A New Kind of Crime Against Humanity?: The Fossil Fuel Industry's Disinformation Campaign On Climate Change

Dear Donald,

Thanks for the great post, and this is a subject that deserves and calls out for persistence.

As a person who was once a chemical engineer in the oil industry (for Chevron, and also had offers from Exxon and Shell); and as a person who is more than familiar with business (Baker Scholar at Harvard, McKinsey consultant, Disney exec, etc.); and as a person who has now been studying ethics/morality from both the scientific standpoint and philosophical standpoint for nearly a decade; and as a person who has analyzed ExxonMobil's recent annual reports, advertorials, and (many of their) public statements; and as a person who carefully considers what they say and what they don't say in their public ads; and as a person who is normally extremely "conservative" in making assertions and offering criticisms; I can confidently say that there is no question in my mind that ExxonMobil (and several other companies, at least) is acting immensely negligently, immorally, unjustly, irresponsibly, and indeed what I would call inhumanly. I've been following many of their ads, advertorials, and actual statistics now for several years.

I have no idea about the "legality" of such things because the law is incomplete, full of ambiguities, subject to interpretations, and allows many real atrocities to pass as "legal", and there are loopholes and excuses too. Relative to the nature of what they are doing, the law is almost irrelevant, it seems to me, in the sense that we ought either to change the law (to make what they are doing illegal, to close the loopholes, etc.) or we ought to find moral and ethical ways to cause ExxonMobil consequences, as a company, if the law itself won't do so.

There is -- I'm quite sure -- a strong and compelling moral case for taking responsible and effective action against ExxonMobil. Period. To the degree that it takes society any longer to lay out that case, and to understand it, and to convey it clearly, -- well, the less time the better, because the harms that ExxonMobil are contributing to are already underway.

If anybody wants a person with the background I just mentioned to help lay out, and make, an entirely solid moral and human case against ExxonMobil, just please let me know. I'm ready to fight the dragon, responsibly, and effectively, with real reasoning and fact, and it is no imaginary dragon.

We should have started boycotting ExxonMobil a decade ago. The Board should have gotten rid of many of the top ExxonMobil leaders, and it's now time that the Board itself should be removed, by responsible and informed shareholders, at least if "shareholders" still consider themselves to have responsibilities to humankind itself!

Donald, I'm glad you brought this topic up, and (these days) this should be Topic One until it is dealt with and resolved.

Cheers,

Jeff

Donald: more 'power' to you.

As an extension of this, what do you think the ethical and criminal implications are for people who are aware of the broad thrust of the world's major studies of emissions and the climate change effects, yet who do nothing, even though they have the means to achieve something in their areas ?

John

The international community does not have a word for this type of crime yet, but the international community should find a way of classifying extraordinarily irresponsible scientific claims that could lead to mass suffering as some type of crime against humanity.

I find it quite surprising that, as a Penn State employee, you should be so downright critical of Professor Mann and his colleagues.

The claim of the article is that there are clear and dangerous untruths about climate change science. The article is not against responsible skepticism. Yet skeptics must publish in the peer review literature and not make claims not supported by the evidence. Once there is a scientific basis for concern, a hurtle passed in my view 30 years ago, those making scientific claims that there is no problem have a deep duty to be careful about such claims. The climate change disinformation campaign are makeing claims which must be understood to be gross distortions of the scientific basis .18 Acaemies of Science in the World have issued statements in support of the consensus view.

If we must believe Greenpeace's Exxon Secrets website, Exxon has contributed about $20 million during the last 20 years. That figure is dwarfed by the funding received by the global warming "scientific" community to prove that human activities with their CO2 emissions was the cause of temperature increase during the 20th Century.

The 'Warmist Lobby' has contributed to this flawed assumption with more than $80 billion -and has failed to prove its case. The incresing scepticism among the common people and the scientific community shows that either Exxon's $20 million has been much more effective than the 'warmers' $80 billion -or that the evidence presented to support their hypothesis is poor, false, or unconvincing.

Have you taken a look at solar activity lately? And the solid correlation that solar activity has with all climatic cycles? Have you read papers by Paul Jose, Rhodes Fairbridge, Ivanka Charvatova, Pavel Hadjel, Paolo Scafetta, Silvia Duauhu, etc, about the sun-climate connection?

Mi impression is that astronomers and astrophysicists have become the black sheep in today's warming scientific community...

I see no response to the claim in the article that it is a distortion to claim that the science underlying the mainstream position can not be claimed to be "debunked" nor is the claim that there is no evidence of human causation truthful. The article was meant to attack claims that are untruthful, not to suppress responsible skepticism.

I never said that open debate was ethically problematic, what I said is ethically problematic is claims such as there is no evidence of human causation given numerous fingerprinting studies, multiple attribution studies, chemical isotopes measurements that demonstrate it is older carbon appearing in the atmosphere, an amazing coincidence of fossil fuel use with risintg atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. It is just not true that there is no evidence of human causation. In fact most responsible skeptics concede as much. The article claims that misinformation is very dangerous.

Donald, I see that you are getting some comments from people who haven't read your original post well, weren't able to understand it, and/or didn't put any actual facts or arguments in their comments back to you. That is to be expected, of course, and is (in a sense) a good sign that some people are beginning to take notice. Yet, please don't waste your time on comments that don't even make a sensible assertion, i.e., comments that are just demeaning or nonsensical. As you know, I suspect, there are much better uses for your time.

