Accepting Scepticism - Contextualising the Climate Change Debate

After reading the comments below a Guardian article yesterday concerning the hugely contentious issue of climategate and the controversy over the UEA Climate Research Unit scientist Dr Briffa and a Canadian climate sceptic called Steve McIntyre, I found a huge amount of vitriol and anger directed towards the author of the article, Fred Pearce. Whilst I feel that we need to move away from the swingeing denouncement of all forms of scepticism over this debate and engage in a more healthy dialogue, I cannot help but suspect that the Guardian's comment sections are becoming a disproportionate battlefield upon which sceptics are attacking a paper they see as only on one side of the debate; the wrong side. Clearly the sceptics barrage is now in overdrive in the wake of all this.

When a Guardian writer called James Randerson eventually appeared to claim the paper's editorial line was that "global warming is happening and caused by human actions, but that does not mean we are blind to contradictory evidence" he was chastised by the sceptics as if he and his paper were being unobjective and somehow politicising this debate (something that sceptics would know all about anyway).

This is absolute horseshit in an age where the Sun can pump Tory Blue smoke from their chimneys over their offices and the Express can print article upon article about climate change being a big conspiracy (let's not even go there). I am not mindlessly dismissing some of the extremely intelligent and powerful arguments as it once seemed quite fashionable to do, whilst at the same time lumping them all as the puppets of big business or right wing thinking. Scepticism has become a dirty word and we should never forget that challenging the orthodoxy is what pushes science forward.

But let's get this straight: There are huge areas of uncertainty and debate and incongruency in the vast swathes of data when you look at the climate science. There's bound to be in an area of science as holistic as this. But taken as a whole, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the thesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Period!

It is said that to explain even the bones of how the science works to a layman would take about two solid days. Now I can totally understand that the public would be sceptical of the science given the recent controversies and the media coverage given them but I would applaud the Guardian as one of the few publication's that has stuck to its guns and reported these latest controversies in the context they should be taken in and against a backdrop of the huge consensus of scientists over AGW. Far from politicising this debate, the Guardian are following the scientific line and not the conspiracy theorists one (which after all sells more papers - see the Daily Mail and/or the Express for more details).

The IPCC and by definition the bodies, such as the UEA's Climate Research Unit, that contribute to it's Working Group's reports by supplying it with vast amounts of data are now inevitably becoming politicised. Any body that is tasked with reporting to the world's politicians and statesmen a series of hugely inconvenient truths is bound to become politicised quickly especially when those inconvenient truths have to be effectively communicated by politicians to a naturally sceptical electorate.

It's a fact that human brains have evolved to not see the danger posed by long term threats because in a natural environment these are not evolutionary traits that have contributed to our ancestors survival. Therefore we are an inherently sceptical set of monkey's by our very nature. Combine this natural evolutionary disadvantage with the economic and political sacrifices that have to be made just to give this issue momentum on the world stage, whilst simultaneously trying to educate a largely unscientific population and you begin to see the scale of the problem.

The science on this issue is huge and pulls together disciplines that have historically never worked together and even thrown off totally new symbioses of disciplines as a result. Trying to understand it all is simply not a realistic expectation for most people (including me I might add) but understanding the fundamentals that underpin this vast field can be instrumental in educating people and allowing them to contextualise the inevitable controversies that will spring forth from time to time. Scientists need to be engaging at this level with the public and not shying away from the challenge. More than ever we need to be popularising science and I have always taken my hat off to the Guardian for doing that more than the competition.

Scientists are a proud headstrong bunch of people who put an incredible amount of intellectual capital into their reputations as well as their work. On occasion their pride and hubris gets the better of them especially when they come under such scathing and consistent derision from sceptics as they have. But when the issue is as big and as controversial as this, the damage that can be done to public credulity by secrecy and collusion is devastating.

I will not deny that I think the debate has moved backwards significantly in the last few months, ever since climategate began to gather speed on the eve of the Copenhagen Summit (timing in this case was crucial for the sceptics). Since then it has been one PR home goal after another for the UEA Climate research Unit and the IPCC. They just don't seem to be doing themselves any favours. The scientific community needs transparency now more than ever over this debate. It cannot afford to make these kind of mistakes again.

There will always be data that seems to go against the trend when assembling powerful climate models and this will always be picked up by the sceptics and denialists and exaggerated and overinflated to discredit and destabilise the whole scientific edifice. Scientists need to trust the public to make informed decisions as much as the public need to trust the scientists to be open if we are going to allow science to inform policy effectively and in time to mitigate global warming.

Burying inconvenient data is far more damaging than admitting the anomalies but it still does not detract from the overwhelming scientific consensus. The need to communicate that fact coherently and intelligently has never been more pressing and I think the Guardian should be applauded for recognising that over and above the immediacy of traditional journalistic sensationalism.

Bliar, Bliar, Pants on Fire

Well there was only really one news story to talk about last week and that was the inquisition of Tony Blair at the hottest show in Whitehall, the Chilcot Inquiry.

After sneaking in early before the geering, if slightly undermanned, protestors emerged for the cameras with their "Bliar" placards and a the usual theatrics of rubber masked Tony Blair heads complete with bloodied hands, the former PM was clearly taking no chances. And this cautious paranoia of the morning's surruptitious early entry to the Queen Elizabeth Centre seemed to be reflected on his face as he emerged to take his seat in front of the panel. Blair looked white, ghoulish and his hand visibly shook as he poured his water. What was this? Had the great persuader really started to doubt his own ability to convince and cajole? Had years of self reflection and unanimous bad press caused Tony Blair to lose his mojo? It certainly looked like it in those opening exchanges.

