At this point, he pushed aside a vase of purple hydrangeas and laid out a map of Antarctica. Small red stars had been carefully affixed to various parts of the continent. “The majority of federal and university-funded climate change research takes place in Antarctica, specifically at South Pole Station and the West Antarctic Divide. This work is overseen by the National Science Foundation, a taxpayer-funded federal agency. To date, there has not been a single climate researcher who doesn’t go down there already convinced that climate change is caused mainly by fossil fuel emissions.”
“Of course you know that a consensus exists among climate scientists that the fluctuations are, in fact, human-caused,” I said.
The man smiled. “And you’ve played right into their hands, Dr. Pavano.”
Chastened, I said, “I admit I know very little about the kind of research undertaken in the polar regions.”
“Which is the other reason why you are here tonight,” the Client broke in. “This coordinated alarmist campaign could have a devastating impact on the U.S. economy and lead to destructive government regulations. Think about the other alarmist campaigns that have been much ado about nothing. The population crisis. The so-called energy crisis. The hole in the ozone. We’ve sat on the sidelines long enough. To do so any longer would be irresponsible.”
By the time the dessert plates were cleared away, I had recovered enough to begin asking questions, and they began to lay out the Plan. It had five phases:
Phase One: Apply for a National Science Foundation–funded research position at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (known as WAIS, or, colloquially, the Divide).
Phase Two: When, as anticipated, the application is rejected, identify at least two of the 135 known climate change skeptics currently serving in the U.S. Congress who might be willing to make National Science Foundation bias a platform issue.
Phase Three: Argue, in a coordinated media campaign, that the National Science Foundation, as a federal agency, is bound by law not to demonstrate bias (if bias is verifiable), or imply bias exists among National Science Foundation leadership (if no documented history of bias is available). If necessary, launch local and national campaigns to support the placement of a nonconformist climate scientist at the research base at South Pole.
Phase Four (assuming Phase Three is successful): Receive federal funding from the National Science Foundation, along with additional private monies from the companies represented at the dinner, via existing pass-through organizations, to explore the idea that climate change is caused by solar variations, not CO2 emissions. (It had been previously concluded that countering the idea that the climate was warming at all was a “zero-sum game.”)
Phase Five: Once funded and sited at WAIS, produce compelling data and, if the data do not support the Plan, manipulate it. Expect, and even welcome, obstruction from researchers and administrators. Document these actions but do not resist them. At the same time, disrupt the existing ecosystem in a manner that attracts the attention of the national media and solidifies the message of bias.
As I was mulling over the Plan (as with the Client, I gave it proper noun status), the discussion took the turn for which Eric had prepared me in the months leading up to this meeting: the Client asked if I was a “god-fearing man.” Next to me, I could feel Eric shift in his seat, expectant but nervous. In our conversations, the lie to which we’d both agreed, and which I was about to tell the Client, had been difficult for Eric to accept. I knew he was raised Baptist, but was not “evangelical,” as he put it. He knew I was an atheist, because Annie had mentioned it in passing to him at one point on the cruise. But when Eric told me what I would be expected to do—the spiritual mantle I’d have to wear if I were to be successful—I had no qualms. The burden of having failed to fulfill immense promise was substantial; I had thought many times over the years of what John Brennan said to me when I’d declined to join his department at Stanford: “No one is more unnecessary than a man who has failed to realize his gift.” I had done many things since to escape the fact that I had failed to realize mine. Being something other than a profound disappointment seemed to me at that moment sublime, even if it required lying about something that, to me, was wholly unimportant. Faith was not so odious an idea that I wouldn’t use it in the name of my own personal redemption.
At the time Eric first brought up the idea of turning me into a “god-fearing man,” I sensed he was both relieved and repulsed by my easy acquiescence. “We’ll have to build a narrative,” he warned. “Otherwise, it will be too easy for the press to pick the story apart.” This narrative-building required a crisis—an atheist scientist who has been thrown out of the halls of academia because of moral and ethical failings directly attributable to his lack of faith. A series of meetings had been arranged with a Pentecostal church in northern Virginia, which, Eric told me, had been chosen because it was fundamentalist in nature but modern in approach. I shared my manufactured narrative with the assistant general bishops, both of whom were deeply moved by the story of a scientist wrestling with his faith. I then met with the general bishop, who, toward the end of our meeting, grew animated and insisted I attend Sunday’s service. “You are,” he told me, “our Prodigal Son.”
At the service, I was brought to the front of the church and surrounded by several individuals, including the general bishop, and experienced what I later learned was the “laying on of hands.” I became a member in good standing of Olive Grove Christian Fellowship.
Annie had watched this unfold with growing unease. Being an atheist herself, she openly ridiculed my new membership at Olive Grove. She even spoke critically of the Client. Eric soon noticed that she was not, as he put it, “on board.” This, he indicated, was a problem. In fact, things between Annie and me had grown strained since I’d undertaken the Plan. Annie had become distant—during the weeks I was in Washington and Virginia, she chose not to fly out on the weekends to join me. In the meantime, Eric wanted to know what could be done to influence her to become a more visible part of the narrative. I decided to ask her myself, and our conversation transformed into a fairly intense domestic squabble, in which Annie said things along the lines of “I don’t know who you are anymore.” Eric and I agreed to leave the Annie question alone for the time being, but I continued my active participation in Olive Grove, and even came to find the spiritual work invigorating, if not convincing. So by the time of the dinner in the Royal Suite at the Four Seasons, I was able to answer the Client’s question with an assertion that I was an active member of Olive Grove Christian Fellowship. He then said that he understood I had been an atheist (specifically, he used the term irreligionist) and felt this was somewhat inconvenient, but acknowledged that it was difficult to find a reputable scientist who was a believer. Eric told the Client about my religious redemption, and how the story of an atheist scientist coming to Christ would be far more powerful than that of a churchgoing man experiencing an intensification of his faith.