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Sometimes I think the climate debate remains stalled because those who are most concerned refuse to ask the pertinent questions. Instead, they keep refighting old battles that are no longer relevant to a constructive discourse. The latest example is this survey by John Cook et al that is getting a lot of undeserved attention in the mainstream media. I say that because, questionable methodology aside, the survey tells us nothing new and is, as science journalist David Appell noted, “a meaningless exercise.”
The main finding, which was just published in the journal Environmental Research Letters:
A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing global warming.
This strikes me as T-shirt worthy. Oh wait…
In a short post at his blog, Appell says these kinds of survey numbers
are made for lazy journalists who don’t want to examine the complexity of the science, reporters who just want a number that quickly and easily supports their position.
He’s right. In a minute, I’ll get to the kinds of complexities that would be good to examine, but first let’s look at the premise for the survey, as stated: Read More
My eight year-old son is not a disinterested sports fan. He knows as much about European soccer as I do (which is zilch), but when we’re in a barbershop for 15 minutes and Manchester is playing Barcelona, he asks me who we should root for. Ditto for the NBA All-Star game, which I let him stay up to watch (just the first half) this year. “Who do we want to win?” he asked me. Part of this stems from natural childhood competitiveness, but I’m sure it mostly owes to that tribal part of our evolutionary heritage. We are a species that defines ourselves by our alliances. Are you a Republican or a Democrat, a Yankee fan or a loyal member of the Red Sox Nation?
Why should science and environmental debates be any different than sports? Look at the different tribes of secular skeptics that have formed in recent years, for example. Team Militant Atheist, led by the hard-charging PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, play in-your-face ball, especially with anyone who suggests that atheism and science can coexist. Are you with them or are you with Team Spiritual Atheism, who are okay with experiences that have a “sacred” or religious quality to them? If you play in that world, you probably feel compelled to choose sides.
The climate change arena is another us/them venue. Read More
When a social cause gains momentum and becomes symbolically important, partisans inevitably hijack it for their own ends. They do this by trying to define and control the meaning of the cause and how it should be perceived. We’re seeing this play out now with the Keystone XL pipeline, which has become a touchstone for environmentalists and climate activists.
An opinion piece by John Abraham in today’s Guardian is what I would consider a textbook case for how not to communicate about a cause that you care deeply about. Abraham, an outspoken voice in the climate arena, argues that President Obama’s climate change legacy hinges on the White House’s decision on the controversial pipeline. That’s absurd. For one thing, the President already has an impressive string of accomplishments on the climate and energy front.
Secondly, it really does the climate movement no good to frame the Keystone battle in such simplistic, over-the-top terms. Doing so overstates the importance of a single pipeline, a rhetorical tactic that green friendlies have been pointing out for some time.
Then there is this passage from Abraham, which is as poisonous to his cause as it is rich in irony (my emphasis): Read More
Photograph by Fer Gregory/Shutterstock
A panel at this year’s American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting was summarized afterwards in a AAAS press release:
Cable news junkies, take heart: if you love wall-to-wall coverage of hurricanes, wildfires and superstorms, your future viewing schedules will be jam-packed.
Researchers at the AAAS Annual Meeting said that wild weather events like Superstorm Sandy and the severe Texas drought are the new normal in North America, as human-driven climate change has made these events more intense and more frequent.
It appears that certain media moguls and self-important, publicity-addicted narcissists are in good company when it comes to confusing climate and weather.
Yesterday, I was alerted to this press release, which starts off:
A University of British Columbia study of American attitudes toward climate change finds that local weather – temperature, in particular – is a major influence on public and media opinions on the reality of global warming.
The study, published today by the journal Climatic Change, finds a strong connection between U.S. weather trends and public and media attitudes towards climate science over the past 20 years – with skepticism about global warming increasing during cold snaps and concern about climate change growing during hot spells.
I went ahead and read the study, which is very interesting (alas, it’s behind a paywall). As the paper acknowledges:
Although past studies have suggested that a particular anomalous seasons, like the hot summer of 1988, influenced U.S. public opinion or media coverage of climate change (Shanahan and Good 2000; Zehr 2000; Boykoff and Boykoff 2004; Krosnick et al. 2006; Freudenberg and Muselli 2010), there has not as of yet been a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between climate variability and the variations in public and media opinion over time.
