Distilling the Discussion of Climate Change

Speaking science is hard. There’s a lot that goes into it. How do scientists, journalists, or other communicators get across the scientific process, facts, models and predictions? In a way that doesn’t put everyone to sleep? Persuasively, even? Science is a process that goes on for years and decades, and a particular subject area may need to be condensed down to 15 minutes, if we’re being generous.

Climate change is the prime scientific subject in our culture today. Everyone has heard of it, most people have an opinion about it, yet it remains muddied in a haze of misinformation, hyperbole and doom. “How to talk about climate change so people will listen,” an article by Charles C. Mann in The Atlantic, tackles the problems of persuasion and the limits of facts in this conversation.

Unlike most non-scientists—okay, unlike most scientists too—Mann digs into a doom-and-gloom news story about sea level rise associated with climate change and reads the two journal articles that backed up the story. He found that the timeline was left out of the story: barely any effect would be seen in his lifetime or even while any descendants could remember his name, according to the predictions. An economic-moral problem at the heart of this incredibly long-term problem is how much do we value future generations, and how much should we do to help them out? “How much consideration do I owe the people it will affect, my 40-times-great-grandchildren…,” Mann writes. “Americans don’t even save for their own retirements! How can we worry about such distant, hypothetical beings?” The human species isn’t good at planning for the future. Can facts and scary stories overcome that limitation at all?

Every side in the debate throws a mass of data at unsuspecting lawmakers or the public, hoping to win over hearts and minds. This strategy has two weak points: the invocation of Science, and the presentation of facts. The data, Mann writes, only work well between climatologists, but “for the typical citizen they are a muddle, too abstract—too much like 10^th-grade homework—to be convincing.” Previous research on persuasion shows the limits of data for winning over the skeptical, even the neutral. Another problem is that every side claims the science is on their side, and the do-nothing crowd is all-too-happy to point out the rare dissenting scientist and then let the ‘controversy’ spin itself. “Bewildered and battered by the back-and-forth, the citizenry sits, for the most part, on its hands,” writes Mann. Like children in the middle of feuding parents, most people are too frozen to pick a side, instead hiding their head under the pillow. Who can blame them?

Science communication comes upon this thorny problem like Sisyphus against his boulder. Progress is made—in polls, in treaties almost signed—then lost again, erased in a cloud of obfuscation and contrived debate. Because it’s not easy, because facts are insufficient, because it will take work and money to address the causes and symptoms of climate change seriously. Some environmentalists turn in frustration toward hyperbole—spitting out boldly false predictions of Malthusian starvation—and “moral blackmail” that sours the public on the whole movement.

Mann argues that to move past the confusion, we need to simplify the discussion and define quantifiable objectives. When talking about carbon, the majority comes from burning coal. And although a lot of carbon dioxide is also released by burning gasoline in personal cars, coal is burned in a much smaller number of power plants, making it easier to wrap our minds around. “No matter what your views about the impact and import of climate change,” Mann writes, “you are primarily talking about coal.” Although the most economically sound solution to producing too much carbon dioxide, an essentially global carbon tax that avoids ‘carbon haven’ countries, is still politically and practically difficult, “it is, at least, imaginable”. And that’s a step.

The Obama administration is, in fact, taking this approach. Coal emissions in the United States are now supposed to be reduced 30% below 2005 levels by 2030.  Is it enough? No. But it’s a start. And reflecting on the lessons taught by the conversation around climate change can help us think about other thorny issues where the communication of science is at the forefront. If we can begin to condense down the salient points about climate change—coal is at the forefront, and changes can be made—then we can think more clearly about simpler issues, like GMOs. Coming to a mutual understanding about what’s at stake, be it coal emissions or agricultural pesticides, can help clear away the clutter and improve both the communication of science and help society decide what to do about the issue at hand.

Agreeing to Disagree

“Disagreement agrees with me.” –Mike Pesca, The Gist

Honest opinion and in-good-faith disagreement seem rare in today’s media. Now, that statement may first conjure up the millions of blogs (ahem) that are nothing but opinions. But! I would challenge the ‘in-good-faith’ clause of many of those. The press, on the other hand, shies away from opinion in order to present an even-handed account of ‘both sides’.  (We’ll cover the value of the he-said-she-said approach to reporting another time, perhaps.)

Hence the brilliance of unleashing Mike Pesca upon the world in his new show, The Gist, on Slate. A short, daily podcast, The Gist typically covers around two topics from the personal (advice column follow ups) to the curious (the state of candy Peeps) to serious current events, like Ebola. And Pesca’s energy and, yes, opinion, permeates the show in a way I find refreshing. The ending segment, the spiel, is Pesca ranting—rant doesn’t need to be a bad word here—on the same mix of anything from the fantastic to daily minutiae.

