climate change
6 Jul 2009
Since When Do Conservatives Hate Facts?
Reason and realism are the bedrock of conservative thought, writes Ben Eltham. The Right's refusal to acknowledge the science on climate change goes against all that and risks discrediting the movement
If a conscience vote on the Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme were held today, how many Coalition members of parliament would vote for it?Not many.
I'm not talking about politics as usual here, where votes are strictly held along party lines and members "cross the floor" at the peril of their political careers. I'm talking about how many of Australia's elected political representatives actually believe in doing something about climate change.
Of course, as we know, the Greens are not voting for Labor's emissions trading scheme, because they think it is too weak. That's not surprising, given the feeble targets it sets and the amount of taxpayers' money Labor proposes to give to polluting fossil-fuel corporations like Woodside, Rio Tinto, Bluescope Steel — and even the Queensland and NSW Governments in their capacity as owners of coal-fired power stations.
Given their commitment to signing a strong emissions trading bill, we can leave aside the Greens' objections for the sake of this hypothetical exercise. What I'm asking here is how many of our elected representatives actually believe in climate change at all?
Not many, especially on the conservative side of politics.
Exhibit A is Family First Senator Steve Fielding. This maverick character gained election in 2004 with 1.77 per cent of the Victorian Senate vote, owing to a complicated preference flow in which the ALP tried to freeze out the Victorian Greens. Now he has a veto on literally every bill Labor takes to the Senate, alongside the South Australian independent Nick Xenophon.
Fielding has taken some strange positions in his term as Australia's first member of the Family First party. Despite a sustained campaign against alcohol advertising, he voted against the Government's alcopops tax hike — a bill which included tens of millions of dollars of funding for preventative health and anti-alcohol measures.
Lately, he has become convinced that climate change doesn't exist, with the aid of a small but dogged band of sceptical scientists.
"The Government needs to explain to the Australian people why global temperatures have remained steady over the last 10 to 15 years despite skyrocketing man-made carbon emissions," Fielding writes on his website.
Actually, the Government has — repeatedly, in a series of publications over many years. In fact, in Senator Fielding's case, it has done so in person, arranging a meeting between Fielding and his sceptics-for-hire with the Commonwealth's chief scientist Penny Sackett and the ANU's Will Steffen. Presumably, one of the things the Government has tried to explain to Senator Fielding is that global temperatures have actually been rising over the last 10 to 15 years, and that — taken as a trend since 1860 — the direction of the curve is up. Way up.
"The Earth has been cooling for the past 10 years" is such a pervasive climate myth that scientists like Barry Brook have devoted whole lectures to it and the UK's highly reputable Hadley Centre has felt the need to issue a publication entitled, simply, "Global warming goes on".
All this was presumably lost on Fielding, who seems firmly in the sway of committed climate sceptics like Dr Bob Carter. So persuasive is his conversion to flat-Earthism, that he has influential cheerleaders in the US media, including the Wall Street Journal barracking him on.
But Fielding is only the best example of a broader trend. There are many climate change sceptics in the Australian Parliament, including the National Party's Barnaby Joyce and Liberal backbencher Dennis Jensen.
Denial has become a conspicuous trend in Australian public life, particularly on the conservative side of politics. When reality doesn't accord with your political beliefs, ignore it. Or better still, find a few discredited experts who agree with you and take them to meet Penny Wong.
The Coalition has been rather prone to this kind of thing lately. Take the economy. Malcolm Turnbull, Joe Hockey and Julie Bishop spent so much time attacking the Rudd Government's stimulus handouts, they couldn't bring themselves to accept that the payments actually worked. Paul Krugman has pointed out a similar phenomenon in the US, where the US Republicans have consistently argued against stimulating the economy, egged on by economists more concerned about inflation in the future than unemployment now. "It has been a rude shock to see so many economists with good reputations recycling old fallacies," he wrote recently, "like the claim that any rise in government spending automatically displaces an equal amount of private spending, even when there is mass unemployment."
Denialism is a handy tactic in political debate. By attacking the science of climate change or the economics of stimulus, denialists can attack the very premise of their opponents' arguments. So people who want to do something about the plunging economy or the catastrophic warming of the planet suddenly become wild-eyed zealots in the grip of a dangerous "new religion", instead of sensible types who are trying to insure against future disaster. Denialism is powerful because it turns reality upside-down. Pollution becomes good; stopping it becomes bad. It's a neat trick.