Cheers and Be Well,

Jeff

This an other comments suggest we are suggesting censoring free speech.
Nothing could be further from the truth, we highly value free speech.
However we claim it is highly unethical for fossil fuel interests to
fund people who are spreading utter untruths about climate change; not
reasonable disagreement or reasonable skepticism. Just as it would be
wrong for someone to tell a child laying on a railroad track that there
is no train coming when they don't know whether a train is coming it is
highly reprehensible for fossil fuel companies to pay someone to say
that there is no evidence of human causation of climate change when
there are numerous robust lines of evidence including multiple
fingerprint studies, attribution studies, evidence from chemical
isotopes of greenhouse gases, a congruence with the rate of fossil fuel
use and increases in concentrations of greenhouse gases of human
causation. It is just an out and out lie to say there is no evidence of
human causation. There may be reasons to be skeptical about some
aspects of climate change science but it is just not true that there is
no evidence of human causation of the undeniable warming we are seeing.
Anyone that says this dosen't know the evidence or dosent care about
the evidence. To support free speech in the abstract would make it OK
for people to lie even when the lieing dose great harm such as telling
a bus speeding toward a draw bridge that is up t hat it is down.
Clearly there are ethical limits on free speech. Clearly there a

This an other comments suggest we are suggesting censoring free speech.
Nothing could be further from the truth, we highly value free speech.
However we claim it is highly unethical for fossil fuel interests to
fund people who are spreading utter untruths about climate change; not
reasonable disagreement or reasonable skepticism. Just as it would be
wrong for someone to tell a child laying on a railroad track that there
is no train coming when they don't know whether a train is coming it is
highly reprehensible for fossil fuel companies to pay someone to say
that there is no evidence of human causation of climate change when
there are numerous robust lines of evidence including multiple
fingerprint studies, attribution studies, evidence from chemical
isotopes of greenhouse gases, a congruence with the rate of fossil fuel
use and increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases of human
causation. It is just an out and out lie to say there is no evidence of
human causation. There may be reasons to be skeptical about some
aspects of climate change science but it is just not true that there is
no evidence of human causation of the undeniable warming we are seeing.
Anyone that says this doesn't know the evidence or dosen't care about
the evidence. To support free speech in the abstract would make it OK
for people to lie even when the lieing dose great harm such as telling
a bus speeding toward a draw bridge that is up t hat it is down.
Clearly there are ethical limits on free speech. Clearly there deep ethical problems with spreading complete untruths about climate change science.

The climate issue has begged for rational debate and continues to do so. Science is a process of learning about the world. The IPCC studies have focused on trying to connect recent warming to increases in greenhouse gases as specified as their task in the Rio Treaty. In that role internal natural variation, indirect and non-radiation solar impacts on climate and potential negative feed backs to the radiative effects of greenhouse gases have been ignored or minimized. It is because of this bias that the "catastrophic" scenarios of global warming exist.

These scenarios are then used to create fear that allows drastic policy measures with potentially significant negative economic impacts, which will affect the poor more than others, to be proposed. Good scientific arguments stand on their own merit and do not have to be published in peer reviewed journals to be correct. And "consensus" and statements by academies are proof of nothing except the theory in vogue at the time. In fact the kind of skeptics you say are being responsible find it difficult if not impossible to be published in most journals because of the bias of the reviewers or editorial staffs. Ironically I see most of the utility industry supporting in small or large measure renewables and conservation and yet they are on the New York Times suspect list.

By providing exaggerated scenarios, continually presenting the most extreme skepticism as a red herring to attack by threatening free speech instead of countering with your own "convincing" scientific arguments and by ignoring and largely not engaging the skeptics that present careful, reasoned arguments you have set the stage for the cacophony of the extremes taking shots at each other. Perhaps a bit of self-examination of how you have approached this issue might provide enlightenment on why it is a hot political battle with little reasoned scientific engagement.

What about the ethical responsibility of those who use the most extreme scenarios to create fear to move forward drastic economic and policy measures that can have negative impacts themselves.

Dick

'John' purports that so-and-so is true! 'Jane' purports that so-and-so is not true! How is the truth to be determined and the matter resolved? If John is correct and Jane is incorrect, or vise versa, do we have an ethical dilemma or merely a difference of opinion? When does the issue become 'ethical'? When John, or Jane, decide to take some action? If each decides to wait and see what developes, is there a dilemma or question of ethics? If one or both decide to take some course of action, do we now have a dilemma? Is it the decision to act that creates the ethical issue, or the nature of the course of action they decide to take that creates a dilemma in ethics?

If John feels he simply must act to save the world from its own stupidity, that extraordianry measures are called for to assure victory at all costs, are things beginning to get sticky? If so, for whom? John? Jane? Both? Does the end justify the means? Is one justified in taking extrordinary steps to defend against one taking extrordinary means? When there is no third party to mediate, how does this change the dynamics of the problem? Is thinking we're right enough, or must be know more?

Acknowledging that evidence lends weight to any argument, how does it lend weight to 'action'? And, the extent of 'action'?

All true! In the world as it is, and not as some might have it in the future, when does one appeal to the highest authority? Is it after lower levels have been appealed to, or from the beginning? Is there an 'ethical' course of action toward an 'ethical' solution? In a similiar vein, is there an 'ethical' requirement to obtain some truly representative level of agreement and support before proceding to a 'solution'that will impact everyone on the planet? Is it enough to only have national level representatives agree, or should majorities of the people in each nation truly agree before their representatives sign up for any major change on their behalf?

The notion that the peer reviewed scientific studies that IPCC relied upon, (over 21,000 were quoted) in the 4th assessment were all funded because they would prove human-induced warming is so absurd it is difficult to know where to start. The NSF nor any major funding organization has no idea what a scientist will find when their work is funded. Any scientist that can prove what cliamte sensitivity actually is will get the Nobel prize or high honors from the scientific community. The scientific funders are funding any studies that can provide answers to the open questions in climate change science and funding organizations just dont know what results will be found .

You say that the peer reviewed studies have failed to prove human-induced warming. The peer reviewed science has demonstrated many,many reasons to conclude that the undeniable warming is human caused and these studies are all layed out in exhausting detail in the IPCC reports. Other responses to these comments lay this out. It is just not true that there is not a lot of solid evidence that points to human causation.

