Cross-posted from The Phoenix Sun.

It’s getting toward sunset and I’m lost, sitting behind the wheel of a cherry-red Prius C prototype, at the bottom of a very steep hill somewhere in the urban wilds of San Diego.

My driving partner, Melissa Hincha-Ownby, looks over and flashes a big grin. In addition to being an auto geek, the MNN blogger is also a mind reader. “Go for it!” she cries.

I do — jamming the pedal to the metal.

Imagine the smell of burning rubber as we rocket up the hill, the acceleration slamming us back into our seats. Then get your imagination recalibrated.

This newest addition to the family is still a Prius, after all, one of the most fuel-efficient vehicles on the road. And, with an estimated in-town rating of 53 mpg, the C is the most efficient hybrid vehicle on the market. No. This is not a muscle car.

Still, the C is the nimblest incarnation of the world’s best-selling hybrid, and we happily zoom up the hill with no hesitation, strain, or detectable shudder. The engine is slightly smaller than the standard model, but reduced weight and improved aerodynamics compensate for the lower horsepower.

I had been skeptical at the morning briefing when Toyota’s chief Prius engineer, Satoshi Ogiso, described the C as “feisty.” Feisty is still a stretch. But this scaled-down version of the Prius is surprisingly fun to drive. At just 2,496 pounds, the C is the lightest Prius sold — by more than 500 pounds. The tires have been pushed to the outside of the frame, giving the C a wider stance. (Must get image of Larry Craig out of my head!) The car’s nickel-metal hydride battery has been moved forward and dropped down, lowering the center of gravity and giving the C more stability cornering.

The new Prius is "feisty," says Toyota engineer Satoshi Ogiso. (Photo by Osha Gray Davidson.)

The C stands for “city,” according to Toyota, but “compact” fits, too. The new model is a full 19 inches shorter than the liftback, as the original Prius has been renamed. “Cheaper” would also apply, with the C starting at $18,950.

Trunk space is limited, but with the rear seats folded down, the total cargo area is a decent 17.1 cubic feet, enough for groceries or even a bike or two.

Performance, efficiency, room. That brings us to, um, aesthetics.

No one has ever called the Prius the world’s most beautiful car, and the C is unlikely to change that. Still, the redesigned back end and changed proportions have made the car physically attractive. Maybe the ugly duckling hasn’t become a swan, but it has developed into a perfectly nice duck. If aesthetics kept the Prius out of the running for some buyers, the new Prius C — with its great mileage, lower price, supple handling, and good looks — should appeal to a new generation of green-car buyers.

Is Burgess a whistle-blower or just a wily businessman?Photo: Steven Depolo

The charges leveled by a solar industry insider recently were deadly serious.

“Solar panels do not work that well … and few know it,” revealed Ray Burgess, president and CEO of Solar Power Technologies. Writing in AOL Energy on Oct. 7, Burgess appeared to be a reluctant or even heroic truth-teller, airing the solar industry’s dirty laundry with the best of intentions. (Several times while reading the piece, Jerry McGuire’s Mission Statement came to mind.)

Burgess wrote that “if we who love solar and alternative energy do not put our house in order, those who believe solar is some kind of government-funded shell-game will do it for us. This would be a disaster for our country.”

In other words, Burgess is not just a whistle-blower, but a patriot.

Using anecdotes and scientific data, Burgess walks readers through the solar industry’s dismal state of affairs, which can be summed up simply: Photovoltaic panels are crap. They fall apart quickly on their own. Their electrical output is subject to “dozens and dozens” of threats — from bullets to golf balls. (Wait — what about meteorites and chunks of blue ice?) One of his listed threats, dust, is a real concern. But here Burgess establishes a leitmotif for his solar indictment, blowing problems far out of proportion.

“In 2009,” Burgess writes in one anecdote, “Google found that after it cleaned its panels, energy doubled.”

Here’s what the Red, White, and Blue Whistle-blower left out.

“We have two different sets of solar panels on our [Mountain View, Calif.] campus,” Google explained in its official blog,”completely flat ones installed on carports, and rooftop ones that are tilted.” Washing doubled the output of the flat-mounted panels.

But, the blog continued, “The rooftop solar panels are a different story. Our data indicates that rain does a sufficient job of cleaning the tilted solar panels … So for now, we’ll let Mother Nature take care of cleaning our rooftop panels.”

Another fact Burgess fails to mention is that nearly all solar installations are tilted, primarily to capture the most sunlight. Owners of solar panels do need to maintain them for peak performance, but that’s hardly a nasty little secret.

Burgess also calls claims that solar panels lose their ability to convert sunlight into electricity at a rate of just 0.5 percent per year “bogus.” According to the prestigious National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Burgess writes, panels degrade “as much as 4.5 percent a year. Or more.”

