A Response to “The Climate Change Debates”

Abstract

Philip Kitcher, a philosophy professor at Columbia University, has written a book review, entitled “The Climate Change Debates” (Science, vol 328, 4 June, 2010, pp. 1230-34). His recipe for an “open discussion and debate” about climate change seems to be a one-sided coverage by an elitist, self-chosen group. “Genuine democratic participation” is out, in favor of “reliance on expert opinion.” And who might these ‘experts’ be? No surprise there; Kitcher knows – and shapes his review accordingly. Making his point, Kitcher then juxtaposes “aging” scientists to “serious” scientists. It’s all downhill from there. To emphasize his recommendation to deny a platform to “deniers” (his term), consider his choice of books for review. All eight books are basically polemics for anthropogenic global warming (AGW), with precious little science in them. Assuming a rough balance of such books on both sides of the AGW debate, the probability of such a choice by pure chance is about 0.39 percent. So much for balance. To make matters even worse, he plugs the very worst of the eight books selected – Merchants of Doubt, written by science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.1 It attempts to smear mainly four scientists, all physicists with long records of publications, public service, and honors. In defense of three of these (recently deceased), who were founders of the George C. Marshall Institute, the GMI has published a reply to this attack on the integrity of the Institute and its founders. The reply is available at http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/894.pdf and is worth quoting from: “Replete with half-truths and mischaracterizations, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s book besmirches the reputations of three great American scientists to silence dissent within the ranks of scientists and stifle debate among policy makers about how to respond to global warming. Their message is both antiscience and anti-democratic. Whether the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is desirable or not is irrelevant, the merits of their scholarship and its implications are clear. Predictably, they create a tobacco strawman and knock it