Cross-posted on the new TEAM Minnesota blog
Last night, renowned climate scientist Jim Hansen spoke to a number of policymakers, nonprofit leaders, teachers, students, and others at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Hansen has been blowing whistles on climate change for twenty years, most recently citing 350ppm of CO2 as the level which we must reach to avoid catastrophic damage from climate change, and inspiring the 350 campaign. Hansen’s speech highlighted both the scientific consensus on global warming and the lack of an effective response from policymakers.
Yet during Jim’s speech, I was struck by his inability to connect the severity of his findings with the morality of responses from policy makers, young people, or really anyone else. We are past the point when expertise is needed from the scientific community. By continuing to propagate the “science vs. junk science” battle, Hansen and others are ignoring real questions of power, morality, citizen engagement, and the social changes that are needed to build a clean energy future.
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Science and scientists have obviously played an integral role in the discovery and general acceptance of climate change as real, human-induced, and dangerous. For the last forty to fifty years, climatology and meteorology have grown from small fields to model-producing powerhouses. Yet up until this point, scientists have failed to convince policymakers and the general public of the severity of global climate change and the depth of changes our society needs.
Part of the reason is that scientists are often terrible messengers. Complex graphs, statistics, and models tend to overwhelm. This information overload psychologically turns people off - if climate change is this big and complex, how can any individual or group have any effect? Further, scientists, and environmental scientists in particular, tend to frame their work as part of a “science vs. non-science” battle. The role of scientists is to educate the public on matters of science, and those who disagree with them are, as Hansen often says, “contrarians” and disbelievers. Policymakers have bought into this dichotomy, from global warming to stem cell research to intelligent design, again blinding them to the ethics and values within science. By treating their research as almost holy, scientists and experts send mixed messages when the best science changes.
By creating this simplified dichotomy, many scientists insulate themselves from the public eye, seeking to complete their research before asking questions of morality because “the public just wouldn’t understand.” What the public ends up seeing is a stream of scientists that claim their expertise on a topic, but continue to shift their opinions on everything (as science does). Think of the climate targets: first, 500ppm was our goal. Then, as more research was done, 400-450ppm (”80% by 2050″) became our feasible target. Recently, Hansen pushed the target down to 350ppm, a point which we’ve already passed. The IPCC claimed that it was 90% sure that humans caused global warming, and pushing CO2 levels to 400ppm would result in a 50% chance of catastrophic climate damage. To a layperson’s or policymaker’s eye, a response to this gambling-like uncertainty is both unsettling, confusing, and paralyzing. Hence, the global response to climate change has been woefully inadequate and misdirected.
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Scientists have always had trouble with models of risk management. Attempts to quantify levels of safety around toxics and nuclear waste have conflicted with observed results, often times with fatal results. Likewise, climate scientists predictions of global warming in the eighties contrasted with the global cooling caused by sulfur dioxides and particulate matter created by coal. Scientists’ predictions of ice-free arctic summers by 2050 contrasted with the recent exponential decrease in summer ice observed by those living in the arctic.
Many scientists also fail to give the social context to their research. When research is framed in terms of ecosystems, atmosphere, and global climate, we fail to understand the interconnectedness of climate change and perceived social/political problems like energy prices, the subprime mortgage crisis, the global food and water shortages, and so on. Another example is the failure of scientists (and policymakers and many others) to recognize the social ramifications of corn-based ethanol. By the time scientists recognized that ethanol was a false CO2 solution, subsidies and political dreaming had already taken over.
These qualities of scientific expertise often lead scientists to advocate technological or scientific fixes for environmental problems. As an article in today’s NY Times points out, climate solutions from geoengineering, like ocean seeding or space mirrors, need to be seriously questioned. Slightly less crazy ideas like carbon sequestration and nuclear power have also come under fire by many in the environmental community. These complex “magic bullets” fail to respond to the root causes of climate chaos, nor the powerful role technological uncertainty and expertise have played in getting us into this mess.
Jim Hansen gave three roles for scientists: learning from the past, observing present changes, and predicting the future. Scientists’ observations from the past provide powerful impetus for action, but the “expertise” demonstrated by climate predictions and models has distracted (or paralyzed) us. While it’s important to take into account “what the science says,” it’s more important to realize that what we’re doing is not just “saving the climate” or “stopping global warming”, but rather building a more just society, tackling poverty, and creating economic growth.
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So what role should science play in the future? More people are becoming skeptical of scientific and technological fixes to perceived scientific problems. In the process of deconstructing scientific expertise, we realize that we are all scientists. We observe changes in science, society, and technology on a daily basis, whether we realize it or not. And if we do recognize that we’re all parts of this world, then we can acknowledge our own power to both observe changes and make change for the better. We are empowered to make decisions beyond which dish soap to buy or how much gas to put in the tank.
This realization has been the foundation for the citizen science movement. With roots in participatory science like bird watching and stargazing, citizen science has grown to include observations on toxics and climate effects. Deliberative and informative methods like citizen juries, science shops, and consensus conferences can help make choices about the technologies and policies that we, the citizens, wish to see in the world. Less formal activities like green drinks and cafe scientifique help break down barriers to expertise and, oh yeah, are really really fun. By engaging the public in decision making processes, we can arrive at real science and technology policy, rather than a hodgepodge of free market and government funded choices.
