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A Third Way on Climate?

Hans von Storch, Nico Stehr and Dennis Bray have written an interesting perspective on climate science and policy, suggestive of a third way beyond the Manichean global warming: yes or no debate. They write,

“The concern for the “good” and “just” case of avoiding further dangerous human interference with the climate system has created a peculiar self-censorship among many climate scientists. Judgments of solid scientific findings are often not made with respect to their immanent quality but on the basis of their alleged or real potential as a weapon by “skeptics” in a struggle for dominance in public and policy discourse.

When we recently established that the method behind the so-called “hockey-stick” curve of Northern Hemisphere temperature is flawed, this result was not so much attacked as scientifically flawed but was seen both in private conversations and public discourse as outright dangerous, because it could be instrumentalized and undermine the success of the IPCC process. Similarly, the suggestion that hitherto excluded research and policy discussions devoted to adaptive measures ought to be undertaken in order to pursue a much more balanced strategy of adaptation to and mitigation of climate change is seen as undermining the Kyoto process…

The concept of anthropogenic climate change is compelling even if the hockey-stick curve is false. Efforts to reduce the release of GHGs into the atmosphere are probably rendered meaningful even if we reduce present and future vulnerability by suitable adaptation measures. Climate science needs to reach a new self-understanding of its own culture”

Their recommendations are worth our attention:

• “We need to deal with the issue of anthropogenic climate change in a sustainable manner. The all too common practices of overselling and of even exaggerating adverse events by some must be strongly discouraged. Examples are the unfalsifiable, and thus useless, claims that current extreme events are, if not proof, strong indications of anthropogenic climate change. Sustainability requires that we tell the full truth as currently understood, irrespective if it fits into the politically correct agenda of the purportedly good case. People make all sorts of decisions under uncertainty — buying insurance, investing in the stock market, often with the advice of supposed financial experts, tolerating genetically modified foods — and there is no reason that uncertainty pertaining to climate change should be disabling.

• We need to respond openly to the agenda-driven advocates, not only skeptics but also alarmists, who misuse their standing as scientists to pursue their private value-driven agendas. This is a tragedy of the commons, namely that the short term gains (in terms of public attention; success of specific political agendas; possible funding) of a few are paid for on the long term by the scientific credibility of the whole discipline. Instead, sustainability requires that the discipline of climate science to provide the public with options of policy responses to the challenge of climate change, and not to prescriptively focus on only one such option (i.e., maximum reduction of GHG emissions).

• Finally we need to accept that climate science (as any other sciences) is a social process. Social and cultural scientists should be invited to analyze this process, to identify hidden limitations and conventions rooted in social and cultural backgrounds of the scientific actors, and to reduce the role of group dynamics on the practice of science.”

Read the whole essay here.