Rachel Carson Center

All-Day Colloquium
April 20, 2017

How the 'Gentlemen of Science'

Obscured the Truth
About Global Warming

Philippe Forêt, Carson Fellow

Professor of Environmental History
Nazarbayev University

A Rachel Carson Center
book project
Unwelcome News from the
Field: Transformations in the
Environment and Societies of
Ancient Asia
To challenge the
historiography and
periodization of climate
research (Fleming 1998), I
examine the assumptions
that American, European
and Russian scientists
harbored on the immutable
nature of the environment
and societies of Asia
(Huntington 1907 and 1915).
The information they
gathered (Norin 1967) allow
me to criticize what
historians at Harvard have
written about climate
research and the collapse of
civilization (Oreskes and
Conway 2014).
I am rewriting in Munich the history of the
discovery of global warming through an
examination of how early-20th century exploration,
armchair geography, and peer-review processes
influenced the analysis of transformation in the
Middle East and Central Asia.
In testing the resilience of historical data and
theories on climate change, I review the peer-review
and collegiality guidelines that scholarly societies
enforced last century.
Unwelcome News will explain why one century ago
the Royal Geographic Society (RGS) and with it the
German academic community vetoed the
proposition that climate had changed in Asia,
rejected any connection between transformation,
environment and society, and eventually silenced
climate theoreticians and field-workers.
 1. The previous meeting
Outline of ‘The gentlemen 2. Reviewing is our duty
of science’ book chapter 3. The war of the Empire
“The trouble with Americans is against fieldwork data
that they haven’t read the minutes 4. Phony climate theories
of the previous meeting.”
Adlai Stevenson
5. Constructing a discipline
around a counter-narrative
6. The deciders of bad
science
7. The web of denials
8. A revisionist attack
9. Political agenda and the
academic market, then and
now
10. Science under house
arrest
1.  The previous meeting
-  The mission of academies
and scholarly societies;
-  Research on climate,
scientific practice, and
early 20th century notions
of competition, esprit de
corps, masculinity, race,
and nation;
-  The use of scientific
credentials to build
authority and discipline,
and to discredit data that
would threaten this
enterprise;
-  The role of the media in
scientific debates.
2. Reviewing is our duty
-  Jean Baptiste
Bourguignon d’Anville: The
father of all reviewers,
editors, and experts.
-  Rules of procedure: Peer
review must be conducted
prior to any claim of
discovery.
-  The peer review process
should correct mistakes,
check facts, and document
interpretations.
-  Authors must take into
account critiques and
requests for change.
3. The war of the Empire
against fieldwork data
The topographical work done in
Central Asia shows clearly that:
-  Uncertainty, instability,
dynamism, crises, disasters,
collapse, and recovery are
elements that belong rightly
to the nature/culture
relationship.
-  This ever-changing
relationship is as ancient as
Silk Road settlements.
-  The study of the past human
responses to climate change
can be done through the
examination of textual and
visual records as well as the
built cultural landscape.
4. Phony climate theories
If climate changes, the
pattern of the changes
recorded by scientists could
belong to different categories:
-  Either local or global;
-  Either incremental or
dramatically sudden;
-  Either linear or oscillatory
(within limits), or
pulsatory (within or
outside known limits);
-  With consequences on
human history or without,
if the impact is felt only in
geological history.
5. Constructing
a discipline around
a counter-narrative
Glory and discredit in
scientific discovery
The Royal Geographical
Society of London
Berlin – London – Paris –
Stockholm – New Haven
6. The deciders of bad science
-  Albrecht Penck’s personal connection of climate change
and geomorphology to German culture and the concept of
Lebensraum;
-  The ‘gentlemen of science’ who rejected “very theoretic
points of view” to adopt methods based on field
observations that would prove that “changes can be
accounted for by the assumption of slight variations of
the surface temperature.”
7. A web of denials
- No global whatever
(although worldwide parallel
events may be related to a
common “very slight”
temperature change);
- No climate change
(except in a linear,
progressive, and
imperceptible fashion);
- No theorizing from field
data;
- No human response to
climate change at the
historical scale, and
therefore to global warming;
- No historical agency given
to the ‘Other.’
8. A revisionist attack on field scientists
-  A successful strategy to validate the review process while
undermining fact-based science;
-  Attacking the message that climate change and culture
are connected, that this link can be mapped accurately,
that human history has a non-European geographical
center;
-  Attacking the messenger: Honors, humiliation, betrayal,
silence, and slander when back from the deserts of Asia
9. Political agenda and the
academic market, then and
now
-  Today’s narrative on the
truth on global warming;
-  The IPPC, atmosphere
scientists, and climate
computer models as co-
authors;
-  The constraints of a focus
kept on measuring
anthropogenic climate
change.
10. Science under house arrest
-  The collective inability to imagine beyond current
research practices;
-  Two more denials from disciplinary gatekeepers:
The contributions to scientific debates of the
humanities, and from the general public.
-  One confirmation: A well-funded war against
science
Primary Literature
Examples from the RGS Geographical
Journal, 1900-1914:
-  Nathaniel Curzon. “Address to the
Royal Geographical Society”
-  J.W. Gregory. “Is the Earth drying
up?”
-  Ellsworth Huntington. “Problems in
exploration”
-  Sven Hedin. “Three years’
exploration in Central Asia
-  Sven Hedin. “Discoveries in
Southern Tibet”
-  Piotr Kropotkin. “The desiccation of
Eurasia”
-  Aurel Stein. “Explorations in Central
Asia, 1906-8”
-  Aurel Stein. “Sir Aurel Stein’s new
expedition in Central Asia”
Secondary Literature
- Mark Bowen. Censoring Science
- Andrew Dessler and Edward Parson.
The Science and Politics of Global
Climate Change
- Paul Edwards. A Vast Machine
- Philippe Forêt. La véritable histoire
d’une montagne
- Ronald Fritze. Invented Knowledge
- James Hoggan. Climate Cover-up
- Naomi Klein. This Changes
Everything
- Eugene Linden. The Winds of Change
- Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.
Merchants of Doubt
http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/
- Spencer Weart. The Discovery of
Global Warming
http://history.aip.org/climate/
index.htm
… RCC Perspectives issues
Credits for this talk go to:
-  Naomi Oreskes
-  Carson Fellows and
visiting scholars
-  The Sven Hedin
Foundation at the Royal
Swedish Academy of
Sciences
-  The Sven Hedin project of
the National Geographic:
http://svenhedin.com/

Please send comments and

questions to:
pforet@bluewin.ch
Thank you for your attention