Science’s embarrassing fossil fuel problem

Alice Bell: Willie Soon has been criticised for taking money from the energy industry, cure but he’s more normal than much of science would like to admit.

People gathered outside City Hall, medicine London, as part of global day of action against fossil fuels, Saturday February 14, 2015. Photograph: Sam Roberts/PA

Alice Bell

An investigation by Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Centre reported in the Guardian and New York Times this weekend showed that the work of Willie Soon — an apparently ‘scientific’ voice for climate scepticism — had accepted more than $1.2 million from the fossil-fuel industry over the 14 years.

As Suzanne Goldenberg’s report stresses, although those seeking to delay action to curb carbon emissions were keen to cite and fund Soon’s Harvard-Smithsonian credentials, he did not enjoy the same sort of recognition from the scientific community. He did not receive grants from Nasa or the the National Science Foundation, for example — the sorts of institutions who funded his colleagues at the Center for Astrophysics. Moreover, it appears that Soon violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work by not disclosing such funding. It seems to be a story of someone working outside the usual codes of modern science.

But Soon is not a singular aberration in the story of science’s relationship with the fossil fuel industry. It goes deeper than that.

Science and engineering is suffused with oil, gas and, yes, even coal. We must look this squarely in the eye if we’re going to tackle climate change.

The fossil fuel industry is sometimes labelled anti-science, but that’s far from the truth. It loves science — or at least particular bits of science — indeed it needs science. The fossil fuel industry needs the science and engineering community to train staff, to gather information and help develop new techniques. Science and engineering also provides the industry with cultural credibility and can open up powerful political spaces within which to lobby.

In the UK, BIS/ DECC 2013 oil and gas strategy is an especially brazen example of how science is expected to serve the fossil fuel industry’s interests. Aside from a bit where the government agrees to consider its role in improving public perception of the UK oil and gas industry, the strategy expresses much concern over the supply of skilled staff and R&D spend in the sector, with a clear expectation that the government should support industry here.
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But this relationship runs deep, just think of how many geology departments are still known as a School of Mines. And it’s not a problem of history, or something pushed simply pushed on science by the government. Take, for example, the UCL/BHP Billiton Institute for Sustainable Resources, or the BP/ Manchester materials lab. There are also deals like NERC and Shell, or Cambridge and Shell, or the long list of industrial sponsors at the Heriot-Watt Institute of Petroleum Engineering. Members of the scientific community sit on fossil fuel company boards — e.g. Imperial’s Alice Gast and Chevron — and vice versa. And there’s science communication too. Museums, for example. And news media (there might well be an advert for an fossil fuel company above this article).

This relationship sits at the heart of many key scientific institutions. It’s not just a matter of a few embarrassing cases in the corner.

This isn’t climate change denial. It’s also, in many ways, totally understandable. The fossil fuel industry remains a large part of the economy, and universities feel it is their responsibility to work with them (and it rarely means working in the manner Willy Soon seems to have). Still, that doesn’t mean it’s not also problematic, that it’s not also sometimes still managed badly, and that it’s not also locking us into particular types of futures, leaving others — less polluting — options under-developed.

In trying to ‘practise what you preach’ we sometimes see scientists argue about whether they should fly to conferences or not. Which is fair enough, perhaps (and, incidentally, may help open up science to women, but that’s another issue). But also possibly a distraction from much larger, much deeper questions.

The scientific community warned us about the link between fossil fuels and climate change. They continually tell the rest of the world to be more evidence-based. Can they heed their own advice?