A number of scientists whom I respect and have come to know a bit–including Michael Mann of Penn State and Richard Somerville of Scripps–have a very interesting letter in Science about the vast gap between science and the public on the climate issue. You can read it here, but only if you have a subscription. Fortunately, you’ll also get what you need from my summary below.
This team of climate scientists takes it to be beyond obvious (and I agree) that “the use of science in decision-making” on global warming “lags far behind” the state of scientific understanding itself. Global warming isn’t the only science-centered issue like this–not by a long shot–but it’s clear there’s an enormous gap here between scientific knowledge and the actions we’re taking, the urgency we feel, and so on. So what can we do about it?
The climate scientists have three basic proposals, of increasing ambition. The first:
….we urge scientists and science journal editors to create a single, readily understood frame of reference for two critical concepts in climate science—atmospheric
concentrations of greenhouse gases and rising global temperatures—by using a standard unit of measure and a single temperature baseline. Specifically, because total anthropogenic forcing is the relevant policy measure, we strongly recommend referencing atmospheric concentrations of all long-lived greenhouse gases as CO2-equivalent (CO2e), not only CO2. CO2e is the concentration of CO2 that would cause the same level of radiative forcing as a given mixture of CO2 and other greenhouse gases…
My gloss: Unfortunately, I’m underwhelmed by this suggestion. Consider: Global warming deniers will be just as good at muddying the waters if we’re talking about “CO2e” as if we’re talking about CO2. Standardizing units of measurement and establishing baselines can’t hurt, but I don’t think it really speaks much to the gap between climate science and the public process.
However, the authors admit this is merely their advice for “scientists and science journal editors.” Then they get more ambitious:
…we urge the broader science, communication, and funding community to support largescale projects to translate scientific assessments into simpler, more useful terms….The first priority should be to explain where humanity stands on a scale of risk that includes CO2e, global temperatures, and climate impacts…the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) format “is inherently tuned for burying crucial insights under heaps of facts, figures, and error bars.” For example, the key warming projections figure, SPM.5 (4), obscures the risk of overshooting the multimodel mean. The average warming for scenario B1 is roughly 3°C above pre-industrial levels, but the range of potential warming is roughly 2° to 4°C. It is misleading, therefore, to say that B1 avoids breaching 3°C; there is, in fact, a 50% probability that it will. Stakeholders urgently need such information, so we recommend that large-scale efforts to improve translation and relevance be given the highest priority.
This is a not-so-implicit admission that while the U.N. IPCC may represent a massive success story for global scientific cooperation–and richly deserves its Nobel Prize on that basis–it is, indeed, extremely flawed as a form of communication or policy advice. The final reports end up exceedingly wonky, more written for scientists than for politicians. There has been a rather naive view that the scientists can just lay out the facts through outlets like the IPCC, and then the politicians will run with them…it hasn’t played out that way.
We certainly ought to make the IPCC more communication savvy; but given that the next report ought to be in about 2012, I’m not sure how urgent this is. Frankly, if we haven’t passed legislation by 2012 on climate change we’re in extremely deep doo-doo. It’s a little late, now, to be fixing the IPCC.
Only at the very end of the scientists’ letter, then, do we get an inkling of what’s really needed now:
At this critical moment, scientific understanding has outstripped our society’s capacity to use that knowledge by a wide margin. This situation must be resolved quickly to give policymakers—and the public—the broadest range of options. Therefore, the science community should adopt a common language and standard baselines to help nonexperts see the problem. Beyond this, the science and communications community should support a concerted effort to close the information gap by communicating climate knowledge in ways that nonscientists will find useful.
Once again, I don’t see the establishment of “common language and standard baselines” as that much of a salvation–deniers can sow doubt with any language and any baselines, I assure you. But this idea of a “concerted effort to close the information gap”–well, that would be promising. If it’s to the tune of millions of dollars, that is–which is precisely the problem.
I think these Science letter writers are definitely thinking along the right lines. They see the vast communication gap, they’re rightly concerned, and they want to close it. That’s the first key step to embrace in our thinking right now about the science-politics-society mess that is the climate issue.
