Conspiracy by whom?
In November 2009, servers at the University of East Anglia in UK were hacked into and emails were stolen. A selection of emails between climate scientists were published on the Internet and a few quotes used out of context to claim global warming was all just a vast conspiracy. This incident was nicknamed “Climategate.”
Despite a vast media frenzy, a number of independent investigations all cleared the scientists of any wrong doing; many quotes were taken out of context, such as
“hide the decline”, statistical “tricks”, “
can’t account for lack of warming” to make it look sinister and many media outlets were unable to explain this allowing conspiracy claims to go unchallenged.
More information about all the investigations from skepticalscience.com (which, unlike its name suggests, tackles all climate skeptic and denialist arguments head-on):
Media Lens also provides a useful article with a number of links from another authoritative web site:
RealClimate, a site run by climate scientists at the forefront of climate research. But what was also interesting from Media Lens was the quote they got from James Hansen, the US scientists who brought climate change to the world’s attention in 1988:
The media have done a great disservice to the public. This mess should be cleared up in the next year or so, although the damage may linger a while, because some people who paid attention to sensationalism may not bother with accurate explanations of the truth.
The impression left from this affair is that there are some parts of the media that care less about responsible reporting than about selling newspapers or other ware. Some of the problem may be honest ignorance, as the quality of science reporting has declined in recent decades. And of course some media are controlled by people who have a political axe to grind.
— James Hansen, email to Media Lens,
Gates of Delusion; Media Distortions And Real Climate Scandals, Media Lens, February 22, 2010
As much as “Climategate” was a non-issue, it seems that an anti-climate campaign scandal has been uncovered.
In February 2012, leaked internal documents from the right-wing organization the Heartland Institute appeared to show that rather than being a think tanks, it was more like a lobbyist,
funded by many large corporations and individuals with an aim to discredit climate change science and propagate denialist views (amongst many other campaigns). They also pay some scientists and others because they are skeptical on climate change. It was even planning a school curriculum to keep teachers from addressing climate science.
And the documents have also revealed the value of disseminating denial messages to influential business outlets:
Efforts at places such as Forbes are especially important now that they have begun to allow high-profile climate scientists (such as Gleick) to post warmist science essays that counter our own. This influential audience has usually been reliably anti-climate and it is important to keep opposing voices out
—
Heartland Institute Exposed: Internal Documents Unmask Heart of Climate Denial Machine, DeSmogBlog.com, February 14, 2012 (Emphasis by DeSmogBlog)
(DeSmogBlog exposed the leaked documents and provides far more details.)
http://www.globalissues.org/article/710/global-warming-spin-and-media#Climategatethescandalthatwasnt
For many years, talk of climate change led to a lot of skepticism and denial, typically from corporate-backed interests such as energy companies. For example, just recently, the British Royal Society, and separately, the Union of Concerned Scientists reported on
ExxonMobil waging a campaign of disinformation on global warming between 1998 and 2005, funding right wing think-tanks and journals such as the American Enterprise Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. And “with the help of right-wing media, such as the Wall Street Journal, … columnists deliberately spread disinformation about climate change.”
As another example, the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) revealed that
some business lobby groups have influenced the Australian government to prevent Australia from reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This lobby group included interests from the coal, electricity, aluminum (aluminium), petroleum, minerals and cement industries. The documentary exposing this revealed possible corruption within government due to extremely close ties with such industries and lobby groups, and alleged silencing of government climate scientists.
Often funded by such corporations, many
lobby and interest groups tried to undermine reports of climate change and its impact, for it threatened their position and economic future. For example, noting the above ExxonMobil case, Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientist’s director of strategy and policy says, “These groups promote spokespeople who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings or cherry-pick facts in an attempt to mislead the media and public into thinking there is vigorous debate in the mainstream scientific community about global warming, when in fact there is none.”
Professor Matthew Nisbet notes the
influence of conservative think tanks in science and environmental skepticism. Writing in ScienceBlogs he notes “A new
study by a team of political scientists and sociologists at the journal Environmental Politicsconcludes that 9 out of 10 books published since 1972 that have disputed the seriousness of environmental problems and mainstream science can be linked to a conservative think tank.”
Other times, some scientists in earlier years showed skepticism based on science, but as data and research improved over time, most changed their positions to indicate some sort of concern or agreement about climate change and human effects/causes.
In more recent years, many large companies that have formed these coalitions or funded such lobby groups have now distanced themselves from those past positions, either as they accept climate change is happening or because they see their reputation being damaged by such association (or both).
Furthermore, some businesses are urging world leaders to tackle climate change. Some are even asking for regulation to help reduce their economic uncertainty, to provide a level playing field (so as to try and take measures but not lose out to competition form a rival that may not take such a view).
In countries, such as the United States, that have been openly hostile toward actions on climate change in the past, local governments, states, and businesses have started to take action anyway, showing that buy-in and support from industry is a key to tackling these concerns.
However, some are still trying to undermine climate change action through deception. As the British paper, the Guardian reports,
scientists and economists have been offered a lot of money to undermine a major climate change report in February 2007, from the IPCC (this report is mentioned further below). The “American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration” was accused of such practices.
Refer to:
Reactions to Climate Change Negotiations and Action