I disagree the science is settled enough to be discussing a new type of crime. For a discussion of the numbers and history of the Climate issues see Climate Etc blog by Dr Judith Currie of GT. She uses but question numbers and facts on climate models and has asked for a dialog on climate consens. Please consider the following: most of the warming is in the urban areas (night time warming not unlikely)where this impact is possibly under estimated in models, NASA used the land temp recording stations that are poorly manintined and suspect - if ours are bad what do we expect for the rest of the world, models are not coreelating during recent cooling, the amount of CO2 from man (3% approx) is small compated to nature - if we all are 10-10 then only reduced 3%, all models have varing degrees of postive feed back loops and no loops for the impact of solar wind, cosmic rays, the sun.

Please be more skeptical of models.

I would think that new technology is the key

The same argument you espouse (that spreading misinformation to push a skeptic agenda is a criminal offence) could/should be directed at alarmists who exaggerate their claims of robust science, minimize levels of uncertainty, propagandize, make ad hominen attacks ad nauseum, refuse to debate, shun colleagues who express any doubt in the 'consensus', and generally promote a bunker mentality that the science is settled.

It is the alarmists who are calling for expensive changes to the global economy. Some would say crippling economic changes which will increase poverty, starvation, illness, war and misery. The precautionary principle applies, yet you vilify questioning and call it criminal.

As for your argument regarding CO2 and warming, I do not deny that there is man-made CO2 in the atmosphere. I do not deny that global trends of surface temperature is on a gentle rise over the last 150 years. What I question is the degree to which the above two points relate to each other, and therefore I question your alarmist statements of millions of people being harmed by AGW effects.

You say "The international community does not have a word for this type of crime yet, but the international community should find a way of classifying extraordinarily irresponsible scientific claims that could lead to mass suffering as some type of crime against humanity." I repeat that the same argument could be directed at you, sir, for failing to acknowledge the uncertainties in our knowledge of climatic forcings, cycles and empirics and desperately pushing an agenda for huge economic hardships in order to turn some imagined 'CO2 control knob'.

I think you need to avoid the word "criminal" since it is too easy for people misconstrue. You can build a stronger cause for legal action against disinformation campaigns by drawing parallels to current libel and liability law.

A distinction can be made between honest debate even when unfounded and foolish claims are made, and stealth disinformation campaigns. People are free to be foolish. But, oil companies have issued public statements acknowledging the reality of AGW and yet have funded groups (think tanks) making the opposite claim. Documenting this is not hard. We should challenge the tax status of think tanks that are really PR firms and not educational societies.

As with tobacco companies legal action should be possible. However, the problem is identifying the victim. It is still hard to connect a specific climate event, like a heat wave or storm, to AGW. This is where some new legal ideas may be needed. Can one sue on behalf of phytoplankton?

One change we need is a constitutional amendment stopping corporate donations to political campaigns.

If 'spreading disinformation' is a crime, it is a nebulous one.
To prove it requires proving (A) that the information being spread is wrong, (B) that the promulgators know in advance that the information is wrong, (C) that the result of spreading the disinformation is measurable damage to other people's health, property, or livelihood, and (D) that such activity is in violation of some written statute, somewhere, with jurisdiction over the person.
Lacking all four of those proofs, it is simply inflammatory rhetoric attempting to invoke the will of some totalitarian state without guarantees of Free Speech.

Thank you for writing this. I have been stunned by the lack of discussion about criminal liability for ecological disasters, and I posted a short entry on the subject during the Gulf oil spill (http://www.nicholasmonsour.com/blog/the-impossibilities-of-environmental-justice.html). Hopefully with continued discussion and pressure from academics and the public, we can one day acheive a more just system of international law regarding environmental crimes.

Our ethical duty to take steps to prevent that harm

The recent Nature article, “Global phytoplankton decline over the past century” by Daniel G. Boyce of Dalhousie University postulates the volume of phytoplankton in the world’s oceans, which produce half of the oxygen in the atmosphere (consuming the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide in the process), has been declining steadily for the past half century—down about 40 percent since 1950.

"What we think is happening is that the oceans are becoming more stratified as the water warms," said Boyce. "The plants need sunlight from above and nutrients from below; and as it becomes more stratified, that limits the availability of nutrients."

The ramification of this decline are manifest in the recent finding by Dr. Tim Parsons, Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C., that the 2008 eruption of the Kasatochi volcano in Alaska might have helped produce B.C.'s largest sockeye salmon run since 1913.

The 34 million salmon that returned to B.C.'s Fraser River this year were "adolescents" in the Gulf of Alaska when the volcano erupted, Dr. Parsons noted, and the ash from that eruption fertilized the ocean, leading to a massive bloom of special phytoplankton called diatoms — an unusually rich source of food for the growing salmon.

The circumstances that produced this aquatic life sustaining phenomena could be reproduced producing as much renewable energy as mankind will ever using Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) which fosters upwelling of the nutrients phytoplankton require in the course of producing energy.

The link between the plankton bloom and the huge sockeye run of 2010 is consistent with Parsons's earlier research. In one 1970s experiment, the sockeye run increased seven fold after he fertilized a lake on Vancouver Island. In other studies, he found salmon populations in the Gulf of Alaska depend on the density of phytoplankton.

The Cohen Commission of inquiry, currently underway into the state of British Columbia's wild salmon stocks, came about because of the collapse of the 2009 sockeye run which necessitated the closure of the fishery for a third consecutive year, despite favourable pre-season estimates of the number of sockeye salmon expected to return to the Fraser River.

In view of the link between phytoplankton and the 2010 bonanza and Dr. Boyces’s finding that we are eliminating phytoplankton at a rate of about 1% per year due to increasing ocean surface temperatures, it is likely prior year collapses have a phytoplankton component.

Salmon migrations occur north of where the best locations for producing OTEC are found in the Pacific and thus the remedial effect of the process would not likely be as dramatic for B.C. salmon as the Kasatochi volcano but massive OTEC generation could remedy broader phytoplankton declines and accordingly global fishery production.

