Science and Politics - Two Big Events in Climate Change This Week

It's been a big week for climate change. There was one huge event that went largely unnoticed, and one less consequential event that was the talk of the town. That fact represents a major obstacle for action to deal with the unequivocal science that says humans are warming the planet.

Let's start with the big event. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international organization that summarizes the state-of-climate-science every seven years, issued its Synthesis Report on November 2nd. As the name suggests, this is the final report in the series and synthesizes the voluminous data from the three scientific working group reports issued over the past year. As their "headline" document notes, the combined reports state unequivocally:

1) Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,

2) Humans are the dominant cause of this warming,

3) Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems,

4) Man-made climate change is a threat to sustainable development, and

5) We must act now.

The unequivocal science that led to all of these conclusions has been documented in great detail in the working group reports already issued; this final report simply summarizes the main points so that policymakers can discuss options to deal with the ramifications of the science. Action is necessary, and necessary action must begin now. The consequences of inaction are dire.

Unfortunately, this critical IPCC report was largely ignored by the media and policymakers alike because....ooh, there was an election!!

What the election means....

Which gets us to the second big event that will, in fact, likely be inconsequential when it comes to taking action. The mid-term elections in the United States occurred on Tuesday, November 4th. As expected, in large part due to the huge Democratic wins in Republican-leaning states six years ago, the Republican party took control of the Senate. Republicans have already controlled the House since 2010. With a united Congress (such as it is), this increases the chances that bills will actually be passed and sent to the President.

That sounds good, right? Not really. Because the Republicans gained control due both to vagaries of the calendar and indebtedness to the tea party, all bills will have to pander to the most extreme elements in both houses of Congress. With respect to man-made climate change this means no bills that honestly deal with the science will ever reach the President. Instead, denial of the science and attacks on science organizations and funding will be the main order of business. This is exactly what the Republican-led House has been doing for four years, and now the Senate can do it too.

So with the conservative climate denial machine (both the tea party and climate denial get major funding and organization through the Koch brothers lobbying network) now in positions to attack science, why is this so inconsequential?

On the one hand it is very much consequential. Efforts to defund science and block action are likely to get further along than in the previous Congress. But on the other hand, no bills honestly dealing with climate were getting to the President anyway because of House denial. Meanwhile, the Republican minority in the Senate successfully manipulated the closure process such that not even the simplest bills could get through without multiple 60-vote majorities. True, now that they control both houses, Republicans can pass bills, but that means they have to take responsibility for them. While most of the Republican leadership has willingly pandered to the denialist elements (and will make those denialists chairs of the relevant science committees), they know that the science is unequivocal and some action must be taken. They've held back economic growth and jobs to hurt the President, but are they willing to throw America under the bus forever? Unfortunately, the answer isn't all that clear.

The most likely scenario is that the Senate won't allow the most egregiously denialistic House bills to get through the Senate. For the merely ceremonial denialist bills the Republicans in the Senate could send them to the President, who will promptly veto anything that doesn't begin to take responsibility for the science.

The science, by the way, that demonstrates warming of the climate system is unequivocal, humans are the dominant cause, has already had widespread impacts on human and natural systems, is a threat to sustainable development, and action is immediately necessary.

You know, the unequivocal science that is documented in the many thousands of pages summarizing the state-of-the-climate as put forth by the IPCC reports largely ignored this week.

Yeah, that science.

To paraphrase Leonardo da Vinci, "And yet it warms."

Dissing the IPCC and other Scientific Organizations - How Climate Deniers Work

One of the recurring tactics used by climate deniers, especially the amateur ones, is to dismiss with prejudice any scientific organization that reports the state-of-the-science with respect to man-made climate change. The most egregiously - and falsely - attacked organization is the IPCC. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which, thankfully, we all know as the IPCC), is written off as a political organization because, well, because it says "intergovernmental" right there in the title, doesn't it? So obviously it just makes stuff up to push an agenda, right? 

Wrong.