At this point, you don’t need to be an expert to be suspicious, just a competent reader. The phrase “as much as” refers to an upper limit. Tacking on the words “or more” attempts to recast the ceiling as a floor.

In fact, as reporter Anne Paine points out in a balanced story on how solar panels perform over time, NREL found that most panels studied over the last 40 years degraded at a rate under 1 percent per year.

Questioned by Paine in The Tennessean, Burgess back-peddled, admitting that his 4.5 percent claim was “an extreme case.”

The rest of Burgess’ jeremiad continues in this same vein, citing imaginary problems or inflating real ones to absurd proportions.

Burgess’ motive for airing what he called solar’s “nasty little secret” may have something to do with his niche within the industry he claims to love. His company doesn’t actually make solar panels — it makes devices that monitor the performance of solar panels. Just what you’d need if you wanted to know, say, how fast your panels were degrading.

If this were simply about a company cranking up the fear factor to sell more widgets, it wouldn’t be worth writing about. Advertisers prey on consumer fears all the time. But timing is key here. According to a study released this week, the number of jobs in the solar industry grew at a rate of 6.8 percent in the past year — almost 10 times faster than the U.S. economy as a whole. Compare that to employment in the fossil fuels industry, which is expected to shrink by 2 percent in the coming year.

The words of the Saudi oil minister in 1976 could come today from Big Coal and Big Oil: “The big powers are seriously trying to find alternatives to oil by seeking to draw energy from the sun or water. We hope to God they will not succeed quickly because our position in that case will be painful.”

In the recent collapse of solar manufacturer Solyndra, the dirty energy industries see an opening to stave off the pain of competition from renewable, clean energy. They, and the politicians they support, are hoping to use the Solyndra failure as a wedge to bring down the entire renewable energy tree — and dispose of the current administration, which has done a lot to support alternative energy. (Not enough, perhaps, but a lot.)

The Burgess piece provides the kind of ammunition the fossil fuels industry wants, even if the charges aren’t accurate. Once these horror stories are published, they bounce around the internet and are repeated until no one knows whether the figures quoted are right. It’s already happening. The article was the basis for a piece that ran in a Charleston [W. Va] Daily Mail blog under the headline, “Expert: Solar panels don’t work well.“

Whistle-blowers can play a critical role in keeping businesses and governments honest. Sometimes, however, they just blow.

The 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid — can it do magic?Photo: Toyota

A series of massive recalls involving 10 million vehicles, and the attendant bad press, undermined the Japanese automaker’s defining trait: a reputation for reliability. Stiff competition from other automakers has eroded Toyota’s American market share (from 14.3 percent in 2009 down to 12.8 percent in 2010). Then came the devastating March earthquake and tsunami that interrupted supply chains and slowed or halted much of Japan’s manufacturing. Toyota production plummeted by 23 percent in the first half of 2011.

Hemorrhaging from these and other wounds, Toyota is almost certain to lose its status as the world’s largest automaker to GM (which had held the title for decades until Toyota seized it in 2008).

Hollywood or bust

Toyota is pinning its hopes for the future largely on the 2012 Camry. The company will also be rolling out 20 other updated models over the next year and a half, but it’s no accident that the new Camry is the first out of the gate. For millions of Americans, the midsize sedan is Toyota. The decidedly practical Camry has been the best-selling car in the United States for an amazing 13 out of the last 14 years.

Where do you go if you’re an automaker trying to awaken from a nightmare? To the great American dream factory, of course: Hollywood. In this case, Paramount’s New York City backlot, seen in countless movies and TV shows (such as this car chase scene from the Bruce Willis movie Surrogates; note that the mayhem involves a Chevy and a Cadillac Escalade EXT — no Toyotas were harmed in the making of this film).

Rolling at the rollout.Photo: Osha Gray DavidsonIn late August, Toyota put on the mother of all rollouts here — part NYC street theater (via Hollywood), part music video, and all Madison Avenue. On cue, 200 dancers, actors, skateboarders, and BMX riders came skipping and spinning down the street, decked out in Toyota red, while a live band rocked out high on a balcony above a giant LED screen, and red banners unfurled from wires and shot up from hidden nooks in the street.

I was surprised by the scale of the production — and I wasn’t the only one. Actor Chevy Chase wandered out of soundstage 32 (where the show Community is filmed) and asked a guard in disbelief, “This isn’t for a film? It’s for an e-vent?” drawing out the last syllable to emphasize the improbability of what he was witnessing.

Finally, thousands of red streamers exploded in the air like paper fireworks as a powder-blue 2012 Camry Hybrid and its all-gas equivalent pulled up at the corner of Brooklyn, Greenwich Village, Upper East Side, and SoHo.

Is the Camry the new Prius?

