Thirty two years ago, on this day, February 24, 1994,
On February 24th, 1994, ABC’s Nightline aired a news segment titled, “Is Science for Sale?” Its host, Ted Koppel, explained the piece was prompted by a conversation with then Vice President Al Gore. The segment features many prominent climate change deniers including:
- Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project
- Ron Arnold of the Wise Use Movement
- Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute
- Richard Lindzen, a coal industry consultant at the time
- Sherwood Idso of CO2 Science
- Roger Maduro of 21st Century Science and Technology Magazine.
The comments in this segment reflect some of the most common arguments used by climate deniers attempting to discredit the scientific consensus on climate change such as:
- Current science is unable to tie increases in greenhouse gases to human activities;
- We should rely on present observations rather than inaccurate climate models which are unable to predict future climate scenarios effectively;
- Climate policies are unnecessary and would hurt the economy, endanger people, and harm our way of life.
On air, Koppel reported the financial ties of his guests, largely comprised of fossil fuel entities, including consulting fees to Fred Singer from Exxon, Shell, ARCO, Unocal and Sun Oil (14:50); funding to Patrick Michaels and Sherwood Idso from the coal interest group Western Fuels Association (12:20; 13:30) ; and support of Ron Arnold’s Wise Use Movement from corporations like Exxon (5:30). The segment also included a clip of Rush Limbaugh, referred to as the “archdeacon of conservatism” boasting, “I can produce as many scientists that say there is not global warming as they can produce that say there is.” He referred to Pat Michaels as “one that I rely on” (12:15).
The segment featured environmental advocates Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund and Vice President Al Gore, however, Jerry Mahlman, previous director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was the only scientist interviewed who challenged the opinions of deniers like Fred Singer, of whom Koppel also referred to as a “scientist.”
Despite the segment’s lack of scientists representing the global consensus on anthropogenic climate change, Koppel comments:
“This is not, you understand, a close call. It’s not as though US scientists are evenly divided or even close to being evenly divided on issues like the greenhouse effect or depletion of the ozone layer. But environmentalists are concerned about even the appearance of a scientific dispute.” (6:09)
1994 02 24 Nightline Ted Koppel – https://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/1994-nightline-special-science-for-sale/
UK-EN | D7960 | Curate for cash | Home | Seller | 16×9 | 15s | .mp4
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that from 1988,eighty-nine onwards, the denialists in the United States had been pushing back as hard as they could against climate science using superannuated physicists like Nirenberg and the George Marshall Institute to muddy the waters. They had done this with significant success.
The specific context was that Bill Clinton and Al Gore had had their asses handed to them over the proposed BTU (i.e.petrol) tax and Gore was therefore probably in a bad mood about all this, and so got talking to Ted Koppel, who was one of the sort of famous news anchors and they did a full on expose of the denialist tropes/
What I think we can learn from this is that politicians have been trying to educate the public and Gore, bless him, has within the constraints of his particular ideology, done more than most. But telling people that they’ve been lied to and showing how they’ve been lied to, turns out it doesn’t work that well, because you’re asking people to admit that they fell for lies, and nobody wants to admit that they fell for lies.
What happened next: Lies kept coming. They were convenient to believe. The lying campaign stepped up a notch around 1997 as the Kyoto negotiations were underway, and alongside the lies came the emissions, came the increasing concentrations. And I’ve already said this about 10 times this month already, so I won’t repeat myself.
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.
Also on this day:
February 24, 1971 – aims of the Department of the Environment
February 24, 2003 – UK Energy White Paper kinda changes the game (a bit).
