I recently wrote
about conservative Christian climate scientist Roy Spencer’s proclivity to put
politics ahead of science. Others in the conservative camp are also perfectly
willing to do so. But there are also many climate activists, including
climate scientists, willing to forgo science for politics and rhetorical tirades.
Advocates for
anything tend to rely on constructing narratives, or stories, that support
their advocacy arguments. How to react to climate change is a difficult question
to answer and there are many opinions and considerations. Things like
developing countries’ rights to access affordable energy, costs of emissions
reduction and clean energy deployments, power grid reliability, the need to
focus enough resources on adaptation, the question of geoengineering, the need
to generate more information and knowledge about potential impacts, and competition
with other important funding, all should be considered. Climate activists
advocate loudly for solutions that are unfeasible, uneconomical, and unfair to
those who would disproportionately bear the costs of higher energy prices, less
available budget cuts to other competing needed programs, and who are unable to
take advantage of tax credits. The attempts by climate activists to “flip the script,”
or rather to change the prevailing narrative to one that is more extreme such
as demanding we call climate change the climate crisis or the climate
emergency, referring to climate delay as climate denial, calling for the end of
fossil fuels, and nonsense ideas like degrowth, have had mixed results. I think
and hope that backlash to those extreme viewpoints has and will grow, but not
to the point we are dissing our efforts to decarbonize and our preparation for climate
impacts. We can probably scale back the urgency a little. We do not need to
make unnecessary demands and try to force decarbonization with mandates and
bans, which often end up being unpopular, anyway. With a little hindsight, I
think net zero by 2050 was probably a mistake. Sure, it gives a target, but is
it a reasonable one? We should also emphasize protecting the vulnerable who are
vulnerable now over protecting peoples of the future by investing more in adaptation
to extreme weather and less in protecting future generations.
A 2020 article in
Global Sustainability identified four discourses that often argue in favor of
climate delay: 1) redirect responsibility – this is commonly used when
people say it doesn’t matter what we do since China and India are still increasing
emissions way more than us. 2) surrender – this is just giving into the
doom, suggesting we should do nothing instead. 3) emphasize the downsides
– that assumes de-emphasizing the upsides. 4) push non-transformative solutions
– try to avoid disrupting society too much. In my opinion, the first two are
poor arguments for climate delay but the last two are very good arguments for
it. We need to strongly consider the downsides of decarbonizing too quickly and
too deeply. We also need to avoid overly transforming society. I would argue that
there is a very good logical case for climate delay. There are many examples,
and I have given a few. Thus, it is obvious to me that in most cases climate
delay is not at all climate denial.
Some of the hardcore
climate skeptics argue that CO2 has a net benefit to society. I disagree. The vast
majority of climate scientists disagree. I acknowledge that there are clear and
substantial benefits to CO2, especially in plant life and food production.
These are well-documented. I would guess that there is a good argument to be
made that we don’t drop CO2 emissions, even if we could, too far below current
atmospheric levels, so that those benefits remain. However, it is clear to me that the
net effect of increased atmospheric CO2 is negative. The global warming effect can
lead to many negative impacts.
Climate activists
had some success in flipping the script as they somehow tweaked the perception
of the climate goal down to 1.5 degrees Celsius from the long-established 2.0
degrees Celsius. They were aided by the IPCC’s 2019 report looking at the
possibilities of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This made the goal
more unreachable (we are still headed closer to 2.5 degrees Celsius but that is
an improvement from 3.0 degrees in previous models)) but at the same time, they succeeded
in increasing the sense of urgency to act. The notion that we not only need to hit
a peak but also reduce carbon emissions down to below 350ppm from the
current 420ppm, advocated by activists like 350.org, took hold among activists
long ago.
Ted Nordhaus of
the Breakthrough Institute wrote a great article in October after being labeled
a “cockroach” by a climate scientist. The article is about incendiary rhetoric
and how that could lead to political violence. He correctly pointed out some of
Donald Trump’s long history with dehumanizing rhetoric, which the Washington
Post compared to the rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini. Instances of people
calling other people vermin, rats, infestations, or cockroaches usually involve
extremists propagating such rhetoric. Nordhaus suggests that defining your
political opponents as subhuman is the first step toward political violence.
In September,
prominent climate scientist Michael Mann in a “tweet” on X described Nordhaus, Yglesias,
and more skeptical climate scientist Judith Curry as “vampires and
cockroaches” who “don’t like it when people shine a light on them.”
Nordhaus points out that there was no backlash against Mann’s clearly
dehumanizing rhetoric. I once saw Mann speak around 2017. I was expecting to
hear a fair amount about climate science but most of the talk was about climate
politics. Since he is a scientist, I had not expected Mann to be so political.
About a year later I heard Judith Curry speak and found her to be more
concerned with science, although she did point out and explain why she was more
skeptical than other climate scientists and how she was unfairly condemned
simply for listening to other skeptics. She was soft-spoken and not preachy
like Mann was. That is just an observation I made. A few years later she would
be subject for a brief time to shadow bans and de-amplification on Twitter due
to her views at the height of censorship of climate views around 2020-2021. That
trend seems to have subsided, thankfully. Nordhaus points out that Mann is no Trump,
but he has a huge platform, many followers, and often writes op-eds. I have
noted in the past his demonization of the fossil fuel industry.
