The debate rages on about whether the science is ‘clear’ on climate, and whether the errors that have come to light recently cast doubt on the overall story (for example, the ‘revelation’ that one estimate of when glaciers would disappear is off — we won’t lose the glaciers by 2035). I’ve seen a couple metaphors/quotes that i really liked on this recently.
First, from Joe Romm of Climate Progress as he answered questions from the media about whether we should ignore some of these concerns:
“Look, each of you works for media outlets that publish corrections. Yet you expect day by day the public should come back and not think because you made a mistake and admitted 2 or 3 or 4 mistakes every single day that somehow your reporting is not trustworthy. Now, in the case of the scientific body, these are reports every 5 or 6 years. And they publish like three 1,000-page reports. It’s going to be very difficult for errors not to creep into it. But again I encourage you to draw distinctions between the wealth of observations in this scientific liteature and these reports, which are an effort to collect everything and digest it. It would be very difficult for it to be error free.”
The second is from Australian journalist Clive Hamilton in a great series on the attack on science:
“Bloggers and columnists, who attack climate science without ever opening an IPCC report or speaking to a real climate scientists, imagine that the body of climate science is a house of cards, and taking away one or two will cause it to collapse. In fact the scientific case for global warming is like a mountain built up by adding one rock at a time over many years. Even if all of the alleged errors were true it would amount to picking off a handful of rocks from the top of the mountain, leaving the rest unchanged and unmoved.”
Finally, I spoke at an event in Denver and was followed on stage by Mayor Hickenlooper. When discussing why we should take action on climate change:
“If there’s even a 2% chance that 95% of the world’s scientists are right…why wouldn’t we want insurance”
In short, the science is as clear as we can ask for, and the down side of ignoring the problem is so high, we should take action.
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The success of smart public policy on energy and climate will require a more informed public. Hopefully, the national media and other players in that educational effort here in the U.S. will take a serious look at the new book, “Merchants of Doubt . . . ” , by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. It’s currently available for pre-order on Amazon.