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Naomi Oreskes: You CAN Argue with the Facts - Full Talk

Sat, 08/09/2008 - 18:29 — admin


In Al Gore's movie "an inconvenient truth", he mentions something that I found intriguing: although most, if not all, articles published in scientific journals in the last years on global warming seem to be in agreement that global warming is at least partially due to human causes, a large percentage of the population strongly believes that scientists are still much divided on this issue. Gore based his statement, amongst others, on research done by Naomi Oreskes, Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California in San Diego. In 2004, she published a fascinating article in the magazine Science, titled Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change , that I highly recommend.

This podcast is the full version of a talk given by Naomi on Stanford campus this last April. A shortened version was posted earlier. In it, she introduces this topic and summarizes her findings. To me, her work and that of others, shows clearly how difficult it is to disseminate research findings to the general public in a convincing manner, especially when the media is influenced by lobby groups with other interests.

Comments

Lobbying tactics

Mon, 08/11/2008 - 13:11 — bi -- IJI (not verified)

Thanks for the video, and the interesting material on the Western Fuels Association.

Anyway, now that the public's slowly waking up to the shenanigans of the PR groups, it seems to me that these groups are now focusing less on changing public opinion, and are turning more towards trying to change the perception of public opinion -- especially in politicians. I've written a bit about this on my blog.

Once more, thanks!

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Review & synposis

Sat, 08/09/2008 - 23:10 — John Mashey (not verified)

Thanks so much!
Full Talk, April 17,2008 - 40 minutes - my description.

Naomi is an award-winning geoscientist/science historian, a Professor at UCSD and as of July, promoted to Provost of of the Sixth College there. She is also a meticulous researcher, as seen from past books, and from having reviewed a few chapters of the book she mentions in the talk. She unearthed some fascinating memos, although of course, impossible to replicate the exhaustive database of tobacco documents.

If you haven't seen her earlier 58-minute video, The American Denial of Global Warming", you might watch that first. It's first half is a longer version of the development of climate science, and the second half is about the George C. Marshall Institute.

This talk has about 10 minutes of background, and the rest is new material on the Western Fuels Association.]

The video production isn't flashy, but it's good enough. The lecture room was packed, I had to stand. Interesting people attended.

This, of course, is an informal seminar talk - for the thorough documentation, you'll have to await the book.

======SUMMARY=====
00:00 Background [fairly familiar, some overlap with earlier talk]

10:30 1988, Hansen in Congress, IPCC starts

11:05 "Tobacco strategy" to challenge science

I.e., use of similar techniques, sometimes by same people

14:50 Western Fuels Association (Power River coal companies)

Sophisticated marketing campaign in test markets

17:20 1991 - WFA creates ICE - Information Council for Environment

ICE ~ Tobacco Industry Research Council (TIRC) -
See Allan M. Brandt, "The Cigarette Century"

21:00 WFA print campaign

23:00 Scientists are more believable than coal people, so use scientists, create memes

25:30 WFA produces video "The Greening of Earth", provides many copies

The Greening Earth Society (astroturf); more CO2 is good for the whole Earth Excerpts from video

30:00- Video shows the Sahara turning completetely green

32:20- "Plants have been eating CO2 and they're starved"
Discussion of circumstances under which CO2 does help and illustration of marketing tactics, cherry-picking, etc. I.e., how does one use a few tidbits of real science to create an impression very different form the overview? Are there lessons for scientists?

40:00 end

[Speaking as an old farmboy, plants need sun, water, soil, nutrients, and CO2, and sometimes right climate, i.e., sugar maples need cold. The Sahara will not be a new cornbelt, no matter how high CO2 goes.]

Other PR Tricks

Tue, 08/12/2008 - 19:58 — Douglas Keachie (not verified)

Don't forget the grabbing of www.anwr.org by the oil companies.

Transcript of end of Oreskes talk (and answer to a Q)

Tue, 08/12/2008 - 17:17 — Anna Haynes (not verified)

(End of talk:)

"So what we see from this story is that while most Americans now do accept global warming as a fact, they don't accept its origins in scientific consensus; they think that scientists are still arguing about it, and this may have played some role in the reluctance of our leaders to actually do something about it.

And it suggests that the resistance campaigns were effective in creating a lasting impression of scientific disagreement, discord, and dissent."

--------------
(Answer to Q:)

"Now that you know all this, what do you do about it?
I think one of the things that it shows is that we all have to be a lot smarter about this issue and come to a deeper appreciation of what we've been up against.

I think a lot of us in the scientific community (and I say this partly from my own experience) have been raised with what I call a "supply-side" model of science - we think that it's enough to just do scientific work, and that if we do the work and establish the facts that somehow that will trickle down to the places where that knowledge is needed.

Or you can think of it as a diffusion problem - that if we create this high concentration of knowledge in great universities like Stanford, then the osmotic pressure will cause it to diffuse to the areas of low concentration of knowledge.

I think we see that that just doesn't work - the world of humans doesn't work according to the laws of diffusion and osmotic pressure. So we have to be more active - I think that the scientific community needs to embrace the idea that it isn't enough just to do the research, that you actually have to think about ways and means of communicating it and getting it out there, and to understand that when you do, it's not just that the public are ignorant or foolish or whatever, but that there's actually active resistance, that you have forces working against it; and you know, there's a lot at stake in these debates.

There was a lot at stake in the tobacco industry; and it wasn't just the tobacco industry that had something at stake, it was also our own government - the U.S. government received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues from sales of tobacco, and the U.S. government massively subsidized tobacco [unintelligible] and marketing in the U.S.

Well, the U.S. government also subsidizes the petroleum industry, right? So there are big, big structural issues at stake, and I don't think that the scientific community alone can solve this problem. But I think that by being a little more clued in about some of the political issues and some of the ways that the resistance campaigns work, it can help us be a little bit smarter about how we do communicate what we know."

For the record, that's Oreskes's "Answer to Q" in transcript

Wed, 08/13/2008 - 21:12 — Anna Haynes (not verified)

i.e. they're not my words, they're N.O.'s.

(I'm not sure I'd made that clear enough)

Dissemination

Tue, 08/12/2008 - 21:24 — margot

I agree with you: we need to do much more to disseminate research and
inform both the general public as well as policy makers. The question
of how this is most effectively done is not easily answered.
To me the answer lies in working very closely with people and
organizations that do have a say. Dissemination to NGOs and
policy makers requires research outcomes to be put in context, in the
big picture. This is also not always easy because a lot of research, in
energy or environmental areas, is done on isolated topics. Roz Naylor
talks about this in our interview with her, for example, in the context
of biofuels: studying biofuels in the USA in isolation is not that fruitful
as it ignored global connections in not only the energy sector but also
food and water.

Influence of researchers in DC is relatively low now, to put it mildly,
and not in the least because of a lack of interest from the current
government to get scientific input. In Europe scientists have more direct
access to the governments.

In any case, this blog is only a tiny droplet on a hot plate.