Dodgy science and dirty tricks – the politics of climate change

Would you let your daughter marry a climate scientist?

Since Copenhagen the reputation of climate scientists has plummeted – and along with it, the prospects for new legislation against climate change. 

Daily media allegations about a lack of transparency, manipulation of the peer review process and errors in the IPCC’s fourth assessment report have been used to undermine the credibility of climate science, along with the integrity of climate scientists.

The fall from grace has been swift and spectacular.  In three short months scientists who warn about the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change have been dubbed ‘alarmists’; their methods, findings and forecasts labelled ‘dodgy science’.

Scepticism has soared in Europe and North America – aided and abetted by one of the coldest winters in recent years.  Although the majority of people still accept that some degree of global warming is happening, most no longer think it’s caused by human activity and they believe that the threats posed by climate change have been exaggerated.  

This will make it more difficult to persuade people to change their behaviours, and critically, action on climate change has fallen down the political agenda.  

Change in the political climate

Public support for legislation against climate change has dwindled away and a growing number of politicians are expressing scepticism or outright hostility.

In the UK, mainstream politicians have dropped their green rhetoric like a hot potato.  US politicians funded by the oil and gas industry, from Texas to Alaska, are denying climate change and fighting environmental legislation like cap and trade, the clean air act and the endangered species act.  Senator James Inhofe has gone further; calling for a criminal investigation of scientists who have worked on the UN reports.

In Australia, Canada and elsewhere the political climate has turned just as frosty.

Right now climate change is no vote-winner, so for the time being, any hope for the kind of decisive political action that was being considered before Copenhagen has disappeared.

The facts remain the same

Political and public opinion has shifted, but the basic facts have not.  No new science or theory has appeared to challenge the evidence.   

The climate is warming and changing.  Our last two decades were the hottest for 400 years.  Ice is melting and sea levels are rising.  These are observable, measurable facts.

The laws of physics show that CO2 is a Green House Gas.  Fossil fuels pump out 31 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.  The annual rate of emissions is continuing to increase, and with rapid growth in India and China, we have not reached peak pollution yet.  These are known and uncontested facts.  

The 2,500 scientists who contribute to the IPCC, and the national academies of science in every major industrialised country accept the theory of global warming and the basic tenet that this is being caused by human activity.  This is a fact.

Clutching at straws

Sceptics say the links between these facts are questionable and it is impossible to prove that human activity is causing climate warming.  

They dismiss the unprecedented concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere as coincidental and maintain that global warming could be part of a natural cycle.  But no new science or theory has been produced to prove this or to challenge mainstream scientific consensus.

Forecasts about the future rate of warming and its possible consequences are contested.  Some sceptics maintain that the ‘modest’ warming they predict could be beneficial – although no alternative climate models have been produced to support these claims.  

Of course it is impossible to predict the future with certainty.  All that climate scientists can do is to project trends and consequences under a range of scenarios – which is exactly what they do.  Forecasts produced by the IPCC are couched in terms of probabilities - but those probabilities are high, peer reviewed and endorsed by the world’s leading scientists.   

The rational response would be to collect and make available the additional data that is needed to improve the models and our understanding of climate change – not to deny the evidence.

But climate change is not being treated as a scientific, rational issue; it’s political and emotional.

Why do people believe the sceptics?

The simple truth is that people don’t want to believe there is a problem. They don’t want to change.  They don’t want to give up their addiction to big cars or flying – and they don’t want to feel bad about their lifestyles.   

People hear about ice sheets melting, but it’s happening thousands of miles away and they are not afraid of forces they can’t see – particularly when the big problems are projected to be 20, 30 or 100 years ahead.  They don’t want to hear about global warming when they are going through the coldest winter for thirty years and the worst economic recession since the 1930s.

They hear environmentalists extrapolating scientific evidence to produce worst-case scenarios that are used to urge them to: stop eating meat, sell the second car, consume less ….  This has been going on for decades, and it’s all too easy to ignore the scientific evidence and see environmentalists as sanctimonious do-gooders who put conservation before economic progress.

