{"id":58364,"date":"2016-04-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/sen-whitehouse-scientists-warn-uri-community-of-secretive-wealthy-interests-fighting-climate-change-action\/"},"modified":"2016-04-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T00:00:00","slug":"sen-whitehouse-scientists-warn-uri-community-of-secretive-wealthy-interests-fighting-climate-change-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2016\/04\/sen-whitehouse-scientists-warn-uri-community-of-secretive-wealthy-interests-fighting-climate-change-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Whitehouse, scientists warn 溏心vlog免费B站 community of secretive, wealthy interests fighting climate change action"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tExperts say fossil fuel industry aware of a warming Earth for at least 3 decades<\/b><\/p>\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 28, 2016 — A philosopher of science told about 200 people at the 溏心vlog免费B站 last week that empirical data is all that should matter in an examination of climate change — not ideology, not religious beliefs.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cTo disbelieve the overwhelming scientific evidence on global climate change does not make one a skeptic, it makes one a fool,\u201d said Lee McIntyre, research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University.<\/p>\n


\nMcIntyre joined U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and other scientists and policy experts at \u201cClimate Change Science in an Age of Misinformation,\u201d a daylong conference sponsored by the American Association of University Professors at 溏心vlog免费B站.<\/p>\n


\nKenneth Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the fossil fuel industry\u2019s own scientists warned company officials about the reality of global warming in the 1980s. But what did the industry do?<\/p>\n


\nIt improved its own infrastructure, including raising ocean drilling platforms and strengthening pipelines in areas threatened by flooding and thawing, Kimmell said.

\n\u201cThey could have disseminated accurate information,\u201d Kimmell said. \u201cCould you imagine the credibility they would have had? British Petroleum (BP) tried this for a short time with its Beyond Petroleum Campaign,\u201d but it didn\u2019t continue.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead the industry created a campaign of disinformation and denial,\u201d Kimmel said.<\/p>\n


\nKimmel talked about the role of climate change in Superstorm Sandy in 2012. \u201cSea level rise added $2 million to Sandy\u2019s toll in New York City,\u201d said Kimmell.<\/p>\n


\nAmong the steps fossil fuel companies should take regarding climate change are: \u201cStop supporting disinformation campaigns. Support sensible climate polices and reduce the carbon levels of their fuels. (Oil from tar sands in Canada is some of the most carbon dense fuel being used in the United States.)\u201d<\/p>\n


\nWhitehouse, the keynote speaker for the event, said Rhode Island is already on the front lines of climate change.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cSea level is up 10 inches at the Newport tidal gauge since the 1930s,\u201d the senator said. \u201cMean winter water temperature in Narragansett Bay is up nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1960s, and our winter flounder fishery is virtually gone. In recent weeks, we had major news stories in The Providence Journal about our drowning seacoast marshes, our endangered historic Newport buildings, and our ocean fisheries in upheaval\u2014all from climate change. It\u2019s here\u201d.<\/p>\n


\nWhitehouse said more than three out of every four Americans understand that climate change is occurring, and that doing nothing will cause a problem for the United States. The senator said American people have extraordinary support for their convictions: from virtually every major scientific society, virtually every major state university (including, of course, 溏心vlog免费B站 and its Graduate School; of Oceanography), from the country\u2019s national laboratories, American military and intelligence officials, and from leading American companies, doctors, and faith leaders. <\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站 and its Graduate School of Oceanography scientists are at the forefront of studying climate change, but the U.S. Congress needs to take action, Whitehouse said, then asking why Congress is frozen. <\/p>\n


\nHe said that threats to democracy by powerful corporations date back to the very earliest days of the nation, and that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison issued dire warnings about these influences. <\/p>\n

\u201cThomas Jefferson wrote that our young nation should \u2018crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n


\nWhitehouse said the Supreme Court\u2019s Citizens United decision allowed special interests to spend\u2014and more darkly, to threaten to spend\u2014unlimited amounts in elections. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cIn our political debate, dark money dollars drown out the voices of average citizens with what has been called \u2018a tsunami of slime\u2019; and all that money is not spent for nothing,\u201d Whitehouse said.<\/p>\n


\nHe cited Jane Mayer\u2019s book, Dark Money, and its description of how fossil fuel interests have put their wealth to this use.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThey invest in intellectuals who come up with ideas friendly to industry. They invest in think tanks that transform these ideas into marketable policies. They funnel dark money through phony-baloney front groups, often untraceable, to propagate counterfeit science, to undermine public understanding of the issue in order to undermine action in Congress,\u201d Whitehouse said.<\/p>\n


\n The result of the industry\u2019s newfound political clout, and of its climate denial apparatus, is that Congress does nothing, which is exactly what the big polluters want and what they paid for, he said.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe emergence of masquerade science to compete with actual science is a key component of the propaganda effort. It plays by different rules than you all do: it is talk-show science, as opposed to peer-reviewed science,\u201d Whitehouse said.<\/p>\n


\nHe told the audience that Americans have a duty to protect the nation\u2019s democracy against special interests, adding, \u201cWe cannot be the nation that knew what carbon pollution was doing to our atmosphere and our oceans but could not rouse itself to do what was required. In previous generations, Americans risked everything to serve the higher interests of this great republic. We know great things can be done by America, because they\u2019ve been done. We must not be the generation that failed at our duty. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cPart of the solution is to pull back secret control of American politics through dark money. But part of the solution is to recognize that a predatory, well-funded rival to real science has emerged, and to understand that real science has to find a way to call out its new, dark twin: industry-funded masquerade science.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe conference was a great success,\u201d said Frank R. Annunziato, executive director of the AAUP, 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s faculty union. \u201cI was delighted with the speakers and with the exchanges between speakers and the audience. The speakers were delighted with the conference, as were Senator Whitehouse and his staff.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nPictured above

\nCLIMATE CHANGE IS HERE: U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse tells the audience at \u201cClimate Change Science in an Age of Misinformation,\u201d a daylong conference at 溏心vlog免费B站 last week that climate change is already having significant effects on Rhode Island. <\/p>\n


\nEXPERT PANELISTS: Cornelia Dean, New York Times contributor and Brown University writer-in-residence; Kenneth Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists; Lee McIntyre, research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University; and J. Timmons Roberts, Ittleson Professor of Environmental Studies and professor of sociology at Brown, discuss the climate change at a daylong forum at 溏心vlog免费B站 sponsored by the American Association of University Professors.<\/p>\n


\nA TIMELY QUESTION: Jody Lisberger, associate professor gender and women\u2019s studies, asks a question during the conference, \u201cClimate Change Science in an Age of Misinformation\u201d at 溏心vlog免费B站. Looking on at left is Pam Rubinoff, coastal resiliency specialist at the Coastal Resources Center.<\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站 photos by Nora Lewis.\n\t<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experts say fossil fuel industry aware of a warming Earth for at least 3 decades KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 28, 2016 — A philosopher of science told about 200 people at the 溏心vlog免费B站 last week that empirical data is all that should matter in an examination of climate change — not ideology, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58368,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}