Since there is so much misinformation out there about what exactly the IPCC does it seems appropriate to give a little background. The IPCC was "established [in 1988] by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences." By definition it is both a scientific body and an intergovermental body. As a scientific body it "reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. " It is an intergovernmental body in that it is "open to all member countries of UN and WMO," and representatives from up to around 130 countries participate in the plenary sessions where decisions about adoption of the technical reports are done. Note that the governmental representatives only show up to adopt the technical reports; the technical reports themselves are written by scientists expert in the fields pertinent to the particular part of the report being written.

The IPCC didn't come into existence on a whim or from some political motive. It was established because there was already a vast amount of empirical evidence suggesting that human activity was causing a dramatic warming of the planet. At the time, this information was spread out in thousands of independent papers and reports all over the world, as well as observations such as retreating glaciers, increasing temperature readings, ice cap extent and volume measurements, and new data from satellites. It was becoming obvious that something was happening to our climatic system, but with the information scattered all over the place it was hard to tell what was causing it. In short, the IPCC was formed to bring all the data from all these sources together, and summarize it into something that could be understood by policymakers charged with making decisions.

While climate denialists like to make believe the IPCC is some sort of political behemoth created to push some agenda, this characterization couldn't be further from the truth. The IPCC staff are actually very few in number (about 10 people). The work of summarizing the state-of-the-science is done by thousands of scientists who volunteer their time to compile, review, and assess the tens of thousands of peer reviewed and related publications and studies. These scientists generally are academics at universities or at scientific agencies such as NASA and NOAA in the US, and their counterparts in countries all over the world. It takes several years to summarize the data for each report.

So contrary to the grand conspiracists that dominate climate denialism, the IPCC doesn't conduct any new research itself nor dictate what is to be written, it is merely an administrative vehicle to coordinate the compiling and evaluating being done by scientists across the globe. These scientists work in diverse teams to synthesize the vast amounts of available information and produce technical reports for each of the three working groups. Only after the technical reports are completed does the IPCC convene representatives from each group and each country to agree on a fourth volume called the Synthesis Report, which as the name implies, summarizes the three technical reports in a way that government officials and the public can understand. 

Since its inception in 1988 the IPCC has published five sets of Assessment documents, in 1990, 1995, 2001, 2007, and 2013/2014. Each succeeding report incorporates all the new research since the last report (plus a reevaluation of the previous studies), and the more we know and understand the more certain we become about the fact that the planet is warming and the likelihood that we are causing it. The most recent, Assessment Report 5 (AR5), concluded that "the warming of the climate system is unequivocal," [p.4] and that "it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century." [p.17] Using the IPCC's terminology, "extremely likely" means between 95% and 100% certainty, and "unequivocal" means clear and unambiguous (i.e., absolutely certain). In other words, climate change is happening and it's because of human activity.

Next up is the process of developing the Synthesis Report, and IPCC rules require 100% consensus among the representatives at the plenary session. This is done long after the three technical reports are completed by the scientists and the synthesis report must obviously conform to the science presented. Since some participating governments rely so heavily on income from the fossil fuels that are the primary contributor to global warming, these members tend to work hard to water down the conclusions in the synthesis report as much possible. Thus, the "100% consensus" process tends to result in estimates that are less dire (NOT more dire) than the science actually supports. So the problem is very likely much worse than the IPCC Synthesis Report suggests. 

As anyone at this point should be able to see, the IPCC itself is merely an administrative vehicle to coordinate the work of thousands of scientist contributors, expert reviewers, and myriad commenters as they pull together all of the scientific studies and synthesize the conclusions derived from those studies. Since these scientists come from a wide range of countries, backgrounds, and views (including contrarian and climate denier views), suggestions that there is a grand conspiracy to further some single agenda is, to put it nicely, bonkers. 

The professional denialist lobby and their spokespeople, of course, know that the science is unequivocal. But they are paid to further the interests of their benefactors and intentionally choose to ignore the science they find inconvenient, and routinely seed the blogosphere with misrepresentations and outright falsehoods so that amateur denialists have fodder to plagiarize. The professional lobby knows that the ideologically motivated amateurs won't really understand what they repeat, nor be particularly skeptical of the sources despite delusionally referring to themselves as skeptics. It's more than a little cynical on their part, for sure, but that's what they are paid to do and they do it well. So they dishonestly demean the IPCC and chuckle at the ideologues who further their goals. 

