Field Of Nightmares - Great Interview With Elizabeth Kolbert

[hatrack]

EDIT

Q: Tell me about your experiences with the scientific community. Why has the one group of people that's really taken climate change to heart not been able to break through the public's apathy?

A: The norms of science are such that they work against communicating alarm to the public. If you read papers on global warming, or generally just talk to these guys, they will tell you, for instance, that discharge of ice into the Atlantic has doubled; but they will never say what the implications of this are -- why this is, you know, horrifyingly dangerous. Scientists speak a certain language, they tend to speak mainly to each other, and the norms are such that you're never supposed to go beyond the data. Their attitude is that the data speaks for itself. Unfortunately, most people don't find those data very compelling. They don't know what the implications are. So you have one community speaking to itself and getting increasingly alarmed, and the rest of the world saying, well, the scientists haven't really figured it out yet. And I would add that the norms of journalism also work against communicating this. So when you add those two together, you're in deep doo-doo.


Q: Complaints about the "he-said, she-said" school of climate journalism are common. As someone who's seen the inside of The New York Times and The New Yorker, can you explain where it comes from? Surely reporters hear this constant litany of complaints about it. What enforces it?

A: On one hand there is a very, very clever campaign to turn this into a political issue, as opposed to a purely scientific issue. And I suppose there were once enough halfway credible people making the case against warming that journalists felt they had to go to them. My hope is that you'll see that less and less. I think the message is getting out there that this is not a two-sided issue. Naomi Oreskes did a paper looking at the scientific literature, and there just is no debate. I hope that phenomenon will taper off, but it hasn't ended. I read the papers like everyone else, and I still see quotes from these thoroughly discredited people, and I honestly don't understand it myself at this point.

EDIT

http://www.energybulletin.net/print.php?id=14778

Much, much more at the link.

[phantom power]

1. "there's not one thing we have to do"

As the mayor of Burlington, Vt., said to me, there's not one thing we have to do; there are hundreds and hundreds of things we have to do. And we have to do them on a global scale.

Meanwhile, the largest CO2 polluting nation on the planet is currently "governed" by a tribe of chimpanzees who don't even acknowledge the basic logic of balancing their own federal budget.

I'm thinking of a phrase that rhymes with "We're bucked."

[Hoping4Change]

2. The comments that scientists believe data speaks for itself

and that the norms of science work against communicating alarm to the public are very illuminating. Thanks for posting this. K&R.:kick:

[Trevelyan]

3. Physicists are getting involved against bushco with this petition and

article:

Petition by physicists on nuclear weapons policy - You can sign under non-physicists and under institution many people wrote "Student" or "Self"

Petition by physicists on nuclear weapons policy, September 2005

As physicists we feel a special responsibility with respect to nuclear weapons; our profession brought them into existence 60 years ago. We wish to express our opposition to a shocking new US policy currently under consideration regarding the use of nuclear weapons. We ask our professional organizations to take a stand on this issue, the Congress of the United States to conduct full public hearings on this subject, and the media and public at large to discuss this new policy and make their voices heard.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/petition /

Will The U.S. Nuke Iran?

Professor of Physics Highlights The Dangers....

[brokensymmetry]

4. Great interview.

I read Ms. Kolbert's book; well written, and deeply disturbing.

Thanks for posting this!

[bloom]

5. the dilemma

"There's a dilemma of sorts: scientists feel uncomfortable with advocacy, journalists feel uncomfortable with advocacy, and advocates are ignored. Environmental groups have been marginalized, stereotyped as Chicken Littles."


I noticed a scientist on UCTV giving an in depth presentation about the oceans and global warming. He was all very matter of fact about all the assessments and projections. And then during the Q & A someone asked him about the consequences and THEN he got a little animated about how dire the consequences could be.

I agree that the scientists are not used to acting dramatic - histrionic - or whatever. It doesn't seem to go with the personality of the people who go into that field.