As green car fans know, the Toyota Prius has been the hybrid of choice in the U.S. since it first rolled onto American shores in June 2000. Over a million Prii have been sold since then. That first model got 42 miles per gallon in the city and 41 on the highway, according to the EPA. And the 2011 Prius does significantly better — 51/48, even after the EPA made its mileage standards more rigorous starting with 2008 models.

Although several automakers now sell hybrids, the experts at Edmonds.com still recommend that prospective hybrid buyers “start their search” with the popular Prius, and that’s sound advice.

But if you’re looking for a roomier, more powerful family sedan that just happens to be a hybrid — and gets better gas mileage than the original Prius — the 2012 Camry Hybrid should move to the top of your list. It’s rated at 43/39 mpg — up more than a third from the 2011 Camry Hybrid.

Bob Carter, VP of sales for Toyota USA.Photo: Osha Gray DavidsonHow did they coax that kind of mileage from a midsize sedan? I asked Bob Carter, VP of sales for Toyota USA and host of the unveiling. He credited the new 150 horsepower 2.5-liter 2AR-FXE engine that uses the Atkinson combustion cycle, plus improvements to hardware and software. The new Camry also has better aerodynamics, and it shed 220 pounds in the redesign process.

“This is the newest generation of our hybrid system,” Carter explained. “I’m confident you’ll get better than 45 mpg in the city.”

Despite all these improvements, the new Camry Hybrid has a base sticker price $1,150 lower than the 2011 model it replaces — $25,900.

When it comes to a fun ride, the Camry Hybrid is no Tesla. But it’s no slouch, either. My test drive covered five winding miles from Paramount Studios to Griffith Observatory, including a 600-foot altitude gain. I found the car surprisingly peppy, handling well even on tight turns.

Camrys are known for being quiet and smooth, but the 2012 hybrid generated even less noise and gave a more fluid ride than the 2011 all-gas model, which is saying a lot. If the dashboard hadn’t had an animated icon showing a spinning electric motor, I wouldn’t have been able to tell when the Camry switched between gas and electricity — the transitions were seamless.

Will the new Camry and Camry Hybrid bring about a reversal of fortune for Toyota? Clearly, that’s the company plan. Toyota anticipates selling 50,000 Camry Hybrids in 2012, up from just 15,000 in 2010, says Carter. The extravagant rollout, long list of improvements, and price cut show that Toyota is serious about retaining (or winning back) the Camry’s “most popular car” status next year and restoring the company’s reputation.

I don’t know about Toyota as a whole, or even the gas-powered Camry. But the 2012 Camry Hybrid? Now, there’s a contender.

How can we best protect the wee ones?

In Japan, survivors also face the ongoing threat of radiation released by six reactors at the Fukushima Daiishi nuclear power plant. Under circumstances still not fully understood, the cooling systems at Fukushima lost power after the earthquake and tsunami. Large amounts of radioactive materials were blown hundreds of feet into the air from hydrogen explosions at the plant, contaminating a large surrounding area.

Kikuko Murakami survived the natural disasters. But, like many Japanese, she is not reassured by the constant government refrain that radiation from Fukushima poses little or no threat to human health for those living outside of a 12-mile exclusion zone.

“We are worried,” Murakami said at a recent press conference focusing attention on the concerns of one important group: breast-feeding mothers. Murakami is the spokesperson for the Breast Milk Mothers Network, a citizen’s group in Fukushima city. “With news that radiation continues to escape from the nuclear accident, the government must do more,” she says.

Specifically, the Breast Milk Mothers Network called on the government to pay an independent laboratory to test breast milk for radiation contamination, and to evacuate nursing mothers whose milk tests positive.

The possibility of a mother passing tainted milk to her infant through breast-feeding is appalling even in the abstract. But the problem is real. Independent tests on nine breast milk samples collected on March 24 and March 30 found radioactive iodine-131 (I-131) in four nursing mothers — all of them living far from the exclusion zone. One woman’s home is 120 miles from Fukushima Daiichi, and just 20 miles from downtown Tokyo.

Reason to worry?

The level of radiation in the women’s milk ranged from 173 picocuries per kilogram to a high of 980 picocuries. Even the highest reading is “a very small amount,” says Dr. Alan Lockwood, professor of neurology and nuclear medicine at the University of Buffalo and past president of the group Physicians for Social Responsibility. “However,” he adds, “there is no level of radiation exposure that is demonstrably safe.”

The Japanese government, nuclear industry officials, and much of the mainstream media stress the first part of Lockwood’s statement while ignoring the second.

“Too much concern is unnecessary,” said Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, the day after the press conference, pointing out that the radiation levels were well below safety limits. But in fact Japan has no such limits for breast milk; Edamo was using the standard set for tap water: 2,700 picocuries for infants under a year old.

Many scientists and health professionals were uncomfortable with Edano’s definitive statement that radiation would have no impact on breast-fed infants.

