Climate change denial seems to be constantly lurking in the background of negotiations. In particular, the recent UEA scandal has become a hot topic for discussion, allowing skeptics to claim that the scientific basis for anthropogenic global warming has been undermined. Yesterday, Saudi Arabia's chief negotiator Mohammad Al-Sabaan argued that what has now been nick-named the 'climategate' affair would have a 'huge impact' on the outcome of negotiations at Copenhagen, telling the BBC that "it appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change". Adding fuel to the fire is US-crackpot Sarah Palin, who has called for Obama to boycott the talks due to the 'junk science' that has been exposed by the recents hacks.
With such strong attack invariably comes defence, and the backlash has already begun. In what may be an attempt to stop the debate escalating further, the UK's Met office will shortly release a dataset taken from nearly 2000 weather stations worldwide that confirms the last decade as the warmest in 160 years. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, mentioned the climate scandal in his opening speech to the COP15 conference yesterday, urging delegates to view recent events solely as an attempt to undermine the IPCC and independent institutional findings worldwide. Likewise, our good friend George Monbiot has released a blog on the Guardian Website that documents the ways that the climate denial industry has tried to influence scientific findings on human-induced climate change.
It seems that even within the climate talks, anthropogenic global warming has yet to be legitimised. Let us hope that debate about climate science and the UEA scandal does not prove to be an obstacle in reaching a binding agreement in the coming weeks.
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The climate physicist and I went to a really interesting talk today hosted by Bellona (check out their 101 solutions to climate change exhibition in the COP - including fanciest visual computery thing I've ever seen) and the Global Observatory on "The Latest Science". IPCC contributor Stephen Schneider spoke about communication and science.
ReplyDeleteHe made an interesting point about the problem with discussing climate science political sphere; usually in politics each side (whether it be republican/democrat or conservative/socialist etc) is given the right to an audience. We judge a media outlet on its "non-bias" by its ability to report the news from both sides or a neutral standpoint. This is because the debates are usually value based and consequently we believe that each argument should be given equal "airtime".
This unfortunately has also been applied to science. Despite the fact that IPCC scientists are about 90% sure that anthropogenic climate change is happening, the media still insists on publishing/airing the othersides views. Yet there are very few counter-arguments that would suggest (and indeed most experts agree) that they are talking total hogwash.
Interesting comparison I thought.
I love Sarah Palin, just when I think there is no one less informed out there than me she opens her gob to remind me that there is at least one who is more clueless...