The media opinion/weather analysis is the aspect of the new paper that caught my eye. Its main finding surprised the researchers. Read More
In his big speech earlier this week, President Obama put the American people on notice that he intends to make climate change a centerpiece of his second term. But is the nation with him on that?
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reports:
Dealing with global warming ranks at the bottom of the public’s priority list. Just 28% say it should be a top priority for the president and Congress, little changed from 2012.
That’s not an encouraging statistic for the climate movement. It also suggests that last year’s extreme and irregular weather events in the United States–such as the mild winter, scorching summer heat waves, and Hurricane Sandy, which, in the media, was often associated with climate change–did not appreciably move the needle on public opinion the way some assumed it did.
So what gives? Read More
If I call you anti-science, which discourse might that be related to? The one on climate change, evolution, biotechnology, or vaccines? Because the term is flung around so freely, who can tell. That was the point I tried making with this recent post.
More importantly, is slagging you as anti-science a constructive way to have a conversation? In fact, it’s likely a conversation stopper.
Such is the case with any term that has become politically loaded. Like “denier.” I was reminded of this yet again via Andrew Revkin and a twitter exchange he had with some folks who cling to the “denier” usage in the climate debate. For a one-stop shop summation of the back-and-forth, along with some excellent commentary, read this post by Dan Kahan at his Cultural Cognition site.
Photograph courtesy of Splinter/Flickr Creative Commons.
A year ago, I noted that “much reportage and analysis on climate change” was beginning to emphasize the connection between global warming and weather related catastrophes. This emphasis gave rise to a new meme, which Newsweek summarized in the sub-headline of a cover story:
In a world of climate change, freak storms are the new normal.
To understand just how widely this meme has since been embraced, google “new normal and climate change.”
But I’m jumping ahead. Before we get to how the “new normal” frame has shaped the dialogue on Hurricane Sandy, let’s recall what Bill McKibben, one of the most prominent climate activists and environmental writers, had to say about the hurricane that grazed New York last year:
Irene’s got a middle name, and it’s Global Warming.
McKibben was hardly alone in making this claim.
By 2012, the climate change/severe weather connection had become a main talking point. As University of Washington atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass observed in April:
It is happening frequently lately. A major weather event occurs—perhaps a hurricane, heat wave, tornado outbreak, drought or snowstorm– and a chorus of activist groups or media folks either imply or explicitly suggest that the event is the result of human-caused (anthropogenic) global warming.
Then came the summer of freak storms, catastrophic wildfires, record-breaking heat waves, and enduring drought. In July, the Guardian published an article titled:
“Is it now possible to blame extreme weather on global warming?
The reporter, Leo Hickman, asked a number of climate scientists if “specific extreme weather events are caused, or at least exacerbated, by global warming?” Many journalists at this time were asking the same question as Hickman. One answer that seemed to resonate widely was provided by oft quoted NCAR climate scientist Kevin Trenberth, who said this to PBS on July 2:
look out the window and you see climate change in action.
The meaning was unmistakable. Trenberth said the same thing to CBS the next day. The “new normal” meme was being cemented. Here’s the headline from an AP story on July 3:
Climate Change: U.S. Heat Waves, Wildfires, and Flooding Are ‘What Global Warming Look Like.”
And here’s the subhead to Hickman’s July 3 Guardian piece:
Wildfires, heatwaves and storms witnessed in the US are ‘what global warming looks like’, say climate scientists
Fortuitously, a much publicized paper came out a week later, which the NYT characterized as thus in its headline:
Global warming makes heat waves more likely, study finds.
The cluster of severe weather events and disasters led Elizabeth Kolbert to write in a July 23 New Yorker commentary:
The summer of 2012 offers Americans the best chance yet to get their minds around the [climate] problem.
In other words, a “teachable moment” was at hand, or, as was turning out to be the case, “teachable moments.”
The teaching extended into early August, when NASA climate scientist James Hansen published his widely-publicized Washington Post op-ed and study. Although there were dissenters, Hansen’s pronouncement (that some recent heat waves and drought episodes were caused by global warming) sounded to many like the closing argument in a case that had already amassed solid, damning evidence.