There is a lot of short-term appeal in denial as a catch-all political strategy. It allows politicians who normally represent the interests of big business and the free flow of capital to argue they are misunderstood rebels fighting a global conspiracy. Indeed, because the reality of climate science is now so widely accepted in the scientific mainstream, the dwindling band of denialists are claiming they are somehow being victimised by the prevailing "orthodoxy". And because action on climate change is going to have to involve regulating carbon pollution, climate denialism has found fertile ground among those of a libertarian and anti-government persuasion.
But denialism is also a betrayal of one of the most cherished facets of political conservatism: realism. Ever since Edmund Burke first reflected on the violent idealism of the French Revolution, one of the key tenets of conservatism has always been a firm and steely grasp of reality. This has been especially true in foreign policy, where conservatives are often the politicians best able to acknowledge that the world is a dangerous place and that prudent steps are required to prevent aggression, as George W Bush's neo-conservative diplomat John Bolton pointed out in this essay.
But there is a long-term problem with embracing denialism of any type as a political strategy. The problem is that reality eventually hits home. Unfortunately, climate change is real. Believing it isn't won't make it go away. It's no coincidence that the first conservative political leader to recognise the reality of climate change was Margaret Thatcher, a former chemical engineer. Unlike Senator Fielding, she could read a graph.
The majority of the Australian public already realise this, as polls have repeatedly demonstrated. That's why Liberal Party strategists are so terrified about Labor calling a double dissolution election on climate change. The public believes climate change is real, and wants action.
And therein lies the political risk for the conservative movement. By fervently believing in things they wish were true, rather than trying to come to grips with things that are, conservatives risk discrediting themselves for a generation. In doing so, the Liberals and Nationals in Australia, and the Republicans in the US, risk trashing some of the fundamental tenets of conservatism: beliefs like realism, prudence, and, in John Bolton's words, "the accretion of experience and reasoning from empirical reality".
After all, there is one type of reality even sceptical politicians must eventually acknowledge: that of the ballot box.
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You can see a web video of a history of US denialism, by the widely-respected US historian of science Naomi Oreskes, here:
http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=13459
Hi Ben - a couple of more recent examples are Abbott’s description of banning smoking in cars with children as "nanny state", and Pyne’s description of increasing the price of cigarettes to reduce consumption, on the advice of an expert panel, as a "tax grab".
But you are often, and here again, much too kind to conservatives. When have they ever been based on "reason and realism"? In the 1950s perhaps? Certainly not in recent decades.
Just look at drug policy. Conservatives keep throwing up ideas that have been debunked years ago and even contradict their own research. Recently, several Liberal Party hacks have called on the government to beef up the "War on Drugs" and refocus away from alcohol. The fact that alcohol is the major drug problem we have in Australia is disregarded for the proven failure of a "Tough on Drugs" policy. SA conservative MP, Jamie Briggs has recently written 2 articles criticising the government’s anti-alcohol campaign and resorted to several claims about illicit drugs that are completely non factual. I want to know why hasn’t there been a public rejection from the Rudd government?
What is it with conservatives and their inability to research facts before going off at the mouth. Drug policy is the most obvious example of this and usually includes ignoring facts under the guise of being "Tough" on [add issue here]. It must be noted that many conservatives abused the Greens for their drug policy which was based on evidence and research whilst supporting completely fictitious anti-drug ideology.
The conservatives that ignore research and the facts about drugs are not restricted to the Libs though and includes Kevin Rudd, Nicola Roxon, Michael Atkinson(SA), Mike Rann(SA), Anna Bligh(Qld), NSW Labor etc.
The question must be asked - if basic scientific research and facts about drug use is ignored by conservatives, what other facts do they ignore.
The Liberals are following in the wake of Howard, who, as the saying goes, "used a lightpole for support, rather than illumination."
If you are convinced of your opinions, as Senator Fielding evidently is, you can always find someone to support them. In America he talked to some climate change deniers who also tried to prove that passive smoking is not bad for your health. It is hard to believe they could provide anything other than false information to support their arguments - so certainly casting doubts on Senator Fielding’s common sense.
