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Anthropogenics..?
Correspondence between Huw Peach of the Green Party and Dominic Lawson of The Independent, beginning 8 June 2007

Dominic Lawson wrote the article ‘The summit designed to breathe new life into the Kyoto process has seen it expire’ in The Independent on 8 June 2007.  comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/dominic_lawson/article2631302.ece

Keith O’Neill of the Green Party emailed him to ask him for the sources of his information on natural CO2 emissions. Mr Lawson replied by return to say it was the Scientific Alliance. Huw Peach followed this up with the following brief email on 9 June.

Dear Mr Lawson,

I am writing to you with 2 questions, concerning your article yesterday.

1) Is the aim of your articles to enlighten the reading public with the best peer-reviewed science* on climate change or to put forward the views of industry front groups like the Scientific Alliance**?

2) If you are wrong about anthropogenic-induced climate change, and the scientific consensus is right, will you simply apologise to your readers and then move on to your next contrarian position (like David Aaranovitch and Johann Hari over the war in Iraq), or will you regard it as a serious failure of your journalism? 

Best wishes,
Huw Peach
** (according to my friend Keith O'Neill, the convincingly-named Scientific Alliance was the source of your information about carbon emissions) 
Reply from Dominic Lawson, 9 June 2007
Dear Mr Peach

Thank you for your letter.

The aim of my articles is neither of the two options which you provide. It is to express my own opinions. I certainly don’t compare them with peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals. In common with most of the Independent’s columnists on the comment pages, I am a polemicist.

I am glad that you use the phrase “if you are wrong.” It suggests that you rightly do not regard the matter as settled. If it were to be settled definitively I would certainly feel that I had got something badly wrong. I wouldn’t feel that to be a specifically journalistic failure, more a general lack of judgement on my part.

As you will readily understand, I am not a scientist, although I did read Philosophy at University and I do recall something of what Karl Popper taught about the scientific method and the theory of falsifiability. He said that the scientific method is to propose a hypothesis – a plausible causal relationship- and then design experiments to test it. These experiments are designed to falsify the hypothesis. If no evidence is found which contradicts the hypothesis, then over a period of years, that hypothesis comes to be regarded as fact. We then describe it as a theory – such as the theory of evolution..

I am not convinced that the scientific consensus (as you describe it) on the anthropogenic causes of global climate change deserves that status. It has only been partially tested and there are still substantial pieces of evidence which appear to contradict it.

I am interested in the example you use of Johan Hari and David Aaronovitch on the Iraq war. As it happens, I don’t believe that they were merely trying to be contrary. Indeed, the fascinating thing was the unanimity with which governments agreed that Saddam Hussein did hold ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ Even the intelligence services of countries which did not support the invasion, such as Germany and France, agreed on this fact. They were all wrong.

I will give you another case of a misconceived consensus, this time among economists and governments, rather than intelligence services and governments. When, in October 1990, Britain joined Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism, there was an extraordinary unanimity of support. The Conservative government of the day was backed on this by both Labour and Liberal Democrat. Every single newspaper supported it, including such normally Eurosceptic papers as the Telegraph and the Mail. Even the Economist, which historically had been a staunch opponent of attempts to fix exchange rates, applauded our joining the ERM.

I remember this clearly because I was then the Editor of The Spectator, which was the only British publication of note which criticised the move to link the pound sterling to a range of European currencies. We were thought to be deeply eccentric in our support for a freely floating currency. Two years on (and millions of jobs and home repossessions later) the Conservative government abandoned the ERM – to the relief of the media which had previously hailed it as indisputable economic common sense. This experience left me with little respect for the innately superior wisdom of the “consensus”. Of course it is true that climatology is not the same as economics – but I remember having been impressed by the arguments of the minority of economists who pointed out the shortcomings in the theory behind the linking of currencies. Similarly, I have been impressed by the arguments of scientists who dispute the current ‘consensus’ on the extent of anthropogenic climate change. It may well turn out that the great majority are right: in which case, as I say, I will have been guilty of a lack of judgement.