As Murakami pointed out during the mothers’ press conference, phrases such as “no immediate risk of health problems” are misleading in discussing the primary threat from radiation. While extremely high levels of exposure produce acute symptoms, the damage from lower doses usually take years to appear.

“Around Chernobyl, rates of leukemia and thyroid cancer in children reached their peak 10 years after the disaster,” she said. Diseases “torment the victims for many years” after the initial exposure.

Says Lockwood, “I-131 ingested by a baby will be concentrated in the baby’s thyroid gland, increasing the risk for developing thyroid cancer later in life.”

He adds that the risk is proportional to the radiation exposure. In other words: Since the exposure was low, the risk to an individual child is also low.

There’s an equally valid way of looking at risk, however. Say that the likelihood of dying from ingesting a chemical is one in 10,000. On an individual level, that seems pretty safe. But it also means that if a million people consume the chemical, 100 of them will die.

The vast majority of infants who drink contaminated breast milk will be fine. A few, however, are likely to develop cancer — 10, 20, or even 30 years from now.

Pathways of exposure

No one can be certain how the I-131 found in the breast milk contaminated the four women in the test group, but there are several likely pathways.

“In Chernobyl, it was the food chain,” says Dr. Ruth Lawrence, professor of pediatrics and ob-gyn at the University of Rochester, New York. “Cow’s milk was the primary pathway.” In Japan, she says, I-131 could have entered the women’s bodies via contaminated tap water (a widespread problem), airborne particles, or tainted food.

Once ingested, regardless of the source, I-131 isn’t dispersed equally throughout the body. It’s concentrated in the thyroid gland, where iodine is used to produce hormones. These hormones are then passed to a nursing infant through the breast milk, where they settle in the baby’s thyroid gland.

Given the possibility that a mother’s breast milk may carry radioactive time bombs that could go off decades into the future, many women may be tempted to stop breast-feeding.

“That would be a serious mistake,” says Lawrence.

Her opinion carries a lot of weight. Lawrence is widely regarded as the leading medical expert on lactation in the U.S. In 1979, her authoritative book, Breastfeeding: A Guide for the Medical Profession, was published; it quickly became, and remains, the standard reference on the subject.

“It’s better to breast-feed unless there’s absolute proof that it’s dangerous,” she said in an interview.

Lawrence points to the many benefits of breast-feeding — hydration, nutrition, protection against infection and disease — which become even more important following a disaster.

“You have to look at the alternatives, too,” she added. For example, the water used to mix formula may have been the original source of the mother’s contamination. To stop breast-feeding in that case would not only deprive the baby of all the considerable benefits of nursing, but would still allow radiation to concentrate in the child.

I asked Lawrence if nursing mothers who are taking potassium iodide to prevent a buildup of I-131 should stop breast-feeding while taking the pills.

Absolutely not, she said. In fact, the benefits of the medicine are safely passed to the infant through the breast milk.

Government study

Three weeks ago, Japan’s ministry of health announced that it had completed its own study. The government detected radioactive substances in breast milk samples from seven of 23 nursing mothers examined from April 24 to 25. Contamination levels ranged from 59 to 216 picocuries — again, far short of the 2,700 limit for tap water.

In announcing the study, an official minimized any threats, saying that the results “showed that no radioactive material was detected or that only a tiny amount of radioactive material was detected.” Another way of looking at it is that the breast milk from nearly a third of the women surveyed had detectable levels of radiation — hardly a reassuring figure, despite the relatively low amounts.

What’s more, according to an account of the study published in the respected newspaper Asahi Shimbun, the women chosen for the study were all from areas in which people had been asked to drink only bottled water and eat only food that had been checked to ensure it was free of radiation.

Whatever the shortcomings of the study, and the relatively high percentage of women with radioactive substances in their milk, Lawrence urges women to continue breast-feeding. “You have to look at the risk/benefit ratio,” she explains. It’s not that nursing under these conditions is completely safe — but it is likely the best response to a bad situation.

Eat your heart out, Julian Assange. This is one document WikiLeaks doesn’t have: a so-called “word cloud” produced by sophisticated word-frequency-analysis software, only available on the internets.

High-ranking sources within an organization you’d recognize if you read its name provided the document below. Using the text of the combined floor speeches made by all Senate Republicans during the last session of the 111th Congress, the secret algorithm — which gave added statistical weight to utterances by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Insufferable) — positively correlates word frequency with font size.

“By visually comparing words of differing sizes,” explained a source with intimate knowledge of the algorithm, “our ability to understand Republican priorities and political methodology has grown exponentially. In short,” he added, with a glint in his eye, “size does matter.”

We reprint the GOP Word Cloud as a public service, without imposing our own interpretation, thereby allowing you, the reader, to make an impartial assesment based solely on the data.

Happy Holidays.

