The manner in which a leading scientist recently obtained vital information on global warming from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank, may seem incredible to someone unaware about the climate change wars. What started as an arcane policy debate has long since degenerated into a series of acrimonious ideological battles. The Heartland Institute is among what have come to be called climate-change deniers, those who wage political battles against the overwhelming scientific evidence for human-made global warming. It is a prominent campaigner against green legislation. On the other side is the well-known hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. Mr Gleick, a global expert on water resources, confessed that, “in a serious lapse of judgement and ethics, I solicited and received materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else’s name”.
“Deniergate” follows 2009’s “Climategate”, in which unknown persons hacked the mail server of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA). Many internal CRU mails were released just before the Copenhagen conference on global warming. CRU maintains the key global temperature record. Deniers mined the leaked mails to allege an alarmist conspiracy. The enquiries that followed — eight of them — established that there was no scientific fraud, though one pointed to “a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness”. Although the CRU boffins behaved with less than due propriety, the scientific consensus remains unchanged: fossil fuels contribute to global warming. But the damage projections vary by magnitudes in different models, making it easier to obfuscate and question the science. Howlers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (such as the retracted claim that Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035) did not help.
Policy consensus is in part lacking because the deniers are well-funded and capable of blocking substantive legislation. It has also become a North-South divide with some poorer nations claiming that abandoning fossil fuels will retard poverty-reduction efforts. Some deniers choose to sell also a faith in technological intervention — arguing that, as fossil fuels become more expensive, the market will reallocate resources to green alternatives. Most models and projections suggest investments amounting to 0.5-1 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product will be required over several decades to mitigate climate change. Emissions trading, carbon credits, renewal energy certificates, etc., may reduce fossil fuel consumption. But fast-track development of financially viable green energy will also require huge funding funneled into research. In the face of vested interests that prefer status quo, this funding is very tough to find. As the latest incident shows, the deniers have succeeded in creating their preferred atmosphere: one in which the continuing scientific consensus and policy urgency are eclipsed by a polarised debate. As time ticks by, it is to be hoped that the low-impact models are correct and that the deniers are also right in expecting the market to automatically find solutions.
