How fear of bias dominates the climate change debate
Climate sceptics say they want science free of politics, yet their campaigning frames discussion
Climate change science has had a turbulent year. The media and blogosphere feeding-frenzy after the release of researchers' emails, dubbed "climategate", and the revelation of an embarrassing error in an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, unnerved many. Yet, as official investigations concluded that there is no conspiracyby researchers, the published results are robust, and the IPCC sometimes struggles because it employs only a handful of people, controversy has receded. So, responses to the first major post-climategate science story, that a weaker sun may actually warm the Earth's surface, the opposite of what has been accepted until now, can help us understand the legacy of the attacks on climate science.
For scientists, it is business as usual. Far from the often alleged conspiracy that scientists ignore the sun and focus only on carbon dioxide in relation to Earth's temperature, the new results use satellite data to show that in the current solar cycle, declining activity is unexpectedly coupled with an increase in radiation in the visible wavelength, which warms the Earth. Furthermore, despite the paucity of data – only three years' worth from an 11-year solar cycle – this radical challenge to convention was published in the elite journal Nature, because science thrives on novelty and careers are made by being the first with an idea that survives scrutiny. This neatly illustrates why no scientist would hide controversial data.
For the media it is back to business as usual too. The broadsheets andBBC website published careful and informative pieces. The Mail andExpress badly mangled the story, with the former running the headlineGlobal warming theory in chaos, even though the lead scientist, Prof Joannah Haigh, explained that the limited impact of solar cycles on Earth's temperature means any reversal of its effects does not put in doubt the climate impacts of carbon dioxide.
Nevertheless, despite scientists and journalists doing their usual jobs, there was a clear post-climategate shift. Both groups stuctured their reporting of the research around guessing what climate sceptics would think about the results. The news reports pre-empted and commented on what the sceptics may think, while the scientists quoted all countered the view that the results may assist sceptics. The scientists and journalists had all internalised the sceptics' narrative.
This shift is a result of the long-running sceptics' campaign. A similar change occurred last month at the Royal Society. Two members of Lord Lawson's sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation lobbied the Royal Society to update its short guide to climate science for the public. Their goal was not to alter the scientific conclusions, as the previous guide was accurate. Their aim was to reframe the advice. The old guide was written as short, clear answers to a series of common arguments made by climate contrarians. The new advice is no longer in such a useful form for the public. The science is the same, but Lawson's gang have politicised its presentation. Prominent sceptics, like Lawson, say they want science free of politics, yet their campaigning has brought about exactly the opposite.
What's to be done? First, acknowledge that many of us, especially researchers and committed science journalists who fear accusations of bias, have internalised the sceptics' conspiracy-laden worldview. Second, we all need to avoid playing along with their agenda, by carefully explaining scientific results to avoid the inevitable contrarian wilful misinterpretations, without name-checking "the sceptics" as a group. We don't accept vocal fringe groups such as creationists framing the reporting of evolution, and likewise, we should actively avoid letting fringe ideological convictions frame public discussions of climate change science.
• Simon Lewis is a Royal Society research fellow at the Earth & Biosphere Institute at the University of Leeds
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