Solar ninja weapons.Photo: Osha Gray Davidson

Handing out small black flags and rolls of stickers reading “No on Prop 23!” Lynn Jurich, the mastermind behind what was about to go down, confessed her ambitious plan: “We want this to go viral,” she said. “This guerrilla action is going to be just the first of many. The oil and gas industries are united. We need to be, too.”

“Right on!” cried one of Jurich’s comrades, fist in the air, half in self-parody, but also with a real sense of purpose. With that, Jurich’s band of guerrillas fanned out, distributing flags, stickers, and fliers condemning California Proposition 23 as a “deceptive ballot proposition that would kill clean air standards and kill clean energy jobs.”

Jurich is a co-founder of SunRun, a pioneer in solar financing, and one of 50 executives named to a 2009 Fortune magazine list of “Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs.” She sees the oil industry-funded Prop 23 as a direct assault on renewable energy. If approved by voters in November, the proposition would roll back a 2006 California law designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

As much as Jurich loathes Prop 23, she sees the fight as a potential rallying point for the solar industry as a whole. Hence, her choice of venues: the Solar Power International conference, the largest solar industry gathering in North America, with an estimated 27,000 attendees from around the globe.

In his Tuesday morning opening speech, Rhone Resch, head of the Solar Energy Industries Association, stressed the need for the disparate players in the field to join together with a common vision, to become, in his words, “Team Solar.”

Which is exactly what Jurich is attempting to do down on the floor of the exhibition hall.

Within a half hour several booths are draped in the funeral black fabric provided by Jurich and her partner in the effort, the Sierra Club.

I approached one such booth and asked about the fabric. As it turned out, the owner, Melissa, who didn’t want her last name used, isn’t convinced that Prop 23 is much of a threat.

“For most people, solar is all about being free from their utility company,” she said. “The climate angle really isn’t that important to our clients.”

So why did she put up the black protest cloth?

“Well, someone from another solar company asked us to,” she said, shrugging. “I think sticking together is a good thing.”

It may not to be the exact the message Jurich wants to hear, but it’s probably close enough for now.

All reading lists are incomplete and arbitrary. This is especially true of a list limited to a dozen works about the ocean, the blue immensity that comprises 71 percent of our planet. So take this list with a grain of sea salt — and suggest your own favorites in the comments section below.

———————————————–

Log From the Sea of Cortez

by John Steinbeck

A nonfiction account of Steinbeck’s voyage through the Gulf of California with his friend Ed Ricketts, who was the inspiration for the character “Doc” in Steinbeck’s much better known novel Cannery Row.

———————————————–

Sea Change

by Sylvia Earle

The only non-technical book I brought along on my trip researching coral reefs around the world. Earle, known to many as Her Deepness, is a leading ocean explorer, scientist, and ocean advocate. Read about her beginnings as an Aqua-babe. Yes, you read that right.

———————————————–

Reef Fish Identification (series)

by Paul Humann

Don’t just sit there reading about the ocean — get out and explore! Humann’s series of three black-binder ocean field guides are the perfect companions.

———————————————–

Ocean

by Miranda MacQuitty

If you’ve got kids and you want them to know something about the world, you’re probably already a fan of DK books. They combine beautiful illustrations and simple, clear, and accurate prose about their subjects. Ocean is no exception.

———————————————–

Aquagenesis

by Richard Ellis

This is my personal favorite of Richard Ellis’ many books about the ocean. Tracking the evolution of sea life to land, and sometimes back to the water, Aquagenesis will change the way you view the ocean.

———————————————–

Gift from the Sea

by Anne Morrow Lindbergh  

A classic meditation on life and the ocean that has lost none of its relevance since it first appeared in 1955.

———————————————–

Song for the Blue Ocean

by Carl Safina

One of our leading ocean advocates and writers, Carl Safina has written many lyrical books about the sea and its creatures. You can’t go wrong with any of them.

———————————————–

The Sea Around Us

by Rachel Carson

To the extent that Silent Spring marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement, The Sea Around Us, written a decade earlier, marked the start of Carson’s career as a nature-science writer capable of sparking a revolution in thought.

———————————————–

The Voyage of the Beagle

by Charles Darwin

Forget for a moment that Darwin’s writings are usually presented as assignments — books that have to be read. This story of young Charles’ journey of discovery sailing around the world is a joy to read, not something to be gotten through.

———————————————–

In the Heart of the Sea

by Nathaniel Philbrick

In telling the true tale that inspired Melville’s Moby Dick, Philbrick captures humanity’s complex and often tragic relationship with the sea.

———————————————–

The Ocean World

by Jacques Cousteau

No list of books for World Oceans Day is complete without one of Captain Cousteau’s many works. The anniversary of what would have been Cousteau’s 100th birthday will be celebrated in three days. What better way to honor both his life and his passion — the ocean world — than by reading one of his classic books?