So when Hurricane Sandy arrived earlier this month, it didn’t take long for climate change to be fingered as a culprit, including in this much-discussed story called, “It’s Global Warming, Stupid.”
Several journalists challenged the simplistic, cause-and-effect proclamations. On Twitter and in his NYT Dot Earth blog, Andy Revkin sought to remain grounded in science, which led some green pundits to chastise him as “scold” who was trying to “tamp down” discussion of the link between global warming and Hurricane Sandy. The best rebuttal to this charge came from CJR‘s Curtis Brainard, who wrote that folks like Revkin were “trying to steer” the discussion “toward facts, and away from exaggerations.”
Powerful memes, however, can be impervious to facts. Consider how discussion on Hurricane Sandy has played out. For instance, a Reuters story from last week starts:
Extreme weather sparked by climate change is “the new normal” and Superstorm Sandy that ravaged the U.S. Northeast is a lesson the world must pursue more environmentally friendly policies, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday.
Another example: New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo recently wrote in an op-ed:
Extreme weather is the new normal.
Green advocacy pundits worried about science-based journalists “tamping down” discussion on the climate change/severe weather connection need not worry. We should expect every major storm to now be discussed in the context of global warming. That is the new rhetorical normal, correct or not. I just laid out how we got to this point. There’s probably no going back.
This is the new normal in the climate debate, and pleas for a more nuanced conversation don’t stand a chance.
When much of the United States was being hammered by drought and brutal heat waves this past summer, there were many media stories that made a climate change connection. The ugly weather and drought-related misery prompted a sarcastic headline from Time:
Now Do You Believe in Global Warming?
The sense in climate concerned circles was that finally–finally!–climate change was hitting home. People could grasp the problem in a tangible way. It was no longer a distant and imperceptible threat. Then in August NASA climate scientist James Hansen published his op-ed and paper, cementing the perception in many minds that global warming was responsible for the extreme heat and freakish weather of recent years. (Not everyone was on board.) Whether this perception will hold once the drought ends and winter arrives is an open question.
Regardless, in varied corners of the climate/communication sphere, there’s been a notable emphasis on localizing global warming. It’s taken different forms. For example, at Climate Central, you’ll see a new report that links the increasing occurrence and severity of Western wildfires to climate change. (For a more nuanced take, this by Brad Plumer is the best I’ve read.) A different path has been advanced by media scholar Matthew Nisbet, who recommends reframing climate change as a public health threat.
In a back-and-forth exchange with Matt this week, via an informal email group we both belong to, I’ve expressed my general doubts about the efficacy of local climate messaging. To be sure, I see much value in the kind of public engagement that Matt has previously suggested. Public forums that bring together multiple stakeholders (and diverse views) are a good thing. They foster dialogue, greater understanding of the topic, and respect for different perspectives.
But I’m not convinced that complex causal connections between global global warming and say, West Nile Nile disease or a higher incidence of allergies, is going to make the case for climate change impacts at a local level.
But Matt is not alone in seeing the value of this tack. In a NYT op-ed, historian Christopher Sellers says that today’s environmental movement “should reframe climate change as a local issue” for suburban America. Sellers writes:
It’s not as far-fetched as it might sound. Already, one can find suburban households, churches and homeowner associations interested in how to do things “greener,” whether it’s recycling or landscaping. The trick will be finding concerns that spark imaginations and mobilize group energies at this local level, and working from there.
The op-ed spurred continuing exchanges within the email group, including this response from me:
The trick is to make climate change visceral–perceived to be an immediate threat, like the polluted rivers and air that catalyzed the green movement 40 years ago. That is no easy trick, despite the best efforts of climate activists.
Andy Revkin also chimed in:
It would, in the end, have to be a trick (not Phil Jones’ usage), because there’s no way to honestly make greenhouse-driven climate change visceral for those who matter (climate-insulated prosperous folks and energy-impoverished developing folks with other far more visceral priorities).
Whether you agree or not, the struggle to communicate the perils of climate change goes on.
My previous post on Nature’s use of “denier” in a recently published paper has triggered a lively comment thread, including this question to me:
Since you obviously object to the usefulness of the term “˜denier’, would you care to comment on its appropriateness after considering Micha Tomkiewicz“˜s thoughts?
