The Latest From "Nature"

Here's another piece of journalistic excellence from one of the bigger AGW cheerleaders out there.  Rah rah!  TLaCour- we're now part of a "small coterie of individuals who deny humanity's influence on climate."  I've never been part of a "coterie" before- woo hoo!

Nature, Vol 463 January 21 2010

Climate science, like any active field of research, has some major

gaps in understanding (see page 284). Yet the political stakes

have grown so high in this field, and the public discourse

has become so heated, that climate researchers find it hard to talk

openly about those gaps. The small coterie of individuals who deny

humanity’s influence on climate will try to use any perceived flaw

in the evidence to discredit the entire picture. So how can researchers

honestly describe the uncertainty in their work without it being

misconstrued?

The e-mails leaked last year from the Climatic Research Unit of the

University of East Anglia, UK, painted a picture of scientists grappling

with this question, sometimes awkwardly. Some of the researchers’

online discussion reflected a pervasive climate of suspicion — their

sense that any findings they released to the public could and would

be distorted by sceptics.

Over the years, the climate community has acquired some hard-won

wisdom about treading this minefield. Perhaps the most important

lesson is that researchers must be frank about their uncertainties and

gaps in understanding — but without conveying the message that

nothing is known or knowable. They must emphasize that — although

many holes remain to be filled — there is little uncertainty about the

overall conclusions: greenhouse-gas emissions are rising sharply, they

are very likely to be the cause of recent global warming and precipitation

changes, and the world is on a trajectory that will shoot far past

2 °C of warming unless emissions are cut substantially. Researchers

should also emphasize that cities and countries can begin to prepare

for the effects of climate change through both mitigation and adaptation,

even though they do not know the exact course of the changes.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

(IPCC) has taken this approach in its ongoing series of assessment

reports, and it has done an admirable job of highlighting the important

conclusions while acknowledging the caveats. It has made some

errors, such as its use of questionable data about the retreat of Himalayan

glaciers (see page 276), but these mistakes are exceedingly rare

in reports that can total more than 1,000 pages, a testament to the

IPCC’s rigorous peer-review process.

No matter how evident climate

change becomes, however, other factors

will ultimately determine whether

the public accepts the facts. Empirical

evidence shows that people tend to

react to reports on issues such as climate

change according to their personal

values (see page 296). Those

who favour individualism over egalitarianism

are more likely to reject evidence of climate change and

calls to restrict emissions. And the messenger matters perhaps just

as much as the message. People have more trust in experts — and

scientists — when they sense that the speaker shares their values. The

climate-research community would thus do well to use a diverse set

of voices, from different backgrounds, when communicating with

policy-makers and the public. And scientists should be careful not to

disparage those on the other side of a debate: a respectful tone makes

it easier for people to change their minds if they share something in

common with that other side.

As comforting as it may be to think that the best evidence will

eventually convince the public on its own, climate scientists can no

longer afford to make that naive assumption: people consider many

factors beyond facts when making decisions. Even as climate science

advances, it will be just as important to invest in research on how best

to communicate environmental risks. Otherwise scientific knowledge

will not have the role that it should in the shaping of public policy.