It is rare to read about the dangers of fluoride in the opinion pages of Australia’s mainstream newspapers, even though a small group of “fluoride sceptics” are convinced of the dangers to our health.
It is also rare to hear about the Rothschild banking conspiracy on radio, even though a committed group of people around the world have collected a wide range of “evidence” to support their view that the Rothschild family controls the world economy through strategic appointments to central banks.
But when it comes to climate science, however, the sceptics have done a great job of establishing doubt in the public mind, and an even better job of propagating their minority views in mainstream newspapers.
In his recent essay for The Monthly, Robert Manne provides a comprehensive account of the players, the tactics, and the timelines involved in shifting the political debate about climate change away from a heavy reliance on advice from organisations such as CSIRO and NASA and towards the views of individual bloggers and radio personalities.
Manne highlights the similarities between the strategies employed by the fossil-fuel industry in recent times and the tobacco industry 50 years ago. Both saw the creation of doubt as their product, and both have made a lot of money selling it. And while it is important to understand how they do it, for me, the question is: why do so many people buy it?
The environment movement in Australia failed spectacularly in its efforts to counter the climate sceptics. The decision to “starve them of oxygen” by refusing to engage was clearly unsuccessful. And the decision to focus instead on selling the details of a compromised policy response rather than selling the urgency of the need to act on climate change left the sceptics virtually free to roam uncontested across the Australian political landscape.
Many have argued that it is impossible to win a debate with climate sceptics. Any attempt, we are told, simply gives them a new forum to distribute their views. But the sceptics clearly didn’t need the involvement of the environment movement to make their voices heard.
The main problem appears to be that many of the non-scientists in the environment movement did a bad job of sounding like authoritative scientific voices. This was compounded by the fact that many of the authoritative climate science voices were unprepared for the personal and political vitriol that the sceptics were willing to throw at them.
But just because you are losing a fight doesn’t mean it can’t be won. Rather, it might mean you need to change strategy, tactics, personnel, or all of the above.
The strategic error that continues to haunt the environment movement is the decision to counter the sceptics’ message of “doubt” with a message of “certainty”. Such an approach was neither intellectually honest nor politically effective. It ignored the inconvenient truth that science is never “certain” and it placed the onus on the environment movement to have all of the answers, to all of the questions that the climate sceptics could think up. If you have ever seen a scientist try and explain the chronological dispersion of carbon isotopes in a 10-second news grab you will know what I am talking about.
Ironically, if those from the environment movement had themselves embraced the product of doubt they could have taken the sceptics head-on without legitimising the sceptics’ often bizarre theories.
As Manne makes clear, the fossil fuel industry has spent a small fortune funding climate sceptics, yet those same sceptics succeeded, in the minds of many, in casting doubt on the independence of government-funded scientists. The environment groups should have focused on creating doubt about the independence of the sceptics.
Similarly, the reason that the sceptics focused on creating doubt is that most people are inherently cautious. That caution should have been the environment movement’s strongest asset. Most people insure their homes against the unlikely risk of fire, most people are happy to “waste” money insuring cars they don’t crash.
Australians are a conservative people who, if told about the small cost of insuring against a risk, compared with the enormous cost of experiencing the risk, are prone to insure. But instead of working to make the population doubt the motives and credentials of the sceptics, the environment movement instead tried to provide “certainty”. What a disaster.
In 2007, John Howard and Kevin Rudd accepted the science of climate change and the need to introduce an emissions trading scheme. Since then, the debate has gone backwards fast. Manne’s article provides a unique insight into how the sceptics fought their battle, but the examination of how the environment movement lost theirs is yet to be told.
Richard, you say that environmental groups should have attacked the independence of the astroturf groups and think tanks. Okay, I agree. But this already happens, and it doesn’t solve the problem of the embedded nature of many of these think tanks in our national conversation, or the ongoing incentives which exist to ensure there is an inexhaustible and interchangeable supply of hacks.
You prescription does not seem apt for the fundamental issue of scientific communication either. It is not the job of scientists to be attacking the political motives of their interlocutors, and frankly, they are not very effective at it.
Real scientists are typically loath to use strident language – though they have become increasingly driven to it by dint of frustration at the pattern of dishonesty. More often, they follow the charitable principle, deal with the substance and use the proper caveated language to present the lines of evidence in a probabilistic manner. That is proper, but it is entirely inadequate when denialists are given an unfettered platform to shout polemic, junk science and conspiracy theories about grant funding and world government. The goal posts are so far apart that the low information voter will see the truth in the middle of nowhere.
Personally, I think the issue may be potentially insoluble as it points at the failure of the press and the marketplace of ideas (as it pertains to popular consciousness) in its current evolution. We can only hope that better education about science and critical thinking will continue to defy the propaganda.
A few things are clear to me, however. There needed to be a properly, concerted effort to explain to the public the centrality of peer referees and review to scientific discourse, and specifically, how peer review over time and meta studies reveal the best enduring picture of the science. This needed to be firmly contrasted with the irrelevance of op-eds and non peer-reviewed books – especially by people who were not remotely engaged in the peer review process.
The only way to beat The big Lie is with The Big Truth. The climate scientists and those who accept the scientific majority hsve been back-footed by believing that the truth is enough. It’s not.
If Alan Jones or Lord what’s his name come out and say “It’s all bullshit?!” science has to scurry along after and say “no it’s not!” No it’s not will always be on the back foot.
They have to get out there and begin a campaign of facts – then the loonies will be back footed by having to gainsay.
Don’t attack, scientists, just hit ’em with a relentless barrage of facts and truth.
If Hansen’s latest paper, covering the impact of climate change on extreme
weather patterns has the same reliability and validity that he has shown in his work
since the ninety eighties in othe papers, then I suspect that weather
patterns are going to debunk the sceptics arguments at faster rate
than the political cycle.
Unfortunately, I think the experience of a couple more Yasi Mk2’s may
be the catalyst to change the direction of the debate and the acceptance of science’s
projections in the general populaces mind, on our CO2e emissions and
indiscrimant plundering of the planets oceans and resources.
Thanks for your work Richard
You argue “The environment movement in Australia failed spectacularly in it efforts to counter the climate sceptics. The decision to ‘starve them of oxygen’ by refusing to engage was unsuccessful.”
But a beat later you state that “the skeptics didn’t need the involvement of the environment movement to make their voices heard.” And that is quite right: freedom of expression and the vector of internet sites which moderate out corrective comment and dissent guarantees them exposure. The environment movement did not disengage with ‘skeptics’ despite entertaining that idea. Instead, ‘skeptics’ refused to engage with science despite their own claims,and simply reject or censor dissent in media under their control.
It has to be understood that most of those turning their backs on climate science’s findings are not skeptics in any real sense.They are rejectionists with clearly stated ideological convictions and their own imaginary ‘science’,full of contradictory positions-it’s the sun/it’s cosmic rays/it’s natural variation/it’s scientific scamming/corruption of observations,etc.- to which they are deliberately or otherwise oblivious. Debate with rejectionists is pointless.
Don’t call them ‘skeptics’: you are falling for the framing,not the clear reality. And the ‘battle’ is not lost ,it simply will take much time:persuading people of the need for major economic rethinking and behavioral change is plainly difficult. Scientists anticipated this in many discussions last century.
If it’s a negative for the Left, “Murdoch” and the rest of the conservative controlled media will promote it – and the less well resourced will reflect it.