The second step, though–no less crucial–is recognizing just why it is that the gap exists. I’ve started to do this in my serious of “Why Reason Loses” posts (here, here, and there will be many more). The underlying cause is equally apparent in the George Will, Nicholas Dawidoff, and other science media scandals relating to climate change. Basically: There is a massive campaign out there to sow doubt about climate science, to misinform the public, and it has merged with politics and many individual Americans’ ideological identities in such a way that it now represents a huge and almost unconquerable dogma, a hydra with a million heads. It is extremely well funded, un-endingly clever, utterly without shame or respect for knowledge, and thriving in the old media and new media alike.
Next to this, in my view, the climate science world has never really put up anything of comparable scale–with the exception of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (which was really the work of Hollywood). So while it’s great that climate scientists want to do something about the communications gap, I think they need, at the same time, to more fully admit just how deep the hole is we have to dig out of.
Which is tantamount to conceding our utter failure to match the dastardly communications effort being put forward by those who would deceive the public about this critical matter of global concern.
April 7th, 2009 at 10:09 am
[...] a letter to Science not available to the public, prominent climate scientists argue “it is imperative we improve the exchange of information [...]
April 7th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air and the oceans since the mid-twentieth century and its projected continuation. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the last century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the twentieth century, and that natural phenomena such as solar variation and volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect afterward. These basic conclusions have been endorsed by more than 40 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries
April 7th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I suggest that an important step would be to incorporate economic analysis into the scientific analysis so that the final report presents results in dollar figures. That’s something people can understand. “Global warming will generate losses of $116 trillion by 2050″ is a statement that anybody can immediately grasp. Even more important, it short-circuits the fundamental derisive point made over and over by deniers and anti-environmentalists: that their opponents are tree-huggers who care more about spotted owls than people.
This will be difficult. It’s very difficult to figure the science with any accuracy; building economic models on top of that is much more dicey. But I believe that it’s a necessary step. Sure, we may end up with gigantic error bars, but the important thing is that we’ll be able to present a median value, and THAT’S what will stick in people’s craws.
To do this, however, we’ll need to establish a whole new form of collaboration: between physical scientists and economists. These two groups are distant from each other, but we need to get them working together. Alongside the IPCC there should be a parallel group (obviously much smaller) of economists developing models for the effects of the IPCC results.
April 7th, 2009 at 11:03 am
“… it has merged with politics and many individual Americans’ ideological identities…”
One thing I’ve noticed is that the few GOP pieces that take this issue seriously must ritually flog Al Gore at the beginning of anything they write. It’s like they need to serve the red meat first in the attempt to get readers to eat their spinach and admit that something Gore said is right. It goes against years of demonology and coordinated messaging.
April 7th, 2009 at 11:57 am
I haven’t read the article, but the extracts you provide seem to me to be more of the same.
We already know there is a gulf in communication over GW. That much is obvious. We need solutions to the problems we face, not more rhetoric about the problems.
April 7th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
More dangerous balderdash from the political appointees of the already discredited IPCC. These guys were chosen by their repective countries not because of climate expertise, but because of an overwhelming commitment to the concept of hunam caused global warming. Thousands of extremely expeienced and respected scientists are now speaking out on this politically supercharged subject, and they are totally in disagreement with the broken model used by the IPCC, and the misleading and dangerous forcasts made to scare people into coughing up money and political influence. I strongly suggest that people do their own diligent research on this subject before parroting the IPCC, or claiming that anyone who disagrees with human caused global warming is an ignorant ‘denier’
When a concensus becomes science fact, then all science is damaged. The earth is cooling down. It has been cooling for over a decade now, and is very likely to continue to cool for another 15-30 years at least. This is despite the horrific predictions of the political alarmists.
Folks, do your own homework. If after some unbiased research you still believe that we humans are warming up the earth, then at least you came to that conclusion by your own means, and not through a group of shrill people predicting a false doom.
April 7th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
If you don’t like the IPCC for whatever reason, there are dozens of other worldwide scientific organizations who say the same thing. The lone dissenting voice is petroleum geologists. (At first they were non-committal, and only dissented after a threatened walkout by their membership.)
