A Hyperbolic Backlash

November 9th, 2004

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

On occasion here at Prometheus we’ve observed that within the scientific community proponents of action to mitigate climate change have an increasing tendency to misjustify, overstate, or misuse science in support of their agenda. By engaging in such hyperbole, the scientist-advocates are, ironically enough, adopting some of the exact same tactics that opponents of action to mitigate climate change have been criticized for by many of the exact same proponents of action.

For example, today’s Seattle Times contains an article that provides a window into the conflict that is festering within the scientific community about using hurricanes, and in particular the 2004 hurricane season, as a justification for changes to energy policies. Here is an excerpt:


“”Four hurricanes in a five-week period could be a harbinger of things to come,” said Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Epstein is among a group of scientists from Harvard and the National Center for Atmospheric Research – a consortium of 68 universities funded by government and private grants – who argue that a rise in global sea temperatures is putting more moisture into the air, increasing the chances not only for more intense hurricanes but also for more rain and severe storms throughout the year. And they say this is only the beginning. Warming, they contend, is an underlying factor contributing to droughts in the
Midwest, heat waves in Europe and typhoons in Japan. Other scientists dispute that gloomy appraisal… “You can never attribute a single season, or even several seasons, to something like global warming,” said Gerry Bell, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center. Bell and other NOAA scientists say it’s wrong to blame warming for an increase in the number or severity of recent storms… Bell said that blaming global warming for recent storms is overlooking the obvious. “It’s like if you see someone take a blowtorch to a house and the house burns down, then arguing that it was the summer heat that caused the fire and overlooking the blowtorch,” Bell said. “We don’t need to be looking for some amorphous signal that may or may not be there.”"

Based on my own research, even if global warming has or will affect hurricanes it is a misjustification to assert that this supports changes in energy policies. The requisite corollary to this statement is that there are plenty of other good reasons for climate mitigation. And recently behind the scenes, I have become aware that this debate over hurricanes is having some implications for scientists within the IPCC and how some policymakers perceive the activities of scientists taking overt advocacy positions.

In addition, today a UK-based group called the International Policy Network (IPN) released a report titled, “The Impacts of Climate Change” which observes:

“The views of pundits and politically motivated activists from myriad disciplines are often aired in the debate about climate impacts. Raising fears of future harms, these people promote proposals which, if implemented by policymakers, would often be more detrimental to humanity than the alleged harms they seek to prevent.”

The authors of this report have identified what they believe is some hyperbole in the climate debate and are using that hyperbole as an opening to advance their own political agenda. It is important to note that the IPN mission statement tells us a lot about their political perspective:

“International Policy Network believes that markets and their underlying institutions harness human potential better than any other institutional arrangement, and are the best way to address the poverty and tragedy faced by many people in the world.” Their report seeks to head off ad hominem attacks on their work at the outset, writing in the introduction:

“… pundits and activists are able to offer a moral certainty to policymakers that scientists cannot likewise offer. Undoubtedly, some of the former will cast aspersions on the motives of those who contributed to this document. In their minds, those who choose to challenge the ‘conventional wisdom’ of human-induced climate apocalypse are either the mouthpieces of big corporations, or they are deluded, or both. Other critics will regurgitate the old chestnut that 2500 scientists of the IPCC have reached a consensus. Or, more absurd, ‘most scientists’ say this or that … To those who choose the ad hominem approach to criticism: read this report and investigate the scientific literature The motivation of this report is to redress the balance in this debate, and to inspire
policymakers and others to take a more balanced approach.”

Let me state that in no way do I endorse the political agenda of the IPN or their report on climate change. But I can say that in the areas of the IPN report that I have expertise (and 4 of my papers are referenced in the report’s Section 5) they have not misused my work.

Criticisms such as those reported in the Seattle Times and the IPN are made possible by the hyperbolic excesses of those pushing for certain political outcomes related to climate change. A danger of using science to justify a political agenda is that, by itself, the science may not compel a certain outcome, and thus there are strong incentives to push the science into the realm of hyperbole. The consequences for both science and policy can be serious, with a loss of legitimacy at risk for the former and gridlock for the latter.

I remain optimistic that the IPCC scientific community will to some degree police the public hyperbole, at least among its own, but so far with only a few exceptions the community has remained mute.

One Response to “A Hyperbolic Backlash”

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  1. Not the IPN Says:

    International Policy Network is, however, a fake think tank – really a public affairs company for corporate clients.