Because people don’t want to believe there is a problem, they are suggestible.  They don’t understand the science, but they are pre-disposed to listen to climate sceptics.  They are ready to clutch at straws and then internalise their belief that climate change is a myth – regardless of the overwhelming scientific evidence.

Over the past year or so they have been given plenty of straws to clutch at.

The smear campaign…

Climate scientists have been the victims of a smear campaign.

Since the election of a US administration that sounds serious about addressing climate change, the anti-environmental lobby has been working at full throttle.  In response to proposed legislation, like the Clean Air Act, the energy industry hiked its lobbying and PR budgets.

There is a sense of déjà vu about the campaign.  Bogus ‘trade groups’, ‘think-tanks’ and ‘grassroots movements’ are funded by corporate clients in oil gas and energy and their PR companies to pay ‘independent’ scientists to speak out – at the same time as their marketing budgets are used to promote their corporate responsibility.  The same tactics were used to manufacture doubt and controversy about the overwhelming scientific conclusions about the health risks of tobacco.  There are strong similarities in the cases - scientific evidence accumulated over a long period; a long lead time between cause and effect; arguments about the intrusion of big government, freedom of speech, the economic damage of regulation - and so the need for significant political will to legislate.  

By advocating free enterprise, small government and free-market solutions to environmental issues, paid lobbyists have politicised the debate, shifting the focus away from the science itself, to the supposed motivations of climate scientists and environmentalists.  In the US people who accept the scientific evidence and advocate action against climate change are now being dubbed as ‘socialists’.

In a report about climate change the International Policy Network, a free market advocacy ‘thinktank’, rehearses a typical line to divert attention from the scientific evidence:  ‘…climate modellers are funded primarily by governments and are rewarded according to the extent to which their models are useful to politicians and their entourage.  Since politicians seem more willing to fund research when the outcome might give them might give them an excuse to impose regulations or taxes, we cannot be surprised that climate modellers have responded to these incentives by generating models that exaggerate the impact of humanity’s impact on the planet.’  Julian Morris, the network’s Director, expressed his respect for science and scientists when, in an interview with the Observer, he described David King, Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK government as; ‘an embarrassment to himself and an embarrassment to his country.’  The IPN receives funding from ExxonMobil amongst others, which lists their donations as part of its ‘climate change outreach programme’.

It is perfectly legal for lobby groups to make a living by misrepresenting science, and corporations can argue that their first responsibility is to maximise shareholder value, but at best these people deserve the title of climate cynics rather than climate sceptics.  They preach freedom of speech, but they are not interested in the debate about how climate change works or whether it’s actually happening.

Dodgy science sells papers

Politicising the debate has split the media; with outlets like Fox News campaigning for the sceptics - operating on the tried and tested PR tactic that if a lie gets repeated often enough, it becomes the truth.

Generalist media have displayed sloppy journalism and a lack of critical judgement.  In an attempt to provide ‘balance’, they report updates from the world’s best scientists, juxtaposed against the unsubstantiated ravings of an industry-funded denier – as if both were equally valid.

Rather than attacking the science itself, sceptics question the motivations of politicians and scientists, use errors in the IPCC report and emails leaked from UEA, to attack their integrity and methods, misquote them, take their findings out of context, present marginal views as mainstream and label the mainstream as elitist.

A giant cloud of misinformation has been created – and it has been brilliantly successful.  Climate scientists receive hate mail.  People with no scientific knowledge staunchly believe that climate science is ‘dodgy science’ and a government conspiracy.  Bloggers, lobbyists and politicians have victimised scientists, and then blamed their victims for ‘dragging science through the mud’ and ‘losing the public’s confidence’.  

No one should doubt the ability of highly resourceful vested interests to maintain the status quo – but only for a limited amount of time.

The polluters’ last gasp?

The campaign against climate science is a rearguard action designed to delay legislation.  

There is a limit to the number of people who are prepared to believe that scientists are involved in a giant conspiracy to exaggerate the risks of climate change.  When the US Chamber of Commerce led a partisan lobby campaign against Cap and Trade last year, companies including Apple, Nike and the utility company PG&E, cancelled their membership.   

