A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, entitled “Expertise and Credibility in Climate Change,” reports the results of an analysis of the expertise of climate scientists. The results are not particularly surprising:
1) Among scholars who publish regularly on climate, an overwhelming majority accept anthropogenic global warming.
2) Most of the scholars who contest anthropogenic global warming have a less credible scientific record than those who accept.
While this should not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the debate on climate science, I doubt it will convince the skeptical public. The reason is that in addition to the most obvious interpretation of these facts — scientific expertise leads individual scholars to accept the strong evidence for climate change — alternative theories may resonate with skeptics:
1) Perhaps skeptics are systematically not allowed to publish in journals, so that they seem less experienced than other scholars?
2) Perhaps the public pressure to accept anthropogenic global warming is particularly heavy among top scientists?
3) Perhaps the authors of the study are themselves supporters of anthropogenic global warming, and thus use data selectively to make their case?
This brings us to the deeper problem with climate science and the media: it does not matter much how credible the evidence for climate change is, as long as influential special interests continue to benefit from contesting it. Almost any fact regarding the credibility of climate science can be explained away using a conspiracy theory, and individuals who are already inclined towards rejecting science are probably also inclined towards accepting such conspiracy theories. Thus, deeper institutional changes may be necessary to improve the public understanding of climate science.
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June 22, 2010 at 7:11 pm
NW Sheffield News
Over 32,000 US scientists signed a public petition last year stating that global warming is bunkum. A subjective, skewed “recent study” is merely propaganda.
June 23, 2010 at 12:55 am
Johannes Urpelainen
Thanks for your comment. I would note, though, that the signatories of that petition are mostly not scientists (the only requirement is that you have a Bachelor’s degree: http://www.petitionproject.org/). By that criterion, I could probably find 100,000 “scientists” from my native Finland (population five million) who would sign a petition supporting basic climate science. And even the 9,000 PhD’s who have signed the petition did not have to present evidence of actual scientific publications on climate change in refereed journals. I am not sure how good the PNAS study is, but the petition with 32,000 signatories is off the mark.
July 17, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Kim Andersen
I find the last paragraph very interesting of several reasons. First of all you implicitly stresses the problem of honest debate. Second and equally important we live in a society were people are split up in “tribes believing in different philosophies”.
1) The German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, talked about the deliberation of the people. As long as we cannot have honest debates, we cannot make the right decisions. We cannot question the assumptions. When this is impossible we end up in situations were less sound climate sceptics win over scientific argumentation (or perhaps vice versa).
2) Maffesoli stresses the point of neotribalism as a situation where people exist in tribes, and with the social websites of today, do not communicate with other people. This has an effect on the quality of the debate. Imagine Facebook groups where sceptics discuss and the opposite. What really happens is that people are agreeing with each other.
Both cases prevent progress which will help us make the right decisions. This is a problem when the issue is climate change. Hence my argument is that there must be room for everyone, because this will give credence to those argument that has the best foundations. The alternative is faulty democracies. Several political scientists have stressed the importance of not only voting as a defining character of democracy, but also debates and knowledge (see Larry Diamond).