Climate Science, Media Coverage, and Climategate

The recent of coverage of Climategate, where emails from a leading United Kingdom climate research facility were hacked and released on the internet, has highlighted the miasmic links between media coverage, climate contrarians (sceptics and deniers), and public and government opinion.

Both in recent times and over the political history of climate change, climate contrarians (deniers and sceptics of anthropogenic climate change), have induced uncertainty in public discourse and national and international policy making. The mass media, in providing column space and airtime for sceptic voices, has been identified as actively contributing to this uncertainty, an uncertainty which is not reflected in the reality of climate science.

The exploitation of sound scientific practice.

The ‘debate’ over the existence of climate change, and its causation by human activity, has been settled unequivocally in scientific terms. The United Nation’s peak climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has continually upgraded its surety of both the existence of climatic change and of its anthropogenic causation over four ‘Assessment Reports’.

The latest report, from 2007, states that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” and that “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”

The IPCC, an organisation consisting 2500 of the world’s top climate scientists, from a range of disciplines, has employed a rigorous peer review and consensus driven process to ensure accurate representation of climatic science .This process is also politically mediated, in that non-scientific state-based actors are engaged in the creation of the final text in Assessment Reports.

Many commentators (for example, Jeremy Legget in The Carbon Wars and David Spratt and Philip Sutton in Climate Code Red) cite the involvement of state-based actors antagonistic to the scientific findings of the IPCC as diluting the publicly stated consensus. Additionally, leading scientists such as NASA’s James Hansen and the Potsdam Institute’s Hans Schellnuber see the IPCC’s findings as conservative.

Modern science is underpinned by the peer review, consensus agreement process. As it notionally eschews an attachment to absolute truths, continuous re-examination and experimentation is encouraged in the pursuit of increased surety. In the case of anthropogenic climate change ‘climate contrarians’ have exploited this process to massively amplify doubt that has for practical ends been eliminated.

Ian Plimer, a Professor of Geology at the University of Adelaide, provides an example of this exploitation by deniers and sceptics. Professor Plimer has been heavily criticised by many climate scientists for employing dubious statistical and other scientific techniques, and seriously misrepresenting the work of other scientists in his recent book Heaven and Earth: Global Warming the Missing Science.

Professor Barry Brook, the chief climate scientist at the same institution, characterised the book as “plausible to conspiracy theorists, perhaps, but hardly a sane world view, and insulting to all those genuinely committed to real science.” Professor Plimer”s (picture) farcical ‘offer’ to debate The Guardian’s George Monbiot didn’t appear to improve his credibility, although some media outlets, such as The Australian, have reported Monbiot as hiding from a debate. In reality Monbiot fronted Plimer and he bolted (Check out the evolution of the challenge at monbiot.com and realclimate.org).

‘Climate contrarians’ are a cohort who appear to consist primarily of non-qualified bloggers, scientists with links to industry at risk from climate change mitigation action (such as Plimer) right wing politicians and journalists (such as Senator Nick Minchin and News Limited’s Andrew Bolt) . They have become a highly visible and disproportionately influential voice in climate change discourse largely because of their legitimisation by the mass media.

The Mass Media Role In Destabilising Climate Change Discourse

The abstract nature of ecological crises, such as climate change, situates the media as the key facilitator of the representation of these issues to the public and as such, imbues the media with a responsibility in communicating information and creating public discourse.

A number of studies and commentators have identified the media’s role in undermining the consensus scientific view in public discourse. This has been attributed to several factors, with a primary causation identified in the conventions of journalistic practice. The influence of public relations practice on behalf of corporate interests that stand to lose significantly from action taken to mitigate climate change has also been identified as important. Not to harp on about Ian Plimer, but Sourcewatch has unearthed links to the Institute of Public Affairs, whose activities include the setting up of astroturfing groups such as Timber Communities Australia and the horribly misnamed Australian Environment Foundation (Don Burke’s last gig before taking on the role PR man and gardener at the world’s largest hardwood woodchipping company Gunns Limited).

It’s also difficult to ignore the potential influence of advertising revenue and the political inclinations of media owners which have been cited as influencing journalistic practice in other areas (such as Fourth Estate principles) in the economically and politically potent, and potentially costly, arena of climate change discourse. A cursory look (in the dark, with the lights out) at the behaviour of FOX in the U.S. would confirm this( and I’d suggest a look at The Daily Show – www.thedailyshow.com if you need convincing and a good laugh).

