Time to break out your coal-fired barbecues, kids. The news is out: greenhouse gasses are good!! Those pesky enviro-wingnuts have been filling our heads with useless nonsense all these years. No longer is there any need to feel guilty for driving your gas-guzzling SUVs and Urban Assault Vehicles.
Above all, Gerald T. Westbrook is a man concerned with truth. For hours he works at his computer in the small office of his Memorial-area home, writing his latest scholarly paper or drawing up a lecture....
Westbrook's specialty has spawned a near cottage industry of sorts in the Houston area. In this energy capital of America, eager listeners still abound for the message delivered by Westbrook and at least a handful of colleagues: Global warming threats are just so much foolishness, hatched by environmentalists to fuel the fears of the populace.
He himself boasts no more than a master's degree and a career focused on marketing and economics, rather than doctorates or published research in the field. But in this war for the public's collective mind and soul, credentials don't have to get in the way of a worthy crusade against the common enemy called environmentalists.
Westbrook still considers himself a scientist. "A degree's not everything," he says. "Look at Rush Limbaugh. He's only got, what, one and a half years of junior college? And he's smart as a whip."
Well, no, Limbaugh is a blowhard in love with the sound of his own voice and intoxicated by his own brilliance. "Smart as a whip"?? Not hardly....
The "science" disseminated by Westbrook and the hundreds like him across the country seems to be sinking in. Internet chat rooms buzz about the myth of human-induced climate change. That message is repeated time and again through letters to the editor and by the punditry class, insisting warming is nothing more than a half-baked theory, with few believers within the scientific community. Groups like the Citizens for a Sound Economy even object to Texas using high school science textbooks that mention an issue that is "by no means resolved in scientific findings."
Westbrook worries that concerns generated by flimsy data may lead to brash actions that could damage the economy. Even if global warming could be proved true -- a big if, Westbrook will have you know -- all the evidence seems to show that it would be beneficial for mankind. The time has come, he believes, for skeptics to set the record straight.
There are those, however, who are skeptical of the skeptics. Sheldon Rampton, co-editor of PR Watch, a quarterly that keeps tabs on public relations campaigns and industrial front groups, says the debate about whether humans are warming the planet is finished in the scientific community.
The real story, he says, is how self-proclaimed experts have been able to obfuscate well-established scientific fact in the eyes of the public. Call it the myth of the global warming myth. The controversy, Rampton says, is coming not from the researchers themselves but from special interest groups with weak scientific credentials and strong ties to the energy industry. He says their claims are typical of those who practice what environmentalists call lobbying for lethargy.
"In general, the tactic is to create enough controversy and doubt about conclusions of climatologists involving global warming that you can justify inaction by saying we need to study the problem further," Rampton says. "The strategy is not to attempt a full frontal rebuttal of the evidence regarding global warming in the hopes of winning the argument. They just attack to create a sense that there's a controversy there."
The methods used for delay, he says, come down to three tactics first laid out by social scientist Göran Therborn. The Swedish scholar says to argue the following:
• A problem doesn't exist.
• Even if it exists, it's actually a good thing.
• Even if it exists and it's a bad thing, there's nothing we can do about it.
These basic arguments enable pundits to muddle an issue with talking points that are then disseminated by the faithful, Rampton says. He says if you look closely, it becomes obvious that these techniques are being used by the very people who have the most to lose if global warming were proved true.
Spin control has it's roots in the "Big Lie" of Josef Goebbels: repeat something often enough, and it BECOMES the truth. Whether it actually IS the truth is beside the point. Big Business has known this for years, and has become masterful at manipulating public opinion. People like Gerald Westbrook might mean well, but in the end they are little more than corporate mouthpieces.
The beauty of the Internet is that with a minimum of information, you can debunk virtually anything. The veracity of your claim is beside the point. This is exactly why conspiracy theorists thrive on the Internet. I would hope that science will not suffer the same fate simply because it serves Industry's purpose.
