For your viewing pleasure to start us off (Senator Inhofe, R-OK bringing a snowball to the Senate floor to justify his opinion that global warming is a hoax):
The great comedian Aparna Nancherla once tweeted, “THANKSGIVING GAME: nobody gets pie until you go around the table & everyone has to say ‘climate change is real.’” Thanksgiving has passed, but it’s not too late to play this at Christmas. If your family has follow-up questions, perhaps steer them towards Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming*.
Merchants of Doubt exposes the doubt-mongers who have attempted to cast uncertainty on established scientific fact. It details the dirty deeds of a small network of individuals who, fueled by political and financial motivations, have opposed thousands of scientists collaborating internationally through the peer-review process. These individuals sometimes had the ear of presidential administrations and they definitely had the ears of the American people.
Why? Because we’re a bunch of morons. They led highly effective, large-scale publicity campaigns and we slurped them right up because we like a lil drama. They cherry-picked data, started/funded institutes--usually conservative thinktanks-- that were extra shady, and distorted scientific research, all with the goal of “maintaining controversy” so that we would think there was more than one reasonable side. The EXACT SAME DUDES that argued against claims that cigarettes caused cancer then went on to fight evidence of human-induced global warming.
Why? Because they are free-market fundamentalists. They wanted to defend their products (tobacco, oil, household items that emitted CFCs, etc.) from regulation. Americans tend to get off on capitalism, and as such, we ignore its imperfections. Capitalism is great--because I can have Amazon Prime Now deliver me $10 asparagus water from Whole Foods in less than two hours-- but “free market economics, focused as it [is] on consumption growth, [is] inherently destructive to the natural environment” (Oreskes & Conway, 183). The authors of Merchants of Doubt did a good job of explaining in layman’s terms how markets fail to account for pollution because its “collateral damage is a hidden cost not reflected in the price of a given good or service” (Oreskes & Conway, 93). The authors maintain that, when it comes to environmental issues, government regulation is needed, and they brainstorm various practical options, backed by evidence.
Oh boy, the evidence. This bad boy is packed with footnotes and its 60+ page notes section will fool your friends into thinking you’re reading an extra large book. I’m glad they support their claims with massive amounts of credible evidence-- especially since they are calling out people who made influential claims without any evidence; however, it makes for an especially dense read. To reveal all of the shadiness, the authors (historians) had to get into the gritty details, and sometimes my eyes glossed over and I looked like Bran Stark from Game of Thrones when he’s having one of his warg visions.
The effort is worth it because now I can force family members at the dinner table to admit our culpability in altering the planet AND sling some facts WITH page numbers. In all seriousness, I feel better equipped to have conversations about the environment. I also learned about the history of the EPA, the particulars of Reagan’s truly wacko “Star Wars program”, and how holes in the ozone were first discovered. I consider climate change to be one of--if not the--most pressing issues of our time, and I’m down to read any book that sheds light on the topic. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming receives 4 out of 5 camel humps. Stay woke!
*Conway, Erik & Oreskes, Naomi. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming: Bloomsbury, 2010. Print.
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