This is in reference to several provocative blog posts by a Holocaust survivor (and physics professor) who, several months ago, asked:
But what about climate change deniers? Can we really compare the two, the Holocaust and climate change? Does this have anything to do with science?
Shortly after this appeared, I did have some thoughts on the heated debate over the meaning of climate “denier,” and cobbled them together in a post for another site. For reasons that I won’t divulge (it’s complicated), that post never appeared. But now seems like a good time to put it up here:
A frequent lament of climate campaigners is that “disinformation” from contrarians and ideologues opposed to any action on global warming continues to muddy the larger public conversation. The stalled politics (in the U.S. and several other countries) frustrates many who regard climate change as an existential threat to future generations. Much of their ire, rightly or wrongly, is often directed at fossil fuel interests, conservative think tanks, and climate skeptics.
So it’s not surprising that a recent forum at Penn State University was devoted to the climate “disinformation campaign.” The first speaker, Donald Brown, a climate ethicist at Penn State, argued that the last 25 years of potential action have been lost because of deliberate “disinformation” from the aforementioned. The continuation of such tactics led Brown to suggest:
I think we should encourage a conversation whether this is some kind of new crime against humanity. It is really evil stuff. It is nasty.
Predictably, this lit up various precincts of the climate blogosphere. Never mind that Brown was essentially repeating something he’d already written a few years earlier.
There are others who want to move the climate conversation on to this same highly charged moral terrain. For instance, just weeks after the Penn State forum, Micha Tomkiewicz, a Brooklyn college physics professor, triggered a firestorm after he explicitly associated denial of climate change with denial of the Holocaust. Most (if not all) climate commentators studiously avoid making such a direct comparison. Some shy away from using the “denier” label altogether because of the connotation.
What was especially striking about Tomkiewicz’s use of it is his personal history: He is a Holocaust survivor. He invoked his personal history while also saying that global warming today might result in the “potential genocide of billions of people.” Thus, denial of climate change, he argued, was akin to “a self-inflicted genocide.”
In a follow-up post Tomkiewicz elaborated:
But, of course, I am using the term “denier” to make a point. In 1933, very few people believed that Hitler would seriously try to accomplish what he preached and almost no one could imagine the consequences of his deadly reign. Although there was evidence available ““ Hitler was clear about what he wanted to do in Mein Kampf ““ why did people not pay attention? These “deniers” might as well have been called skeptics in their day.
I make my “climate change denier” claim for one reason. It’s easy today to teach students to condemn the Holocaust, but it’s much more difficult to teach them how to try to prevent future genocides. There are different kinds of genocides and they don’t repeat themselves; they come to us in different ways. I am not suggesting that the Holocaust is just like climate change. But what I am suggesting is that it’s hard to see a genocide ““ any genocide ““ coming. The future is hard to predict, but we can see this one coming. This genocide is of our own making, and it will effect everyone, not just one group or country.
This line of reasoning takes climate rhetoric to a new level. Judging by the varied responses from across the environment/climate-concerned spectrum, most people are not going there. [Perhaps the editors at Nature should take note.]
Others reject the validity of the moral equivalence frame altogether. Mark Hoofnagle at his Denialism blog (his subject is the phenomena of denial as it relates to all science-related issues) wrote:
I do not think that a moral comparison need be made between holocaust deniers and climate change denialists. The only comparison needed is between their tactics, which are dishonest and intellectually bankrupt”¦The comparison between climate denialists and other denialists should come from the fact that they argue the exact same way, and it should end there. Holocaust denial and climate change denial share many features, as does evolution denialism, HIV/AIDS denialism, vaccine crankery, 9/11 trutherism etc., that is they use rhetorical tricks to deny a body of evidence that contradicts an ideological position.
This most recent clash over labels and Holocaust/climate change analogies is reminiscent of the controversy stirred up by NASA climate scientist James Hansen’s provocative metaphorical statement in 2007:
If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains “” no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.
As Andrew Revkin noted at the time, scientists and environmental campaigners have for several decades “been on an ongoing quest for imagery and analogies sufficiently jarring to focus public attention on global warming.”
Today, that quest remains just as elusive and contentious as ever.
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