05/23/07
A reporter should know better than to listen to Greenpeace
I wrote the following in response to an article by Marc Gunther discussing Exxon's funding of organizations which are skeptical about human-caused global warming and the magnitude of the "problem".
Gunther's article is here:
Exxon Mobil: The Rest of the Story
And here is my retort:
Mr. Gunther,
If you wanted to learn about capitalism, would you ask Stalin for source material? If you were a reporter who wanted to write an at-least-nearly-objective article about Judaism, would you go to Joseph Goebbels for your lessons? If you wanted to write about gay rights or contraception, would you look to the Christian Coalition for unbiased information?
I presume the answer to these questions is no, which leads me to wonder why you would to go Greenpeace for information about the global warming debate. Greenpeace is a group that uses “climate deniers” in the way that others talk about “holocaust deniers”, implying both the scientific and historical accuracy of their opinion as well as a similar significance of the issue, all of which are false.
Greenpeace is a group which has become so radical that Patrick Moore, a founder of the organization, has abandoned it, noting that Greenpeace and other extremist organizations are anti-science, anti-trade, anti-capitalism, and generally naïve.
As for the Heartland Institute (which I served on the Board of Directors of some years ago), they get less than 5% of their income from the energy industry, unlike Greenpeace which receives millions of dollars from far left wing organizations and recently reported over $18,000,000 in gross income in their most recently published annual report. While I am no long privy to Heartland’s exact financials, I would guess that Greenpeace takes in somewhere between 5 and 10 times the money that Heartland does.
Additionally, one must remember that for global warming alarmists, their mission is some combination of a business and a religion. Anyone who disagrees, or even questions their dogma, is a heretic. It reminds me greatly of the Catholic Church of centuries past refusing to admit that they might be wrong about the sun revolving around the earth, or of others steadfastly believing that the earth is flat. I suppose the first metaphor is more appropriate since the penalty for disagreeing with their dogma was anything from censure to imprisonment to death. There is no doubt in my mind, after hearing these alarmists foam at the mouth, equating “climate change deniers” to holocaust deniers, etc., that they would muzzle and punish us skeptics if they could.
One reason that Heartland and a few other courageous groups go out of their way to deny the existence of a consensus on “global warming” is because there isn’t one. Not only are Al Gore, John McCain, Tony Blair, and the great intellectual Leonardo DiCaprio factually wrong to say that “the debate is over”, but their position is very dangerous given that their policy prescriptions amount to aiming a gun at the economic heart of the industrialized world in a quixotic chase for a fraction of a degree over a century.
Heartland, CEI, and those other groups are doing us a great favor by standing up to the enviro-extremists because if they had their way, the entire world (but especially the industrialized world) would suffer tremendously.
As for the US Climate Action Partnership, as a financial reporter you can’t possibly believe that those companies are doing what they’re doing because they believe in global warming as a real threat. No, they are doing it because they see which way the political winds are blowing. It is all about helping design the rules of the next game so they can extract as much extra profit from it as possible. Of course, any former Board member of Heartland such as myself must be a full-blooded capitalist, and I am. But capitalism is based on providing value to customers and creating a mutually beneficial voluntary exchange whereas what these companies are doing is posturing to use government to extract money from taxpayers and redirect it to them. Why do you think Lehman Brothers has jumped in so aggressively? They want to create and rig the market to their benefit, and when you have a government willing to go along with it, it’s hard to blame these companies…but I still do. No, they are not tree-huggers. They are worse than tree huggers, because tree-huggers while often wrong in their policy preferences are at least not hypocrites.
[For an interesting article about a CEO who hasn’t caved in to the political winds, see this article:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010098
And for just one example of many about others speaking out against the widely-spreading cult of global warming alarmism, here’s a good short article from New Zealand:
http://www.stuff.co.nz//timaruherald/4064691a6571.html]
If Exxon funds skeptics in this debate, it would be because the risks to their customers and shareholders make it worth that funding. Don’t forget, Al Gore is the guy who wanted to add dollars to gasoline taxes. Greenpeace and friends hate, and I do mean hate, technology and the modern industrialized world. If making fuel so expensive that the economy grinds to a halt is what it takes to achieve their anti-capitalist goals, they are perfectly fine with that. Meanwhile, those of us who would want to buy fuel from Exxon will be paying $5 or $10 per gallon, while the guys at BP who have bought political favor by joining the cult of global warming early on will be siphoning off our tax dollars.
As for “part of the solution or part of the problem”, in this case there is a policy in search of a problem. Humans are not likely to be a substantial cause of global warming. CO2 concentrations lag temperature changes rather than leading them. The policy suggestions of Al Gore, Kyoto, the Stern Report, etc., amount to economic suicide. A business reporter should know better than to let a big business like Greenpeace manipulate you into uncritically accepting their marketing.
Mr. Gunther, you should be ashamed of letting Greenpeace use you as a propaganda tool for them. You should be ashamed of your weak attempt to tarnish Heartland’s position on climate change by talking about ties to “the tobacco industry”, as if they were somehow related. The only relevant way in which they are related is that Heartland has demonstrated an ability and willingness to stand for liberty and free markets even when they are unpopular.
Heartland and Exxon deserve our thanks, and your readers deserve better than a pro-Greenpeace editorial from someone representing himself as a reporter.
4 comments
Galileo was tried twice: the first time in 1616 and the second time in 1633.
The first trial was conducted (in secret, to protect his reputation) to review Galileo's scientific work. The evidence was reviewed and Galileo was given an opportunity to provide evidence of the heliocentric view. The ptolemaic and copernical models were compared and according to the court there was not evidence for either one over the other. Galileo offered tidal movement as evidence that the earth moved, but this was dismissed (correctly) as insufficient evidence. The court issued a sentence that the heliocentric view was unproven, could be called a thesis, but not a theory or hypothesis. The pope, on the basis of the sentence, issued a prohibition for Galileo to teach it as scientific fact, but as a mere thesis "until proven or corrected" and to refrain from teaching about scripture. (note: evidence was provided and permission was granted to teach it as hypothesis in 1620).
Galileo agreed (the whole thing was done in private) but then disobeyed. This led to his second trial, in 1633. The key article of indictment was disobedience (which was true). He was sentenced to house arrest for this disobedience, but he was permitted to continue meeting with colleagues (he met with Hobbes, Milton, and Torricelli among others), to continue research, and to continue to publish (he penned his masterpiece "Mathematical discourses and demonstrations regarding two sciences" [that's my translation]) in 1638 following his sentence.
Galileo died in great honor and was granted a plenary indulgence by the pope, who regarded the scientist a friend.
Much of the misinformation present about Galileo was collated during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in France and England (for political reasons -- don't forget the Catholic Church was a political powerhouse) out of real sound bites taken out of context; a technique that would make the NYT proud.
Unfortunately it stuck and kids are still indoctrinated. Many people, even ones that should know better, still drink the kool-aid.
(as an aside, I recently learned about another cool piece of ancient propaganda; turns out the myth of the peaceful cohabitation of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Sicily in the eleventh century was just that -- a myth. A myth cleverly concocted through public works and artistic integration by the sovereign, and that has lasted for nearly 1000 years. But that's another story.)
I can agree that sentences were harsher than appropriate. On the other hand, that was a time when the legal systems and due process were already well developed.
Also, don't fall victim to the error of reaching erroneous conclusions about an entire society (such as the Catholic Church) on the noise made by an outspoken few rather than the official teachings. That's like believing that Sharpton speaks on behalf of the "black community".
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