The scientific case will get stronger.  Mainstream science already presents a coherent case for man made climate change, while scientific sceptics offer disparate theories that fail to explain the rise in global temperature or its acceleration in the past 25 years.  ‘Contrarian arguments’ from noted scientists are valuable because they challenge assumptions.  Many have been investigated and discounted – although they continue to be quoted by the sceptics.  Disputes about contested findings will be investigated and resolved and additional data will continue to build climate records that confirm warming trends.

The economic case will get stronger.  With peak oil approaching, and energy security an increasing concern, change is inevitable.  The smart money is pouring into renewable energy, energy efficiency, electric cars and resource management, and as experience with these technologies increases, their cost will fall.  10% of the recent economic stimulus packages around the world was allocated to environment protection and low carbon investments; with around $230bn due to be deployed in 2010.  In 2009 the G20 agreed to phase out $300bn of fossil fuels.  

Maintaining ‘business as usual’ is only in the short-term interests of rump of corporate interests; many more companies stand to gain by accelerating the development of low carbon technologies and infrastructure.  At the national level, the scale of the economic opportunity offered by low carbon technology is so vast that the countries that achieve leadership in the field will achieve overall technological and economic leadership for decades to come.  By delaying concerted action sceptics and their political supporters are damaging national economic prospects.

The sceptics have managed to delay the inevitable, but delay could be fatal for millions of people - just as delays in tobacco regulation were – and as the Stern report spelled out, the costs of addressing climate change keep rising with emissions.

Determined leadership is needed to regain the initiative and to act in the vital interests of the many rather than the vested interests of a few.

So what needs to happen?

1. Government leadership

For the time being, sceptics have succeeded in undermining the normal legislative process whereby politicians receive advice from scientists and they then ‘sell’ policy to the general public.  Governments need to win back public support by re-presenting the case for action.

Just before the Copenhagen conference, The Economist Magazine put the case in simple terms:  ‘…the benefits of averting that kind of catastrophe (outlined in the IPCC report) are incalculably large, the costs of doing so should not be enormous – as little as 1% of global output, if policy is well-designed.  This newspaper reckons that the world should fork out, rather as householders spend a similar proportion of their income on insuring their homes against disaster.’  The magazine followed up with the idea that: ‘Action on climate change is justified, not because the science is certain, but precisely because it is not.’

This is the central message politicians need to get across – that it would be irresponsible to ignore the warnings of their scientific advisors. The threats to personal security, energy security, food and water are too serious to ignore.

And we need a realistic but optimistic vision of the future  – a future without pollution and with abundant clean energy – which can be achieved with productive investment in new technology, promoting economic growth rather than at a crippling short term cost.  

Too much government communication about climate change has slipped into the same vein as journalism – focussing on black and white scare stories with headlines like ‘six months to save the planet’ – this is simply presenting the flip side of the deniers’ arguments.  While people want certainties and black and white scenarios, the consequences of climate change are ambiguous - and this needs to be acknowledged.  The truth does not diminish the urgent need for change – it reinforces the case.

2. Engage more thoroughly with the private sector

While politicians can negotiate emissions treaties and scientists can explain global warming, only the private sector can build solutions.

Governments are funding the development of green technology in partnership with private sector companies - from tidal power with energy companies in Scotland to smart grids in partnership with Boeing in the NW USA, but this needs to be accelerated, co-ordinated and scaled up.  To date, governments have only provided ‘seed money’ for the low carbon economy, and serious investment is waiting for clearer policy and incentives.

This point was made by the economist Jeffrey Sachs writing in the Guardian just before Copenhagen:

Ultimately the large-scale deployment of low carbon technologies requires governments to provide incentives that can only be funded by increasing the price of carbon - acting on the principle that ‘the polluter pays’.

While politicians negotiate, they must accelerate the development of green technology and develop practical plans to provide defence against climate change – how to defend cities threatened by rising sea levels, how to feed populations threatened by drought.  

