A significant number of Americans are skeptical of climate science. According to the Pew Research Center, about 3 in 10 say that taking action on climate change is not important, and 14 percent don’t believe that the Earth is warming. A survey by Resources for the Future found that the proportion of climate change skeptics in the U.S. had increased 40 percent since 2013.
We have had our own encounters with science skeptics at the Independent. Three weeks ago, we published William von Herff’s investigation into the death of a right whale on Martha’s Vineyard and the reactions on social media to reports about the cause. Soon afterward, we heard from ACK for Whales, a Nantucket group opposed to the construction of offshore wind turbines whose Facebook page helped spread misinformation about the whale’s death.
In a letter to the editor this week, the president of the group disputes one detail in our report — that ACK for Whales still belongs to a coalition founded by well-known climate change deniers — and it does seem that our source, a report from Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab, erred on that point. We have corrected our article.
The Nantucket folks were eager to talk to us, and we agreed. It was an enlightening conversation.
Researchers who conducted a necropsy on the whale determined without doubt that the cause of death was entanglement in fishing gear. But posts on the ACK for Whales page falsely claimed there was no evidence of entanglement and blamed the death on the Vineyard Wind project.
Two members of the ACK for Whales board, Veronica Bonnet and Amy DiSibio, wouldn’t directly answer a question about how they think the whale died. And they were a little slippery in acknowledging their group’s role in the disinformation campaign.
“I don’t think that we directly shared that in our Facebook group,” said Bonnet. “I think it was a member of our Facebook group. I’m not a professional Facebooker. I’m a retired person with a busy life.
“The necropsy report isn’t final,” she added. “Was the tired small whale also caught up in vessel traffic and increased noise and sonar noise? We don’t know.”
Bonnet and DiSibio were accompanied by Mark Herr, a public relations crisis management specialist. They said the scientists who conducted the necropsy and their organizations are suspect.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that wind companies are giving money to marine mammal rescue organizations and to the groups that are doing the necropsies?” said Bonnet.
We asked them to name the marine scientists ACK for Whales does rely on to ground its arguments. They couldn’t name any. Why not? Because all of them, they said, are tainted by corporate money.
Skepticism is a good thing. And scientists are not saints. But accepting donations from wind power companies or anyone else is not the same as spreading untruths. And there is a difference between researchers devoted to finding facts and a group that only recently changed its name from Nantucket Residents Against Turbines to “ACK for Whales.”
