Climate denialism
This page is mainly about two French earth scientists who have tried to deny or minimise the human contribution to global heating. Their obstructive views, spanning well over a decade, held great sway in the French scientific community because of their strong scientific and political connections. I am not providing any original research, but simply supplying translations of relevant French articles from Le Monde, a newspaper which I read every day in print, and which is on a par, or surpasses, the best of The Guardian or the New York Times.
I have also appended at the foot of this page some comments about the changing views on climate expressed in the Economist over the years. This conservative weekly magazine, particularly influential in political circles, has also contributed to the delay in progressing measures to combat global heating.
The French media debate about le réchauffement climatique (global heating) is far more grown-up than the sensationalised news and comment that passes for debate in the British broadsheets. I have translated some of these articles into English, in the hope that the French media perception might be better appreciated - and admired - by non-French-speaking scientists, and also because until recently this debate was largely ignored in the anglophone world. I excluded articles covering subjects which are well covered in the anglophone press, unless the French take on them is significantly different.
The first thing to note is that science in general, and climate change in particular, gets far more prominence in France than in the UK media. I cannot imagine an article about possible abuse of the peer review process and editing of academic papers even appearing in the UK press, far less being introduced on the front page, as published in Le Monde at the end of 2008. This story centres mainly around Vincent Courtillot, a solid-earth geophysicist who is a climate-sceptic. In 2010 Courtillot also appeared on the front cover of the weekend colour magazine, which accompanies the printed copy of Le Monde every Friday.
In case you think that the climate mavericks are getting too much attention, it should be stated that the articles are far from flattering - they are damning. A glance at the headings below, translated from those of the original newspaper articles, will confirm this. One of them, Global warming: 400 researchers against Allègre, even made the front page headline; unthinkable in the UK or USA.
There is a political dimension, in that Claude Allègre, a distinguished solid-earth scientist, is both a climate-sceptic and former minister of education in the socialist government from 1997 to 2000. However, criticism of his sceptic views can hardly be ascribed to a right-wing political agenda, because Le Monde is broadly left-wing, and Libération even more so.
Here is a résumé of the articles, in chronological order, and using the article titles in translation. There are links to pdf or htm files of the original French text; the translations are pdfs, normally with the accompanying photos or cartoons, and laid out in the style of the print copy.
How to influence the debate on climate evolution
This article appeared in Le Monde on 20 December 2007, under the heading above. I already knew of Vincent Courtillot as a fellow solid-earth geophysicist, having once cited him in a paper I published in 1995. The article is very short, so here is a full translation:
Vincent Courtillot, president of the geomagnetism and palaeomagnetism section of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), sits on the council of that organisation, which carries great weight on the global scientific scene. Thus he has the right to vote on its official declarations. During its last autumn meeting held in San Francisco from 10-14 December, the learned society had to renew the text of its official stance on global warming - signalling its influence on the research of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the conclusions of which provided the basis for the discussions begun at the Bali (Indonesia) conference. "M. Courtillot made it known to us that this declaration [of the AGU] was a problem for him, reports a council member of the AGU. He was informed that there was no serious scientific research that was in a position to put our text in question. Then we held a discussion on his stance, a discussion at which M. Courtillot was not present. The council members voted in favour [of the text], with the exception of M. Courtillot, who abstained."
Fraud suspected in climate-sceptic study
This was the title of an article in Le Monde, 20 December 2007. Le Monde gave Courtillot a right of reply. The paper stated that the "virulence" of his response surpassed the norms expected. Le Monde nevertheless published it more or less in full, but with editorial comments interjected. The original article of 20 December (translation to English here) seems to have been subseqently removed from the paper's archives.
Backroom deals between geologists
One year later a report in Le Monde in December 2008, entitled Backroom deals between geologists (translation here), aroused suspicion that scientists at the Institute of Physics of the Globe in Paris (a prestigious research centre, of which Courtillot was director at the time) were receiving unwarranted favouritism in getting their work published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Their own colleagues are, or were, on the editorial board, but did not step down from reviewing their colleagues' submissions, as would normally be the case.
The hundred faults of Claude Allègre
Page 3 of the weekend edition of Le Monde on 28 February 2010 was devoted entirely to Claude Allègre and his latest book, "riddled with errors". The French title uses a play on words; cent-fautes (hundred faults) is a made-up homonym of sans-fautes, which means without fault, as in a perfect score.