———————————————–

Ocean: An Illustrated Atlas  

by Sylvia Earle and Linda Glover

Three hundred and fifty-two pages of maps, charts, photographs, and explanatory text make this 2008 National Geographic atlas the new standard for ocean reference books.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world.”
– Margaret Mead

Because Americans are optimists we tend to see Mead’s observation as upbeat and life-affirming (as it was probably intended). Blinkered by optimism, however, we miss the dark flip side of her observation — that a few fanatics can do immense harm.

In their sweeping and comprehensive new book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erick M. Conway document how a handful of right-wing ideologues — all scientists — have (mis)shaped U.S. policy for decades, delaying government action on life-and-death issues from cigarettes and second-hand smoke, to acid rain, and now, finally, to climate change. The book is similar to the popular Discovery Channel show “How Do They Do It?” Only instead of investigating quirky mysteries like how stripes get into toothpaste, Merchants of Doubt looks at exactly how we arrived at the gravest crisis in the history of our species — one we created ourselves.

Although most of these scientists were influential men in themselves (and they are all men), they could not have done as much damage without powerful allies. Whole industries bankrolled their research, sometimes laundering the money through front groups with innocuous names. Think tanks like the George C. Marshall Institute were financed specifically to publish and disseminate their papers — junk science that couldn’t survive the rigors of peer-reviewed journals. Oreskes and Conway also devote an insightful section to the mass media’s mostly unwitting complicity in this scandal.

This premise may sound like a conspiracy theory, but the truth Oreskes and Conway elucidate is more banal and convincing. The title, Merchants of Doubt, frames the authors’ argument, echoing an internal memo from the Brown & Williamson tobacco company that declared: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.” Big tobacco helped finance the industry of doubt in its modern form, run by the scientists whose schemes this book details. In a sense, this is an industrial history and it should be no more shocking to see the same names continually popping up than it is to see Lee Iacocca’s in a history of the auto industry.

Fred SeitzThe central characters in Merchants of Doubt include Fred Seitz, S. Fred Singer, William Nierenberg, and Robert Jastrow. These may not exactly be household names, but it’s probably not much of a stretch to call them the founding fathers of industrial-strength doubt.

Fred Seitz was a pioneer of solid-state physics who helped develop the atom bomb. From the end of World War II until his death in 2008, Seitz devoted himself to protecting laissez-faire capitalism from communism. He moved quickly from scientific research to administrative work, serving as president of the National Academy of Sciences from 1962 to 1969. When the Soviet Union broke a moratorium on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, Seitz immediately urged President John Kennedy to respond in kind, despite evidence that radioactive fallout contaminated swaths of land for more than a thousand miles. Innocent people would die, but some collateral damage is inevitable when fighting a war, even a cold one.

Fred SingerFred Singer is another physicist turned cold warrior. He began his career developing the government’s earth observation satellite system. Along the way, Singer took up the cudgel defending free enterprise by opposing environmental regulations. The other “merchants of doubt” profiled by Oreskes and Conway traveled a similar path. Physicist William Nierenberg’s work on the Manhattan Project led him in the early 1960s to become NATO’s chief scientist working on developing weapons to use against the Soviets. Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow moved from NASA into a leading position supporting Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, aka, Star Wars) to counter “Soviet hegemony,” which he called the “greatest peril” in U.S. history.

What all these men have in common (aside from their background in physics) is the belief that the Cold War didn’t end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In their minds, and in the minds of their followers, “real Americans” are still battling socialism, only now the threat comes primarily from within. Grasping that bizarre and paranoid notion is central to understanding their motivations and methods.

In the 1950s, Big Tobacco had begun using scientists to sow doubt about links between their product and cancer. As the evidence against them mounted in the 1970s, the tobacco industry realized they needed something more. They found it in Seitz, who was not merely a scientist, but the former president of the Academy of Sciences.

R. J. Reynolds put Seitz in charge of the company’s biomedical research grant program. The amount of money available was staggering. In 1981, Oreskes and Conway write, the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association together contributed $300,000 to research. In that same year, Big Tobacco directed $6.3 million to researchers who consistently found no evidence conclusively linking tobacco to serious medical problems.

Seitz and the tobacco industry were a perfect fit. Environmental and industrial regulations were anathema to each. For the industry, it was a simple matter of self-interest. While Seitz was well-paid for his work, ideology may have been the more important factor. Over the years Seitz’s conservative views had grown ever more extreme. He found himself alienated from many of his scientific colleagues over the Vietnam War (many of them were against the war; Seitz was an enthusiastic supporter). He also became convinced that environmentalists were dupes of communist propaganda, if not outright traitors.

Eventually, Seitz’s right-wing views would become too much for even the tobacco industry. Seitz was, in their view, “not sufficiently rational” to maintain a public connection with the industry.

Large solutions make large targets, and Jacobson’s work is often controversial. The coal industry attacked his credibility in 2001 after he argued, in the journal Science, that electricity generated by wind power in fast wind-speed locations was as cheap as electricity generated by coal. More recently, some environmental groups got upset when Jacobson published evidence that substituting ethanol for gasoline would cause as many or more deaths from air pollution.

