In 2004, Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Tom Toles of the Washington Post published a cartoon with an Uncle Sam-like character standing behind a lectern saying “Global warming isn’t happening.” Then someone from outside the frame responds “It is happening.” The dialogue continues:
“If it’s happening, maybe it’s a good thing.” “It’s not a good thing.”
“If it’s not a good thing, it can’t be confirmed.” “It has been confirmed.”
“If it’s confirmed, maybe it’s not caused by humans.” “It is caused by humans.”
“Even if it’s caused by humans, maybe it will fix itself.” “It won’t fix itself.”
“If it won’t fix itself, there’s nothing we can do.” “There are things we can do.”
“If there are things we can do, they’re too expensive.” “They’re not too expensive.”
“If they’re not too expensive, we can postpone doing them.” “We can’t postpone doing them.”
“What do you mean?? This conversation has taken over a decade already.”
By now the conversation has taken over two decades, but the stages of denial are the same: deny the problem exists; deny it’s a problem; deny we’re the cause; deny we can solve it; claim it’s too expensive to solve; claim there are too many uncertainties; claim there are more important things to do; claim it’s good; claim it needs more study and debate; claim it’s a hoax.
All of these claims are the definition of a hoax: An act intended to trick or dupe; something accepted or established by fraud; something intended to deceive.
Much of the denier hoax strategy was hatched in 1998 by the fossil fuel industry, conservative think tanks and public relations experts in their Global Climate Science Communications plan. The details of the GCSC are available online in an American Petroleum Institute memo dated April 1998.
The main goal of the GCSC has been to fraudulently convince “a majority of the American public” that “significant uncertainties exist in climate science,” and for over 20 years the denial machine has been very successful, manufacturing uncertainty about settled climate science.
One of their strategies has been to pay scientists to falsify climate science. As just one example Dr. Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, was paid over a million dollars from Southern Company, ExxonMobil, and the API, to claim, among many things, that the sun was causing global warming. This claim has been repeatedly proven false, since, among many other proofs, warming increased even while solar radiation declined.
A Guardian article published on Feb. 27, 2015, states “Impacting the voice of elected officials was a key target under the ‘Victory Will Be Achieved’ section of the [API] memo. Now in the U.S., about half our elected officials are climate deniers or are scared to even talk about the subject, so the impact of this 1998 campaign and subsequent misinformation campaigns around climate science is still clearly holding us back from climate policy solutions.”
Another Guardian article published Jan. 23, 2017, stated “Climate denial is evolving. All of Trump’s nominees rejected his claims that climate change is a hoax, but all cast doubt on the degree to which humans are contributing, and to the threats it poses. It’s a softer, cuddlier form of climate denial that doesn’t reject all scientific research — just the vast majority — and yields the same end result of obstructing climate solutions.”
In the Senate hearing on the nomination of Scott Pruitt to head EPA, he was willing to state that Trumps claim that climate change is a hoax was not correct, but he was unwilling to say that climate change is primarily caused by human activity. He would only say that human activity is contributing in “some manner” but “I believe our ability to measure with precision the degree of human activities impacting the climate is subject to more debate, whether the climate is changing or that human activity is contributing to it.”
What? Some manner? More debate?
The 2013 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report states with 95 percent confidence that humans are the main cause of the current global warming, and that humans have most likely caused all of the global warming since the 1950s.
NASA states “Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.”
The Guardian continued: “… physical reality doesn’t bend to denial or ‘alternative facts.’ Until we address the problem, we’ll continue to see record-breaking heat and extreme weather. The longer we deny and the less action we take, the more extreme the consequences will become.”
“Our fingerprints are all over climate change and the changes are precisely in line with what would be expected as a result of an increased greenhouse effect from human carbon pollution.”
William Gran, now retired, was an adjunct instructor at Greenfield Community College on global warming and climate change.