#oreskes

[meanwhileinstasiville]

Exxon Scientists Predicted Global Warming, Even as Company Cast Doubts, Study Finds

Starting in the 1970s, scientists working for the oil giant made remarkably accurate projections of just how much burning fossil fuels would warm the planet.

2400 seems to be an informal end to the human race according to science fiction written since the 70s. Exxon? 

[justyournewsworld]

Naomi Oreskes – the gift that keeps on giving, Pt 1 Reposted from GelbspanFiles.com Harvard science history professor Naomi Oreskes was one of the witnesses appearing under oath at the 10/23/19 House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s “Examining the Oil Industry’s Efforts to Suppress the Truth about Climate Change” hearing. A pair of missteps while responding to questions didn’t bolster her appearance as a detached, objective,…

[justyournewsworld]

Oreskes, Harvard and the Destruction of Scientific Revolutions Guest post by Bradley Keyes consensus (kənˈsɛnsəs) — n. general or widespread agreement (esp. in the phrase consensus of opinion ) usage Since ‘consensus’ refers to a collective opinion, the words ‘of opinion’ in the phrase ‘consensus of opinion’ are redundant and should therefore be avoided Source: consensus. Collins English Dictionary—Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition.…

[qa-nature]

Naomi Oreskes: Why we should trust scientists

Naomi Oreskes: Why we should trust scientists

Many of the world’s biggest problems require asking questions of scientists — but why should we believe what they say? Historian of science Naomi Oreskes thi…

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[robplastow]

Communicating Climate Change - A Story of Uncertainty

Originally posted at www.earthscan.co.uk/blog 31/01/11

The irony of climate change is also one of human knowledge. It is our paradoxical wont, as Douglas Adams reminds us, to demand guaranteed, rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.

Depending on whether that uncertainty is presented as wonder or as doubt, we are then equally compelled or disabled.

The framing of uncertainty is therefore at the heart of communicating climate change, and of determining in the minds of millions what is even real, as one infamous episode also reminds us.

In November of 2009 an unknown hacker infiltrated the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, stole thousands of emails, hacked into the RealClimate website and posted the haul. All done with impeccable timing, right before the COP15 climate talks in Copenhagen.

No one knows who was responsible and the chances are we will never properly find out. However, when reviewing the hack, the UK's former Chief Scientist, Sir David King suggested an operation on the scale of a national intelligence agency's capabilities, bankrolled by large American lobby groups.

Continuing on from this hack, now more than a year on, the issue of anthropogenic climate change is still seen as controversial. Despite enquiries finding nothing wrong with the actions of the CRU, and instead shedding light on the deception used in manipulating the emails from some 10 or 15 years ago, the great anti-climate PR coup has arguably been the single most effective piece of climate change communication from either side of the so-called debate.

How has it been so effective? By having a simple target that is itself complex, abstract and extremely disruptive: uncertainty.

This target is not new. Before Climategate, the same approach was taken by the tobacco industry who employed the same PR firms that later went on to represent the oil industry.

In his 2006 book Heat, George Monbiot chronicles this development of misinformation, and the perpetrators behind it whom he calls the 'Denial Industry'. It is of note that this book precedes Climategate by 3 years. Crucial to the agenda of the Denial Industry is to muddy the waters and promote the promulgation of doubt – and in the case of climate change, its bizarre nature over time and space, its complexity and unpredictability make that all the more easy to do. As does the lack of capability of the science community to get its message across. A message, it must be acknowledged, that not a lot of people want to hear anyway due to the consequences it has for the way we live our lives.

Monbiot gives a thorough account and so I will only pick out what I feel is the key issue he presents. Monbiot highlights the commonality between the tobacco and oil industry in using PR firms to establish and fund think-tanks and institutes with purposefully misleading names such as the Science and Environmental Policy Project, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition and many others whose purpose it has been to attack the science behind climate change (many of which are provided at www.exxonsecrets.org) in order to shift debate away from curbing their business. Their efforts are driven by a simple idea expounded in the following advice:

“Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate”.

This advice is from Frank Luntz, given to Republican Party activists during the first mid-term election of George W. Bush's presidency, (leaked memo available here).

Climategate then appears to be a continuation of this same rhetoric and a good example of the strength of Luntz's advice.

Key to the climate sceptics argument then, is that the science behind climate change is in doubt. Yet, Naomi Oreskes showed in her review of 10 years worth of peer-reviewed literature in the journal Science, that the case put forward by today's climate scientists is in no doubt at all. In a talk at MIT concerning the communication of climate change she also went on to tackle the issue of big oil funding sceptics, denialists and delayers in order to continue with business as usual.

The irony is that the side of the issue that has the least amount of quality science to support its ideas, has the most effective communication campaign through the hypocrisy of labeling climate science as 'junk science' and environmentalists as deceptive promoters of a global conspiracy. That coupled with an impressive commitment to their cause, of never backing down.