Developing new technologies and large-scale adaptation plans have lead times, and there is no time to waste.  

3.  Invest in climate science

Existing climate models are too crude to forecast the impacts of global warming with anything like the degree of certainty that is required.  Scientists readily acknowledge this fact, and they know the additional data that is needed.

In particular, more data is required to understand feedback mechanisms in the climate system – the potentially catastrophic multiplier effects that give rise to so-called scare mongering.  Better systems are also needed to predict impacts at the local level - where people actually live – rather than for the global climate as a whole.

The data that is needed can only be collected by earth observation – using remote sensing systems that combine readings from satellites, suborbital flights and sensors based on land and in oceans.  

Earth observation has been under-funded.  Berrien Moore, in his testimony to the US House Committee on Science and Technology said: ‘The nation’s system of environmental satellites is at risk of collapse (so that)…the climate record from NPOESS is under danger.’  Numerous satellite launches were postponed or cancelled over the past ten years because of budget constraints on NASA.  

Shockingly, there is currently only one satellite in orbit that is measuring CO2.  It can only measure CO2 in the atmosphere as a whole, and it is so old that it is ‘about to fall out of the sky’ (Rob Mitrevski, ITT, speaking at the Dynamixx conference in November 2009).

A global observing system is needed, with regional and national space agencies working together to combine data and develop new systems where there are gaps.  A global network to link observation systems, GEOSS, is still in the early stages of development.       

The technology needed to better understand, predict and eventually mitigate climate change already exists in Aerospace and Defence companies and in national and regional space agencies like NASA the ESA.  Climate scientists need to work with the private sector to specify the systems and resources that are needed. Governments should fund this and co-operate, to ensure that the data produced is available to the global scientific community.

As well as understanding climate science, improved earth observation systems are needed to validate any international emissions treaty that is eventually signed.  Validation was a key sticking point at Copenhagen.  Currently scientists are able to measure GHG concentrations in the atmosphere as a whole, but not pin point the source of these emissions.

Climate sceptics should be included in the process.  It is not good enough for them to criticise from the sidelines.  They also need to be clear about the kind of data that would either convince them, or enable them to put forward alternative forecasts and theories.

5.  Improve education

We need people to be more sceptical about the sceptics.    

The general public, as well as many politicians and journalists, are poorly informed about the basic science, as well as the quality of data that decisions are based on.

The sceptics have conducted as well-coordinated campaign, with the backing of PR companies, but there has been no organised response from the fragmented scientific community.  

Environmental groups are not regarded as neutral and objective and have been dismissed by many as scare-mongers.

Scientists have not been in the business of communicating with the public. ‘Serious scientific’ journals publish research, but not for the public.  Research findings are reported in the press, but usually focus on particular aspects of climate change, like the potential consequences for ice sheets or coral reefs.  They do not address the underlying science.  The whole picture is only communicated occasionally - through the IPCC every seven years in dense language that is completely inaccessible to lay readers.

An alarming fact that emerged during Dynamixx’s conference in November is that non-expert political decision-takers have no idea that the data they are using is not ‘decision-quality’.  Our politicians also need to be educated about climate science so that they understand the steps that are required, and can explain this with confidence to the public.

A new approach is needed to educate people and communicate about climate science.  This needs to be a goal for governments and scientists.  They need to organise themselves and provide funding to get the message across.

Scientists need to calmly re-state the evidence, and take the science to the people, in plain language.

6.  Stand up and be counted

More voices need to be added to the debate – voices that are trusted by the public.    

Companies have taken action to clean up their own acts, but most have not spoken out in support of climate science and the need for change.  In the technology engineering sectors that offer potential solutions - like Aerospace and Defence – ‘no one seriously questions the science’.  They could provide a powerful and influential voice to support politicians and scientists.

These companies have brands that are trusted by large sections of their publics.  They should come out and support the science and the need for decisive action.  Although they do not see campaigning as part of their role, it is in their interests to do so, and it is the right thing to do.  

The sectors that stand to gain from the status quo have not hesitated to campaign against science.