Friday’s spiel was an argument in favor of arguments, couched in the context of debates on HBO and CNN around the very premise of Islam. Is it a bad religion or a good religion? You can, I’m sure, imagine some of the simplistic arguments on either side of that simplistic question. But Pesca was not diving into the specifics, but rather encouraging the exercise. Strip away the personal attacks and you have the basic elements of a debate. “There was a struggle over the definition of terms. There were competing assertions as to what the relevant facts were. There was a thesis offered…” Counterpoint. Counter-counterpoint.

Although Pesca cops to the increasing tendency to devolve into “shouting or bullying or baiting or clapping at the dumb parts,” he calls out for a (possibly imagined?) past when argument was intended not to make your side feel better, but to reach through the column to the undecided, even the other side. Because these are different constructions, of course. The cheerleading argument is much simpler and easier than well-framed persuasion.

I’m not sure that Pesca is imagining the supposed golden age of discourse quite right. Regardless, I would like to see his vision realized today. I think of the ongoing conversations St. Louis is having over the events in Ferguson, and now in the City as well, about black youth and police behavior. Many of my conversations are civil and respectful, with participants vulnerable enough to provide honest opinions and to be swayed by good-faith arguments and to stand comfortable in disagreement. But a fraction (and a majority online, unsurprisingly) of these conversations are sadly reduced to choir-preaching and name-calling. Disagreement is taken as evidence of treason. Even skepticism can be anathema in the wrong circles. That’s sad. Because as our society grapples not just with the inequities of race, but with our stance toward Islam, our approach to immigration, or our rights and responsibilities on the world stage, we need disagreement. The called-for ‘public debate’ after every significant moment must be both. To shut down debate is to shut out progress.

I think one thing wrong with our conceptions about disagreement is the tendency to write off opinions that are not our own far too quickly. But, as Pesca notes, “if the argument is sound, and if the disagreement is honest, then an expressed opinion doesn’t need to be subscribed to in order to be valued.” There is no debate without disagreement. No progress without debate over the facts and over our values. Let’s not squash that with conflict-aversion or simplistic name-calling. Let’s embrace it.

Unless, of course, you disagree.

Towers of Illinois

You’re driving north in Illinois. The sun set hours ago, a hundred miles back. It’s dark out. Black. Your headlights hardly cut into the inky night, barely enough to see the road in front of you. To your right, some unknown distance ahead, you see a flash of red dots, like an oilrig on the horizon, and then they’re gone. As if the rolling hills and the highway shrubs and prairie grass obscure your vision every hundred feet or so, they appear and disappear just on your periphery. But then it becomes clear, it’s not the terrain that makes them blink in and out of existence, but the lights themselves are pulsing in unison. Dozens of faceless towers announce their location for all to see, all at once, then disappear. Like the synchronous fireflies of Southeast Asia, they appear somehow sentient. As you approach closer, the pulsing red lights illuminate the towers, as blades turn slowly, silently, in the wind. Three blades, lit for a moment and towering over the landscape for miles, like the devastating, tripod creatures from Mars sent to conquer in War of the Worlds. Though unmoving, they seem, here at night, working in unison, like they could decide to uproot themselves and lumber over farmyards toward the nearest town…

Wind turbines are one of several renewable energy resources being developed as we grapple with the impacts of burning fossil fuels and climate change. The EPA, under President Obama, has set the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 30% by 2050. Illinois currently receives 4.7% of its power from wind and ranks 4^th for total megawatts installed in the States. Many wind farms are on actual farms in the rural areas that you can see from the highway. Missouri generates only 1.3% of its energy from wind, with an installed capacity just an eighth that of Illinois. Ameren, my provider, plans to add 400 megawatts over time, while KCP&L currently provides about 540 megawatts in Kansas and Missouri, and Kansas ranks 3^rd in the country with 19.4% of its energy coming from wind.

These plains states have a great potential for developing wind energy as the wind famously tears through the open prairies and farmlands. Although wind energy cannot provide the constant, base supply of electricity needed at this time, it is a powerful component of a balanced energy portfolio that can help meet our national goals of curbing carbon emissions.

…You’re driving south in Illinois. The sun is up, but hidden behind a sheet of clouds that the wind pushes east. You come close, seemingly within inches, of dozens of towers, their blades turning lazily to meet the breeze. Soundless. Less eerie in the sunlight, they are still imposing. Standing evenly apart, quietly waiting for night to fall to organize. Biding their time until they can announce themselves, saying ‘Here I am!’. So that, if they ever decide to pull out of their foundations and wander, at least we’ll know where they are.

(Edit: Okay it turns out I totally unconsciously stole the idea of War of the Worlds etc. http://xkcd.com/556/)