junk science

a few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to attend a talk by Jim Hoggan, founder of DesmogBlog, who spoke about PR Spin and global warming. this is a topic on the tip of everybody's tongue nowadays; whether you're a politician, CEO, or Average Joe. with the popularity of Al Gore's The Inconvenient Truth as a book and documentary, we're also seeing increasing media coverage on the matter.

An interesting anecdote from the film:
Of 928 peer-reviewed scientific reports released in the past decade about global warming, NONE of them have denied that global warming is indeed happening.

However, 53% of mainstream media coverage argues that there is disagreement on whether global warming is real.

Odd, no? Why the discrepancy?

Much of it has to do with the funding of so-called "scientists/experts" to disseminate what the PR industry refers to as "disinformation", which serves to create a debate that isn't really there. Many of these think-tanks are founded by companies like Exxon, whose business is literally pollution. Hoggan and the DeSmogBlog team make the argument that this type of "junk science" on global warming is extremely reminiscent of the "debate" on tobacco just more than a decade ago. The tobacco industry, spearheaded by Philip Morris, had a difficult time battling the research that showed second-hand smoke as being a Group A carcinogen, which lead to the creation of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). The coalition's goal, as indicated by the name, was to label the research showing the dangers of tobacco (which causes lung cancer, as we know now) as being "junk science" and to debunk legitimate research in the media and other public arenas.

Another reason for the proliferation of PR Spin concerning global warming, is the regime of "objectivity" in the mainstream media. One of the ways in which news is structured is through the "balance of opinions" (which appeals to the need to be "objective"). To present a debate on the topic is part of how content is organized, even if one side of the debate is clearly in the right. In turn, this enables "junk scientists" to gain access to air time, even though they have little to no credibility in the scientific community. To argue against global warming would be arguing against organizations like NASA, the American Meteorological Society, the UK's Royal Society, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are the sources that have spurred international discussions such as the Kyoto Protocol.

The next time you hear an "expert" debunk global warming, check out Sourcewatch, and follow the money on these opinions.

Credit is due to Jim Hoggan's article Slamming the Climate Skeptic Scam, and Kevin Grandia's The JunkScience Coup D'Etat, both found on DeSmogBlog.