Climate scientists as political activists?

February 19, 2008 4:19 AM

How are the role of scientists and the relationship between them and society changing as the climate questions has become (and will continue to become) more and more acute?

For example, I suppose that there for many climate scientist could be a tension between on the one hand scientific standards of never saying anything that’s not entirely certain and ‘keeping out of politics’, and on the other hand the need to create a quick change of public policies. Where do I find anything especially clever written on this? And how is the moral/political responsibilities of scientists changing in general in the light of climate change? I’m particularly interested in what scientists and scientific institutions themselves actually think and do here and how this has been received by politicians, activists and the public.

Lot’s of questions in this question, I see that. It’s part of the early creative process of writing an application for a research project. That means, if you have any ideas about questions in the neighbouring areas that you find being of particular interest from both a political science perspective and a save-the-world-perspective, they’re also very welcome!

posted by pica to society & culture (7 comments total)

If you have access (most university and libraries should), the journal Nature is a good resource for this. Their Climate Change Report has a lot of info, and you may be especially interested in this book review by Moser.
posted by Jorus at 5:02 AM on February 19, 2008

I think there are two kinds of "science" out there in the conventional wisdom. (Forgive me if there are real words for this, I'm working from memory.)

There is Science- the act of applying the scientific method and reporting your results, which are reproducible.

Then there are "the sciences". Where researchers use math and scientific tools to measure the real world and draw conclusions.

No more or less important, but different. And that needs to be understood. Researchers measure a result and try to figure out the cause. Or they see a cause and try to predict a result. But without the ability to experiment and reproduce, it's not Incontrovertible Scientific Fact like the speed of light, gravity or that cats are nuts.
posted by gjc at 7:06 AM on February 19, 2008

The local chapter of the American Meteorological Society has sponsored a couple of lectures on climate change here lately. The first one dealt with debunking some of the myths that had been used by politicians and the media to debate the existence of climate change and you can get the powerpoint here; the February one, which was more concerned with what's actually going on vis a vis climate change, isn't up anywhere yet. However, everyone involved with the lectures has been pleasant and easy to deal with and you may be able to contact them directly for more information. The speakers were pulled from NCDC and you may be able to find more of interest through them as well.
posted by mygothlaundry at 7:43 AM on February 19, 2008

I am part of a multi-university climate-science research group, with the specific goal of providing relevant facts about how climate change will affect our stakeholders (land and water managers, small farmers, etc). We decided one year ago that we needed to distribute a document with the *facts* of local climate change to our constituents, who were actively asking for the information. One year later, we have a 3 page document over which a single sentence causes us to argue for an hour. It is frustrating, to say the least.

Within our group, which consists of climatologists, social scientists, economists, engineers, and ecologists, we have people who passionately and rabidly campaign that global warming is a badly-researched hoax, and actively take a decidedly non-objective part in the corresponding politics (anti-Gore documentaries, etc). We also have extremely objective members who conclude that the science is not complete by any means, but the data we have is more than enough to justify taking preventative measures. Finally, we have the scientists who passionately agree with current anthropogenic global warming theories. As you can probably guess, this makes for some interesting meetings.

Basically, my conclusion has been that it is impossible for any group that deals with policy at all to retain scientific objectivity. When we deal with politicians, they do not want sound bytes of us saying "well now, we're only 90% certain within 2 standard deviations from the mean that droughts will become more severe in the next 20 years". Politics and classical science are inherently at odds in this regard, as no good scientist or engineer would dare make a statement without explicitly accounting for uncertainty. Interestingly, at the annual American Meteorological Society meeting last month, most of the talks I saw accepted anthropogenic climate change as fact. I could talk about the differences between the GCM models they use and other types of environmental models, and how those differences cause a distinctly different approach to interpreting the results for hours-- but since that doesn't have much to do with the question, I'll hold off.

While I don't know of any literature dealing with the issue of science v. politics in climate change, I know that it makes our job very frustrating and difficult. I am actually pretty amazed that the IPCC report came out at all, knowing how hard it is to get scientific consensus on many of these issues. Personally, I feel that researchers have a responsibility to get involved in policy, but it makes scientific objectivity very tricky to maintain. Obviously, I haven't sorted out my specific feelings on the issue yet, and I don't think that I ultimately should passionately support a particular position, as keeping the ability to change your mind in light of new information is a very valuable skill that many of the scientists I work with would be better off if they realized.
posted by hybridvigor at 8:00 AM on February 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

1. Scientists say things all the time that are not 100% certain. The nature of science almost precludes 100% certainty by its nature, and nothing would ever get published, challenge, refined, debunked, strengthened, or anything in the sciences if scientists were holding out for 100% certainty.

2. Scientists have not shied away from advancing public positions on politicized matters of science. Especially with regard to evolution.
posted by adamrice at 11:12 AM on February 19, 2008

I didn't say that science needs to be 100% certain. In fact, I said that no good scientist would ever say that something was 100% certain, and this uncertainty is what makes turning research into policy very difficult.

The vast majority of engineers and scientists that I know DO shy away from both politics and policy. Those that I know that have entered policy related fields (mostly environmental and bioethics) often get burned or disillusioned quickly about ever getting anything done, and leave. Of course, I am still in academic science, so my population is skewed.

However, there are quite a few scientists that do recognize their responsibility in educating a U.S. public which gleans most of their scientific knowledge from TV news pundits or what they heard from a friend. And whether they are nasty and arrogant about it (Dawkins), fascinating but obscure (any number of pop-particle physicists), or interesting but out of their league (Lomborg, Diamond), kudos to them for bringing these issues into the public consciousness.
posted by hybridvigor at 1:56 PM on February 19, 2008

OK, sorry if I misunderstood you on point 1. I read "scientific standards of never saying anything that’s not entirely certain" as meaning "only say anything when you're entirely certain."
posted by adamrice at 3:37 PM on February 19, 2008