I conclude by pointing out the obvious: that I have no influence –either benign or malign--on scientists or governments. They go their own sweet way, regardless of what I, or any other newspaper columnist writes.

Best wishes

Dominic Lawson

Response from Huw Peach, 13 June 2007

Dear Mr Lawson,

Thank you for your reply to my e-mail about journalistic responsibility and the climate change debate. I appreciate the opportunity to debate these issues with you.

In your reply you made some interesting points about misconceived consensuses and you talked about Karl Popper’s theory of falsifiability. 

In my reply to you I would like to explore this theory by testing it out on A) your extraordinary claim that commentators have ‘no influence’ on government and B) the source of your information on climate change, the Scientific Alliance.

A) First of all your point about influence. You concluded your letter by saying;

 ‘I conclude by pointing out the obvious: that I have no influence –either benign or malign--on scientists or governments. They go their own sweet way, regardless of what I, or any other newspaper columnist writes.’

This despite being the former editor of the Spectator and the Sunday Telegraph; 2 publications, whose raison d’être is, surely, to exert influence on government.

If what you say is true, and commentators such as yourself have ‘no influence’ on government, then why are journalists and commentators usually the first people to be thrown into jail or ‘disappeared’ in totalitarian societies?

If what you say is true, would you also say that David Aaranovitch and Johan Hari had ‘no influence’ over liberal public opinion (vital for the government) in the run-up to the war in Iraq?

Or that Con Coughlin’s articles and books about Iraq’s ‘WMD’ and ‘terrorist training camps’ had no influence on The Daily Telegraph readership and thus made no contribution whatsoever to the pro-war mood in the press, so vital for the government, and the Opposition which supported them?*

Personally, I would not write to newspapers and journalists if I felt I had no influence on the debate, and ultimately on government. Nor do I think you would spend time writing your polemical articles or penning thought-provoking letters to readers if you felt you had no influence.

My own influence is minuscule, compared to yours; I don’t have a column in a national newspaper. However, I regard the consequences of making the wrong judgement on climate change as utterly appalling. For this reason I base my views on the consensus of scientific opinion [1], rather than on industry front groups like the Scientific Alliance [2]. I believe that peer-reviewed scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the view that mankind is adversely affecting climate change, and that not to act would be grossly irresponsible.

All those who decide to become politically active, have some sort of influence on government, whether it is on local government, stopping a pool closure, or on national government by publicly demonstrating against war.

In my opinion, your claim that commentators have ‘no influence’ on government does not stand up to analysis by the falsifiability test.

B) Your reliance on the convincing-sounding Scientific Alliance [2] for your facts also prompts me to test out the theory that the Scientific Alliance is a bona fide organisation, whose challenges to the scientific consensus deserve more credence from Independent readers than the peer-reviewed scientific consensus [1].

Last year I read Sharon Beder’s cogent and well-researched book, Global Spin (Green Books, 1997) [3], about the activities of anti-environmentalist think-tanks and organisations such as the so-called Wise Use movement in the USA. After reading it, I concluded that think tanks with convincing-sounding names like Alliance for Climate Strategies, Air Quality Standards Coalition, Global Climate Coalition and World Climate Report were not at all interested in the climate or air quality, but in protecting the vested interests that funded them. I therefore felt that they ought to be treated with great suspicion.

Journalists who make use of their information, without informing their readers of the vested interests behind them, also deserve to be treated with outright scepticism, in my opinion.

Exxon Mobil’s success in funding climate change sceptics and derailing attempts to limit carbon emissions internationally has been well-documented. As most people now know, (due to the work of people who refused to believe that they had ‘no influence’), ExxonMobil donated money to lots of organisations and think tanks with an anti-environmentalist agenda. [4]

After reading the links [2] concerning the Scientific Alliance, one can only conclude that the theory of falsifiability is a truly useful tool.

Surely what is at stake here means that commentators (even polemicists with ‘no influence’ on government) must ensure that they get their facts right. If they do not and choose instead to use information from sources which have not undergone the peer-review process, then they deserve censure from their readers.

