{"id":4255,"date":"2015-01-08T11:27:16","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T16:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=4255"},"modified":"2015-01-08T11:27:16","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T16:27:16","slug":"tomgram-michael-klare-perpetuating-the-reign-of-carbon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=4255","title":{"rendered":"Tomgram: Michael Klare, Perpetuating the Reign of Carbon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Perpetuating the Reign of Carbon<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Think of it as the uncertainty principle.\u00a0 By the nature of things, doubt, the unknown, and uncertainty are naturally part of the big picture in science, especially when it comes to creating \u201cmodels<\/a>\u201d of the future.\u00a0 As Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway showed in their blockbuster book,\u00a0Merchants of Doubt<\/em><\/a>, the giant oil companies (following the playbook of Big Tobacco) proved adept at taking advantage of the uncertainty principle to protect their positions as themost profitable<\/a>\u00a0corporations in history.\u00a0 They funded a small group of scientists to not quite deny the reality of climate change, but to emphasize the element of doubt in its science, as in all science.\u00a0 Major fossil-fuel producers used their money both to create a\u00a0network of outright climate deniers<\/a>\u00a0and a subtler if no less dismissive attitude toward climate change based on uncertainty.\u00a0 Think of them as the Yo-Yo Ma\u2019s of doubt.\u00a0 And proof of their success at this effort is evident in a new Congress in which few self-respecting Republicans would dare claim (\u201cI\u2019m not a scientist<\/a>…\u201d) that there’s any reality to human-produced climate change, while the leading \u201cenvironmental\u201d figure in the party, Senator Jim Inhofe, dismisses the world\u2019s climate scientists as part of a\u00a0gigantic plot<\/a>\u00a0against the free market.<\/p>\n

It hardly matters that climate change is, by now, an obvious reality or that the evidence piling up indicates that it will prove devastating for us and the planet unless the burning of fossil fuels is in some way significantly curtailed and most fossil fuel reserves are somehow\u00a0kept in the ground<\/a>.\u00a0 And here\u2019s another point not to remember: uncertainty is actually a two-way street.\u00a0 The oil companies, not surprisingly, placed their bet on the direction that headed toward doubt that climate change was a serious issue for humanity.\u00a0 That part of the street is now largely blocked.\u00a0 However, the other direction is unnervingly open — and it leads into uncertainty about whether the effects of climate change will be\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0devastating<\/a>\u00a0than presently predicted by, for instance, the consensus science of the U.N.\u2019s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Perpetuating the Reign of Carbon Think of it as the uncertainty principle.\u00a0 By the nature of things, doubt, the unknown, and uncertainty are naturally part of the big picture in science, especially when it comes to creating \u201cmodels\u201d of the future.\u00a0 As Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway showed in their blockbuster book,\u00a0Merchants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[112,141,263,328,369],"class_list":["post-4255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-carbon","tag-climate-change","tag-energy","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-global-warming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4256,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions\/4256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}