Nordhaus notes that many climate activists have praised a recent book called Ministry of the Future which involves assassinations of fossil fuel executives by climate radicals who are essentially eco-terrorists. Bill McKibben praised the eco-terrorists as “clever.” I read one of McKibben’s books years ago that showered endless praise on Cuba for its resourcefulness in the face of sanctions. Nordhaus also points out the history of dehumanizing rhetoric among environmentalists from an early interest in eugenics to Paul Ehrlich, Grant Harden, and Lynn Margulis. Ehrlich’s rhetoric had consequences like the forced sterilization of millions of people. Harden was adamantly anti-immigrant, and Margulis was anti-humanist and favored conspiratorial views.
I am in total
agreement with Nordhaus on the following statements (except where as a
commentator pointed out, only anthropogenic climate change is caused by fossil
fuels, and as I know fossil fuels are only responsible for less than half and
closer to a third of anthropogenic climate change since other sources like
methane and CO2 from landfills, agriculture, livestock, industrial emissions, and
deforestation are other major sources:)
“I’ve spent my career advocating for practical approaches
to climate and environmental problems. But in doing so, I have also taken
positions on issues that are bitterly contested by many in the climate
movement, including advocating in favor of nuclear energy and intensive,
technological agriculture, arguing that natural gas has an important role to
play in both the global energy transition and efforts to end poverty, and
pushing back against inaccurate and irresponsible claims about the role that
climate change is playing in current day extreme weather events.”
“Increasingly, in recent years, it is no longer enough to
recognize that climate change is happening, that it is the result of fossil
fuels, and that the world should do something about it. Many climate activists
now insist that anyone who challenges any of the movement’s claims, not only
about the reality of climate change but its impacts, its solutions, and its
costs and tradeoffs, is a science denier. That’s how people like me get branded
as climate deniers and, ultimately, cockroaches.”
I disagree with
Nordhaus that the rhetoric will result in political violence. It’s possible but
I do not think it is likely.
What got Nordhaus branded subhuman by Mann was his facilitation
of a fact-check of climate scientist Genevieve Guenther’s book The Language
of Climate Politics: Fossil Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It, which was
highly praised by Mann, McKibben, and the activist community. The fact-check
was done by George Morrison and shows quite clearly in my opinion how flimsy and
dead wrong and how easily refutable are several of Guenther’s claims. Morisson
debunks eight claims from the book in detail, some of which were due to a basic lack
of understanding of processes and either severe misunderstanding of data or intentional
manipulation of data. Is the way to fight fossil fuel propaganda is to lie
about it, to counter it with climate activist propaganda? Nordhaus wrote in the
intro to the piece:
“Like a lot of people in the reality-based climate
community, I have struggled with how to deal with Genevieve Guenther. How do
you respond to someone so patently unserious without appearing to take them
seriously? The problem, though, is that a lot of Very Serious People in the
climate movement take her very seriously. Her book, “The Language of Climate
Politics” was published this summer by Oxford University Press to rave advanced
reviews. Bill McKibben, the founder of the modern climate movement, cannot imagine
“a savvier or more useful account of our greatest crisis.” Michael Mann, the
movement’s most iconic scientist, asserts that Guenther expertly elucidates
“the ways in which the modern climate discourse has been polluted by bad actors
with an agenda of business-as-usual dependence on fossil fuels.” Ro Khanna, the
Democratic congressperson from Silicon Valley calls the book, “an enlightening
and inspiring journey through the politics of climate change” and Rolling Stone
writer Jeff Goodell avers that “Guenther knows her subject and is a fabulous
bullshit detector.”
“Guenther claims the book was peer-reviewed and that she
also personally hired a former New Yorker fact-checker to review its 600 plus
citations. But anyone even remotely familiar with the literatures that Guenther
cites will find themselves surprised by many of her claims. We are told, for
instance, that global agricultural yield over the last 60 years has fallen;
that Robert Solow, who invented modern economic growth theory, secretly knew
that economic growth was constrained by the availability of agricultural land;
and that crops grown for bioenergy produce ionizing radiation and deplete the
ozone layer.”
“What Morrison found was a variety of claims that
consistently either misunderstand or misrepresent the literature they cite.
What follows is far from an exhaustive factcheck of Guenther’s claims. Morrison
simply read through these chapters, identified claims that he knew to be wrong,
and went down the rabbit hole of Guenther’s citations to figure out what the
evidential basis was—or was not—for her claims.”
“I can’t speak for the rest of the book (although as
someone who features prominently in the opening chapter of the book, I can say
with certainty that she misrepresents my work, claiming that I have argued for
the continuing and indefinite use of fossil fuels and that eliminating the
world’s dependence on fossil fuels is “impossible.”). What I will say is that
insofar as the claims that follow are representative of the rest of the book,
it would seem that what Guenther has produced is in fact a classic example of
climate disinformation, not its antidote.”
References:
On
Cockroaches, the Climate Movement, and Democracy: Why the Escalating Rhetoric
and Tactics of the Climate Movement, Sooner or Later, Is Likely to End in
Political Violence. Ted Nordhaus. The Breakthrough Journal. October 14, 2024. On Cockroaches, the Climate Movement,
and Democracy (breakthroughjournal.org)
Fact
Checking Genevieve Guenther. A Guest Post by George Morrison. Breakthrough
Journal. September 18, 2024. Fact Checking Genevieve Guenther -
The Breakthrough Journal
Discourses
of climate delay. Global Sustainability. Volume 3 , 2020 , e17. Published
online by Cambridge University Press: 01
July 2020. William F. Lamb, Giulio Mattioli, Sebastian Levi. J. Timmons Roberts,
Stuart Capstick, Felix Creutzig, Jan C.
Minx, Finn Müller-Hansen, Trevor Culhane, and Julia K. Steinberger. Discourses of climate delay | Global
Sustainability | Cambridge Core
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