In the same way that I feel Con Coughlin, Johan Hari and David Aaranovitch (among others) bear a tremendous responsibility for the bloodshed in Iraq, because of their articles and polemics before the war, I feel that your attempts to mock global attempts to reduce carbon emissions are similarly irresponsible in light of the overwhelming likelihood that the scientific consensus [1] is right and that you, the Scientific Alliance and its industry backers are wrong.

Many thanks for responding to my e-mail.

Best wishes,

Huw Peach

[1] www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

[2] news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?id=83662003&tid=733

www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4218957,00.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Alliance

[3] homepage.mac.com/herinst/sbeder/global.html

[4] exxonsecrets.org/html/listorganizations.php

* By the way, do you view Con Coughlin as a reporter who is ‘guilty of a lack of judgement’ or are the column inches he devoted to these fabrications (above) excusable because he is a very talented ‘polemicist’, who has thereby earnt his promotion in the Daily Telegraph?
Response from Dominic Lawson, 15 June 2007
Dear Mr Peach
Thank you for your letter.
I don’t want this correspondence to become too cumbersome – for both our sakes—but I thought that your response deserved further consideration.
I continue to believe that the influence of newspaper columnists on Government is illusory. Let me take your own example of Messrs Hari, Aaronovitch and Coughlin. You say that these gentlemen bear a tremendous responsibility for the bloodshed in Iraq. I am a friend of none of them, but I feel obliged to point out that if none of them existed, or if they had existed but chosen not write in the way they had, there would still have been exactly the same bloodshed in Iraq.
It is simply not true that the “raison d’etre “ of the Spectator and The Sunday Telegraph is to “exert influence on government”. If these publications have any reason for existence it is to stimulate, entertain, and occasionally inform their readers. If their raison d’etre was to influence the government they would have gone bankrupt and ceased publication many years ago.
Embarrassing as it is to admit it, my reason for writing is largely vanity: I like the sound of my own voice. If I really wanted to influence the political process I would have done as my father did, which was to leave journalism and go into politics. I’m afraid I lack the necessary public-spiritedness.
I am not, by the way, arguing that newspapers have no influence, but in my experience this is entirely created by news, not comment. For example, at The Spectator I inadvertently caused the resignation of Nicholas Ridley because of an interview I conducted with him in which he made some rash remarks about the role of Germany within the EU. When at the Sunday Telegraph, I precipitated the resignation of David Blunkett, because we revealed the way in which he had become involved in a visa application for the nanny of his mistress. In so far as the public –as opposed to government-- are influenced by newspapers I believe it is because the revelation of an embarrassing fact can galvanise them. By the way, the laws of defamation reflect this reality: it is almost impossible to bring a suit successfully against a newspaper for its opinions, no matter how trenchantly expressed. But newspaper lawyers are always careful to monitor the news pages before publication.
You are of course entitled to dismiss the views of a group such as the Scientific Alliance as corrupted by vested interests. I don’t think it is, and I should add that any error in my piece was entirely my own responsibility.
Best wishes