Another recent Nature article, “Robust warming of the global upper ocean” determined the average amount of energy the ocean has absorbed over the period 1993 to 2008 is enough to power nearly 500 100-watt light bulbs for each of the roughly 6.7 billion people on the planet.

This amounts to 300 terrawatts (TW) annually.

Richard Smalley, 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, says in his paper, Future Global Energy Prosperity: The Terawatt Challenge, “To give all 10 billion people projected to live on the planet by 2050 the level of energy prosperity we in the developed world are used to, a couple of kilowatt-hours per person, we would need to generate 60 TW around the planet— the equivalent of 900 million barrels of oil per day.”

The total annual world consumption in 2006 for all energy sources was only 15.8TW yet as the Dalhousie study shows we are risking the planet generating this with current technologies

Smalley pointed out that energy production is the largest enterprise of mankind running at about $3 trillion per year in 2004 when he made his presentation.

Current projections put this total at $4 trillion producing roughly one quarter of the 60 TW Smalley says will be needed.

The $4 trillion (plus) question therefore is how do you get from 16TW to 60 TW without burning up the planet?

The answer in a thermodynamically coherent sense is to covert 60 TW worth of the 300 TW being absorbed by the ocean to electrical energy.

OTEC is a method of exploiting the temperature variations between the stratified ocean layers to produce electrical energy. The laws of thermodynamics dictate the more energy that is produced by this method the more the ocean will be cooled and the process also fosters upwelling of the nutrients required by phytoplankton to consume CO2 while generating O2.

The first law of thermodynamics states, the increase in internal energy of a system = heat supplied to the system - work done by the system

Producing 60TW using OTEC would convert 60TW of ocean heat to electricity, so 330-60 or 270TW of additional heat would accumulate in the ocean annually, whereas in the case of nuclear power, which is also baseload (and reactors are only 33% efficient) 120TW worth of additional heat would be generated, most of which would end up in the ocean killing more phytoplankton.

The climatic benefit of using OTEC is three times greater than nuclear and as much as 60 TW more beneficial than any other renewable energy source including fusion which some consider energy’s holy grail. OTEC consumes heat already in the system rather than generating more heat to produce energy which inevitably leads to additional warming of the atmosphere.

The best locations for OTEC would require the production of an energy currency and in producing hydrogen you would mitigate the problem of sea level rise in two ways:

1. by lowering the temperature of the ocean, reducing thermal expansion, and

2. by reducing the ocean’s liquid volume by converting a portion to its gaseous components O2 and H2.

The oxygen is then available to revitalize the ocean’s increasing number of dead zones and to replenish some of the atmospheric losses due to phytoplankton loss.

OTEC is baseload that can be leveled producing hydrogen when capacity exceeds demand. In many locations it can be produced within 5000 km of energy markets and therefore can be fed ashore using HVDC cabling with a loss in the neighbourhood of 5%. Some of the best locations are mid-ocean however and would require the production of an energy currency to bring the power to market. In this regard, hydrogen is as much a water currency as it is an energy currency.

Hydrogen produced at depth can use the chimney effect as a conveyance to shore or would be pre-pressurized for loading in a tanker. It is also lighter than air and thus would rise by its own buoyancy to an elevation where it could produce both energy and water with gravitational potential. This water could then irrigate deserts which would draw down CO2 levels.

Leonard Ornstein, a cell biologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and NASA climate modelers Igor Aleinov and David Rind have outlined a plan similar to the Global Warming Mitigation Method to sow the deserts of the Outback and Sahara in the Journal of Climatic Change.. They conclude irrigating these deserts "probably provides the best, near-term route to complete control of greenhouse.

OTEC has the prospect of becoming the largest global source of renewable energy while mitigating global warming. The crime is it is not being advanced.

Dr. Brown,

The same energy companies should be held criminally liable for their even more successful, ongoing campaign to obfuscate the science of ozone damage, and to delay regulation of the toxic emissions created when their products are burned, which cause cancer, emphysema, and asthma, as well as forest death and significantly diminished yields of important food crops such as wheat, soybeans, corn and rice.

This post http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2010/09/im-crying.html has excerpts of testimony by Allen Lefohn (towards the end of it), who has been paid by the likes of The American Petroleum Institute, Northern States Power Company, Washington Water Power Company, and the Edison Electric Institute to testify as an expert witness and produce papers undermining the consensus about the impacts of ozone, acid rain, and other pollutants. Basically he has made a career out of impeding the EPA's ability to restrict greenhouse gases.

Mike, the issue is that 'A' is definitely NOT easy enough to establish. If so, Michael Mann wouldn't need to keep performing and re-performing 'the trick,' nor would his ilk keep trying to undermine research counter to his position.

Future catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is premised on modeling, which inconveniently hasn't made a right call yet on climate prediction versus direct observations. It only takes a single example to dis-prove the theory, and uncomfortably for alarmists there are many simple examples with the Medieval and other previous warming periods being just one.

I feel the similarity is to alarmists being the 'consensus' in the 1300's. "We all know the world is flat." Then some new group says, hmm, how does a ship disappear over the horizon but return? I think I'll test that proof and go sailing. Which is met with those in Professor Brown's camp. "That's heresy! Don't you dare! And if you try, we will silence you. And if you do show us wrong, we'll make sure it doesn't get published. Remember, as high priests, we have a lot to protect here."

The difference between the IPCC conclusions and the conclusions that I have been pointing to as ethically problematic, notice I have never said that any climate change skeptical claims is ethically problematic but only those that can be shown to be clearly false such as that there is no evidence of human causation is that the IPCC claims are based upon peer-reviewed literature all of which is exhaustively set out in thousands of sites.

Larry,

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions because the law Congress established required it to follow the science. Exxon, BP and Shell have issued statements saying they agree with AGW. Yet they fund groups that make absurd claims like there is no data to support AGW. If they were selling a product this way this would be false advertising. Wait, they are selling a product. They skirt the law by giving the money secretly to "educational" foundations. Let's tighten up that loophole.