A bold highlight text box in the body of the
article (translated
here), written by Le Monde's
scientific journalist Stéphane Foucart, states:
"The author has confounded the name Georgia Tech, short for
Georgia Institute of Technology, with that of a person", so that even a casual
glance at the page, with its title and large photo of Allègre, will get the
message across.
A second article beneath the first, The imaginary list of scientific 'support' recruited by the former minister, goes into even more detail. Allègre was immediately given the opportunity to reply, which he did on 4 March in Climate: the questions which remain.
The Mediator of Le Monde published The climate war on 13 March, in response to a barrage of correspondence from readers (equally divided, apparently, into pro- and anti-Allègre). This excellent piece (translated here) justifies the paper's stance, noting that no-one, not even Allègre, himself actually refuted a single one of Stéphane Foucart's assertions of error. The editorial director had the final word, explaining what is the duty of a responsible newspaper.
Global warming: 400 researchers against Allègre
The front-page headline Global warming: 400 researchers against Allègre, and lead story of Le Monde on 2 April 2010 (translation here) demonstrates the attention that science gets in France. Half of page 4 inside the same edition is devoted to a more detailed article, More than 400 climate scientists appeal to the minister (translation here), plus a short column on the findings of the 'Climategate' parliamentary inquiry in the UK.
Climate: an academy under the influence
The debate over the French climate-sceptic scientists and their influence rumbled on. At the time of the Paris COP21, Le Monde published a long article (translated here) about a short letter from 200 astrophysicists lamenting the climate-sceptical position adopted by the French Academy of Sciences. The article goes in to recount how Courtillot and Allègre unduly influenced a 'COP21 group' tasked by the academy to furnish an opinion ready for the Paris climate summit.
One climatologist bluntly questioned Courtillot's ethical behaviour, in first issuing a draft opinion after the group had disbanded in array, but which was not the work of the group, and later drafting a shorter version in which climate is hardly mentioned. Courtillot also claimed that this version, which had veered off-topic to discuss energy rather than climate, had the support of almost all the members of the group. The final version made no explicit reference to human responsibility for the current warming, no mention of the climate projections conducted by the scientific community, and no characterisation of the risks posed by global warming. The opinion had become essentially about energy, "which is completely ridiculous since the Academy already gave an opinion on energy transition earlier this year... " according to the climatologist.
Claude Allègre and the climate: reprise of a blatant denial
An interview with Claude Allègre appeared on 21 December 2018 in Le Monde under the headline above. He appears to be unapologetic. Here are some extracts.
And the scientist asks himself with the subtlety of a pachyderm in a peony field: "Is it more urgent to be concerned about hunger in the world (...) or unemployment (...) or should we meet in Copenhagen with 120 heads of state to worry about the climate in a century and spend half a billion euros on it?"
Enunciated in this way, the sermon seems to be said, and it does not matter that Claude Allègre is not a climatologist - he is a geologist - and that almost all specialists on the subject challenge his theories.
In his fight, Claude Allègre has an ally, unknown to the general public. His friend and collaborator the geologist Vincent Courtillot, who will succeed him at the head of the Institut de physique du globe de Paris (IPGP).
The two men, in a perfectly well-oiled division of roles, will not cease to support each other and to back each other up against the rest of the scientific community to advance their theses. When Mr Allèggre occupies newspaper columns, Mr Courtillot tries to get published in scientific journals, with varying degrees of success.
Since his serious cardiac accident in January 2013, Claude Allègre no longer speaks, while Vincent Courtillot has not responded to Le Monde's requests. With hindsight, how can we explain that just ten years ago two men were able to hold the top spot in terms of climatoscepticism and dominate the debate despite the protests of specialists on the subject?
Faced with Claude Allègre, the real climatologists were initially stunned. "There was a phase when we were very little present in the public arena," admits Eric Guilyardi, director of research at the CNRS. We let a lot of people speak for us: environmental NGOs talking about the end of the world and, conversely, "negators" like Claude Allègre. We weren't equipped, we had no media coverage. We were like rabbits dazzled by the headlights."