Only 44, Jacobson is bound to prompt more controversies in the future. He is poised to play a crucial role in moving public opinion passed a tipping point where transformative ideas that were once thought impossible are considered not just conceivable, but doable, and necessary.

Q. How did you get interested in climate change?

A. I’ve always wanted to solve large scale problems. It probably began in high school when I went to Los Angeles for a tennis tournament. The air quality in LA was so bad that I couldn’t play. I was coughing, couldn’t catch my breath – it was terrible. So, air pollution was my introduction to climate change. You can’t separate the two.

Q. You’re talking about more than just CO2 here?

A. Yes, but they still connect in the end. The first thing to understand is that between two-and-a-half and three million people die each year because of air pollution. A lot of those deaths, particularly in the U.S., are caused by inhaling particles from vehicles and from coal-fired power plants.

The real culprit is combustion itself. No matter what the source, combustion produces gases and some of them become particles – air pollution. How dangerous they are depends on all sorts of factors like size, constituents, concentration.

We tend to focus on CO2, which is understandable because it’s the largest contributor to climate change. But I come to the issue from an air pollution perspective. I looked at the role of soot, a leading cause of air pollution mortality, and I found that it’s probably the second most important factor causing climate change.

Q. When I hear “soot” the image that comes to mind is grimy 19th Century London with all the chimneys spewing smoke from coal furnaces.

A. That’s right – definitely soot. But there are other sources and they share one thing: combustion. Soot is a byproduct of burning fossil fuel, bio-fuels or biomass. So soot comes from coal-fired power plants, tail-pipe emissions – anywhere material containing carbon is burned.

The promising side of this discovery is that soot doesn’t stay in the atmosphere very long – especially compared to greenhouse gases. And because of that short lifespan, reducing and then eliminating soot emissions is the fastest way to slow global warming.

Q. But that means eventually eliminating our reliance on combustion as a source of energy, right?

A. We have to take drastic steps, right now, to reduce both particle and gas emissions. It’s something we can do, though. I’d argue that it’s both technically and economically possible to transform the world’s energy system to a sustainable one in two decades.

Q. I think that qualifies as tackling a “large scale problem.”

A. (Laughing) It does. In our Scientific American article we cited examples in which the United States made massive transformations before. In WWII, the U.S. converted auto factories to produce 300,000 aircraft in a short time. Starting in 1956, we started work on the Interstate Highway System which eventually covered 47,000 miles, completely transforming commerce and transportation.

Our Wind, Water and Sun (WWS) plan is also ambitious. To complete the change to a sustainable energy society we’ll need 3.8 million wind turbines, 90,000 solar plants and many geothermal, tidal and rooftop photovoltaic installations around the world.

But it has some advantages beyond the most important one, which is to stop global warming. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that by 2030 the U.S. will need 2.8 trillion watts (or terawatts, TW, of energy), and the world will need 16.9TW. If only WWS sources are used, the U.S. energy need drops to 1.8TW. The projected world total declines to 11.5TW.

Q. To ask the obvious: how does that happen?

A. For one thing, burning gasoline is an extremely inefficient way to power a car. As much as 80% of the energy produced escapes as heat. Running a car on electricity, only about 20% is wasted.

Q. The Obama administration is investing billions of dollars in clean energy research, development and deployment. As someone who lives and breathes these issues, what do you think of their efforts?

A.They’re moving in the right direction, but what the Obama administration is doing is not even close to what needs to be done.

Q. What about Energy Secretary Stephen Chu? Do you get the sense that his efforts are hamstrung by politics?

A. No. I think the problem of global warming is one or two orders of magnitude greater than what Secretary Chu thinks it is. They’re talking about making big changes within fifty years. But we need some of these changes to be in place within one or two years.

I’ll give you an example: carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). The Department of Energy is pouring billions of dollars into a technology that even its backers admit won’t be online for another 20 years. First, I think that’s an optimistic assessment. But more important is the fact that we have proven, up-and-running technologies right now that could do the job. The money that could be used deploying wind turbines and solar power plants today, is being wasted on CCS. That’s a serious, serious mistake.

Q. I know that you were a professional tennis player for a while, a teammate of Patrick McEnroe’s at one point. Are there any insights from playing competitive tennis that either helped you in your work or that could apply to how we need to address climate change?

A. The key is to keep your eye on the ball. Don’t let distractions get in the way of your focus on the best strategy (or in the case of climate change, the best solutions). Also, don’t be intimidated by your opponent (or special interests). They will always try to knock you down. Finally, give it your best effort. Even if you lose in the end, you should always be able to say you gave 100%.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to learn if anyone from Bhopal, India, would be speaking at the climate summit in Copenhagen.