Dominic Lawson
Reply from Huw Peach, 20 June 2007
Dear Mr Lawson,
Thank you for responding to my letter. I appreciate you taking the time to answer my points and criticisms.
You stated that the influence of newspapers derived from the NEWS they uncover, not the VIEWS of commentators, and that I had over-stated the influence of Aaranovitch, Hari and Coughlin, which was, in your words, ‘illusory.’ Once again, however, I feel this does not stand up to Karl Popper’s falsifiability test.
The Prime Minister’s attack on the The Independent as a ‘viewspaper’ [1] not a newspaper, provide the most obvious recent proof that your assertion is wrong. Surely it shows that Mr Blair ascribes far more influence to the paper’s VIEWS than the NEWS it prints.
On the other side of the Iraq debate -the elephant in the room, in my view- one could equally point to the influence of VIEWS in Rupert Murdoch’s 175 media outlets. While the NEWS stubbornly refused to yield a ‘smoking gun’ to justify a UN-sanctioned war, the VIEWS of commentators in Mr Murdoch’s empire pushed relentlessly -and successfully- towards war.
Liberal commentators’ VIEWS were similarly vital in the propaganda war. Are you seriously suggesting that The Observer’s pro-war editorial on 19 January 2003  [1] 'Iraq: the case for decisive action' [2], chiming with the powerful, had no influence on public opinion?
Al Gore’s VIEWS, cogently put together in the film An Inconvenient Truth, have had far more influence on governments across the world than the steady drip-drip of climate change NEWS, upon which those views are based.  If the NEWS coming out of peer-reviewed scientific journals had had more influence on governments, than the influential VIEWS of industry front groups or commentators like Michael Crichton and Melanie Philips, then the necessary collective, international action on climate change would have happened a lot sooner. 
One might wonder what Joseph Goebells would have thought of your extraordinary assertion that commentators have no influence. Judging by the number of commentators and writers, thrown into jail or murdered by the Nazis, it should surely be clear that their influence was more than ‘illusory’.
By the way, I thought my point about journalists, writers and commentators being the first to be locked up in totalitarian states deserved a response. I was disappointed that you did not.
Your point about the laws of defamation are interesting. You clearly have more experience of these matters so I defer to your knowledge here.
However, it is clear that there are moments in history, where people have had to come to regret views they have expressed in the past, as they have then been held responsible for them.
Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Mother Night makes some interesting and uncomfortable observations about this.  I recommend it.
Best wishes.
Yours sincerely,
Huw Peach
[1] A further example of the powerful influence of a ‘viewspaper’ is The Sun’s now notorious headline the day of the unexpected Conservative election victory in 1992: ‘It woz The Sun wot won it’. The previous day its front page had shown a picture of Neil Kinnock next to a light-bulb, urging the last person leaving Britain to turn it off in the event of a Labour victory.
I would be interested to know in what way the influence of this VIEWS-heavy, NEWS-free front page was ‘illusory’.
Response from Dominic Lawson, 20 June 2007
Dear Mr Peach
The fact that Mr Blair attacks the Independent for its becoming, as he put it, “a viewspaper” tells us no more than that Mr Blair is annoyed by the Independent. I should add that he is no longer rational in these matters and you should be careful about basing your arguments upon his latest insights. As for Goebells, what he demanded was that the press in his country reported falsehoods as if they were real news events. The same has been true of all totalitarian countries – the Soviet press’ completely fictitious accounts of steel production or grain harvests are examples of this.
You ask if I seriously suggest that the Observer’s pro-war leading articles had no influence on public opinion. Yes, I do. Were you influenced by them? Was the man in the Clapham omnibus?. Meanwhile I note that you do not rebut my comment that if Messrs Coughlin, Aaronovitch and Hari had not written as they did, that we would still have witnessed exactly the same bloodshed that has occurred in Iraq. If, however, someone such as the late Dr David Kelly had gone public before the House of Commons voted on Iraq and said that the facts advanced by Mr Blair about Iraqi WMD were spurious – and he could provide the true state of affairs—than that would have had a significant effect. Dr Kelly didn’t speak out to Andrew Gilligan until after the invasion, however, and indeed had written an unpublished article advocating the military removal of Saddam’s regime( because of its WMD programme) shortly before the invasion.
Anyway, I am glad that you have now become an enthusiast for Karl Popper’s falsifiability test.
Best wishes
Dominic Lawson
Reply from Huw Peach, 21 June 2007
Dear Mr Lawson,
Thanks for your rapid response!
First of all, your point about Aaranovitch, Hari and Coughlin… I should not have lumped together Coughlin with the other two. Their contribution to the war-effort was distinctly different:
1)      Coughlin -along with commentators in Mr Murdoch’s 175 publications worldwide - cheerleading the rush to war;
2)      Aaranovitch and Hari labelling it as a war of liberation and those who opposed it in unflattering terms.
