Category: Climate science

A walk on the supply side

 “…we tend to assume that the public are confused because they have a deficit of scientific knowledge, education and cognitive skills. That is to say that they’re scientifically illiterate.”

In these words science historian Naomi Oreskes, speaking with others at a symposium at the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting, depicts the reaction of most scientists to the puzzling gap between scientific knowledge and public perception of climate change. I might add that although I’m no scientist I share the assumption she describes, since it was reading climate science (at the lay level) which made me aware of  the reality of the crisis.

 

She goes on to critique the response of the scientific community:

“So if the problem is a deficit, then the remedy for it is a surfeit. So it seems to me that the scientific community has succumbed to or fallen into or pursued what I would call a supply side response… we try to supply good information with public outreach efforts…And there are many examples of this, but since we’re here at AAAS, one of my favourites is our AAAS Press Room… If you actually read this web page you find it’s filled with fantastic information, but how many people are going to take the time, how many people in the public even know that we have a AAAS Press Room?”

The supply side model has failed.

“…our message has not gotten through to the American people. In fact a completely different message has gotten through which is that scientists are arguing, that there is still a lot of scientific uncertainty, that more research is needed, and that a lot of what we’re seeing can be explained by natural variability.”

She has tried to understand how this message of uncertainty and doubt is the one that has got through to the public and has found that for the past 30 years the American people have been subject to a very organised and systematic campaign to spread that alternative message.  Her forthcoming book, co-authored with Erik Conway, will document the campaign. (The book will be reviewed on Hot Topic.) But in the meantime she offered the symposium an example which the book doesn’t cover.

After the first President Bush signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Western Fuels, a consortium of coal producers, launched one of many campaigns to challenge the scientific evidence. They did this by hiring a PR firm, a group known as Bracy Williams & Co, and a set of market researchers, Cambridge Reports, to specifically plan a strategy, to test that strategy, and if it were successful, to implement it. The main point of this strategy was to reposition global warming as theory, not fact.

They began with a series of print ads. Oreskes sums up the message of those ads as follows:

“’Who told you the Earth was warming?’ Chicken Little, so there’s your alarmism argument. ‘Some say the Earth is warming, some also said the Earth was flat.’ So scientists are now cast as the opposite, as the anti-science. And ‘How much are you willing to pay for a problem that may not exist?’ That’s an argument that we’ve seen repeatedly over the last 20 years.”

Then they organised public relations tours in combination with this ad campaign

“and a big part of this public relations tour was to get scientists who could appear on TV, so arrange television appearances by sceptical scientists, usually not climate scientists, but people who had what appeared to be relevant credentials.”

Next step was to analyse the results through focus groups, which showed that yes, you could market attitude change. But it worked best if the evidence was presented as facts by technical spokespeople, that is to say people who were scientists or who appeared to be scientists. Therefore that it was essential to recruit scientists to deliver the message.

The scientists were duly found and incorporated into step two of the campaign, the production of a video called The Greening of Planet Earth.  Most of them weren’t climate scientists, but mostly actually agronomists from the US Department of Agriculture making the claim that we know for a fact that carbon dioxide increases agricultural productivity, and in fact not just agricultural productivity but productivity of all plants.

“So it’s a very, very positive message, it’s all good, the scientists are all very kindly-looking, they’re very nice, they’re very calm, and they just tell this good news message over and over again.”

In a weird way, Oreskes comments, the opponents of scientific information have been more scientific than the science community. They studied and tested and built on the evidence they gathered from the testing. More scientific, more organised, more aggressive  The scientific community meanwhile has relied on peer reviewed journals and websites which are too technical for the general public.

People are not confused, she argues, because they are ignorant of the science. They are confused because people have tried to confuse them. Successfully. The misinformation campaigns get reported in the mass media.  The scientists’ responses are made in peer reviewed journals.

What’s to be done? Oreskes raises PR possibilities, but recognises they may not enhance scientific credibility. But at least, she says, since what the scientific community has been doing in the past has clearly not been effective, it might be worth considering some alternatives. Yes indeed, but what?

Oreskes is doing an excellent job of revealing the enormity of what the science has been up against over the past two decades. It certainly isn’t scientific scepticism. But I don’t see any possibility of science matching the kind of organised campaigns that Western Fuels mounted and others have continued. They are highly unethical.  They are cynical and manipulative.  They have no scientific basis.  Those and many other considerations make it impossible for the scientific community to even think of doing battle on that ground.  Science is the only weapon the scientists have.  Not that they have to confine themselves to peer reviewed papers.  These are critical times and it would be good to see more of them entering into the public arena, seeking out journalists, expressing their fears, writing op-eds, badgering editors, publishing books.  But when all is said and done it is only the dawning realisation of the seriousness of the science that will tell against the false assurances of the deniers. It seems to me we’re stuck with that.

Well, I’ll be… blowed

The estimable Bomber Bradbury has been wondering why all the climate cranks have gone quiet since the exoneration of Phil Jones and the CRU by a British parliamentary enquiry — and, surprise, has since received something of a challenge from Cameron Slater at his Whale Oil blog. In normal circumstances I wouldn’t go anywhere near Slater’s site, but I did notice that a little while ago he was moved to post this…

Is Gareth Renowden a complete twat?

Is he a fraud as well?

