March 1997 Vol. XIV, No. 2

It is probably impossible to persuade the American people that they want the carbon dioxide police in their backyard, with or without blue helmets.

Naturally, no one would try. However, a campaign is underway to persuade the Administration and Congress that the American people want binding controls on heat-trapping gases. The rest could follow before people think to ask the question: just how will the limits be enforced, once the cost is known?

Scientists are essential troops in the campaign: ``Active and relentless participation by the scientific community is required to ensure that a significant international agreement is reached,'' stated an update by the ``Sound Science Initiative'' (SSI) of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

Scientists do have some problems in communicating with the public. Recently, SSI held a 1.5 hour nationwide media training seminar for more than 30 scientists by telephone conference. Here are some tips from their experts:

1. Stay on the message. The SSI message is simple: (a) Global warming is a serious problem. (b) It will have adverse impacts on human health and the environment. (c) We must take action now to fight global warming.

No matter what the reporter wants to talk about, bring him back to the Message Triangle. If he gets into a sensitive area, say you aren't an expert on that, but what you can say is this...(segue to Message Triangle).

2. Don't confuse them with doubt. In other words, don't talk like a scientist, with caveats and error bars. Emphasize the word ``consensus.''

3. Don't talk too much. A Dan Rather soundbite is about 7 seconds. You may get 15-20 seconds on local shows, or the equivalent three or four sentences in print. So practice your sound bites, and don't get trapped into giving the reporter what he is looking for. Set your time limit for interviews in advance, at 15 to 20 minutes, so that you can terminate the interview before you are in over your head without appearing to be evasive. Your main purpose is to advocate, not to educate.

4. Cultivate a personal relationship with a reporter. You want to be in his Rolodex. Buy him coffee, take him to lunch, brief him on upcoming stories. (Watch for them at http://www.ucsusa.org.)

5. Interview the reporter before he interviews you. Find out what his angle is and who his other sources are. If he catches you off guard, call him back after you rehearse your sound bites. Take control before agreeing to answer questions.

6. Be colorful. ``We're still using 19th century technology to get our electricity. It's time to switch to the 21st century with clean, renewable technologies like wind and solar power.'' (Most people don't know that windmills are 12th century technology or that Grandma's house had a solar water heater in 1930 and replaced it with gas as soon as she could.)

The greatest threat to the success of the SSI is public knowledge of the controversy over the assertions in the Message Triangle. Damage control is still underway over one Wall Street Journal article by Frederick Seitz (see 7/96 issue), past president of the National Academy of Sciences. A serious charge of corruption is portrayed as a mere procedural quibble.

A more recent problem for SSI is a March 13 article in Nature (1997;386:164-167) entitled ``Spurious trends in satellite MSU temperatures from merging different satellite records.'' The accompanying editorial dutifully states that the ``rates of climate change as projected exceed anything seen in nature in the past 10,000 years'' (an SSI soundbite). The danger is the graphs of actual temperature measurements, which show a slight cooling trend since 1980. Also, the article discusses errors in measurements large enough to change the direction of a trend. Nonexperts can still ask the simple but difficult questions:

1. Well, what did happen 10,000 years ago? Was it an Ice Age? Or was it the ``Climatic Optimum,'' when Michigan had a subtropical climate? Dramatic changes (or upheavals) have occurred, and human activity was surely not the cause. And what about 100 years ago? Between 1890 and 1900, temperatures rose at the rate of 0.2° per decade, faster than between 1980 and 1994 (see ``Are Human Activities Causing Global Warming?'', George C. Marshall Institute, at http://www.marshall.org.) For historical perspective on popular concerns about climate change, see the article on ``Climate and Climatology'' in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, available on CD-ROM in the Robinson Self-Teaching Home School Curriculum, v. 2. And for a graph of sea surface temperature over the past 3,000 years, see Access to Energy 1/97 (PO Box 1250, Cave Junction, OR 97523).

2. What would be the effect of delaying interventions for 30 years in order to collect more data? (In the worst case, almost none: Nature 1996;379:240-243).

3. What would be the actual cost of enforceable emissions limits? Demand a dollar figure, not the number of economists who signed a statement that it wouldn't hurt very much. Also look at practical effects on individuals: the cost of electricity, restrictions on driving, rationing of fuel, the cost of food and everything else that requires fuel or electricity for production, and the number of new prisons required for people who violate the rules.

4. If the cost turns out to be higher than predicted, what is the mechanism for repealing the limits?

One such question could plant seeds of doubt that germinate into independent thought. The San Diego meeting is the place to collect some ammunition. And our own media seminar by Lou Guzzo, collaborator of Dixy Lee Ray, will show you how to deploy it to best advantage.

Remember, the cut-off date for our room block at the Bahia Hotel in San Diego is May 2. Call (800)288-0770, or (800)233-8172 from Canada. A registration form is enclosed. Dates are June 14-15; call for information on Friday group activities.

The revised EPA guidelines on cancer risk estimates are a ``regulator's dream come true,'' according to Michael Gough and Steven Milloy in Cato Institute Policy Analysis #243, 11/12/96 (tel. 202-842-0200). ``The EPA's plans to drop statistical significance as a criterion for evaluation of epidemiologic studies mean that risk assessors may have to consider study results that are almost certainly the product of chance and that the public will be inundated with reports of effects that are not real.'' The EPA gives no reasons for dropping the requirement; it simply disappeared from the list of criteria.

Statistical significance─the requirement to show that a finding has less than a 5% probability of being due to chance alone─has stood in the way of attributing cancer risk to electromagnetic fields, environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), pesticide residues, and hazardous waste sites. When the EPA lowered the traditional confidence limit from 95% to 90%, thereby permitting the conclusion that ETS was associated with an increased lung cancer risk, heavy criticism from the scientific community ensued. The new attitude appears to be, ``Why deal with criticism when you have the power to change the rules?''

The cost of the change: untold gigadollars of added regulatory burdens.

The EPA continues to make the assumption that animal test results predict human risk and that toxic effects seen only at high-dose levels in animals are predictive of human risk at far lower exposures. Anyone who opposes EPA interpretations has to prove that the EPA errs─and the EPA decides what opposing information it will consider. As Gough and Milloy point out, no one has ever determined how many observations and facts are necessary to displace an assumption.