In Part One, we met three men who were instrumental in starting the climate scare, ex vice-President Al Gore who represented the money desire, Maurice Strong at the UN who provided political and organisational drive, and Bert Bolin, Swedish meteorologist who ostensibly provided the scientific knowledge.
Maurice Strong and Mustafa Tolba, Strong’s successor as Director of UNEP, were members of the Brundtland Commission who ensured that the Villach recommendations which were based on Bolin’s 560-page oeuvre featured prominently in its report, published in March 1987 as ‘Our Common Future’. This ‘global agenda for change’ put the term ‘sustainable development’ into the political vocabulary for decades to come and predicted that the ‘greenhouse effect’ may by early next century (which is now long past) ‘have increased global temperatures enough to shift agricultural production areas, raise sea levels to flood coastal cities and disrupt national economies’ (none of which has happened). It added that urgent action would be needed to limit the greenhouse gases other than CO2, particularly chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which it estimated would be half the problem by 2030. Above all, however, international action would be needed to curb the use of ‘fossil fuels’ which were seen as the single greatest contributor to rising temperatures. That is where the UN would come in.
By the end of 1987 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) had agreed that an inter-governmental mechanism should be created to provide ‘scientific assessments of climate change’ and to formulate ‘realistic strategies for national and global action’. Strong and his allies looked towards setting up that global convention recommended by Bolin at Villach which could move climate change to the centre of the international political agenda.
The next year, 1988, was a turning point for which the trigger was a US Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources meeting on June 23 and chaired by Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado. Wirth was one of the first US politicians to take global warming seriously and he had invited the outspoken Dr James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies to address the committee. It was an unusually hot summer that year and Wirth and his team had chosen 23 June because it was thought likely by the US Weather Bureau to be the hottest day of the summer, which it duly turned out to be with the thermometer hitting 95℉ (35℃). The night before, Wirth and colleagues went into the room and opened all the windows so that the air conditioning didn’t work. It was perfect for them with wall-to-wall TV cameras present and everyone perspiring. This turned out to be the breakthrough as far as media outlets were concerned. It had been staged for maximum effect, moved global warming up the media and political agenda, and gave James Hansen a central place in the ‘narrative’ for years into the future despite his comments being greeted sceptically by many other scientists.
The WMO and UNEP had also got going on their proposals. At the same time discussions were happening on how to implement the recommendations of the Brundtland Commission. This led to a ‘World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere’ in Toronto in June. The conference was addressed by Bolin, Brundtland and Brian Mulroney, then the Prime Minister of Canada. A joint statement was issued:
‘Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war’.
Strong’ stuff. The delegates agreed there must be a concerted international effort to cut back on emissions and they supported the idea of an ‘intergovernmental panel on climate change’. Invitations went out to a meeting in Geneva in November at which the IPCC was born. It was a modest event for only 28 countries attended. But that was to change.
Bolin was to be the chairman and there were to be three working groups to assess scientific information, environmental and socio-economic impacts and response strategies. It was agreed that each of these groups would produce a report to be presented to the UN General Assembly at its meeting in the autumn of 1990.
Politicians took note. Among them was Britain’s Margaret Thatcher who said in a speech: ‘We are told that a warming effect of 1℃ per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacier ice and a consequent increase of the sea level of several feet over the next century …it is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s.’
Those who were paying attention recognised Mrs Thatcher’s claims had been taken directly from James Hansen’s Senate testimony. She moved to open the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate research in 1990. Once she was out of office, Baroness Thatcher later recanted on her original stance, recognising the global warming campaign as nothing less than a cloak for international socialism.
Another was Senator Al Gore who wrote in a Washington Post article: ‘Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand-new relationship with planet Earth. The world’s forests are being destroyed; an enormous hole is opening in the ozone layer. Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate. Chemical wastes, in growing volumes, are seeping downwards to poison groundwater while huge quantities of carbon dioxide, methane and chlorofluorocarbons are trapping heat in the atmosphere and raising global temperatures. How much information is needed for the human mind to recognise a pattern? How much more is needed by the body politic to justify action in response’.
Others who took notice were the leading environmental lobby groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and the Environmental Defence Fund. The chief campaign focus of these largely left-wing groups had been the need to save the world from nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War they needed to find another focus for their efforts, so they alighted on global warming, as did many Marxist activists who rushed to join green parties all over the Western world.
There were many scientists who did not agree with the global warming story, but they found themselves ignored, defunded and subjected to ad hominem attacks. One witness who had been called before Senator Wirth’s committee in 1988 was Professor Lester Lave, a respected economist at the Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Contrary to Hanson’s testimony he told the assembled senators that the question of global warming was controversial. By no means was there agreement and the climate science was still very uncertain about what might be happening. He was instantly denigrated by Gore who said he didn’t know what he was talking about and there was no point is listening to what he had to say.
Taken aback, Lave wrote to Professor Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a pre-eminent climate scientist. Lindzen confirmed to him that the case for global warming was not only controversial but also, in his own view, implausible.
Lindzen later wrote a long paper entitled “Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus” which described the extraordinary pressure to which had built up by the end of the 1980s to give the impression that global warming was supported by an overwhelming consensus of scientists. He went on later to describe how the various NGOs (Greenpeace, WWF, Friends of the Earth etc) had come together to form a Climate Action Network. As Lindzen put it:
‘These lobbying groups have budgets of several million dollars and employ about 50,000 people. Their support is highly valued by many political figures. As with any large groups, self-perpetuation becomes a crucial concern. “Global warming” has become one of the major battle cries in their fundraising efforts. At the same time, the media unquestioningly accept the pronouncements of these groups as objective truth.’
Another such group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, originally an anti-nuclear group, organised a petition urging the recognition of global warming as potentially the greatest danger faced by mankind. Of the 700 signatories which included Nobel prize winners and many members of the National Academy of Science, only about three or four, according to Lindzen, were climatologists.
Lindzen submitted a critique of Global Warming to Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It wasn’t published because there was said to be no interest among the readership but, astonishingly to Lindzen, Science attacked his unpublished paper in print. It was eventually published in the Bulletin of The American Meteorological Society, but the editor deliberately solicited rebuttals including a direct ad hominem attack on Lindzen by one Stephen Schneider who was to become a major cheerleader for the “warmists”. However, readers’ letters to the Bulletin were predominantly sceptical of the case for man-made global warming and a subsequent poll of climate scientists showed no fewer than 49% rejecting the idea of man-made climate change with 33% not knowing. Only 18% supported it but they thought that only some of the warming might be caused by man. Lindzen’s main thrust had been about the pressure applied to agree that the man-made global warming thesis was now accepted by an overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion when, in fact, there was much evidence against it.
The attitude towards Lindzen, a highly experienced and knowledgeable meteorologist, became the template for how all ‘deniers’, as they would be called, were in the future to be treated by those supporting the man-made global warming hypothesis, including by the political and media establishments across the Western world.
To aid in persuading the public, the cause became fashionable among the Hollywood glitterati with such well-known actors and actresses as Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand and Meryl Streep holding seminars, pledging funds and filming appeals. Politics and celebrity had trumped science, and a band wagon was rolling.
Strong and Bolin must have been pleased with the results so far, but the real triumph for them was still to come at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.
Right: Rogues - Clockwise From Top left: Maurice Strong, Bert Bolin, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Al Gore.
Next: The Real Crisis