Chill out: Scientists are getting a little too angry for their own good
In response to political attacks, some climate researchers are arguing for an "aggressively partisan approach" — a strategy that is likely to backfire.
—A version of this article was published by Slate magazine on March 18, 2010.
Climate scientists are getting a little too hot as Congress continues to struggle toward new energy legislation. Significant attacks from global-warming skeptics — including last year’s Climategate affair and unfair accusations stemming from the subsequent discovery of errors in the latest IPCC report — have left those in the research community understandably angry.
Having spent eight years calling attention to the politicization of climate science by the Bush administration, they now find themselves on the other end of the same allegations.
Whatever raw emotions this reversal might produce were displayed a couple of weeks ago in yet another series of leaked emails. This time, members of the prestigious National Academies of Sciences complained to one another about the climate skeptics' “neo-McCarthyism.”
They lamented that “science is getting creamed with no effective response.” One researcher called for “a relentless rain of science and scientific dialog on the incredible, destructive demagoguery.” Another participant urged an “aggressively partisan approach.”
The latest batch of e-mails reflects a bunker mentality among climate scientists, forged during the Bush administration and reinforced by the recent attacks on their credibility. Despite the promise of an Obama presidency, many now see themselves losing a “war” against “anti-science” forces allied with energy companies and the Republican Party.
Meanwhile, scientists have been urged by liberal strategists and commentators to “fight back”— by forming political action committees and openly supporting “pro-science” candidates, among other things.
But urgent calls to escalate the war against climate skeptics may lead scientists and their organizations into a dangerous trap, fueling further political disagreement while risking public trust in science.
Rather than becoming more political and aggressive on the national stage — scientists should seek opportunities for public interaction, dialogue, and partnerships in communities nationwide.
The problem starts when scientists overestimate the influence of climate skeptics. When legislation and international treaties fail, and polls show a decrease in public concern about the environment, the “climate deniers” take the blame.
Yet the efforts of James Inhofe, Glenn Beck, et al. represent just a few of several factors shaping public doubt and policy inaction. More important, perhaps, are the poor state of the economy, competition for political attention from the health care debate, and confusion over colder weather.
We’re also faced with a widespread distrust of government that makes explaining complex cap-and-trade proposals much more difficult. And it doesn’t help that long-standing rules in Congress allow individual members to block substantive legislation.
Given these factors, it’s unsurprising that communication researchers, including me, have doubts about Climategate's relative impact on public opinion.
An analysis by Stanford University’s Jon Krosnick estimates that between 2008 and the end of November 2009, belief in global warming dropped just five points, from 80 percent to 75 percent.
Other surveys find a more substantial downward shift over the same period, but teasing out the causal influence of last year’s hacked e-mails remains a question that will be debated in academic journals for some time.
A small minority of Americans were likely to have paid attention to news and discussion of the event, argues Krosnick, and even fewer would have changed their long-standing views based on a single event. As he summarized in a March 2010 news release about his analysis:
The scientific community is overreacting to these events. In theory, it is possible that public regard for climate scientists has dropped sharply since our 2009 survey. But based on my 30 years of experience in this field, that’s very unlikely, because American public opinion, even on a highly publicized and frequently debated issue, changes very, very slowly. So in a two-month period, it’s unlikely that there would be a dramatic change. My guest is that relatively few Americans are aware of the media controversy or are paying attention to it, and even fewer are influenced by it.
Consider that a Pew survey from December indicated that just 17 percent of Americans reported reading or hearing “a lot” about the leaked e-mail scandal. In comparison, during the same month, more than half said they had read or heard a lot about Afghanistan and the healthcare debate.
If communication researchers have trouble establishing clear evidence of Climategate's impact on public opinion, what explains the apparent overreaction by scientists and their bunker mentality?
Past research shows that individuals more heavily involved in an issue, such as climate scientists, often view even objectively favorable media coverage as hostile to their goals. They also tend to presume exaggerated effects for a message on the public and will take action based on this presumed influence.
The call to arms that “science is getting creamed” and that an “aggressively partisan approach” is needed are examples of how these common miscalculations about the media have colored the outlook of climate scientists.
Scientists are also susceptible to the biases of their political ideology, which surveys show leans heavily liberal. Ideology shapes how scientists evaluate policy options and interpret who or what is to blame for policy failures.
Given their liberal outlook and environmental values, scientists likely find it difficult to understand why so many Americans have reservations about complex policies that impose costs on consumers without offering clearly defined benefits.
Compounding matters, scientists, like the rest of us, tend to gravitate toward like-minded sources in the media. Given their background, they focus on screeds from liberal commentators, which reinforce a false sense of a “war” against the scientific community.
The scientists seem to believe they can prevail by explaining the basis of climate change in more persuasive terms while asserting the partisan motives of “climate deniers.” This has been the strategy since the early days of the Bush administration.
Yet for many among the public, more than a decade of claims about a “war on science” have likely been ignored as just more elite rancor, reflecting an endless cycle of technical disputes and tit-for-tat name-calling.
Instead, scientists should focus on strategies that transcend the ideological divide rather than strengthen it. Most importantly, snarling, finger-in-the-eye responses to science critics risk alienating the more than one-third of Americans who remain ambivalent about climate change.
To be sure, there is a need for effective communication, but rather than exaggerate the problem of an allegedly hostile American public — scientists need to wake up to the fact that they continue to enjoy almost unrivaled trust and communication capital.
Consider that a recent Yale/George Mason University survey finds 74 percent of Americans trust scientists as a source of information about climate change. Though this figure is down slightly since 2008, scientists still outrank every other societal group or political figure on the trust index by a wide margin.
The numbers hold even among groups that might seem most antagonistic to science: A recent analysis (conducted by me and several colleagues) found that 77 percent of evangelicals under 35 trust scientists as a source of information about global warming.
Climate skeptics hope to erode this trust by drawing scientists out into the open of political debate. Instead of going on the counterattack, scientists and their organizations should employ their communication capital by partnering with opinion leaders from other sectors of society and engaging with local communities through public meetings and social media.
By creating a public dialogue on climate change in cities and towns across the country, they can make the issue more personally relevant without getting mired in ideological differences.
In these contexts, scientists and their community partners can discuss climate change as more than an environmental problem. They can frame the issue in relation to national security, religion, public health, or economics, and emphasize policies that would lead to societal benefits rather than sacrifice and hardship.
Here’s the best part: These partnerships with opinion leaders, from clergy to CEOs, would do far more than educate the public — they would educate scientists, too.
By getting out of the lab and away from their echo chamber of like-minded views about climate politics, researchers would learn how other people view climate change, and what should and can be done about it. Ultimately, scientists are better off as community-based diplomats than cable news and blogosphere culture warriors.