Scientist Says Politicians Pay Advocates to Cloud Climate Change Science

Dr. Michael E. Mann, an internationally known scientist, addressed the community  on the subject of climate change at Monday’s Holland Symposium hosted by Angelo State University.

He said, “Texas is on the front lines of this issue in many ways in respect to the effects of climate change...along with the political battle over what to do about climate change.”

Mann noted that there is a challenge in providing for the energy needs of our nation while still preserving the environment.

“Despite the fact that there is a controversy, some of it manufactured about the issue, the science is actually relatively straight forward,” Mann said.

Mann explained that the science behind climate change is not based on models.

He added, “This [climate change] isn’t something that is new and controversial. This is basic two-century-old physics and chemistry.”

Mann considered the 2011 drought in Texas as being one the most profound

events that is thought to be linked to climate change. He said that most people probably don’t think of farmers and ranchers as the most concerned demographic with human caused climate change.

However, Man stated, “It turns out that it’s farmers and ranchers in Texas who have seen perhaps some of the greatest damages of climate change in history in the U.S.”

According to Mann, 25 percent of ranchers in Texas and Oklahoma lost their cattle to the drought along with a significant amount of their crops.

He said, “If the science is this clear the question is...why hasn’t there been any action to seriously confront this issue?”

Mann said that this is due to the “politicization of science.”

“There are very powerful interests that are pretty happy with our current addiction to fossil fuels,” Mann said.

He explained that at one point, prior to the controversy associated with the subject, “The American public was becoming convinced that there was a scientific consensus about the cause of climate change.”

Mann said that the issue of climate change and how it relates to the fossil fuel industry is comparable to the tobacco industry during the mid 1990s.

He said that there were politicians who wanted to, “reassert doubt and confusion into the discussion, to hire paid advocates whose sole purpose was to cloud the science, to attack the science, to undermine the scientist.”

“In fact some of the same paid advocates, some of the same scientists that were advocation [sic] for the tobacco industry years ago are now being paid by the fossil fuel industry to attack the science of climate change.”

He said the difference now is that the product isn’t one that only affects the health of individual human beings, but is about a product that has an impact on the entire planet.    

“There is a worthy debate to be had on how we are to make that transition that we need to make towards non-carbon based energy,” Mann said. “I fully believe that the fossil fuel industry has to be an engaged part of these discussions.”

For more information on Mann’s scientific studies visit his website at http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/index.php