But then something happened. Perhaps it was the sudden realisation that he could still do this, he would always be able to do this, this was what he was good at: pulling of masterly displays of self belief and inner conviction that would make any neo-con proud. Perhaps the great orator had suddenly found his footing. Or perhaps he just realised that nothing that Chilcot et al could, or indeed would, throw at him would prove insurmountable or be followed up with the kind of legalistic scrutiny that his profession has taught him to expect when being cross examined. But this was no court dock he was sat in and whatever it was, the colour had begun to return to Tony Blair's face and back were those hypnotic hand gesticulations, pulling you in like a hypnotists pocket watch swinging from its chain.

Suddenly we were transported back to the apex of Blairite Britain. In an instant I realised all that was lacking from our incumbant PM and how vacuous these qualities have turned out to be in his predecessor; oratory exuberance, political guile, telegenic vivaciousness. It was a sharp reminder of what could happen again if we allow ourselves to be courted by such superficial qualities in a Prime Minister that buys into their own hype. But this wasn't about the past for old Tony. This was about the future. This was about the big one, the legacy maker... standing shoulder to shoulder with the neo-cons in Iraq.

There are many issues and outrageous fallacies thrown up by Blair's robust and unshakable defence of the war in Iraq (too many to discuss here and now) but after six hours of questioning Chilcot deemed it fit to conclude by asking TB if he had any regrets. It was here that the former Prime Minister made perhaps his biggest blunder of the day. Instead of using this opportnity to offer condolences to the dead British Soldiers (some of whose parents were sitting in the room) or hundred thousand or so dead Iraqi's he restated his conviction that Saddam was a monster who had to be removed and that he did the right thing. There was no shred of sorrow for the horror and sufferings caused by the war, a notion that could easily have been articulated by someone like Blair without the need to undermine his own arguements regarding its necessity. But there was none of it. Just bullish self belief. Here was the man, here was his legacy and if this ship was going down he was prepared to go down with it. This was his war and he believed in it. He was never going to show any contrition.

Boo's were heard in the room and Chilcot called for silence. TB momentarily looked shaken for the second time that day but quickly regained his composure.

After six hours of defending his corner in the mountain face of contrarian evidence that seems to tower over both the legal and moral case for war, TB was like a boxer going into the twelth round of a big title fight knowing he was going to win, head held high, skipping round the ring in the knowledge of putting on a stellar performance. His intransigence towards the end may turn out to have been a fatal PR blow landed on the chin.

Blair left the Inquiry's ring to jeers and tears, followed by his bodyguards (probably as alert to imminent trouble now, than any British security contingent would have been during his ten year premiership.)

But it can't be denied that he put on a convincing and vitriolic show of idealism over populism. Over six hours he had managed to dodge and weave his way past question after question, often finding room for didactic rebuttals often bordering on speech making. We got it all; the legality of war, Goldsmith's volte face over resolution 1441, being Bush's poodle, signing up in blood at Crawford, WMD's or lack of them, the list goes on. Even when they brought up the Fern Britton interview, Blair just seemed to shrug it off as a silly slip up and evidence that even he (yes even he) could be less than clear of portraying his meaning in an interview. Oh please!

Again and again Blair kept on referring to 9/11 and how it had changed everything, even the nature of intelligence. He saw it as an attack on us too, you see (given this spurious line of thinking, wouldn't drawing a clear line between British Foreign Policy and the US Foreign Policy have been a more apt approach; because if 9/11 wasn't an attack aimed on us then 7/7 certainly was.) He seemed to give the impression that WMD's or no WMD's the assesment of intelligence after 9/11 had changed and so too had the existential threat from Saddam's regime, which he openly admitted had no links whatsoever to Al Qaeda. Interpretting intelligence effectively has nothing to do with zeitgeists or perceived threats; it has everything to do with well... interpretting intelligence acurately, as it always will do. Only Sir Roderick Lyne really seemed to get the bit between his teeth at any point in the proceedings but Blair was on a role by now and brushed all and sundry aside, reitterating his convictions over and over again. The threat of inaction over Iraq portrayed as frankly inconceivable in his assesment.

Blair then did something that to me seemed quite extordinary and so far unprecedented in this Inquiry: his testimony actually began turning into polemic. Suddenly he was posing hypothetical questions back to the Inquiry. Where would we be if we hadn't invaded? Shouldn't we be looking at this from the 2010 perspective and not 2003? The world's a safer place without Saddam the monster in it. The Iraqi's are happier now he's gone. Incredible. Truly incredible. Even Campbell didn't dare show this kind of obstinancy. But then it was always going to be all or nothing for Tony Blair.

By the afternoon he was well in his comfort zone and rambling on with that old Blair flair, even managing to berrate Iran for trying to destabilise the country as if it weren't playing by the rules. How could we have forseen this kind of behavior from the Shiite Pariah state? Surely they would be thankful for us deposing Saddam and his Sunni minority failed state. Weren't we doing them a favour? Obviously they didn't quite see it like that.

Tony Blair really surpassed himself on Friday. Not only did he manage to defend the war he had taken us into. He even hinted at the danger of avoiding another one. Saints preserve us, did the neo-cons get to him that bad?