April 7th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Well, Michael must think that Chris has enough credibility to necessitate an attack / rebuttal. Of course, the rebuttal is filled with the same dis-information as always:
One key reason that we are making so little headway is the fact that it is in the interests of lobbyist to delay action as long as possible. I would agree with Erasmussimo above that we need economic analysis from someone else other than Lomborg clones. We never see the costs of doing nothing that can be avoided.
Earth Day will be hear in a couple of weeks. What an opportunity to tell everyone that the big time lobbyists have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, that they are only seeking the funding that flows only to the smoothest liars, and that they all are willing to kill millions for the sake of a bigger deal. It is the same ideology that brought us unregulated credit default swaps. Just follow the money.
April 7th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Um, Michael? Please provide your ‘unbiased research’ showing that the Earth is cooling — we’re all trembling with anticipation…..
April 7th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Wes, I think the “follow the money” argument cuts both ways– after all, the bigger the climate crisis, the more research dollars for climate scientists.
I’ve read lots of research papers that end with “and there’s still stuff we don’t know, so more research is needed.” I don’t think I’ve EVER read a research paper that ends with “we understand this pretty well, so we should find higher-priority things on which to spend money.”
April 7th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
If this was about grubbing for research dollars, Gavin, wouldn’t they be trying to milk the uncertainty, instead of broadcasting a consensus? How many tree ring studies can Michael Mann do? If there is certainty, then it seems like his most important work is behind him.
April 7th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Um, JM? In Michael’s defense… some sources for global cooling since 1998 are:
1. The UK Meteorological Office’s Hadley Center for Climate Studies
2. Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia
3. 650 of the world’s top climatologists at December’s U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland
The information is not hard to find. The real question is not whether or not a global cooling has been taking place, the question is if cooling is the short term trend or or warming was.
April 7th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
You’re writing on the wrong blog, Don. Chris Mooney addressed the “cooling since 1998″ silliness in his recent Washington Post Op-ed.
As for the 650 climatologists, that story has been debunked as a stunt.
April 7th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Don and Michael, if you wish to convince any reasonable person, you need to do more than simply make unsubstantiated claims. Between you, here are some claims that I don’t think you can substantiate:
1. “These guys [the scientists in the IPCC] were chosen by their repective countries not because of climate expertise, but because of an overwhelming commitment to the concept of hunam caused global warming.” Can you document the selection process to back up your claim?
2. ” Thousands of extremely expeienced and respected scientists are now speaking out on this politically supercharged subject, and they are totally in disagreement with the broken model used by the IPCC” This certainly requires substantiation. I believe it to be incorrect.
3. ” The earth is cooling down. It has been cooling for over a decade now”. Please present your analysis and your evidence, taking into account the thermal inertia of the earth’s climate system.
4. Don presents three sources that he claims support global cooling. However, my understanding of the evidence produced by these sources is that they support AGW. Please provide the specific evidence to which you refer.
I have found that global warming deniers are long on accusations and short on substantiation. I hope that you will break this tradition.
April 8th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Re Michael
Mr. Michael provides a perfect example of the big lie. As the late and unlamented Josef Goebbels once stated, if one is going to tell a lie, make it a big lie, tell it loudly and tell it often and eventually people will begin to believe it.
Just for the information of interested readers, since Mr. Michael trashed the IPCC, with, of course, not a shred of evidence to back it up, lets look at some of the deniers. The thread in the attached link describes an online petition organized by the CATO institute of scientists who deny the scientific consensus on global warming. Aside from the fact that very few of them have expertise in the field of climatology, there are a number of nutcases on the list. It includes HIV/AIDS deniers like one Eduardo Ferreyra, and orgone energy proponents like one Dr. James DeMeo.
Of course, the CATO petition, like the Imhofe petition proves nothing. There are similar petitions with multi-hundred signers denying HIV/AIDS, the theory of evolution, big bang cosmology, CFCS/ozone depletion, cigarette smoking/lung cancer, etc.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/cato_copies_the_discovery_inst.php#more