You are still free to not believe in gravity if you wish. But if you try to sell people toxic anti-gravity pills using false claims you may indeed be liable as the tobacco industry was found to be. You are free to believe tobacco is healthy, but you are not free to use such claims in selling it.

Prof. Brown should be clearer that you cannot prohibit responsible or irresponsible scepticism, but deliberate fraud against the public for profit is another matter. The new legal issue is that most of the damage has not occurred yet.

How are oil companies different than tobacco companies in ethical terms? If there is no ethical difference, why should there be a legal difference?

(As for funding, I do know people who get NSF funds. And, no there are no political tests. The tiny handful a scientists who are sceptical still get funded! Even under Bush the funded science mostly still said AGW was real. And all branches of science use models!)

"What do we call such behavior?"

Business as usual, I think.

Bob Armstrong,

If you understood the most basic physics yourself you'd apologize for your post...

The Supreme Court did not order the EPA to regulate CO2. Instead, the court determined that the EPA had the authority to regulate it. Big difference.

Mike replies to Larry:

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions because the law Congress established required it to follow the science.

No, the SC said the EPA had the authority to regulate CO2 and could either issue regulations or publish a statement explaining why it didn't.

Exxon, BP and Shell have issued statements saying they agree with AGW. Yet they fund groups that make absurd claims like there is no data to support AGW.

Well, of course they do. Florida Power & Light, one of the greatest consumers of coal in the country, is also the single largest owner of "wind farms" in the country, and as a result has had no tax liability on over $2 billion in annual revenue for the last 3 years.

Wake the hell up. There is no data to support AGW. If you deny this, show me the exact paragraph in the IPCC's AR4, WG I, Ch. 9 -- which is the only relevant chapter in the whole report -- where there is any scientific evidence supporting this silly hypothesis.

Suppose the oil companies said: While there is a lot of scientific evidence that AGW is real and dangerous, we think the burden higher energy costs and lower profits is just too high and that future generations will understand why we did nothing. Then fine. That would be a honest and ethical argument. But that is not what some of them are doing. They - like the tobacco companies - know the science is very likely correct, but sow doubts in the public mind through stealth campaigns. This is unethical. Should there be legal consequences? For the tobacco companies there was. Do we have to wait for millions to die?

Those of you who truly don't agree with climatology or evolution or gravity are free to speak your mind. You are not free to sell a product using false claims - even if you believe them. You are free to believe your dog is the devil. You are not free to kill people on his say so. By any legal standard the science of AGW passes muster. Courts and government agencies have to use consensus conclusions. What else should they follow? If you disagree, you can publish your own research on how great tobacco is or that AGW is harmless, but you cannot sell products based on it until the courts determine the consensus has changed.

For example, silicon breast implants were restricted for years until the science determined they were safe. In that case industry finally won. The point is there has to be a common basis for making decisions. (This was one of the cases that lead to the current need for courts to follow mainstream science and not let lawyers sherry pick studies.)

We pay NASA to run the experiment.
There’s a more direct calculation of what the surface temperature would be without the greenhouse effect.
The solar energy flux at the Earth orbit (S) = 1.366 x 10*3 W/m-2 (+- 0.1%.
Earth’s radius (R) = 6.371 x 10*6 m.
Cross section (EC) = pi x (6.37 x 10*6 m)*2 = 1.28 x 10^14 m2
Surface area (ES) = 4 x EC = 5.12 x 10^14 m2
Energy flux crossing Earth (EE) = EC x S = 1.74 x 10^17 W
The energy absorbed by the Earth (EA), considering reflection = .70 x EE = 1.22 x 10^17 W.
In equilibrium, the Earth’s average radiated energy (ER) = EA.
Stefan’s constant (A) = 5.67 x 10^-8 W / ( m^2 x K^4)
Stefan-Boltzmann Law ER = ES x A x T^4
1.22 x 10^17 = 5.12 x 10^14 x 5.67 x 10^-8 x T^4
T^4 = 1.22 x 10^17 / 2.9 x 10^7
T*4 = 4.21 x 10^9 K^4
T = 254.7 K

The conclusions of IPCC have been reviewed by many scientific organizations around the world with expertise in the subject matter and supported. Given this to say that the science of climate change has been "completely debunked "is just not true. The US Academy of Science issued a statement in May in this regard. The 800 articles in your list will not withstand any serious review. Many appear in journals that do not do climate science such as the journal of physicians and surgeons almost all of them dont refute the main claims of IPCC, many are not peer reviewed andare not in journal format, few appear in any major cliamte science journal. A number of people are looking at this list and results will be published soon. In fact the claim that these 800 are equal in credibility to the mainstream scientific articles relied upon by IPCC is not true.

No 0f couse not. What we said is that there are wildly untrurhful claims being made by some ideological skeptics that include that there is no evidence of human causation whichare flatly untrue. These claims are being financed by fossil fuel interests. It is the fossil fuel interests that support these claims that are highly unethical. Every Academy of Science in the world has issued statements that support the consensus view. You can not claim that the science of climate change has been debunked. You can claim that you dont agree with the scientific view but you cant tell citizens that there is no evidence for human causation.

But that is the whole point, doc! The "proof" of CAGW is based on computer models that ASSUME the atmosphere has a significant sensitivity to CO2. But since no one KNOWS, in fact, what the sensitivity is (as even you stated in a previous comment), then we must look into today's data and compare it past data (i.e. proxy records) to see if our time of increased CO2 follows any pattern in the paleo record. And THAT is where the pro-CAGW community has trouble. In just the last century, we have examples of: 1) CO2 holding fairly constant while temperatures increased, 2) CO2 increasing while temperatures decreased, and 3) CO2 increasing while temperatures increased. This divergent behavior is damning evidence that CO2 and temperature are not highly correlated. Going back further, one can find examples of temperature rising at rates faster than the last 30 - 40 years while CO2 was, again, fairly constant. And, if we go back far enough, we can find examples of CO2 being MUCH higher than today and the planet thrived (implying that any "tipping point" due to CO2 alone is not just questionable but, indeed, tremendously unlikely). One cannot look at the past climatic history of the planet and conclude that, somehow, it's different today, even if the leadership of ALL of the Academies of Science say it is.