I think Ben Eltham needs to move forward to study the more recent science related to the claims of Global Warming, which no longer can claim support by a “consensus” and in fact never could. There have always been a very substantial number of very highly qualified scientists who have not agreed with what was in fact developed, as pointed out by John Coleman of the Weather Channel, by a group who used the potential fear of the problem to gain access to improved research grants. This process continues in some degree even thirty years later, Eltham has also tried to dismiss the quality of the four scientists who accompanied Senator Fielding in his discussions with Senator Penny Wong, who herself was accompanied by scientists of her choosing as Eltham points out. The four advisors to Senator Fielding included Australia’s two most qualified and experienced scientists in climate science, Bob Carter, whose Geological analysis of the past is recognised as the most accurate of its type and a hydrologist who has published some fifty papers on the subject of climate. What qualifications does Eltham claim for making such comments and what is his experience in an appropriate area of science which not necessarily “climatology”. The atmosphere is complex, and its structure and behaviour requires that there be a range of qualifications used in its analysis. “Climatologist” is usually a term for a generalist who has entered the area as a physical geographer or meteorologist. To dismiss the capacity of Fielding’s advisors to properly question the claims that carbon dioxide is responsible for global warming, as Eltham has done, clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of what this important scientific debate is about. However, the outcome was that Senator Wong’s supporting scientists, Professor Penny Sackett and, I believe, the leading scientist from the Climate centre at ANU, were not able to answer the three straight forward and very reasonable questions posed by Senator Fielding. His first question was simply to ask why all of the IPCC and our CSIRO modelling showed continuing warming over the last ten years, while in fact measurements from the major global warming centres, including ground measurements analysed by the Hadley Centre and three others together with the more reliable satellite measurements, all of which had been responsible for demonstrating the clear warming between 1978 and 1998, have shown cooling since 1998. This and the other questions should have been able to be answered immediately had there in fact been an answer to them. Senator Wong asked for a 48-hour period to allow her advisors to assemble answers. However, the time blew out to about three days and the questions have not in fact been answered. Penny Sackett has apparently since withdrawn from the discussion, presumably because she feels the arguments presented by the IPCC are not sustainable. (Some of the IPCC supporters, claim that warming is still going on but can’t be detected because the natural changes in climate are currently over whelming this warming. Why were these universal models unable to account for the factors which cause such overwhelming cooling? Does this provide confidence in their accuracy in predicting the climate over the next fifty to one hundred years? I think not.)
This lack of a clear scientific explanation of the assumptions that CO2 is a problem is quite consistent with my own experience in corresponding for over twelve months with the CSIRO Climate Science Group in Melbourne whose modelling forms part of the IPCC reports. Their leader, Dr Penny Whetton, responded with apologies for not getting back to me with answers, promises that a "Colleague" would soon be forwarding answers to my scientific questions and references to their report which simply stated that:
"Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations " Very likely indeed!
This, in place of a reference to a scientific proof of carbon dioxide’s effects! Such proof does not in fact exist as is clearly demonstrated by many attempts to obtain such proof from many other Global Warming proponents.
This statement in fact goes as close as our CSIRO ever gets to "demonstrating" that carbon dioxide is responsible for increases in the earth’s temperature from 1978 to 1998. As a physicist with 40 years experience in the science of the absorption of radiation by gases and the redistribution of that energy to other gas molecules, I would require significantly more detail than that which I have been able to wring out of Penny Whetton over twelve months of straight forward correspondence, yielding nothing more than promises and the statement above. I have come reluctantly to the conclusion that the modellers do not understand the physics of carbon dioxide and all of their usage of increased warming is an unsubstantiated assumption. If Ben Eltham would like to contact me to discuss this science, I would very much welcome that. He can do that by visiting the ACSC website at http://www.auscsc.org.au. I look forward to discussing this directly with you Ben. I am in fact enjoying a stimulating discussion with a fellow physicist with different experiences from mine, who is a believer in the CO2 claims by IPCC. He contacted me for that purpose to avoid the usual insults and ad hominem attacks which have replaced scientific debate on the blogosphere. We do not agree but we respect each other’s position, concede points made by each other and present our own arguments with confidence, clarity and scientific rigour. It would be great if people from both sides of the argument could place their views, with supporting scientific arguments, on a web site and exchange genuine views without rancour or abuse. I am sure many would agree. How could we achieve that? A proper scientific debate would help us all and enable scientists to enlighten the public.
John Nicol
Ben, apart from your last sentence you are talking disingenuous nonsense. There you are right to say that all politicians must eventually acknowledge reality of the ballot box in democratic countries. But the science of climate change will have little to do with how people vote.
