By Warren Pearce, , Reiner Grundmann, Mike Hulme, Sujatha Raman, Eleanor Hadley Kershaw and Judith Tsouvalis
Published in: Environmental Communication
In their replies to our paper (Pearce et al., 2017), both Cook (2017) and Oreskes (2017) agree with our central point: that deliberating and mobilizing policy responses to climate change requires thinking beyond public belief in a scientific consensus. However, they both continue to defend consensus messaging, either because of “the dangers of neglecting to communicate the scientific consensus” (Cook, 2017, p. 1) or because “‘no consensus’ … remains … a contrarian talking point” (Oreskes, 2017, p. 1). Both highlight previously conducted market research by fossil fuel companies which suggested that
scientific uncertainty provided a political weapon in fighting regulation, concluding that incorrect public perceptions of the scientific consensus weaken support for policy action (Oreskes, 2017, p. 2). It is odd that scholars accept corporate research as proof of a claim about the relation between knowledge and decision-making, when the academic evidence cited in our Commentary provides numerous examples to the contrary. Grundmann and Stehr (2012) examined the literature regarding the relation between scientific information and policies (including climate policy), finding that what matters most for effective policy is the identification, and use, of levers for action such as taxes, regulation, incentives or public investment, not scientific consensus.
Public opinion data also cast doubt on the importance of consensus messaging. In Table 1, we summarize relevant 2017 national survey data of US public attitudes and knowledge (Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, Rosenthal, & Cutler, 2017; Marlon, Fine, & Leiserowitz, 2017). Although one should be cautious interpreting such surveys, the data shows a clear majority position among Americans: that climate change is real, important and worrisome, and that the US should take policy action and invest in public education. These positions have been reached in the absence of accurate knowledge about the scientific consensus. There is little evidence here that supports the notion shared by Cook, Oreskes and various fossil fuel companies: that disinformation about scientific consensus begets public opposition to policy.
Despite this evidence, Cook (2017) and Oreskes (2017) appear convinced that public understanding of scientific consensus is essential for developing effective climate policies. Even if this “gateway belief model” could be proved in laboratory studies,1 it holds questionable significance in the real world where sources of competing information always exist (Kahan & Carpenter, 2017). Science itself provides fertile ground for such discrepancies, as two current examples demonstrate. First, the debate over the hiatus/pause in global temperature increase was not invented by fossil fuel interests, but is a subject of genuine scientific disagreement (Medhaug, Stolpe, Fischer, & Knutti, 2017). Second, there is increasing expert debate regarding how much carbon dioxide can be emitted while keeping global temperature rise below 1.5°C (Millar et al., 2017a, 2017b; Peters, 2017; Rathi, 2017). For climate scientists, there is no obvious consensus about questions such as these. On the other hand, Cook, Oreskes and others persist in messaging the minimalist fact that human influence on a changing climate is uncontroversial amongst scientists.
To reiterate our Commentary, we agree there are occasions where this consensus is worth stating. However, there will always be public voices of dissent, and drowning them out with consensus messaging is implausible (Aklin & Urpelainen, 2014). Far better to design sustained public engagement on climate change around possible policy options, rather than allowing the needle to get stuck on consensus messaging which offers little when it comes to planning policy responses. Instead, it is necessary to open up the normative dimensions of policies such as carbon taxes, geoengineering or radical societal transitions to public scrutiny and debate (Nisbet, 2014), and to find new policy measures that can attract cross-partisan support (Ryan, 2015).
Cook (2017) interprets our argument as playing into the hands of climate disinformers. Far from it. It is the insistent demand that publics will only engage in relevant policy debates once they have adopted a “gateway belief” that is playing into the hands of those who wish to slow-down climate policy design and implementation.
Greater public participation in defining policy solutions will help challenge the current system, where policy interventions are presented as value-free responses to scientific facts, leaving science vulnerable to political attacks that scientists and their allies are ill-equipped to repel (Jasanoff, 2010; Pearce, Brown, Nerlich, & Koteyko, 2015; Raman, 2017; Wynne, 2010). Starting with specific policy proposals, and exploring their normative assumptions, is likely to prove a better public engagement strategy than the promotion of consensus messaging.
For example, the UK Government’s “My2050” online tool enabled members of the public to design their own energy pathway to the UK’s 2050 carbon reduction target. Participants adjusted different elements of energy generation and demand within their pathway, revealing the normative assumptions regarding energy trade-offs embedded in the policy target (Mohr, Raman, & Gibbs, 2013). Complementary deliberative dialogues allowed participants to reflect more extensively on the target’s demands, with the results informing recommendations for decision-making (Sciencewise, 2012). In this model, members of the public are assumed to have something to contribute to crafting societal responses to climate change, rather than seeking to correct some deficiency in their understanding of the issue (Nuccitelli, Cook, van der Linden, Leiserowitz, & Maibach, 2017). Also, Pidgeon, Demski, Butler, Parkhill, and Spence (2014) report that in their deliberative workshops, some participants who were sceptical about climate change were nevertheless enthusiastic about transition beyond fossil fuels.