The consensus view is that climate sensitivity is between 2 and 4.5 degrees C with actually an upper tale at 9C. Even at 1.5 degree C there are some parts of the world that suffer greatly. In fact there are parts of the world that are already deeply stressed by drought. As long as there is any possibility that the consensus view is correct no one should claim that there is no evidence for the consensus view as long as evidence exists. In other words the burden of proof should be as a matter of ethics on those who dint want to do anything to reduce the threat as a matter of ethics. By spreading misinformation that there is no evidence for the consensus view climate skeptics who make this claim are encouraging people who could reduce their greenhouse gas emissions at no cost to them by simply eliminating waste to continue behavior that may lead to suffering. In other words, once it is established that there is a reasonable basis for concern, a fact well established by the consensus view and the overwhelming comparative number of peer -reviewed papers that support this view, it is ethically wrong for someone to say there is no evidence for this position.

"In fact, they don't pass peer review because the mathematical or scientific flaws are obvious to the reviewers. No paper that is rejected is merely rejected out of hand. The reasons are documented and the authors can respond or make corrections."

Bill - I don't know what world you are living in, but your statements are a far cry from reality. Yes, skeptical as well as supportive papers have flaws. But the fact is that skeptical papers, including the better ones scientifically, are frequently "rejected out of hand" or otherwise obstructed by those who control the climate change literature. This has been documented many, many times. The IPCC did it with its report too.
As I said in an earlier comment, this obstructionism is reminiscent of the Middle Ages and the Inquisition's persecution of those who didn't agree with the Church that the Earth was the center of the universe. Galileo was lucky enough only to be placed under house arrest for endorsing the sun-centered view of the solar system, because he had powerful friends at court, but less fortunate individuals were tortured or even killed for their contrary beliefs. At least we've advanced from those times.

"Denialists hold a position that can not be supported by the science so they attack the scientists."

I haven't attacked any scientists myself, and am in fact a scientist who focuses on the science - a position you can check out by looking up my book on the subject. And I don't deny that CO2, whether from human activity or not, causes SOME warming. The crucial point, and the one most often overlooked by warmists, is HOW MUCH of an effect the CO2 has.
The IPCC's temperature increase range of 2 to 4.5 degrees C can be seriously questioned. If feedback (not just from clouds) is zero or even negative, unlike the positive feedback in IPCC computer models, the climate sensitivity falls to 0.5 deg C or lower. The models not only estimate feedback poorly, but they also omit important natural sources of warming such as several solar effects, ocean climate cycles, and undersea volcanic eruptions. When the models get a handle on these and other phenomena that are part of our climate, then we can pay attention to their predictions.

I want think about the legal issues. Assume we have a for profit company the makes a product. Assume that mainstream scientists have determined that the product is harmful. Assume Congress asked the NAS to investigate the matter and the NAS reported that the product was indeed harmful. Any court would recognize this science in a liability suit, but the damages have not occurred yet.

Some people (X) not affiliated with the company disagree. We agree that they are free to speak their minds on the question.

But, what measures can the company take to defend itself? (A) We agree - I assume - that they cannot bribe Congressional men or women to vote in their favor. (B) We agree - I assume - they cannot make false claims to sell their product. (C) But can they secretly give money to tax exempt educational groups to spread doubt among the public? (D) Can they secretly fund attack ads on politicians who want to restrict the sale of their product?

Are C&D fundamentally different than A&B? Under current law C&D are permitted. Should we change that?
If so, we must not infringe of the rights of X. Should we change tax laws so the educational groups have to list their donors? Can we distinguish between education groups and stealth PR firms - requiring only the latter to list their donors? An AIDS educational group may have group reasons to protect the names of donors, for example. Can incorporation laws be changed to prohibit companies rights to fund political groups in exchange for their limited immunity protection? Would this require a constitutional amendment?

Your computation is much more complicated than it needs to be because planet size makes no difference , only the portion of the "celestial sphere" covered by the sun and its temperature matters .

As I stated , for a uniform gray ( flat spectrum ) ball , absorptivity/emissivity cancels out . Absorptivity is 0.7 , but so is emissivity . So , as Kirchhoff pointed out 151 years ago , and Ritchie had actually demonstrated in 1833 , how dark or light a gray sphere is makes no difference to its equilibrium temperature . This gives the 279k value for any uniform gray ball in our orbit .

It is only with the ( impossible ) assumption that the ball somehow emits 1.0 of the heat absorbed that you get that get the impossibly cold "frozen earth" value so ubiquitously cited .

I consider the understanding of the most basic classical temperature physics of radiantly heated balls pathetic on both sides of the debate . While this one impossibly extreme computation is parroted endlessly , I see little evidence that people in the debate even know how to compute the equilibrium temperature of a radiantly heated uniformly colored ball . If you can't do that , any claims about more complex problems simply is nonscience .

As usual the corporate side lies about its role in the global warming scam. Fossil fuel companies are 100% begind cap and trade, despite donating tiny amounts to right wing nut jobs to divert attention from the truth.

