The media and climate change contrarians (Jonathon Porritt)

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« Blogging and 'Phlogging' | Main | Time to press the panic button? »

The media and climate change contrarians

Here we are, four days away from (all being well!) a new global agreement on man-made climate change, and the front page of the Daily Express carries the following headline: “100 Reasons Why Global Warming is Natural”.

This is getting beyond a joke. I have always argued that it is critical to carry on giving airtime to dissenting scientists who find themselves completely or to some extent out of sympathy with the consensus position brokered by the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change. I am obviously talking here about serious scientists, carrying out their work in good faith, and publishing in properly peer-reviewed journals. That, after all, is how the scientific method works: any scientific hypothesis is only as good as the rigour with which it is put to the test on the basis of potentially conflicting or inconsistent data.

But there are two problems with this, and both relate to the inability of the media to understand the nature of the scientific process, and to act responsibly within that understanding.

First, so much of the dissenting stuff does not emanate from scientists of that kind. Much of it is based on speculation, exaggeration and manipulation of other people’s data. It’s never been published in proper journals, never been subjected to proper peer-review, and completely fails to meet any of the basic tests for “sound science”. Much of it lives and breathes through the blogosphere. And almost all of it is arrant nonsense.

Second, when the science moves on, the contrarians (and the scientifically-illiterate media that love to front those contrarians) refuse to move on at the same time. So yesterday, for instance, The Independent’s Science Editor, Steve Connor, did a brilliant two-page spread demonstrating how the all-time favourite thesis of the contrarians (that climate change is not in any way man-made but is a consequence of variations in solar activity - particularly sunspots) has been comprehensively dismantled since the two principal scientists involved in this theory (Svensmark and Friis-Christensen) first published their findings. And those two have been completely unable to refute the dismantling that has been done.

Without that critical contrarian prop in place, much else falls. But we wouldn’t expect the Daily Express to follow the science that closely, would we?

Which makes it really difficult to go on being “inclusive” about these contrarian views, or indeed tolerant of the malign media forces that sustain them.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on December 16, 2009 10:27 AM | Permalink

Comments (1)

Having read this and all your other blogs, I applaud the work you are doing. I feel sure your style and content is compelling to those who already have a deep awareness and concern for mankind and the environment. Since the media simply seems to trade position and copy to stimulate sales, who is going to capture the interest and imagination of the general public who have been conditioned since birth to avoid the uncomfortable?

Posted by John Martin Lyle | December 29, 2009 2:53 PM

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