However, I regard their roles in the bloodshed as equally serious, because I, unlike you, feel that writers in the public arena have tremendous influence and thus bear a great responsibility for the words they use. What you might shrug off as a regrettable ‘error of judgement’ has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of other people [1]. The words these opinion-makers have used have – not on their own, it is true, but together with other factors- devastated the lives of other people.
You said that you write because you like the sound of your own voice, and that public-spirited people go into politics instead of commentating in the press. I do not accept that all commentators have the same motivations. Many writers I read see themselves as public figures and have an acute awareness of their responsibility as such. They are motivated by compassion for others, take care to check their facts and ensure that the information they use comes from reputable, peer-reviewed sources. As their honesty is a stronger force than their vanity, they also admit it if they get things wrong.
You said I failed to rebut a point you made about these three commentators. Yes, I did [2]. However, I feel it is only fair to point out that you have not rebutted all my points.
As a case in point, you only partially answered my point about Goebells by saying he required the German press to report falsehoods as if they were real news events. This, of course, is true.
However, I feel that you sidestepped my point about the way totalitarian states deal with those whose VIEWS do not echo their own.
Totalitarian governments sideline, silence, imprison and murder commentators, not because of news they know about, but because of their VIEWS and the fear of the powerful that these views will infect the population. The very fact that these commentators see things differently is deeply subversive to the power system in these countries. Here are 4 examples of this.
Andrei Sakharov was banned from all military research after expressing his VIEWS on the dangers of a world nuclear war in a 1969 essay. In 1980 he was arrested after publicly expressing his VIEWS against the Soviet Union's illegal invasion of Afghanistan. Why did the authorities bother if Mr Sakharov's influence was 'illusory'?
Archbishop Romero was assassinated in El Salvador in 1980 the day after giving a sermon in which he called for soldiers as Christians to stop carrying out the government's repression and violations of basic human rights. Would you not agree that he was killed because his VIEWS were a powerful influence on people in El Salvador and abroad? Why did the powerful in El Salvador resort to violence if the power of the archbishop's views was 'illusory'?
Thousands of Chinese students peacefully demanded democracy in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Their attempts to express their VIEWS were ruthlessly crushed, and thousands lost their lives. Why did the Chinese government act so murderously if the VIEWS of the students had no influence?
Thousands of people around the world are imprisoned because of their VIEWS, published in their own countries or abroad. This has been well-documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and countless other human rights organisations. The reason is that their VIEWS influence their fellow citizens and are thus subversive to the powers-that-be.
People are interested and influenced by the views of people around them and by the news and views they read in the press. The views expressed by the liberal press to justify the Iraq war carried a much greater force, because they did not come from the ‘usual suspects’. I may not have been swayed by them, but the undecided man on the Clapham omnibus could well have been. To say that the influence of other people’s views on us is ‘illusory’ is deeply unconvincing.
Returning to your point about Goebells requiring the press to report falsehoods as real news, does this not make you think of the activities of the climate-change denying corporation, ExxonMobil, dangling massive advertising budgets in front of the press, funding front organisations, putting out PR stories in the press to suggest doubt in the science of climate change when there is, in fact, unanimity [3]?
My definition of falsehood would be: science from a questionable source presented as 'fact', but which has not undergone peer-review.
By the way, does the Scientific Alliance subject its publications to peer-review?
Many thanks for continuing this correspondence.
Yours,
Huw Peach
[2] I should maybe have started by asking you for your views on the background pro-war noise provided by Mr Murdoch’s 175 outlets, rather than singling out 2 liberals and a well-known hawk for censure. I mentioned the size of the Murdoch media empire in my last letter but you decided not to make any comment upon whether the views expressed in comment pieces across this empire have influence or not.
Response from Dominic Lawson, 21 June 2007
Dear Mr Peach
I fear that this correspondence has run its natural course. We are unable to agree but ( I hope) respect each other’s point of view.
Best wishes
Dominic Lawson
Reply from Huw Peach, 21 June 2007
Dear Mr Lawson,
Agreed.
Many thanks for devoting time to this correspondence.
It has been stimulating and thought-provoking and I have welcomed the opportunity to engage in debate with a public figure.
Yours sincerely,
Huw Peach,
Shrewsbury
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