James Hansen writes

Governments today, instead, talk of "cap-and-trade with offsets", a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests. Cap-and-trade invites corruption. Worse, it is ineffectual, assuring continued fossil fuel addiction to the last drop and environmental catastrophe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/aug/26/james-hansen-climate-change?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments

These are the criminals

International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)

BP, Conoco Philips, Shell, E.ON, EDF , Gazprom, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley.. Goldman Sachs.

http://www.ieta.org/ieta/www/pages/index.php?IdSiteTree=1249

Thank you for your response.Incidently, I also believe that GenIV nuclear or thorium cycle nuclear are the transition energy sources that can get us to renewable baseload power without destroying the climate.
I have to take exception to a few comments though. Soon's paper was published in the Medical Sentinel. It is a rag sent out by the same people that sent out the "Petition Project". That paper does not look to me like it should have been published anywhere, but the follow up commentaries show plenty of reasons why a scholarly journal dedicated to climate science would not have published it. It doesn't lend any support to the idea that peer review is similar to the Inquisition. I can't say for sure but I would be willing to bet that Spencers paper is the same. Spencer mixes a lot of stuff in his work (including politics and religion), but mostly clings to satellite records that have since been corrected and no longer support his beliefs.
Mainly though , I would like to point out my major problem with your comment. You agree that CO2 causes "some warming". It is clearly a heat trapping gas. If you wrap a heat emitting body in extra insulation it WILL warm. up We are at 390 ppm and climbing fast. Skeptics base their arguments for inaction on the idea that something MIGHT come along (some feedback, or cosmic rays,the climate fairy or whatever) that invalidates all of the evidence that is accumulating that such a rapid run up in CO2 concentrations can cause serious problems. At what point do you stop waiting for this lifesaving mechanism to show up and take evasive action. The claims of economic devastation are overblown, and there are many studies indicating that transitioning out of a carbon based economy will cause a slowing of the growth of GDP and not a retraction if we get started now.If we wait a few generations the economic toll will be catastrophic. What will we say to that generation? That despite all the evidence we didn't want to be inconvenienced until we had absolute proof?
I don't think this is too far afield from DR. Brown's original point. If it is , my apologies. The denialists and skeptics that responded tried to make the point that the climate science in question is so vague that the claims made by the fossil fuel industry can't be considered a deliberate deception, that they are simply making a legitimate interpretation of sketchy data. On that point they are incorrect.

It's refreshing to have a rational discussion of this most basic physics .

The e notation for powers of 10 has been common in computer languages since the days of Fortran nigh on 50 years ago .

My equation assumes a flat spectrum , that is a neutral gray ball . Thus absorptivity = emissivity = k for all wavelengths and absorptivity from the sun's approximately 6000k black body spectrum is the same as emissivity from our ball at approximately 1/21 that temperature . Thus the k drops out .

This assumption is neutral , not only in the sense that a null hypothesis should be neutral in not presupposing some particular spectrum , it separates out average reflectivity , albedo , from spectrum leaving the pure correlation between the spectra of sources , sinks , and sphere as the factor raising or lowering the equilibrium temperature from the simple unweighted sum of impinging energy .

What most appalls me about the lack of scientific approach to these "climate science" debates is no one seems to actually know how to calculate the temperature of a simple radiantly heated colored ball . I find it inconceivable that anybody could have graduated from a physics program 60 years ago without learning how do the calculation . Yet in 2010 , with the welfare of the world in the balance , I see This one crude , most extreme , in fact impossible , example used as the field's null hypothesis . Explicitly : that without an atmosphere the earth would have a uniform spectrum exhibiting 0.7 absorptivity with respect to the sun's approximately 6000k spectrum , yet 1.0 emissivity with respect to earth's approximately 300k spectrum .

Something is seriously wrong when , tho the actual measured spectrum of the earth , and of course that of the sun , are available , no one does the actual computation . While I go into more detail , with a few lines of executed Array Programming Language , on my website , I don't have the time to mess with the actual full spectra of interest , So I'm offering a meager prize of $300 to any student who gathers and confirms the relevant spectra , and works with me to implement the couple of additional lines of APL needed , and calculates precise equilibrium temperatures for various spectra . The "model" will immediately be able to handle any spectral image of the globe .

Bob, I also appreciate the exchange. However, we will not agree on how the physical world works. Increasingly accurate and compelling empirical evidence will settle the public debate about climate science. Many of the same players are pulling the strings in a repeated pattern of stoking confusion to influence public opinion. “Winning” for them is delaying the inevitable.

Looking at your website I see that we’re about the same age. You develop complex computer applications. I developed computer systems and semi-conductors before retirement. You have an advanced degree in psychophysics from Northwestern . I have a physics B.S. from Caltech. We’re both politically active which is why we both care about how CO2 influences the climate. Science informs political decisions about environmental policy. I’m more comfortable with that process than Libertarians.

On many specific issues I fully agree with Libertarianism. However, I think that sweeping hidden transaction costs under the carpet of free market dogma introduces a flawed market bias. A fee should be assigned to the right to degrade the environment, otherwise such transactions are subsidized by damage to the commons. Rational consumers and investors don't make optimal decisions in a distorted market. You might agree in principal, otherwise wouldn’t you be promoting “the environment doesn’t matter” rather than minimizing the risk (probable cost) of climate change? Donald Brown’s essay advocates assigning a high current value to investments that will reduce emissions by emphasizing the ethics of how such investments will benefit our descendants. Ethics, economics, science and politics are vital to devising mechanisms that will deliver the best shot at preserving the civilization upon which personal freedom and prosperity depends.

Back to Professor Brown’s question , “What do we call such behavior?”. Does “Ecocide” cover it?

There is no consensus view and never will be. So the debate will go on forever.

OK, if the IPCC is a literature review, let me rephrase my question:

Where in AR4, WG I, Ch. 9 is a reference to an article which presents actual evidence of CO2 causation of dangerous warming?

Interestingly, I have asked this question on many blogs supporting the hysterical warmist position, and some of the evasions were even more transparent than this one. Never, however, have I gotten an actual answer. I invite Dr. B to be the first.

It is beyond my comprehension that a supposedly sentient individual has apparently accepted the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming prior to its actual proof in accord with the tenets of scientific method. There is no paleoclimatological evidence; there has been no statistically significant warming and the integrity of a large swath of the data is questionable. The "hockey stick" has been demolished. The role of clouds is not known. Hell, we don't even know what caused the warming since the LIA. The only other "proof" consist of immensely complex computer models requiring the simultaneous accurate solution of scores of non-linear equations.

