‘An honest reckoning’ for climate discourse
I’m not holding it together very well today. Natural personal sensitivities aside, I’ve this morning read James Risbey’s excellent paper: “The new climate discourse: Alarmist or alarming?” published in the peer-reviewed Global Environmental Change, (Issue 18: 2008, pages 26-37). It is, well, alarming.
A quick summary. The papers asks: is the discourse that talks of climate change as ‘catastrophic’, ‘rapid’, ‘irreversible’, ‘worse than we thought’ etc. either alarmist rhetoric, or is it in line with the actual science? Risbey’s analysis finds that these terms, used by NGOs, green activists, politicians and scientific spokespersons to urge for action (and reported in the media as such), are not exaggerated rhetoric or over-the-top; they are in fact in line with scientific consensus. It is worth taking one example in some detail.
One question that Risbey asks is: ‘is it worse than we thought?’ and here is a snaposhot of the scientific reports on which he assesses this claim:
Sea level rise has been increasing at the very top of the range of projections, so it is ‘worse’ (higher) than our (IPCC) best guess expectations (Overpeck et al., 2006; Rahmstorf et al.,2007)… Heightened concerns that dynamical processes could drive much more rapid breakdown of the ice sheets than simple surface melting are bolstered by recent observations. Luthcke et al. (2006) present results to suggest that loss processes associated with glacier acceleration and melting of Greenland’s ice now exceed the gains due to increased snowfall over the interior. Though this result is not unexpected, it was not expected this early in the warming process (Alley et al., 2005). Similarly, paleo-research on sea level rises associated with past warming periods shows some rates of change that are much faster than current projections (Overpeck et al., 2006). Finally, projections of sea level rise based on empirical sea-level/temperature relationships also project faster rates of rise for the 21st century than IPCC estimates (Rahmstorf, 2007)…
Risbey concludes, “while views of whether climate change is ‘worse than we thought’ are invariably mixed, for the key indicators of sea level rise measurements and projected rates of change of sea level rise… it is not overstating the case to say that the problem is worse than the community thought it was just a few years ago.” (Risbey, 2008)
The language of Climate Change matters
As Risbey states, it is not just a matter of semantics. Language matters. Enough for “some pro-fossil fuel lobby groups, who use the language of uncertainty and charges of alarmism to delay policies” (Risbey, 2008, referencing Luntz 2003; Karp 2006).
As such, this was an important piece of research carried out by Risbey, because it is extremely useful in tackling the arguments made by those who are using the ‘alarmist’ card to delay action. A recent comment by Mark Seall at TalkClimateChange mentions that, in some cases, it is not the number of skeptics that quieten the voices of alarm, it is the quality of their argument, from which the ‘greens’ retreat.
And more: those using the ‘alarmist’ argument are not only skeptics, but journalists and scientists of ‘the middle ground’. Risbey was responding to a claim made by Andy Revkin, writing in the NYTimes.com, that there is an “invisible middle” of climate scientists who believe alarmism is taking hold.
A personal experience: just yesterday before reading Risbey’s document, I posted comments to Revkin’s NYTimes.com DotEarth blog, claiming he was committing ‘informational bias’ in providing publishing space to those who believed the voices of ‘alarm’ were ‘alarmist’. These comments were rejected. When I enquired why (they were not abusive; they were on topic) again, no response.
However, this anecdote aside, Risbey was more focusedly responding to an article by the climatologist Mike Hume, who claims that the ‘climate of fear’ created by such rhetoric is out of step with and overexaggerates the scientific concensus. This was argued in a peer-review article “Conquering the climate” and popularized in an article for the BBC news website.
Mike Hume is a respected scientist working at the respected School of Environmental Science, UEA, Norwich and Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He is not a ’sceptic’ or denialist of the fact of climate change, but has three arguments against what he sees as ‘value-laden’ rhetoric. He sees the discourse of catastrophe as:
- a campaigning device being mobilised in the context of failing UK and Kyoto Protocol targets to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.
- a political and rhetorical device to change the frame of reference for the emerging negotiations around what happens when the Kyoto Protocol runs out after 2012.
- allowing some space for the retrenchment of science budgets, implying that one more “big push” of funding will allow science to quantify them objectively.
Is it the language of science?
