Which one are you?
Stewart Brand — author of “The Whole Earth Catalog” and creator of the term “ecopragmatist” (of which he clearly is one) — had a piece in the New York Times a few days ago in which he identified four distinctly different attitudes toward climate change. I encourage you to read the piece, but here’s a quick summary of his classifications:
Denialists: There is absolutely, positively no human cause behind whatever warming has occurred (if there’s even warming at all).
Skeptics: OK, there might be some warming, but the science isn’t nailed down tight, other factors have been given short shrift, and there’s a whole lot of scare-mongering going on.
Warners: The climate is changing and we’re headed for eventual disaster if something isn’t done right now.
Calamatists: Mother Nature is going to kill us all, and we deserve it because humans are loathsome, greedy and self-indulgent.
Feel free to declare where you belong on this scale. I’ll go first. I’m a skeptic who errs on the side of the warners. The more I read about the assumptions and models that support Climate Theology (and there’s been a lot to read lately), the more skeptical I become. Science, like journalism, is supposed to be obsessed with truth — no matter how uncomfortable it may be, how much research funding it endangers or how many political beliefs it imperils. What we know now that we didn’t know a month ago is that key members of the climate-science community are done pretending that contrary scientific judgments have any place in their deliberations. To them, climate science is settled and from this point it’s just a political argument. Problem is, history is rich with moments when science was “settled” and disbelievers were considered to be a political problem. Things tended to not end well for them, as you may recall. Does the name Galileo ring a bell?
Still, the fact that we continue to debate the science is a good sign. And because my faith in modern research is greater than my belief that some of it has been corrupted, I give the warners the benefit of the doubt. It would surely be a good thing to stop the increase in carbon emissions, and reduce it if we can. Just don’t blow those carbon emissions up my skirt. I really hate that.
December 16th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
I tend toward “denialist” - which itself is a loaded term which presumes that you are denying something known to be true. Everyone agrees the climate can change. The question is whether it’s changing extremely rapidly and whether people are the cause.
True scientists should not be getting FOI requests and they sure as heck shouldn’t be fighting them. Nor should they be throwing away data. The burden of proof is on them not the other way around. They have not proven their case.
You should not have faith in modern research. I was a university faculty member for 14 years. “Researchers” are just like politicians - make any promise necessary to keep the gig. I saw the successful people do it again and again and it’s one of many reasons why I got out.
I was also the Editor in Chief of the premier technical journal in my field. Had I wanted to (I did not) pursue an agenda, I could have absolutely determined what got published and what did not.
I knew where the lines were drawn. Had I wanted to suppress one point of view and promote another, all I would have had to do would be to send the first to known hostile reviewers and the second to known sympathetic reviewers. All aboveboard, all “peer reviewed”. All bad science.
December 17th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
“Science, like journalism, is supposed to be obsessed with truth.”
I ask, in all seriousness, when has journalism ever been about the truth? I don’t mean this in any Left vs. Right manner (as it is true for both political shades).
Journalism is simply practiced agendaism. A study some time ago surveyed a lot of J-school students and found that by far their #1 motivation for becoming “journalists” was a desire to change the world and make it a better place.
Now, certainly this is a noble and (I believe) genuine sentiment. But it has nothing to do with journalism, truth, or any of the 4 “W’s”.
If you think Capitalism is bad, that the United States is the root of most of the evil in the world, that disinfranchised is the same as justified, that in order to create a more equitable and sustainable world culture an indirect approach is required that equates production with destruction, then that will be the slant in your reporting.
History, of course, is replete with examples.
Journalism is, in theory, the 4th estate, and democracy would be so well served if that were true. Sadly, however, it is not the case.
The best of intentions have no bearing on the quality of outcome.
December 21st, 2009 at 10:08 am
Dan,
A nice and nuanced description of your climate skepticism that is pretty close to my own view. For some reason, Claude Rains comes to mind. “I’m shocked, shocked that there’s less than pure practitioners of science and journalism in this place.” Jeez, ya think?