Ok what about as deluded as “Quota” Smith?

Oh come that is too harsh for any one surely?

Can we mark believers with a tattoo so when they later claim they didn’t “really” believe they were just trick ing we can kick their lying balls real hard?

Distasteful, I think you’ll agree. Perhaps he has shares in a tattoing business? In any event, he’s earned a riposte. Let’s look at his “challenge” and see if it stands up to scrutiny.

Continue reading “Well, I’ll be… blowed”

Arctic sea ice maximum reached, melt starts

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Arctic winter sea ice extent reached its maximum on March 31st, the latest date since satellite records began in 1979 according to the latest sea ice update from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre. The maximum extent was 15.25 million square kilometers. The NASA image above shows the ice extent on March 6th, before the late month growth spurt caused by a cold spell in the Bering and Barents seas. This late season ice is unlikely to have much impact on summer minimum, as it is thin and will melt rapidly as temperatures rise. Click on the image to get to a NASA animation of the winter ice season (not available on Youtube, or I would have posted it).

The NSIDC points out that a critical factor is the age and thickness of the ice as it heads into the summer melt season. The video below explains why, and how NASA is running a series of flights over the Arctic, the IceBridge campaign, to replace the thickness data lost with the ending of the first ICEsat mission. A new satellite won’t fly until 2013. The flights are already generating some fascinating imagery — I’ll be keeping an eye on their Twitter feed for more.

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Winter 2010: cold in places, exceptionally hot in others

Northern hemisphere winter, that is — we’re still in a nice warm autumn down here. Before I disappear for a couple of days of hectic activity (vintage 2010 tomorrow, bottling the ‘09 on Monday), I just wanted to draw attention to a couple of articles I read over my Saturday morning toast (fine bread from the farmer’s market). The first is the review of the northern hemisphere winter by Bob Henson at UCAR: an interesting overview of how El Niño and the Arctic Oscillation combined to bring cold and snow to the US and Europe, but record breaking warmth to Canada, Greenland, North Africa and the Middle East. Henson draws on a fascinating statistical analysis of the winter by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Netherlands Meteorological Institute(KNMI), putting the combination of cold, snow and warmth into the context of a changing climate.

2010winterstats.gif

Van Oldenborgh assesses the the likelihood of the various temperature and snowfall anomalies in the context of an unchanging climate, and on the change that current trends indicate has already occurred. The map above left (click to see the original via KNMI) shows how often winters as cold as 2010 would be expected in the current (changing) climate: 10-50 year return periods are common, stretching out to 100-500 years in parts of Siberia. The map at right shows the warm extremes. Even in a warming climate, winter 2010 was a 10,000 year event — extremely unusual — in parts of the Middle East. Egypt’s winter, for instance, was a full 1ºC above the previous record, and 3ºC above the mean. Southern Greenland was also exceptionally warm. Compared with an unchanging climate (assuming that the probabilities for 1971-2000 still apply), the cold anomalies are less extreme because cold events were more common in the past, and the heat extremes were greater. But however you analyse the situation, the warmth experienced in Canada and the Middle East was more unusual than the US and European cold spells. It’s well worth reading van Oldenborgh’s article, even if you’d rather be eating chocolate eggs.

PS: Also noteworthy: David Appell takes a look at why current sea ice extent/areas don’t tell us the ice is “back to normal”, as some would have us believe. In the words of the old joke, sceptics are asserting “never mind the quality, feel the width.”

May all your buns be cross, and hot. Happy Easter.

Dogged Pearce still hounding Jones

Fred Pearce is a fine one to speak of a rush to judgment. Many of his Guardian articles on the UEA emails did just that. (See Pearced to the Heart and Defending the Indefensible on Hot Topic) Yet that is the accusation he levels at yesterday’s report of the parliamentary committee’s investigation into the matter.  Essentially because, he claims, they avoided investigating the more complex charges such as those raised by him in the Guardianseries.

What he seems most concerned with is that Jones got off lightly.

“The MPs are clear that there are serious issues to address both in climate science and in the operation of freedom of information law in British universities. But in their desire not to single out Jones, they end up bending over backwards to support a man who is the pillar of the establishment they are criticising.”

Here is what the report concluded:

“The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, we consider that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community. We have suggested that the community consider becoming more transparent by publishing raw data and detailed methodologies. On accusations relating to Freedom of Information, we consider that much of the responsibility should lie with UEA, not CRU.”

Not enough for Pearce.  It lets Jones off too lightly:

“… whatever standard practice may be, surely as one of climate science’s senior figures, Jones should take some responsibility for its misdemeanours? Jones has worked for the CRU for more than 20 years and been its director for six. The MPs found there a “culture of withholding information” in which “information may have been deleted to avoid disclosure.” It found this “unacceptable”. Doesn’t its director take responsibility?”

What does Pearce want?  Resignation?  Dismissal?  The parliamentary committee received submissions, examined Jones, affirmed that it had seen nothing which suggests the science from the CRU is faulty, said Jones should be reinstated and made recommendations for changed practices in  future in the interests of the science being irreproachable.  There are further investigations to come.  Meanwhile the globe continues to warm.  It seems to me that Pearce as an environmental journalist ought to be able to find more useful occupation for his talents than arguing with the verdict of the committee. Jones might have earned a period of respite. The Guardian should call off its dogs.