It seems unlikely, but the delegates gathering in Copenhagen need to hear what only someone from Bhopal can properly tell them. They need to know what it was like 25 years ago this week, when a cloud of poison gas leaked from a pesticide plant in the middle of the night and drifted over the Bhopal slums. Thousands died; it was the worst industrial disaster in history and it holds lessons that are essential to the proceedings on climate change about to start in Copenhagen.

To those who came of age after Bhopal, here are the awful details:

* The sirens started at the Union Carbide plant at 12:50 AM on December 3, 1984. The public alarm was turned off after a minute. A second alarm, heard only inside the plant, continued to warn UC workers. The two alarms had originally been on a single switch, making it impossible to turn off one without deactivating the other. But frequent leaks caused the alarms to sound so often that the company became concerned about its reputation. They took decisive action in 1982: they decoupled the alarms.

* At 1:15, someone told the police that there was a gas leak in the northern part of the city. The police called Union Carbide, but were told that the UC plant was secure. Officials searched frantically for the source of the leak for the next hour, calling the UC repeatedly. Each time, the company insisted they were unaware of any problems.

* At 2:00 AM the nearly-empty tank stopped leaking. Fifteen minutes later, UC restarted the public warning siren. An engineer from the company contacted the police. The leak that – up until that moment – the company had denied any knowledge of, was, he reported “plugged.”

* Officials from Union Carbide’s U.S. headquarters maintained that the leak was an act of sabotage by a disgruntled former employee.

There’s something else the delegates should see: advertisements, created decades apart, one by Union Carbide and one by the coal industry.

In the UC ad from the 1960s, a giant, god-like Caucasian hand from the sky pours an elixir from a lab flask onto a “symbol of ancient India … oxen working the field” with a dark-skinned Indian peasant behind a wooden plow. In the background just across a river, the UC Bhopal plant rises gleaming and white.

Below the picture a headline provides the take-home message: “Science helps build a new India.” If Science is a god, as the picture implies, its manifestation here on Earth was Union Carbide.

“Working with Indian engineers and technicians,” states the ad, “Union Carbide recently made available its vast scientific resources to help build a major chemicals and plastic plant near Bombay.”

If any doubts still lingered about UC being the very incarnation of Science, the tag line at the bottom of the page was designed to clear things up. Placed next to the Union Carbide logo, it reads: “A HAND IN THINGS TO COME.”

The messaging around “clean coal” has been updated for the new millennium, but most of the same elements from the UC ad are present.

In place of a hand, the billboard at left below, sponsored by the coal industry, features a giant light bulb with a beautiful nimbus of other-worldly (and environmentally friendly) green light. The word “COAL” is also green-tinged on the sign. At the bottom of the billboard, the themes of Science and modernity are combined with the words: “CLEAN & GREEN WITH NEW TECHNOLOGIES.”

Coal, of course, is neither clean nor green. Burning coal to generate electricity is the single largest source of CO2 emissions, which, in turn, is the primary greenhouse gas driving climate change.

But, the ad seems to promise, coal is no longer a cause of climate change, thanks to new technologies. In fact, these technologies do not yet exist. They may never work at a scale that makes coal a “clean and green” fuel.

And if the most frequently mentioned technology, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), is somehow made practical, it could create hundreds of potential Bhopals. The idea behind CCS is to capture millions of tons of CO2 from burning coal and pump them deep into the earth where, in theory, they won’t leak out.

The same companies that until recently insisted that human-caused climate change is a hoax, now ask us to trust them with a technology they say exists, but doesn’t.

It’s helpful to look at climate change itself is an industrial disaster, albeit one that’s happening over a longer period of time than Bhopal. The economic might and political influence of Union Carbide caused the thousands of deaths in India. In the wake of Bhopal, people in the United States began to wonder what was being made in the chemical plants near them. Should they be concerned? The chemical industry reacted swiftly.

Less than a year after Bhopal, the chemical industry trade group bragged in an internal report that they had fought off new regulations and right-to-know laws in nearly forty states.

“We have,” the author of the report boasted, “retained our trade secret protection rights and successfully avoided costly requirements for unique labeling, environmental emission monitoring and independent risk management audits.”

Avoiding regulation, blocking public access to information, denying culpability for disasters they’ve caused, sowing doubt where scientific consensus exists – these are the strategies used by reckless industries from tobacco to chemical manufacturing to energy production.

Some of the same entities are already at Copenhagen arguing for minimal action and maximum delay. It’s too bad organizers chose Copenhagen for the summit. It’s far too lovely. Delegates should have met in Bhopal at the abandoned chemical plant that caused the worst industrial disaster in history. The worst, that is, until now.

A longer version of this piece was originally posted on thephoenixsun.com.

Spread the news on what the føck is going on in Copenhagen with friends via email, Facebook, Twitter, or smoke signals.