I urge Gazette readers to read Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway's "Merchants of Doubt" to understand better the subterfuge represented in the column "Trump is correct on Paris climate accord" that appeared in the Tuesday, July 13 issue of the Cape Gazette. Oreskes and Conway show how small numbers of politically driven scientists over the years managed to sow doubt on such topics as DDT, acid rain, tobacco smoking, and climate change.
When well connected and willing to do the bidding of the corporate interests funding them, such scientists can exert inordinate influence, well beyond their realms of expertise and training. Oreskes and Conway also fear that mainstream media are not apt to the task of understanding the scientific realities that are being misrepresented.
The pro-Trump column in question seems a perfect example. By focusing attention on a squabble over numbers (Fuchs vs. Weathers), extrapolating from the Bidens' house purchase to the state of the climate (!), or cherry-picking quotes from James Hansen or Bjorn Lomborth, the author demonstrates the media ineptitude that Oreskes and Conway fear.
Whether that ineptitude stems from incapacity or unwillingness to inform oneself on the single most important issue facing our species is moot. This issue is far greater than the author's picayune ramblings about nuclear power or energy usage at server farms. Yes, solar panels sleep at night and wind turbines operate only when there is wind. That is why leading entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk are putting their money into battery development.
Readers who want to learn genuine facts rather than process an agent of doubt's disinformation can read the bone-shaking account in David Wallace-Wells' "The Uninhabitable Earth," which appeared in New York magazine July 9. The author substantiates these claims:
• Heat stress in New York City if temperatures match current trends would exceed that of present-day Bahrain, one of the planet's hottest spots, and the temperature in Bahrain "would induce hyperthermia in even sleeping humans."
• The droughts in the American plains and Southwest would not just be worse than in the 1930s, but worse than any droughts in a thousand years. The food supply will drastically diminish.
• There are now, trapped in Arctic ice, diseases that have not circulated in the air for millions of years, and our immune systems have no way to fight them.
• The fraction of carbon dioxide just crossed 400 parts per million, and high-end estimates extrapolating from current trends suggest it will hit 1,000 ppm by 2100. At that concentration, compared to the air we breathe now, human cognitive ability declines by 21 percent.
• For every half-degree of warming, societies will see between a 10 and 20 percent increase in the likelihood of armed conflict. A planet five degrees warmer would have at least half again as many wars as we do today.
• Every degree Celsius of warming costs, on average, 1.2 percent of GDP (an enormous number, considering we count growth in the low single digits as "strong").
• Ocean "dead zones," the result of acidification from coal plants, will grow like cancers, choking off marine life and wiping out fisheries, already quite advanced in parts of the Gulf of Mexico.
It is not surprising that the author of the Cape Gazette column aligns himself with the Libertarian credo. Climate change requires bold, courageous commitment and collaboration among all the nations of planet Earth, a challenge to which the ostrich mentality of Libertarianism cannot rise.
And the time-honored practice in journalism of presenting "both sides of an issue" can result in affirming a merchant of doubt when one side of an issue is nothing but subterfuge. Smoking tobacco causes heart disease and cancer. Climate change is real, humans contribute to it by burning fossil fuels, and we must act decisively and quickly to afford future generations an inhabitable planet.
Jim Henry
Lewes
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