This in part results from the huge amounts of money that fund it from big oil companies such as Exxon and vested interests of those such as Koch Industries but also from the lack of ability on behalf of the media to discern fact from fiction in a complex topic. In the fast paced world of journalism, with ever increasing media to distribute information, coin shocking headlines and meet tight deadlines, one Phd looks very similar to another, and the innocuously named institutes all appear the same at first glance.

At the same time, the overwhelming evidence widely available - which Oreskes has pointed out – is that the issue is resolved within the scientific community: humans are responsible for global warming.

The reason 'debate' continues is a consequence, in many ways, of framing.

The opposition that resulted in the Climategate debacle has shown the power, albeit deceptively, of a well targeted communication campaign that frames the debate with a simple target and goal and relies on emotion to stir support. Their story is that the science is uncertain, that people are trying to trick you and are attacking the way you live your life for their own gain. The hypocrisy is of gargantuan proportions and makes for exceptional camouflage.

The delays that have resulted from such tactics and the Climategate mudslinging have set the whole world back, disrupted COP15 and have led to climate change being a decidedly different kind of 'hot' topic than it should be. It has dropped from mass media, almost as if it is too controversial to entertain with any certainty.

And it is uncertain, but in a different way. We know that burning fossil fuels, among other things, releases carbon dioxide and that if you have societies and economies that burn them for decades all over the world every day, stores of carbon that had hitherto remained in the earth will then be released into the atmosphere as CO2. The increasing concentration of carbon dioxide will then cause the earth's atmosphere to increase in temperature.

However, the future is uncertain, the climate models will never be 100%, nature is too complex and our understanding of it too incomplete. That type of uncertainty is unquestioned and something we must acknowledge and live with; we are merely human after all and just as much a part of the often unfathomable nature as the climate. Our existence, let alone our scientific endeavour, is still very new in the time-frame of the planet, to think we know it all would be ridiculous. The question as to our capability to ever understand the way that nature operates on a fundamental and deterministic level is itself highly questionable, but is the course of science to at least better our understanding of it. The climate challenge is a challenge of great uncertainty, which is what makes it all the more pressing for us to do something about and commit to understanding it better.

As the President of the Royal Society, Nobel Laureate Sir Paul Nurse has shown in BBC Horizon's Science Under Attack, if science is to have the impact it necessitates on the world it studies, we had better get more adept at communicating it.

Climate activists, scientists and environmentalists need to re-claim and re-frame the climate change campaign. And they are*. Recently, WWF have sought to expound on the issue of framing, with much emphasis on transparency they would add, in their Common Cause report.

Common Cause is also a good indicator of the effort that is needed in all camps to put a stop to the quibbling that delays our response to global warming. We need to become more savvy in our deconstruction of the media, of messages and intentions behind them. We also need to acknowledge the importance of emotion, culture and ideology in the framing of campaigns, and in doing so beat the denialists at their own game in a more transparent and less vitriolic way.

If we are to affect real change and respond to global warming we need to accomplish a lot more than merely showing that it is happening. That should have been put to bed a long time ago. There is always room for criticism and debate, that's how science works, but there is also a point at which a consensus is formed, upon which decisions are made so that we may progress to act.

Without action all the efforts of science are for nothing. 2010 was the joint hottest year on record and in that same year came acknowledgment that stopping temperatures from rising by 2C is virtually impossible.

Because of the delay we have shown to act, temperature rises are much more likely to be greater than 2C and we are looking at a world that will have a much harder time dealing with 3C or 4C changes as a result. The story has changed.

Although it is a great failure for climate activists that Climategate has brought so much enthusiasm and encouraging action within the green movement to a standstill, it is also a great opportunity to learn how to get better at communicating climate change.

If we are to have any impact at all on curbing emissions we must reclaim the narrative of global warming and recognise the importance of tackling the oil industry's grasp on the media and the climate story as well as the climate itself. Then perhaps, uncertainty can be seen as the refuge of hope.

*Excellent work is also happening all the time at at the UK's Climate Outreach and Information Network, (COIN) and many developments are also often reported at www.desmogblog.com

Some sources: http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2011/01/18/four-degrees-and-beyond-climate-change-and-irrational-minds

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y4yql

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10538198

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/14/oxburgh-uea-cleared-malpractice

http://www.desmogblog.com/who-hacked-cru

http://www.wwf.org.uk/wwf_articles.cfm?unewsid=4224

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/20/met-office-2010-second-warmest-year

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/13/uk-media-ignore-climate-change

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/site/2011/four_degrees.xhtml

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20110112/

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110112_globalstats.html

http://www.monbiot.com/

www.exxonsecrets.org

http://www.sindark.com/NonBlog/Articles/LuntzResearch_environment.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12224948