It is questionable whether] the effect on freedom of the press is any different in substance [if] the underpinning for the complaints body is statutory or, as with the APC, contractual.
The real objection to statutory backing is about how the power might be misused in the future …
(p 244, italics added)
[The Australian Press Council] accepts that to implement the reforms [necessary for it to] become an effective regulator, government … support is required [in the areas of:]
- funding,
- the conferral of powers of investigation and enforcement and
- the mandating … of membership.
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