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Why it's time to stop talking to the climate sceptics
It is fair to say that talk radio is never going to be the forum for the most nuanced debate on green issues, but after appearing on London's LBC 97.3 last Sunday to discuss the business case for environmental action I was still taken aback at the refusal of many to even accept the possibility that climate change is real and that perhaps we should do something about it.
Every conspiracy theory going was voiced during an hour that saw me fielding questions from the host James Max and members of the public, all of which pretty much boiled down to "there's no such thing as global warming, is there?".
There was the suggestion that scientists have made it all up to protect their "lucrative" funding, that green taxes are just a ruse to make more money, that sunspots are responsible for global warming and that only a few decades ago we were worried about global cooling.
There was also my personal favourite from a woman called Joan who rung in to say there was nothing to worry about because as it gets warmer she'll be able to grow oranges and lemons in her garden.
The problem is how you even begin to engage with these views when the person you are talking to will countenance neither scientific evidence nor logical reasoning.
Consequently, my suggestion that the scientific funding available to research manmade climate change is dwarfed by the financial gains available to those who can prove the opposite were pretty much ignored.
As was the fact that the proportion of tax revenue coming from green taxes has fallen in the UK over the last decade and the fact that sunspots and the post war period of cooling have both been fully accounted by the vast majority of climate scientists who are certain we now face a global catastrophe of unprecedented scale.
As for Joan, the fact that a couple of degree increase in average temperatures would mean drought and catastrophe in other parts of the world was rejected on the grounds that "lots of part of the world are cold". While the argument that the flip side of orange groves in our gardens would be more frequent water shortages and fatal heat waves was dismissed with the rather glorious non sequitur "we had heat waves when I was girl".
So what do you do when the normal rules of debate are temporarily revoked by individuals who refuse to recognise concepts such as evidence and logic? How do you argue with an assertion that climate change is not happening based on nothing more than a belief that it is not happening? And what should businesses do with customers and employees who continue to cling to these views?
I'm increasingly coming round to the view that the answer is to just ignore them.
As I quickly realised last night you are never going to change their mind, on the simple basis that belief will trump evidence every single time. Attempting to engage in a debate is a pointless exercise that will only leave those armed with genuine peer-reviewed scientific evidence or basic principles of risk mitigation feeling extremely frustrated.
Instead the best option when faced with the belief that manmade climate change is not happening is to steal a move from the sceptics play book and reframe the debate.
The fact is that most of the changes required to deliver a low carbon economy make sense with or without climate change.
For example, Joan might not care about the environment, but she is likely to care about her energy bills and would welcome ways to cut them. For businesses this cost argument is even harder to dismiss given soaring energy prices and growing concerns over supply security.
Even GM's Bob Lutz has grown to accept the logic of this argument, dismissing climate change as a "crock of shit" but insisting GM's Volt electric vehicle is still needed to help wean the US off of increasingly expensive foreign oil.
Meanwhile, business leaders who are sceptical about climate change still have to accept and address the commercial, cost and legislative risks associated with being a carbon intensive business even if they think the customers and politicians imposing these new green demands and laws are just plain wrong.
Because more people understand good basic business sense than understand climate science, sceptics will find these arguments in favour of action far harder to dismiss than they do UN climate reports.
And if you can convince enough of them to start to reduce their energy use through these basic business arguments it may be possible to encourage even the most sceptical firms and customers to make progress towards cutting their carbon footprint even while we wait impatiently for the last of the climate change denying dinosaurs to finally die out.
It's even worse than you say, James. The conspiracy mongering has gone far beyond talk about sunspots and solar minima. Now they are claiming that a full-blown ice age is coming no matter what humans do.
They are saying it is out of the hands of the IPCC! They are saying that all the environmental organizations in the world cannot stop disastrous cooling! They are saying that doubling the carbon dioxide level can not stop it and not even halving the co2 level could stop it!
They are trying to make those of us working to stop global warming to look ridiculous and impotent. I will not stand for it. I agree, we will ignore these kooks, and teach them the lesson they deserve.
Posted by :Sven Olson | February 26, 2008 4:35 PM
We may have some conspiracies of our own, but global warming activists are not without theirs. You have put yourselves into a win-win situation. More hurricanes? It's because of global warming. Less hurricanes? It's because of global warming. A heat-wave in the summer: global warming. Massive snowstorms in the winter: global warming. It’s hard to believe in a cause when the facts are always changing.
I love a clean environment and I’m tired of the brown cloud that hovers around my city. I'm glad we're taking steps to reduce our "carbon footprint", but I think the panic that many people have gone into is unwarranted. History has shown that our sun and therefore our planet will go through cycles, with or without humans around. So yes, there is nothing we can really do about it except wait it out, help anyone who is affected by any changes, and let Joan (of whom I’m sure cares about the environment in her own way) plant her oranges. The panic is unnecessary. We will survive.