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Jim Hansen strikes me as a jaded and pessimistic guy. He has weathered a lot of criticism and is probably afraid of what he sees for our future. But during a question and answer section, he got really excited while talking about historic climate trends. Hansen loves what he’s doing, which I’m always in favor of. I thank him for his years of priceless service. Likewise, many of the policymakers I’ve met have their hearts in the right places but simply have little idea what to do. In response to these problems, we must democratize both politics and science, to let the public discuss, deliberate, and choose the policies and technologies that we are to use, and to understand and confront the root causes of climate change rather than devoting more time to climate science debates.
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With so much at stake, don’t we need scientists and engineers in the discussion? I am not advocating a technological elite, merely that their opinions be considered along with all of the other disciplines.
Yes, the solutions must include a wide variety of perspectives, but at the end of the day, the proposed solutions must physically work and not break the bank. Engineering can be an awful help in both activities.
Thank you for writing this! I am a (student) scientist myself and I am eternally frustrated with not only the lack of communication between scientists and the community (causing frustration and mistrust), but also the inability to focus on current societal problems. Scientific consensus about global warming has been established. Now it’s time to study the effects (not just physical, but also societal) and solutions and BRING IT TO THE PEOPLE!
I’m a science communication major at U.Tennessee-Knoxville, and I’m very interested in the power dynamics of grassroots organizing and expertise.
I think the main reason it’s important for Hansen to keep highlighting the difference between good science and bad science is that as long as old energy industries sit at the policy table, they’ll be representing and funding bad science. Hansen’s dialectic plays out on the empirical and ecological dimension of this 21st-century movement, and it’s to be expected that most of the net-based discourse about this movement would feature that science bias. Science has been the dominant language of institutional policy since the Enlightenment, only conflicting with religious or cultural policy when it comes to social and behavioral systems like gradeschool curricula and product hazards.
But at the level of the infinite personal decisions and resolutions that have to be made in this movement, the scientific method is powerless. I think this crisis in the public legitimacy of science is evidence that we’re finally beginning to inject values, as a culture, into the territory that science typically dominates, such as climate and the environment. For instance, I’d expect a lot of vague Earth Worship rhetoric from movement leaders who try to get elected to public office, and much more profound appeals to conscience than just slick green marketing schemes for fuel-efficient vehicles.
For example, in Tennessee, there’s been a complete reversal in the orientation of the Christian conservative community to the campaign against mountaintop-removal that was started by environmentalists, students, and rural citizens. The Tennessee Scenic Vistas Protection Act, which would ban mountaintop-removal in the state, has a lobbying effort being led primarily by a Christian environmental group called LEAF (http://www.tnleaf.org/). It’s amazing to see how eco-history has brought evidence-based tree-huggers and faith-based bible-thumpers together for a landmark piece of legislation.
Is it because we don’t need expertise from scientists that you don’t tell us what happened historically, you only say “he got really excited while talking about historic climate trends”? How he feels is more important than the facts?
Or maybe we should know more, such as science just now figuring out that glaciers on one lonely mountain behave differently than a polar glacier field. http://www.ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2008/08/14/120550.html
Frankly, I’m not sure where the disconnect is: there is already too much greenhouse gas in the air, so carbon dieting is unfeasible as a way to avoid climate catastrophe. Here is what Climate Code Red says:
–Human emissions have so far produced a global average temperature increase of 0.8 degree C.
–There is another 0.6 degree C. to come due to “thermal inertia”, or lags in the system, taking the total long-term global warming induced by human emissions so far to 1.4 degree C.
–If human total emissions continue as they are to 2030 (and don’t increase 60% as projected) this would likely add more than 0.4 degrees C. to the system in the next two decades, taking the long-term effect by 2030 to at least 1.7 degrees C. (A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007).
–Then add the 0.3 degree C. albedo flip effect from the now imminent loss of the Arctic sea ice, and the rise in the system by 2030 is at least 2 degree. C, assuming very optimistically that emissions don’t increase at all above their present annual rate! When we consider the potential permafrost releases and the effect of carbon sinks losing capacity, we are on the road to a hellish future, nor for what we will do, but WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE.
Any carbon diet strategy would be dependent upon clean coal:
“The vast majority of new power stations in China and India will be coal-fired; not “may be coal-fired”; will be. So developing carbon capture and storage technology is not optional, it is literally of the essence.” –”Breaking the Climate Deadlock,” Tony Blair, June 26, 2008
But:
Vaclav Smil, an energy expert at the University of Manitoba, has estimated that capturing and burying just 10 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted over a year from coal-fire plants at current rates would require moving volumes of compressed carbon dioxide greater than the total annual flow of oil worldwide — a massive undertaking requiring decades and trillions of dollars. “Beware of the scale,” he stressed.”
Dr James Hansen is calling for a moritorium on new dirty coal-fired plants, which is clearly unfeasible from an economic and political perspective. Instead, there is a cheap and simple way to immediately cool down the Earth: just add a little sun dimming aerosol to the upper atmosphere. We won’t be able to stop rapid ecosystem collapse without geoengineering.
“Stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gases below about 400 ppm of CO2 equivalent is required to keep the global temperature increase likely less than 2C above pre-industrial temperature.” –Report of Working Group 1 of the IPCC, 2007, p. 828
We are currently at 455 ppm CO2 equivalent, and there is new research suggesting that Arctic permafrost is about to melt and emit tremendous amounts of greenhouse gas that will overwhelm any cuts we make to our emissions.