The amateurs? We'll discuss more about their traits and tactics as we continue the series. One ubiquitous trait of amateur denialists is contradiction (often in the same sentence). More on that soon.

 

Changing the Way the IPCC Communicates Climate Change

The IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has released its periodic series of reports documenting the state-of-the-science, and the prognosis is not good. Human activities are warming the planet. That is scientific fact.

And yet, not much is happening in the way of policy action to deal with this scientific fact.

I've argued on this page that the IPCC, and scientists in general, need to change the way they communicate the science. While the IPCC has tried to have a better "rollout" of the reports, even to the point of joining the YouTube age, they still haven't figured out 1) that they have to communicate directly to the public, and 2) how to do that.

The Climate Outreach and Information Network, COIN, a UK-based climate communication NGO, has issued a new report discussing this important issue. Called "Science and Stories: Bringing the IPCC to Life," the report offers some recommendations on how IPCC can improve their communication of climate data. The following is taken from page 6 of the COIN report, with the report's following pages going into greater depth on each:

1. Invest in communications

An enhanced communications budget would provide more resources for the

IPCC’s existing communications team to expand their role and reach, and to train

some of the hundreds of scientists involved to communicate more effectively

2. Embrace video content and social media

With an enhanced communications budget and a group of scientists with focused

communications training at their disposal, the IPCC could significantly expand

into a broader range of communication channels that it currently makes only very

limited use of.

3. Show the human face of the IPCC

The IPCC has excised virtually all evidence of human life from its publications.

One way of bringing the IPCC to life would be to show the (many) human faces of

the IPCC – the scientists who give their time and valuable expertise – and tell

their personal stories.

4. Work with a diverse range of partners

The IPCC should work with a range of partners from across the social and

political spectrum who can lend cultural credibility to the scientific consensus they

convey and bring the science to life.

5. Tell human stories about climate change

IPCC outputs must be coupled with human stories and powerful narratives which

can bring the science to life. How will climate change affect the things people

love?

6. Test everything

Any recommendations for communication should be grounded in systematic

testing.

7. No more Assessment Reports

- deliver science to 'order'

If the IPCC were structured in order to catalyse a proportionate public and

political response to climate change, the Assessment Reports would be turned

on their head and would start from the needs of their audiences. These

audiences would be defined by their capacity to bring about rapid social,

technological and economic change.

While there is room for debate about the exact procedures that IPCC and other scientific organizations can employ, there is no question that improving communication is necessary. As report co-author Adam Corner writes in The Guardian:

For almost 25 years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released regular assessment reports warning the world of the dangers of climate change. The scientific knowledge that has been accumulated over this time is astonishing in its breadth and scope.

...Despite all the rebuttals of sceptics' arguments, and the "myth busting", public opinion is no further advanced than it was when the IPCC first started producing its reports.

As the science becomes more and more unequivocal, the calls for action haven't followed suit. Clearly there is a need for improvement. Scroll back on this page for more discussion and ideas about how to communicate science.  I'll have more on this and other ideas for how scientists and policy makers can better communicate with the public.

Book Review - State of Fear by Michael Crichton

This site periodically does reviews of books that are related to science and science communication. State of Fear by Michael Crichton is a novel. Despite being fiction, it's become an icon of the climate change denial community. That in itself says a lot. As such it raises interesting science communication issues.

Because this book is really two "books" I'll review them as if they were separate. The first "book" is a novel about the struggle between extremist environmental groups and a rich benefactor with a change of heart supported by a mysterious private paramilitary-ish hero. The focal point of the conflict is global warming. The novel is interesting and the action is exciting enough to keep people reading to the end. That said, the plot was rather predictable in an almost James Bondish sort of way. Still, the book is an interesting read for its genre.

