Madhouse Cartoon: "This isn't happening"
The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy
Book Review by S. Tom Bond, Jane Lew, Lewis County, WV
This is a very good book on climate change. A friend loaned me a copy of “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy,” and it is about the best book on climate change I have ever seen. The title, of course, is a takeoff on the “greenhouse effect,” which everyone has heard about, but which a significant number of people have not been able to accept.
I found the title a bit off-setting, but the contents are both simple enough anyone can understand, and thoroughly footnoted for a scholar. Footnotes are relegated to the back of the book so as not to interfere with reading. The author is Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and director of the Earth Sciences Center at Penn State, someone who has really great communication skills. The illustrator is Tom Toles, a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist of the Washington Post, who has been long involved in climate change science. And the book is short, 150 pages.
It is ideal to loan to your doubting neighbor. Although I have seriously followed developments in the science for a decade or so, I found a lot of new information, too. What makes it valuable is the simplicity and power of the arguments. A person with a high school education can understand it, and with the cartoons, enjoy it.
After the two introductory chapters on the science the chapters are:
>> Why should I give a damn? >> The science of Donald, >> The war on climate science, >> Hypocrisy – thy name is Climate Denial, >> Geoengineering, or “What could possibly go wrong,” and >> A path forward.
As you can see from the last chapter, Mann is optimistic. As everyone knows, the big obstacle is obstruction financed by the fossil fuel industries. Exxon was among the first to research the effect of carbon dioxide on the heat budget of the earth, all the way back to the 1970′s but began denial in the early 1980′s.
Oil is a good racket. Suppose you had a way to extract a toll of anyone on earth that wanted to move themselves or any object other than by walking and carrying? Also a toll from anyone wanting to make electricity, concrete, steel, and most of the materials we use. Pretty hard to give that prerogative up, with the wealth developed by it. Mann even uses the famous Upton Sinclair quote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
You should be aware that the denial technique was developed by the tobacco industry when it was learned that tobacco use caused cancer – and the tobacco industry is still going strong today. But the method has been used less conspicuously by many other industries as well. It includes the demonization of those who bring the bad news about the ill effects of the industry products. Rachel Carson got the same treatment from the DDT industry as Al Gore did from the carbon burning industry.
The denial process rates a whole chapter. Essentially, it is a retreat from simple denial of the facts at the beginning down through a series of steps to admission that “It’s ‘Too Late ‘ or ‘Too Expensive to Act’ and ‘We’ll Find Some Simple Technofix Anyway.” Each step denies action and doesn’t interrupt the flow of wealth to the perpetrators.
Mann brings up a large gallery of deniers for sale. Fredrick Seitz, who received over half a million dollars from the tobacco industry, then moved into climate denial, for one million.
Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson and Willie Soon are mentioned. S. Fred Singer is cited as the most prolific. He left academia to join the Science and Environmental Policy Project, which “debunks various environmental and health threats” and is funded by Philip Morris, Monsanto and Texaco.
Other organizations sponsoring climate denial include the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), the Advancement of Sound Science Center, Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, Freedom Works, Heartland Institute and over a dozen more. Specializing in producing ready-made law for legislatures is American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Mann brings up state governments that are controlled by Tea Party Republicans involved in climate change denial, notably Virginia, where attorney general Ken Cuccinelli tried to intimidate Mann from reporting results of his research at the University of Virginia, although the nation’s most costly military installation, Hampton Roads, located in Virgina, is already being threatened by sea rise. The U. S. military recognizes the problem, and is investing to improve the situation. The winner in state denial, however, is Florida. Florida has more to loose than any other state by slight sea level rise, because of its very long coastline, low relief and vulnerability to hurricanes. Infiltration of sea water into over pumped aquifers is an increasing problem. In Florida it is illegal to mention climate change in official state writings!
Then there is the Congress, where Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, the representative from the 21st district of Texas. He is wholly owned by the petroleum industry, conducts a three ring circus (this author’s word, not Mann’s) fighting an investigation of Exxon’s part in research on effects of greenhouse gasses and subsequent denial. He is trying to use House investigative tools to stymie State attorney generals and nine non-governmental organizations in their investigation of the Exxon affair, and lately the federal Securities and Exchange Commission as well. Smith has a less well-known colleague in the House, “Smokey” Joe Barton, also working for the oil industry.
In the Senate James Inhofe, Chairman of the Committee Environment and Public Works, Republican from Oklahoma, does the same kind of heavy lifting. His main tool is hearings trying to debunk climate change. He is famous for saying climate change “is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American People.”
This book, The Madhouse Effect, is a great reference and loaner for those of us who are thinking about the world our children and grandchildren will live in. The world is full of sociopaths and indifference. Wise individuals don’t wait until their own ox that is gored, we can see it coming and must be preemptive.
You can buy it via the Internet for less than $16.00.
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