14 DAY TRIAL // With the release of the climate-related email stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), and the discovery of minor errors in a report produced by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), many critics to global warming believe they have uncovered some sort of conspiracy. I have often received comments on climate change-related articles asking me if I am a part of the global conspiracy, and I have always responded by asking these people who stands to gain from the alleged conspiracy. When you devise a plot on this scale, someone stands to gain considerably, and yet I haven't received a single straight answer.
Recently, after the Climategate scandal broke (because certain media channels really love the word “-gate” attached to everything), those who contest the validity of climate change and global warming for various reasons have started foreseeing the end of the conspiracy. Some have even wrote that the “caste of cards” is coming down and that the world is beginning to see the “truth.” In my opinion, it takes a lot of nerve and straight-out ignorance to make such statements, in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary. Why people think they know best when they haven't got the slightest connection with a certain domain of science is beyond me.
Many people have watched conservative talk shows, such as the ones on the entertainment channel Fox News, where hosts such as Glenn Beck, who are promoting their own agendas, and are also known for their conservative views, started spreading misinformation by the ton. To tell you the truth, if someone told me that I am a journalist, and that Mr. Beck was one too, I would be ashamed. If this is what reporting is, then I am glad to say I am in another field of work. The manner in which the news of the email scandal was presented in mainstream news outlets is simply disgusting. Many reporters who were involved in presenting the “facts” didn't have the slightest clue about what a scientific study was.
They cling on to some words they find offensive, and then build an entire story (or rather fairytale) based on that. So many things about the letters and the IPCC report have been blown out of proportions, that people have began to question science altogether. And this is a real pity, because, if we turn our face from it again, as we did centuries ago, we can easily fall back into superstition and centralized leadership of the kind we don't want. For example, many people believe that the cooler winter that we experienced is a sign that the planet is not warming.
This denotes the most basic lack of knowledge on how the atmosphere works. Of course there will be more precipitations if the winter is wetter. And the winter is wetter because the climate is getting warmer. This isn't too difficult to see, but unfortunately people have lost their objectivity. It is partially their fault, partially the fault of scientists who don't do a great job at public relations, partially the fault of politicians who follow their own interests rather than the common good, and partially the fault of the media, as many outlets have lost sight of what presenting the news in a balanced manner means.
Showing both sides of the argument doesn't mean showing people on the street giving their two cents. This should be the last thing on the list. When you present an issue such as global warming, you bring scientists with decades of expertise, who argue with each others in scientific terms, and not appeal to emotions. How you feel about an issue has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is real or not. Just because some people believe global warming is not happening, and spend their time online on any websites they can find saying that, they cannot erase decades of ground- and satellite-based data.
Just a few days ago, climate scientists met at a hastily organized conference, put together by the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in San Diego. All participants expressed great concerns as to how the media covered the last few months, when climate critics used every little error or glitch in the data they could find to argue that climate change was not happening. Because many critics are paid off, and belong to groups that specialize in public communication (the modern term for propaganda), they can spin the story in such a manner that appeals to people's emotions, without actually conveying any form of scientific content.
And people fall for it. According to recent polls, a growing number of people in the United States, for example, are not only losing their belief that climate change is taking place as we speak, but also that science in general is not to be trusted. I would ask them, what else should you trust, if not people who have dedicated their lives to making your life, and that of our children, better? Should you maybe trust conservative politicians, and in 30 years' time live in a world covered in smoke? Or maybe religious groups that tell you you are too small to affect the Earth in any way?
It's true that warming and cooling cycles occur, and have done so for billions of years. They even take place on other planets. But this cannot be used as a pretext to cover up the influence that human activities have on the atmosphere. Never in the modern history of our planet – the last billion years for example – has a haze of obnoxious chemicals covered the vast majority of the Asian continent. That is man-made, as are the billions of tons of carbon dioxide that are being pumped in the atmosphere each year. They exceed the natural output of volcanic eruptions several times over, and promote massive changes in the atmosphere and the oceans.
There are at least several hundred studies that cover each of these particular changes. And this is where propaganda steps in. All this tremendous body of work is being cast aside with only a mention of a glitch that occurred in a report. No one is saying that critics and skeptics should not exist, they are arguably the most important part of the scientific process. But criticism must be constructive and to the point. You simply cannot say that global warming does not exist if one glacier is growing. There are variations in long-term trends, and each time one happens critics jump at the opportunity.
One glacier in Switzerland may be growing, but if Antarctica, the Arctic and Greenland are melting, then what is the overall trend? How people ignore this type of logical reasoning is beyond me. I am not talking about those who get paid good money to do so, but about those who process data on their own, and then draw their own conclusions. The best thing to ask yourself is the old Latin adagio “cui prodest?” meaning “who stands to gain?” This was the first thing judges in the old days asked accusers and defenders. This has held true over the ages, and now is more so than ever. When you see people on TV telling you that scientists are the devil and that oil company- and conservative-sponsored lobby groups are your friends and guardians, maybe you should be asking who stands to lose if these interest groups win.