Climate change has never been given a high priority by voters, and as the recession bites they will become far more interested in the short term cost to them of climate change mitigation than any long term cost of the problem regardless of whether they believe it exists or not. Though President Obama does not face a vote for a while, US mid term elections are not that far away, and in Europe several leaders have elections to think about.
The reality you should acknowledge is that no more is going to be achieved by politicians to reduce the growth of both greenhouse gas emissions and their concentration in the atmosphere in the next 5 years than was done in the last. One result of their efforts, at public expense, will be to enrich brokers, consultants, pundits and some scientists at the expense of the poorest in their nations. The only other result will be to further regulate the lives of their citizens
If as I hope and believe there are some rational people reading this web site they should understand it is simply untrue to say that any of the people you call “deniers” believe climate change does not exist, or do not accept any of the known physics of the climate such as the facts that so-called greenhouse gases absorb and re-emit radiant energy, that air warmed in whatever way can hold more moisture.
In general, all that so-called “deniers” deny is that there is any scientific proof that the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide has much to do with recent warming – or the lack of it in the last decade or the middle of the last century. US postal rates correlate better with warming and cooling than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Correlation even if it were good does not prove causation. Even if the models accurately simulated the real climate and were internally consistent, neither of which they are, they too are not scientific proof.
"Since When Do Conservatives Hate Facts?"
Since always… whenever it contradicts their agendas, or they think it threatens their wealth.
The ‘deniers of reality’ are out in strength again, with plain lies, obfuscations, misdirection, ‘funny’ statistics and a weird belief that they will survive, no matter what happens to everyone else. You know, the old blather, ‘it can’t happen to me’!
But in one way they are right, there are enough of them, and they are all loud enough, to keep Rudd and other Governments world wide from actually doing anything constructive to stop and turn around the utter world destruction that is coming, whether they like it, believe it, or not.
By the time it becomes evident to them that they are so blitheringly WRONG, it will be far too late. Will it be available to the rest of us who are having to die a miserable death in the not-so-far future because of them, to get these people by the throat and shake some sense into them..probably not! Great pity!
Poor fellow, my world! Dazza.
I put it to you Ben that you don’t even know what it is the ‘deniers’ are actually denying.
Is it ‘climate change’ or is it ‘ALP rhetoric’, or is it ‘carbon based taxation’ or is it that hominids can actually ‘change climate’, or is it that there is no observable or measurable effect that anthropogenic CO2 has any effect on average global temperatures ?
I don’t think you know.
Fear not, there is actually a debate going on… but the likes of ‘Our ABC’ and it seems your good publication are trying to bury it, especially when the ‘non IPCC’ evidence is presented.
Here is a link to some ‘inconvenient truths’ should you care to try to understand the science - You don’t have to be a scientist to do so :-
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/06/30/funded-arrogance/
And remember Science is not ‘democratic’, and nor should it be.
That’s part of how science works. The ‘null hypothesis’ and scientific method does not give a flying frangipani about consensus or ‘peer review’. Even the simplest fact can destroy the most eloquent of your arguments Ben.
Ah Ben, the deniers are coming thick and fast now.
As usual.
http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/Climate_change/
Ben,
When you say the public believe that climate change is real and want action are you refering to
"The Climate Institute commissioned an online survey of 1,400 people to get their opinions on climate change."
Secondly, shouldn’t the Federal Opposition and the Public appraise and question the "action" that the government proposes?
I’m going to take these comments in reverse order. So:
EarnestLee - there’s been a number of polls which have consistently found that the majority of Australians want the government to take action on climate change.
Here’s a Lowy Institute poll from 2006 which found 92% of respondents agreed that climate change requires action, including 69% who support immediate steps “even if this involves significant costs.”
Here’s an Essential Media Communications poll from 2008 which showed 72% of 1011 respondents supporting the introduction of an emissions trading scheme.
Here’s a September 2008 ANU poll which finds a majority of Australians consider global warming a serious threat, with a majority again supporting an emissions trading scheme.
Here’s an ABC story about the latest Nielsen poll (June 2009) which shows two-thirds of Australians support the current version of the CPRS.
Billy Bob Hall,
I looked at the link you posted, and it seems to mainly be complaining about ad hominem attacks on one of the climate sceptics Steve Fielding took to the meeting with Penny Wong. Well - I don’t think that’s what England was doing, and in any case, the link in question goes on to attack England quite personally - even questioning whether he deserves his research funding - so on the ad hominem argument, JoNova is quite hypocritical.