The second "book" is only important because this novel (repeat, novel) has been given almost biblical prominence by the climate denial movement. Some other reviewers even assert that the words of a novelist should be given more weight than all of the world's climate scientists. This inability to separate fiction from reality (perhaps it can be called the "Ayn Rand effect"), is both scary and embarrassing to our society. Crichton's novel, as well as his Authors Note and Appendix, offers so much climate denial propaganda that it is like reading the denial lobbyists' talking point memos. He tosses out the exact same straw men, misrepresentations, and misdirections, laced with semi-truths and out-of-context cherry picks, that have become the mainstay of the denialist industry. Each talking point had already been debunked at the time of the book's publication in 2004, and with another 10 years of data demonstrating unequivocally that we are warming our planet, his talking points seem fantastically silly today.

So read the book as a novel (which, of course, it is), with all the suspension of reality necessary and appropriate for fiction. Just remember it's just fiction. If you're interested in man-made climate change, do your research at NASA, NOAA, the IPCC, and all the rest of the actual scientists in the field.

Communicating Climate Change - The Problem with the Media

From Media Matters

The IPCC released the third of its series of reports on man-made climate change last week, and the organization Media Matters published a first analysis of how the media was reporting it. While the analysis was limited in scope, it does provide some interesting insights into the role of the media in communicating the science.

One of the most noticeable things about media coverage of the report was that there wasn't much media coverage of the report. This is a problem on several levels, not the least of which is that the media is not communicating to the public one of the most important science stories impacting the public. While ignorance may be bliss in some cases, this isn't the time to hide from reality.

Another problem with the lack of coverage of this third report is that its focus is on mitigation, that is, it offers some potential solutions to man-made climate change and the impacts that we are facing from those changes. These are dire messages. But as Media Matters notes, "studies show providing dire messages without solutions could be ineffective."

Covering the first U.N. reports warning of the dire impacts of climate change, while giving relatively little coverage to the report outlining the solutions, may be counterproductive. A 2009 review of studies on climate messaging, published in Science Communication, found that "fear-inducing representations" of the threat of global warming without providing solutions could "trigger barriers to engagement."

Even worse:

[D]ire messages warning of the severity of global warming and its presumed dangers can backfire, paradoxically increasing skepticism about global warming by contradicting individuals' deeply held beliefs that the world is fundamentally just.

So whereas the media reported on the problem, they largely ignored reporting on the solutions. Doing so actually reduces the chances for action. And action is what the IPCC - and every other scientific organization - insists must happen. In fact, the IPCC notes that "carbon emissions need to be drastically reduced in order to prevent global temperatures from rising over two degrees Celsius -- the threshold to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of manmade global warming." We're well on our way to reaching the two degrees Celsius. Without action, the question is not will we reach it, but how fast.

It's one thing for the media to poorly report on science, as has been discussed here and here. But what we're talking about here is media actually misinforming the public by its dual errors of 1) ignoring coverage of solutions, and 2) giving false credence to science deniers.

This is a major problem.

All Three IPCC Climate Change AR5 Technical Reports are Now Available

With the release this past week of the Mitigation volume, all three technical reports of the most recent IPCC climate change review, i.e., the 5th Assessment Report (AR5), are now available. A Synthesis Report will be released in October of 2014 that summarizes the main points of all three technical volumes.

The AR5 has been a major undertaking, with hundreds of scientists volunteering their time to reviewe tens of thousands of published papers and assessing their meaning, then writing it all up for others to read. Thousands of other scientists, interested parties, and even climate deniers reviewed the draft documents before they were finalized. Nearly 55,000 comments were received and addressed in the Physical Science Basis volume alone, with massive numbers of comments also being addressed in the other two technical reports.

The result is an undeniably comprehensive review of the state of the science. And the conclusion is clear - human activity is warming the planet, the consequences are extremely significant, and action must be taken now to minimize or reverse the inevitable ecological and economic impacts.

The reports and associated materials can all be downloaded and reviewed on the IPCC website. Previous posted have discussed some of the good and the bad about how IPCC is communicating the information.