"For ordinary people, the globe is the climate, so he was considered an expert, he played on the confusion to appear legitimate on this issue," notes Eric Guilyardi. But Claude Allègre "comes from the earth sciences, and there was a total lack of knowledge of climate science on his part. He did not make the effort to open up to it, on the contrary, he despised us. And that fuelled rivalries between scientists," adds Valérie Masson-Delmotte.
The Academy of Sciences turns the page on climate scepticism
This is the title of an article in Le Monde dated 29 January 2020. Here are some translated extracts.
Until a few years ago, the scholarly society was the scene of a confrontation between climate sceptics and supporters of the scientific consensus which prevented any position being taken against climate change. The colloquium "Facing up to Climate Change, the Field of Possibilities", to be held on Tuesday 28 and Wednesday 29 January in Paris, is thus the first to be organized on climate by the pluricentenary institution in the presence of the general public. A symbolic act, which puts an end to a past that has become burdensome.
The institution has not always held this position. For years, "the Academy was paralysed on the subject of climate by a small group of climatosceptics led by geochemist Claude Allègre and geophysicist Vincent Courtillot," recalls one academician. "They were blocking debates on the subject, as well as the election of certain climatologists to the Academy." The former minister Claude Allègre was then "protected" by certain members of the bureau of the Academy of Sciences, "who let him express himself freely," the academician continued. Several members of the institution's board belonged to the Fondation Ecologie d'Avenir, created by Claude Allègre and hosted by the Institut de France, which brings together all the academies.
An influence that was to continue until 2015. That year, despite the absence of Claude Allègre, who suffered a cardiac accident in 2013, an opinion from the Academy of Sciences designed to support the COP21 climate negotiations led to a confrontation between academics, particularly Vincent Courtillot. After months of bitter debate, the final text did not explicitly acknowledge human responsibility for the ongoing warming or characterize the risks posed by climate disruption.
"That history is behind us," says one academician. Since the election of the mathematician Etienne Ghys as permanent secretary at the beginning of 2019, the influence of the climatosceptics - a handful of the 284 members of the institution - is now nil, according to several sources. Vincent Courtillot, who was not present on Tuesday, was not given a voice at the colloquium. "The Academy of Sciences now speaks at the same level as other academies in the world on a subject on which there is consensus. It has regained its rank," said one academician.
Global heating denied by the Economist
This comment was sparked by an article in the London Review of Books written by Stefan Collini, published on 6 February 2020. The article is a review of the book Liberalism at large: the world according to the 'Economist' by Alexander Zevin.
In my view the biggest failure of capitalism is its congenital inability to come to terms with anthropogenic global heating, the main challenge now facing humanity. The Economist, the so-called 'God-like' conservative weekly magazine (Stefan Collini), is symptomatic of the problem. [NB the links to the Economist website below are behind a paywall.]
In 1997, some two decades after scientists - including oil industry researchers - had quantified industrial-era CO2 emissions as the main cause of global heating, the Economist dismissed the problem as 'the mother of all environmental scares'. Two years later, in a special report of 9 September 1999, it was referring to 'environmental hijacking' by 'green pressure groups'.
A leader column of 2009 was still giving credence to climate denialists, under the false aegis of scientific controversy and balance. But the debate had long been settled by then; indirect reference was made to alternative views put forward by two well-connected French geophysicists, Claude Allègre and Vincent Courtillot, neither of whom was a climatologist sensu stricto. I have discussed them above. Their views were shortly thereafter demolished on the front page of Le Monde, as well as in the scientific press.
In 2013 a now-famous '97%' meta-analysis published by nine earth and climate scientists, since downloaded over a million times, and quoted by the Pope and President Obama, studied some 12,000 abstracts of climate-related research papers going back to 1991. The analysis showed that 97% of those expressing an opinion on global heating endorsed the consensus position that it is anthropogenically-induced. The analysis was conceived by my dear departed friend Andy Skuce, one of the authors.
Only that year did the Economist start to accept the scientific consensus, but it made the switch in a series of confused articles (see Skeptical Science). The adage, quoted by Collini, that you read the Economist to find out what's going to happen next in the world may well be true, but your information may be wrong - skewed, in my opinion, by the dogma that capitalism always has the answer.
In short, influential media like the Economist have contributed to the needless delay of at least 30 years in political action to mitigate global heating. Collini's 'must-have status accessory of today' has been far more damaging than a Gucci handbag.