Hume’s argument is that “the IPCC scenarios of future climate change - warming somewhere between 1.4 and 5.8 Celsius by 2100 - are significant enough without invoking catastrophe and chaos as unguided weapons with which forlornly to threaten society into behavioural change.” That is, ‘catastrophe’ is not the language of science, it won’t be found in the IPCC reports, and it either leads to inaction, through fear or denial, or confuses people to the real state of affairs, when even the scientists can’t agree…
But Risbey’s anaylsis puts this one to bed. Of course taking generic statements (’is it worse than we thought?’) and analysing their ‘meaning’ through specific examples is a subjective analysis; one which Risbey clearly identifies as such, and qualifies that his analysis “rests on the strength of the arguments” (Risbey, 2008).But it is a fascinating and, I believe, strong argument, that shows that, in disagreement with Hume, that ‘catastrophe’ can be the language of science.
But does it effect (behavioural) change?
This is key.
I do in some degree agree with Hume when he argues in his BBC article that “[t]he language of fear and terror operates as an ever-weakening vehicle for effective communication or inducement for behavioural change”. This is also a point picked up by Risbey, who notes Hume’s comments and states that “fear on its own is a poor motivator for change”. However, as Risbey continues:
the critical factor is not the threat itself (fear), but whether it is conveyed in a credible and trustworthy way, along with credible, effective, and fair means of redress. (Risbey, 2008)
Where the NYTimes’ Revkin may have got it right is the focus on the energy agenda. This is where Risbey’s paper also leads the debate. If we need to emit less greenhouse gas (CO2, methane etc) then we need to consume less energy (and also meat, but that’s a different post). An interesting recent article on changes in UK consumer behaviour on energy consumption and the UK’s Energy Efficiency Commitment (EEC) do suggest that regulation and policy can be used to effect change, but it is likely to be conservative action, with therefore conservative results:
Despite the fact that the evidence on behavioural change measures is still in its infancy, our results show that behavioural measures could be included in the next phase of the UK’s Energy Efficiency Commitment (EEC)… [However] since the existing evidence on the energy savings from behavioural measures is relatively weak, a rather conservative approach may be required to begin with. (Mari Martiskainen, Sussex Energy Group, SPRU, University of Sussex, 2007)
Where else are behavioural changes being seen? In the plans for the UK’s eco-towns, for example. Or people and communities taking action for themselves and creating towns for transition from a high to a low carbon community.
So what is the path to global, structural behavioural change?
But as the author of this paper admits, instigating behavioural change, while not impossible (think of how quickly Gerald Ratner changed the behaviour of the jewellery-buying public, or, closer to the issue, the change in consumer behaviour in purchasing organic produced food) is, when relating to energy use, structurally very complex. I believe neuroscience and advertising are going to come into play here in the future, but again, that’s for another post.
Risbey quotes the work of Ereaut and Segnit (2006) who have identified three threads of discourse in the UK: “alarmism” (discussed), “settlerdom” (there’s nothing to do) and “small actions” (recylcing’s enough), all of which “in their own way, foster inaction (through fear, dismissal, or by trivialising the issue, respectively)” (Risbey, 2008).
Risbey then leads us on to the emergence of a fourth thread, which:
sees climate change as alarming if action is not taken soon. In this view, climate change looms large, but there is still time to take actions to avert larger changes… This discourse recognizes both the possibility of large climate change and the means of preventing it. The discourse is ‘‘alarming’’ in that it sounds an alarm to alert the public to the need to change course.
An example would be George Monbiot’s Guardian columns and his book Heat where, the dust jacket claims, Monbiot “demonstrates that we can achieve the necessary cut - a 90% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 - without bringing civilisation to an end.”
Conclusion
I agree with Norman Fairclough when he says “wider processes of social change can be seen as starting from change in discourse” (Fairclough 2005).
We can’t rely on conservative political changes to maybe, perhaps affect behaviour; we require large, positive and immediate wholesale structural changes to our energy consumption. This can only come from governments on the supra-national stage.
The discourse of uncertainty is no longer an option: both because it does not ‘fit’ the scientific consensus, nor do we have the time. Whether or not the language of ‘catastrophe’ is a suitable replacement or rhetorical device is still to be seen.
I believe Risbey’s call for an ‘honest reckoning’ of the science will, finally, be the selection of a “discourse that sets the appropriate course” to action for real, effective behavioural change on this alarming crisis.
References:
Fairclough, N., (2005). Critical Discourse Analysis. Marges Linguistiques, 9 (2005), p.76-94.
Risbey, J., (2008). The new climate discourse: Alarmist of alarming? Global Environmental Change, 18 (2008), p.26-37.
