HOW AND WHY TO FIGHT FOR CLIMATE ACTION

Spin, science and climate change; Action on climate is justified, not because the science is certain, but precisely because it is not
18 March 2010 (The Economist)

"Climate-change legislation, dormant for six months, is showing signs of life…[S]enators and industrial groups have been discussing a compromise bill to introduce mandatory controls on carbon…Yet…if discussion ever turns into legislation, it will be a pale shadow of what was once hoped for.

"The mess at Copenhagen is one reason…The recession is another…[W]hen times are hard [business owners] are unwilling to incur new costs…[After the] argument over American health care…this is not a good time for any bill that needs bipartisan support…[The] cold winter has hurt…But climate science is also responsible. A series of controversies over the past year have provided heavy ammunition to those who doubt…Three questions arise…How bad is the science? Should policy be changed? And what can be done to ensure such confusion does not happen again?…The problem lies not with the science itself, but with the way the science has been used by politicians to imply certainty when, as often with science, no certainty exists…"

A January Pew Research Center poll showed climate change has fallen to the bottom of the public's priorities. (click to enlarge)

"When governments started thinking seriously about climate change they took the sensible step of establishing, in 1989, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…It has done the job of basic science pretty well…Its reports trawl through all recent climate science. The wide range of the outcomes it predicts—from a mildly warming global temperature increase of 1.1°C by the end of the century to a hellish 6.4°C—illustrate the uncertainties…But the ambiguities of science sit uncomfortably with the demands of politics. Politicians, and the voters who elect them, are more comfortable with certainty…Politics, like journalism, tends to simplify and exaggerate…

"Such an approach may, in the short term, have encouraged some voters to support measures to combat climate change. But implying that Britain’s children face some sort of Saharan future is wrong, and dangerous… Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority slapped the government for its infantile advertisements…[Worse,] e-mails from and to various researchers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia…revealed an unwillingness to share data which broke the spirit, if not the letter, of Britain’s Freedom of Information act, an aggressive attitude to the peer review of papers…[and the hedging of] science in the face of politics…{Also, mistakes in] the most recent IPCC report…raised troubling questions about its procedures."

But the question remains. (click to enlarge)

"…Sceptics point out that each mistake has tended to exaggerate the extent of climate change. The notion that the scientific establishment has suppressed evidence to the contrary has provided plenty of non-expert politicians with an excuse not to spend money reducing carbon. So the scientists’ shameful mistakes have certainly changed perceptions. They have not, however, changed the science itself…[M]ost research supports the idea that warming is man-made. Sources of doubt that have seemed plausible in the past…have been in large part resolved, though more work is needed. If records of temperature across the past 1,000 years are not reliable, it matters little to the overall story. If there are problems with the warming as measured by weather stations on land, there are also more reliable data from ships and satellites…"

"Plenty of uncertainty remains; but that argues for, not against, action. If it were known that global warming would be limited to 2°C, the world might decide to live with that. But the range of possible outcomes is huge, with catastrophe one possibility, and the costs of averting climate change are comparatively small. Just as a householder pays a small premium to protect himself against disaster, the world should do the same…[T]here is plainly an urgent need for change is the way in which governments use science to make their case. The IPCC has suffered from the perception that it is a tool of politicians. The greater the distance that can be created between it and them, the better. And rather than feeding voters infantile advertisements peddling childish certainties, politicians should treat voters like grown-ups. With climate change you do not need to invent things; the truth, even with all those uncertainties and caveats, is scary enough."