28-34.p1.pdf28-34.p2.pdf28-34.p3.pdf28-34.p4.pdf28-34.p5.pdf28-34.p6.pdf28-34.p7.pdfscience because the editor who oversaw its publication hadbeen critical of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changeand the Kyoto Protocol. And the editor (a social scientist whois on record opposing Kyoto) of a different journal that pub-lished a second version of the controversial paper comment-ed, “I’m following my political agenda—a bit, anyway, but isn’tthat the right of the editor?”If scientists evaluate the research findings of their peers onthe basis of their political perspectives, then “scientific” debateamong academics risks simply becoming political debate in theguise of science. From the perspective of the public or policy-makers, scientific debate and political debate on many envi-ronmental issues already have become indistinguishable. Suchcases of conflation limit the role of science in the develop-ment of creative and feasible policy options. In many instances,science—particularly environmental science—has becomelittle more than a mechanism of marketing competing politi-cal agendas, and scientists have become leading members of theadvertising campaigns.One example of this dynamic that received considerablemedia attention was the controversy over the 2001 Bjørn Lom-borg book The Skeptical Environmentalist, published by Cam-bridge University Press. Heated debate and controversy arethe norm insofar as environmental issues are concerned, butreaction to this book spilled over from the environmentalcommunity onto pages of leading newspapers and magazinesaround the world, and has thus come to occupy the attentionof scholars who study science in its broader societal setting.SCIENCE AS POLITICAL BATTLEFIELDA focus on the intersection of politics and science is not newand has been studied for decades. What may be new, or at least28REGULATION SPRING 2006ENVIRONMENTRoger A. Pielke, Jr. is a professor of environmental science at the University of Coloradoand a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences(CIRES). He may be contacted by e-mail at [email protected] recent years and in different coun-tries, combatants on opposing sides of highly con-tentious debates related to the environment, medi-cine, and even national security have frequentlyasserted that science compels their favored politicalperspective. Whether the subject is global warming,genetically modified organisms, or even the exis-tence of weapons of mass destruction, it is not surprising toobserve advocates selectively using and misusing “science” toadvance their firmly held positions. What perhaps is surpris-ing, at least to some observers of the scientific enterprise, is thatscientists increasingly seem to be joining the political fray byequating particular scientific findings with political and ideo-logical perspectives. For example, when a 2003 paper in the journal ClimateResearch argued that twentieth century climate variations wereunexceptional in millennial perspective, advocacy groupsopposed to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change hailed theresearch as “sound science,” while advocacy groups in supportof the Protocol called the paper “junk science.” In this case,more troubling than the selective use of scientific results byadvocates is that many scientists’ evaluations of the paper’s sci-entific merit correlated perfectly with their public expressionsof support or opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. Acceptance ofthe paper’s conclusions was equated with opposition to Kyotoand, correspondingly, rejection of the paper’s findings wasequated with support for Kyoto. For example, one prominentclimate scientist (on record supporting Kyoto) suggested intestimony before the U.S. Congress that the paper must be badInstead of claiming there is just one policy response to a given issue, scientists should provide a range of options for policymakers.When ScientistsPoliticize ScienceROGER A. PIELKE, JR.University of ColoradoREGULATION SPRING 2006 29more meaningful than in the past, is the degree to which sci-entists themselves encourage political conflict through sci-ence. Examples abound in areas as diverse as internationalwhaling, cloning and stem cells, sex education, and drugapproval, to list just a few. The debate that followed publicationof The Skeptical Environmentalist saw an unprecedented mobi-lization of not just environmental groups, but many scientistsagainst the book, its author, and its publisher.In the book, Lomborg, a Danish statistician by trainingand a self-described environmentalist, advances a view pop-ularized by Julian Simon, the late economist and Cato Insti-tute scholar, that environmental problems are not as severe asadvertised by environmental groups. Instead, Lomborgargues, some combination of business-as-usual and incre-mental change will be sufficient for children born today to “getmore food, a better education, a higher standard of living,more leisure time and far more possibilities—without theglobal environment being destroyed.” Reaction to the book was both quick and diverse. The Econ-omist wrote, “This is one of the most valuable books on pub-lic policy—not merely on environmental policy—to havebeen written for the intelligent reader in the past ten years.”Rolling Stone gave a similarly positive review: “Lomborg pullsoff the remarkable feat of welding the techno-optimism of theInternet age with a lefty’s concern for the fate of the planet.”In contrast, Scientific American wrote, “The book is a failure,”and the Internet-based Grist Magazine concluded that the book“is C-minus stuff, as straight-forward and lackluster as a 10th-grade term paper.”In light of its favorable reception in some quarters, TheSkeptical Environmentalist must have seemed to many environ-mental advocates like a declaration of war. Environmentalgroups such as the World Resources Institute and the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists began an aggressivepublic campaign seeking to discredit Lomborg and CambridgeUniversity Press. Lisa Sorensen of the Union of Concerned Sci-entists justified the offensive as a preemptive political strate-gy: “This book is going to be misused terribly by interestsopposed to a clean energy policy.” It is not a surprise to see an organized campaign amongenvironmental groups to advance their own causes by dis-crediting the book. To a lesser degree, it is also not surprisingto see the