Publics around the world possess a rich understanding of the climates they live with, the risks they face, and the potential changes they would like to see. Mobilizing and engaging these views are the proper building blocks for public debate, not an insistence that knowledge of a single number is a pre-condition for political progress.
Full paper with citations here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17524032.2017.1392109?journalCode=renc20
Instead of constantly moaning and blaming everybody else for everything that they predict, model, hypothesis, model, suggest, model that is supposedly going to go wrong with the climate “unless we do something”, the “something” invariably being the climate activist scientist’s own personal pet and generally utterly impracticable project for ” fixing” the climate.
Could all those wannabe scientific “climate fixers” please describe to this lay person at least, just what they want the NEW Global Climate to conform too as a Climate ?
What they intend the global climate to look like and how all the myriad of phenomena that makes up the present global climate have to change to conform to the Perfect Climate of Climate scientist’s Nirvana that seems to be the goal of great mass of those climate scientists who subscribe to the “consensus” belief of the imminent man made destruction of the climate.
That whole cabal of alarmist climate alarmist scientists have NEVER condescended to describe to us, the deplorables and street level peoples, or described in detail to us laypersons who finance their activities 100%, NOT once have any of that large number of climate “consensus” scientists described in detail the type of Global Climate theybnare aiming for and hacve set in place programs to achieve,NOT once have they described the proposed characteristics of the New Global climate that will be so different from today’s Global Climate and how it will so much more beneficial to Life on Earth and in what way that they are endeavouring to achieve this through sacrificing so much of mankind’s technological and social progress achieved at such a great cost in treasure and lives over the last 5 centuries.
The whole cabal of today’s self serving climate alarmist scientists and their hallowed “consensus” are seemingly and almost universally utterly incapable of clearly articulating to us lay persons exactly what they are trying to achieve in the shape, form and characteristics, both major and minor, that they intend for the NEW “consensus” delivered Global Climate.
Like any project, major or minor, unless you have a reasonably clear definition of what you are trying to achieve and what your preffered end goal is and therfore what and how and when and with what instruments you intend to use to achieve that defined goal, you are doomed to failure.
Nowhere over the last two decades of watching climate alarmism, have I EVER seen anywhere a climate “alarmist” scientist who has written down and spoken about and been quoted on the shape and characteristics and advantages and disadvantages, both minor and major of the New Global Climate that the “consensus” scientists hope to achieve by their program of massive changes in our present global society that has been shaped by humanity’s entire social and technological advances of the last few centuries.
In this model, members of the public are assumed to have something to contribute
To finish for them: “but only in this case. The public are a bunch of useless idiots as we all know”.
Social scientists like these start with the assumption the climateers are right. This group sounds very ‘reasonable’ given the assumption. They suffer from selective hearing. They don’t hear that all serious, scientifically literate sceptics really want is a simple laydown of the real empirical evidence that indicates global warming to be an existential threat. Is that asking too much? Why would they withhold such evidence? They have no evidence. Hey, I like the climate, the greening, the big harvests- a good life could be had by all if trillions weren’t being thrown away that could otherwise be invested in the economy.
So foaming at the mouth hysterically isn’t working so they are putting on their “thinking caps”. Maybe if they just admitted they want totalitarian communism imposed on the globe some people would be attracted to their message. Reading their paper I’m not too worried about their thinking caps.
I’d be happy to make three gay wedding cakes a week and help them with some of their other ideas if they would let this desire to run the world on wind and solar go.
Is it not true that almost every scientific “consensus” in history
was eventually was found to be wrong,
ranging from slightly wrong, to completely wrong?
Not that wild guess predictions of the future climate have anything to do with real climate science,
especially after 30 years of grossly inaccurate predictions!
Predictions of the future are usually wrong.
Why should predictions of the future climate be different?
Especially since the causes of climate change are still open for debate,
except in the closed minds of the CO2 is Evil Cult.
Exactly. Or to look at it another way, every advance in science has come from those who disagree with the viewpoint that prevailed at the time. Never from those who “agreed” with the “consensus” viewpoint.
I agree with the scientists who disagree with the CAGW claptrap – because the scientists who disagree are correct. Even though the scientists who disagree may not have a pat explanation for whatever changes to the climate are currently occurring or have occurred in the past, the admission of their incomplete knowledge is at least a step forward in understanding, by way of continued seeking of knowledge via the scientific method. The “consensus” pseudo-scientists’ insistence that the answer is known while the predictions based on such supposed “knowledge” are repeatedly shown to be false is not going to advance the state of so-called “climate science” beyond that of religious dogma.
“Environmental Communication”
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This is the distinguishing feature of the modern climate cult.
The message has to be incessantly “communicated” to the public, and if they fail to believe it wholesale, the psychology department of Climate Incorporated gets mobilized to disparage and marginalize the doubting Thomases, using pseudoscientific psychoanalysis methylated with epithets.
No real branch of science works like that.
Your last sentence says it all.
Best description of the whole “climate change” BS story ever penned –
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” – H.L. Mencken