The exploitation of scientific process in order to present non-existent uncertainty on climate change can be (and often is) amplified through media practice. Max Boykoff, an Oxford based Geographer specialising in media and climate change coverage, in a study involving analysis of U.S. press articles, identifies numerous examples of the use of sceptic commentary which is disproportionate to its scientific relevance. This is echoed in the Australian media, with press outlets such as The Australian regularly featuring contrarian voices, including a small pool of sceptic academics (for example Bob Carter and Ian Plimer) and non-expert community members such as surf life savers and tour boat operators, in opposition to climate scientists.

Journalistic conventions, such as the way newsrooms works, who the boss is, or the dictates of news production often serve to scupper the fine intentions of journalists (or make it harder for the crap ones to do even passable work. or make it easier for dodgy ones to twist the truth). With climate change, the constant desire to frame conflict in news , and the use of sceptics to provide ‘balance’ has resulted in often horribly disfigured representations of climate science as an evenly contested climate science consensus.

Max Boykoff ascribes the use of balance in this context as facilitating the discursive and real political space for the US government to shirk responsibility and delay action regarding global warming. Or, in other words, sticking your head in the sand and hiding the rest of you behind a pile of Piers Akerman’s news clippings.

One recent media event serves as an exemplary demonstration of the role and power of the media in shaping climate change discourse and policy in the lead-up period to the COP15 the widely covered ‘Climategate’ affair.

Climategate: Media Coverage and Political Response

In late November, hackers released emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia(UAE), one of the worlds top climate research institutes, and home of a number of key contributors to the IPCC, which purportedly demonstrate purposeful manipulation of data by climate scientists to overstate global warming.

Media coverage from some quarters, including Australia and the U.S, appears to have heavily overstated the significance of what representatives of the UAE have called a deliberate attempt to undermine the strong consensus that human activity is affecting the world’s climate in ways that are potentially dangerous.” For example, FOX News commentator Dan Gainor has written The private e-mails showed potentially unethical or illegal behaviour and a possible conspiracy to distort science for political gain, while articles by The Australian have widely quoted sceptic bloggers.

In public statements the research unit targeted has said that “The selective publication of some stolen emails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way,”. Despite explanations by the research units director Phil Jones (who is standing aside pending an investigation) regarding his use of the word trick in an email regarding data analysis, and of the contents of other emails, some media commentators and sceptics have taken these as evidence of data manipulation by scientists.

The linkage between disproportionate media coverage of the disputation of anthropogenic climate change , and the impacts of such on the public arena have been clearly demonstrated in the Climategate situation. Several political actors have seized upon the issue in order to re-assert publicly their doubts regarding climate change, and in several cases this appears to have had significant political impacts.

In Australia, influential Liberal Senator Nick Minchin has cited the hacked emails as confirming his scepticism as his party has been involved in high level policy discussions over the legislating of an emissions trading scheme. Saudi Arabia’s chief negotiator at the COP15 has also used the emails to retreat from his nation’s recent acceptance of anthropogenic climate change, suggesting that the Copenhagen negotiations were now unnecessary.

Conservative politicians and other sceptics in the United States have also sought to use the emails to support calls for inquiries into the legitimacy of local climate research. Influential sections of the U.S. Media, such as FOX News, have also actively supported the conclusions drawn by climate contrarians. For example, John Lott claimed on FOXNews.com that the East Anglia scientists were brazenly discussing the destruction and hiding of data that did not support global warming claims, whilst also drawing linkages with the IPCC process and characterising the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report as ‘controversial’.

Republican politicians and climate sceptic bloggers have also tried to tie Obama’s Science Advisor John Holdren into the situation because one of the 1000’s of hacked emails was a(n apparently innocuous) communication to him.

It looks like Climategate is still getting a good run coming into COP15. Interesting timing to say the least. I’ll be keeping an eye on how sceptics and other actors are covered over COP15. If you want to see what’s going on and who’s saying what(as well as a few other bits and pieces) come and check out COPVoices at http://copvoices.blogspot.com/