It is refreshing to see a skeptic and a non-skeptic interchange reasonable views on climate change science. This is not what the original article was about. The original article was about the evil of obvious distortions being circulated by some in the disinformation campaign including the claim that there there is no evidence of human causation and that the consensus view referred to by 18 Academies of Science around the world have been "completely debunked" These are obviously false. One may be reasonably skeptical of whether the models have it right without claiming there is no evidence of human causation or that the scientific support for the consensus view has been "completely debunked." As a matter of ethics if it is possible that the consensus view is correct than ethical questions arise about who should have the burden of proof and what quantitiy of proof should satisfy the burden of proof. It is particularly important to see these ethical questions if harm can be done while uncertainties are being worked out. In other words, duties to act may exist in the face of uncertainty particularly in cases where it is others who will be harmed by delay and if one waits until all uncertainties are worked out it it too late to protect others who have not consented to wait.

Prof. Brown - as Bill Logan and I have mentioned in our posts, we know we've been somewhat off track. But the underlying science matters for any discussion of ethics, because it involves the question of whether global warming by 2100 is going to be a negligible 0.5-1.0 degrees C (as skeptics maintain) or the 2 to 4.5 degrees predicted by warmists. You won't hear much more from me, at least for now, as I'm taking a short vacation.

I'm not sure what you "saw in some of our recent exchanges", but my position is this. I believe that there is warming, though less than it's made out to be; that it comes mostly from natural climate cycles and not human CO2; and that the indications are the total warming will be minimal. That said, I have little time for those on either side of the debate who bend the truth, alarmists or skeptics alike. And I'm no fan of oil or other fossil fuel companies either, for a variety of reasons. Thanks for the opportunity to contribute.

Ralph Alexander:

1) The Greenhouse Effect works, given absorption/emission spectra of greenhouse gases, the sort of stuff we learned in sophomore physics at PSU ~1965. For them not to work, you have to throw out most of modern physics, including quantum mechanics.

2) We know that the big increase of CO2 since the Industrial Revolution is due to human burning of fossil fuel. We know because the ratios of carbon isotopes has changed in ways only explainable that way:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/

3) If solar irradiance is more-or-less constant (modulo sunspot cycles), which it has been for a while, then about the same energy is coming to Earth.

Higher GHGs reduce outward radiation, and since Conservation of energy is The Law (sophomore physics again), the Earth gets hotter until it radiates more strongly enough to balance.

The usual analogy is a bathtub, constant inflow from faucet, drain slowly getting plugged up, water rises until the pressure is enough to balance.

4) So, I am afraid your position seems to be that modern physics does not work, typed on a computer whose semiconductors depend on quantum mechanics and transmitted via fibre optics systems that do also.

5) If anyone cares what happens to their parts of the US, I recommend a great, readable book from 2009 by the US Global Climate Research Program:
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts

Each US region is covered by 5-6 pages, since the effects differ. Share with grandchildren so they can figure out if they'll need to move.

In reading the posts by people who try to argue against AGW, I find that they want to continue "business as usual", and to disregard the evidence of their senses. The air is less clean (remember how fresh the air smelled when we were kids?); the land is highly polluted (so many "brownfields"); humans are pushing many species to extinction (by our sheer numbers); the corals are dying (due to acidification / warming)... These are multiple lines of evidence that people are destroying our habitat. What will it take for people to look outside and compare What Was to What Is? All these effects add up, and point to people pushing the planet's natural carbon cycle and regenerative capacity into overload and breakdown. It doesn't take a scientist to see what is happening. All you have to do is open your eyes.

This is not an addiction, we have been snared, booby-trapped, trapped and imprisoned by the fossil fuel industrial complex.

That would be the same fossil fuel industrial complex that makes it possible for you to comment from your computer, and that made your computer possible in the first place.

The fact that the actions occur today, and the worst effects occur after 20 and more years, as the excess carbon dioxide slowly overheats the mass of ocean water, does not lessen the culpability.

... and the fact that ocean water is opaque to infrared, and can thus not possibly be heated by radiation from CO2, of course does not lessen the culpability either, because not enough people are commuting to work on their bicycles.

Take some deep breaths, Louise.

I'm reminded of tobacco companies during the 50s and 60s trying to make out its ok to smoke and also the way people carried on, even until today.

I'll save you the details but if you are interested, check out my blog post on Mad Men, Smoking and 'selling' Climate Change: http://www.10waystosavetheworld.net/mad-men-smoking-climate-change

Is anyone really surprised that the fossil fuel companies would be disseminating misleading information?

Is anyone really surprised that the fossil fuel companies would be disseminating misleading information??

Consider the Allied prosecution of the Nazis.

One thing the Nazis tried to assert was that, because the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals etc. that they murdered were not members of a foreign army, no War Crimes had been committed.

Then they went on to assert that because they were German citizens or under Germany's control, and they were the German law, no domestic crime had been committed either.

What the allies essentially did was say, well, here's this new crime Crimes Against Humanity, and we're going to charge you ex-post-facto.

The Nazis protested that this was merely victor's justice, and the prosecutor replied that probably the first person to be charged with murder had the same opinion.

We all know the rest.

The exact same thing obtains here.

What these corporations and individuals have done is not substantially different from shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.

They have engaged in false speech which endangers lives. In fact, they've killed people with their lies.

Not to mention the felony conspiracy that they're obviously guilty of.

But the point is, this is not merely a felony; it's a capital crime.

It really doesn't even matter that they believed their ideology at the time they committed their crime, any more than it mattered that the Nazis *really believed* their own ideology.

Neither does it matter that they "broke no law" and anything we charge them with will be ex-post-facto.

Mass murder is mass murder no matter how you dress it up. That's the reality they're going to be facing.

Just like the Nazis.