Twenty seven years ago, on this day, May 30, 1996, Fred Seitz, energetic and lunatic denialist, tries to smear the IPCC, focussing on one particular scientist, Ben Santer
“This controversial issue also resulted in two letters (dated 30 May and 26 June), being sent to me, one from the Global Climate Coalition (John Schlaes) and the other from The Climate Council (Donald Pearlman). Copies of these were also sent to ten key members of the US Congress as well as the Advisor for Science and Technology and Assistant to the US President (John Gibson), and the Assistant Secretary of State (Eileen Clausen).”
Bolin 2007, page 130
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 365.3ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Global Climate Coalition was in full beast mode, trying to attack specifically Ben Santer. And as one of the authors of the lead authors of a particular chapter of the IPCC’s second assessment report (which said that there was evidence of a discernible impact of man’s activities on the climate). Almost 30 years later, it’s not really regarded as controversial. But this was the first statement of the IPCC to that effect. And the Global Climate Coalition was wanting to try to stop it or failing that, send a warning to other scientists. Let’s try and chill the debate or slow it down.
What I think we can learn from this
This is an age-honoured tactic, that you shoot messengers and hang the body on a gibbet with a sign that says “This is what happens if you open your big fucking mouth”. It was ever thus. And having it come from multiple sources, and be distributed to lots of people is also standard – makes a lot of noise, kicks up a lot of dust and dirt…
What happened next was that someone at the Wall Street Journal probably got a copy of that letter because a few days later, there was an editorial smearing Santer.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
See also –
Excerpt from Oreskes and Conway’s Merchants of Doubt https://billmoyers.com/2014/05/16/the-relentless-attack-of-climate-scientist-ben-santer/
Fred Pearce interview with Ben Santer, 2010…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/09/ipcc-report-author-data-openness