Posted by :Denying Dinosaur and Kook | February 26, 2008 5:19 PM
"There was the suggestion that scientists have made it all up to protect their "lucrative" funding, that green taxes are just a ruse to make more money, that sunspots are responsible for global warming and that only a few decades ago we were worried about global cooling."
Nice summary, got it in one.
Posted by :harbinger | February 27, 2008 12:50 AM
If you cared to really research actual facts, and not just make guesses based on short-term trends that sort of correlate, you would, yourself, be a skeptic of man-made climate change. I dare to say that I too once believed this fallacy until I researched the actual heat received by the Earth from the sun, as measured at the surface and from satellites. The facts actually do support the side of the argument that says the Earth's climate is completely regulated by the Sun, and the Sun alone. If I were you, what I would do is to attempt to find facts to prove each point of the man-made global warming skeptics to be wrong. You will find this task to be daunting, and impossible, as I did.
Posted by :Fred | February 27, 2008 3:54 AM
The problem may be the venue as much as the topic. I had a chuckle over some of your experiences. And I fear that if you were to do the same thing on this side of the Atlantic, your experiences might be worse. Nevertheless, I think there are two sides to the argument. Though I am personally convinced that global temperature rise has been a reality from 1972 to 2002 at least, I think there are still many environmental controversies that need to be resolved, including the magnitude and derivative of CO2-induced warming, and whether other factors might also contribute. The sunspot theory is currently regarded as a fringe theory, but if the current cooling trends continue perhaps we might think about that some more. I would also think it might be useful to consider data from the NCDC which shows a several year cooling trend in the oceans since 2002 while land surface temperatures have increased over the same period (why is that?), the predominance of warming in the northern hemisphere compared to the southern hemisphere, warming in the polar regions more so than the equatorial regions (and then, more so in the winter than the summer). All in all I think that the climatological health of the planet is a rather complex problem, and there is no shortage of qualified climatologists willing to discuss these issues and their implications for the future. On the other hand if you limit yourself to fielding questions from the public at large, God help you!
Posted by :Elliot Kennel | February 27, 2008 8:23 AM
People like Joan just don't care about the rest of the world so there's no point in trying to convince them.
Unless a major tipping point such as methane hydrates is going to happen soon there is a more important reason to urgently get off fossil fuel.
The reason is that oil production has peaked and will soon go into decline. When supply cannot keep up with demand then prices will go sky high, $100 a barrel will seem cheap. Natural gas is finite and prices quickly follow oil so expect further price increases with coal just behind. Dirty coal will be used instead of gas for electricity.
The real problem is not whether oil costs $100 or $200 or $300 but what happens when it cannot readily be bought in the market at any price. Oil underpins the whole of our society, agriculture, transport, mining, plastics.... Without it society could collapse if we delay any longer.
We need urgent action on the scale of World War 2 to break our addiction to fossil fuel. This needs to happen now but unfortunately our political leaders are only concerned about their time in office e.g. why does it take a whole year for Brown to ban plastic bags?
Here are some easy steps:
Ban incandescent lights with a three month period.
Ban sales of new cars over 300 g/km with a three month period with a plan to reduce this further each year. Say 250 by the following year, then 200 the next and so on.
Electrify all rail – do not order new diesel engines.
Simplify planning permission for renewable generators and encourage renewable generators.
For all new building ensure they are fully self sufficient for heating, e.g. insulated to German “PassivHaus” standards.
Apply a tax on electrical devices over their working life that covers the cost of offsetting the electricity/CO2 down to the level of A+ or A performing devices. This will encourage people to buy A class devices since now people often tend to just look at the initial price and others who have no interest in the running costs just the up-front costs e.g. landlords, builders.
Make all consumer goods have a 20 year life span and built to be repaired not thrown away.
Posted by :tonyw | February 29, 2008 2:18 PM
I agree with tonyw although, I know none of that will happen under our current leaders because all the things he's suggesting affect the manufacturers and producers rather than the consumers. It is okay to make Joe Schmoe pay extra taxes on the products and services that they buy, but NOT okay to make Sony, Samsung et al pay for the damage their products have done and will continue to do!
These days, I do have to just walk away from people who use those ridiculous arguments like sunspots/natural rhythms of the earth. Yes, those things all effect the earth's temperature, but none of them can cause the Permafrost to start thawing.
However, I do agree that Green taxes are just a ruse to wring even more money out of the public. The London Congestion Charge, for example, was supposedly introduced to cut the amount of traffic in central London. It didn't. Then we were told that it would cut the volume of CO2 being released (because low emission cars are exempt). It didn't. It's just another way for our government to squeeze even more money out of its citizens while keeping up the pretense of caring about them and the environment!
Posted by :TashaL | March 25, 2008 5:11 PM