an ad on the op-ed page of the New York Times: “Some claim that
humans are causing global warming, and they point to storms or
floods to say that dangerous impacts are already under way. Yet scien-
tists remain unable to confirm either contention.” That flies in the face
of the available evidence. But three years later, at the beginning of
2003, ExxonMobil remained a major funder of a tiny handful of indus-
try-sponsored “greenhouse skeptics.”
The Greening Earth Society, a creation of the Western Fuels Coal
Association, takes a slightly different tack. Citing the opinion of a few
greenhouse skeptics—most of whom are on its payroll—Western Fuels
trumpets the idea that more warming and more CO2 is good for us
because it will promote plant growth and create a greener, healthier nat-
ural world.
These arguments neglect to mention that peer-reviewed science indi-
cates the opposite. While enhanced CO2 creates an initial growth spurt in
many trees and plants, their growth subsequently flattens and their food
and nutrition value plummets. As enhanced CO2 stresses plant metabo-
lisms, they become more prone to disease, insect attacks, and fires.
The impacts are even more negative in the world’s tropical regions,
where most of the poor and hungry live. As temperatures and carbon
levels rise, plant biologists forecast a big drop-off in the rice yields in
Southeast Asia, for example. A half-degree increase in the average tem-
perature could cut India’s wheat yield by 20 percent—this in a country
where one-third of the population, more than three hundred million
people, live in poverty.
Our knowledge about climate change comes from the work of more
than two thousand scientists from one hundred countries participating in
what is the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collabora-
tion in history. You would scarcely know this from the way the issue has
been reported in the United States. The American news media have gen-
erally reported the issue as though the science was still in question, giving
the same weight to the greenhouse skeptics as they do to mainstream sci-
entists—all in the name of “journalistic balance.” Real balance, reflecting
the weight of opinion within the scientific community, would accord
mainstream scientists about 95 percent of an article and leave a couple of
paragraphs to the skeptics.
4 Introduction