I also read the exchange of emails between Matthew England and William Kininmonth and I find them pretty damning - for my opinion of William Kininmonth.
England points out that William Kinninmonth has got his sums wrong - Kinninmoth has done some self-professed "back of the envelope calculations" and England points out, very reasonably in my opinion, that "density (and therefore thermal expansion) is non-linear in temperature" and therefore Kinninmoth’s linear curve is wrong. Or do you contest this?
So - I have to agree with Matthew England when I repeat his point. If you or William Kinninmoth have any new data to present, why not present them to a peer-reviewed scientific journal?
David Holland,
I’ll leave aside the first few points you make, such as the abilty of the world’s leaders to actually constrain carbon emissions, as contestable and pessimistic, but at least rational and valid points of discussion.
I’ll cut to the chase and deal with your penultimate paragraph which states:
Sentence 1: WRONG. Carbon dioxide has been established as a climate forcer by countless peer-reviewed scientific studies, including of course the IPCC, which I would remind all the sceptics here is of course a very large group of climate scientists from many disciplines who have reached a consensus about the role of carbon dioxide in climate change.
Sentence 2: WRONG. I can’t speak to US postal rates, but carbon dioxide concentrations correlate with a high degree of statistical validity to observed temperature changes.
Sentence 3: MISLEADING. Since the models developed by climatologists do actually propose a well-understood model for climate forcing by greenhouse gases, correlation is accompanied in this case by a compelling causal explanation - the so-called "greenhouse effect."
Sentence 4: WRONG. The models are indeed "internally consistent," if by that you mean based on computational models that robustly predict observed changes in the earth’s atmosphere, oceans and climate.
Finally, and here’s something the sceptics don’t often address, even if we leave aside the climate forcing properties of carbon dioxide, aren’t you worried that the world’s oceans are becoming more acidic?
John Nicol
Your point about the world’s scientists using anthropogenic global warming to gain research funding is not supported by the evidence. Can you cite any evidence to back up this theory?
As to my own qualifications, I am not a climatologist, although I did train to postgraduate level in cellular neuroscience, which has given me a keen understanding of the level of expertise required to publish peer-reviewed scientific research, and a humble appreciation of the commitment of the world’s climate researchers to continuing their profession in the face of people who continually misread and misinterpret the data they present.
John, I’d point you to Naomi Oreskes paper in the journal Science which assesses 928 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles and finds that every single one agrees with the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. Is that not a consensus? And if there really is a viable alternative hypothesis to AGW supported by robust observations, what is it, and why hasn’t it been published? Do you really believe all the world’s leading scientific journals are engaged in a conspiracy?
Finally, you again repeat the "earth has been cooling since 1998" myth; apart from the fact that it is simply cherry-picking the data, I urge you to listen to Barry Brook’s lecture on the point and come back to me with your explanation.
And then of course there is the Vostok ice-core data, which I notice you don’t mention presumably because it tends to support the AGW case.
Ben,
You cite a number of studies in answer to my question. I am not sure that they represent the man in the street.
However the real concern to the economist in me is what to do next.
On my table I take it from your articles that you would agree with 1, 2, and 3.
"We have not got past step one.
1. Is the World actually warming?
2. Is the warming man-made?
3. Can we do anything to correct such a warming?
4. Shouldn’t we devote our resources to prepare for sustainable living in a new environment.
Personally I think all of our energies should be devoted to 4. This "Carbon Market" is an expensive and worthless distraction."
I am hoping that the Parliamentary debates and perhaps Senate enquiry will ruthlessly examine the Governments proposal which I find outrageously inadequate if you accept 1 though 3.
Over to you. Are you suggesting the Opposition and Senate capitulate?
Sometimes I pine for the days when I was a lefty… It was such an awesome feeling to be so utterly right about everything and to have the conviction that all who disagreed with you are both ignorant AND evil.
It really is the pits to have to think.
EarnestLee
I would say we’re still arguing about step 3.
The answer is, yes we can do something, for example by burning less carbon. Clearly, this is going to require a pretty serious policy effort, though not one nearly as expensive and dangerous as doing nothing about carbon emissions and simply trying to adapt to 3,4,5 degree and higher global temperature increases.
Let me try out a metaphor for you:
If the sink is blocked in your bathtub, the first thing you should do is turn off the tap; after that you can start worrying about repairing your bathroom. You might still need to call the plumber, but you know what? The first thing s/he will do is turn off the water mains too.
Right about now I would say the global climate bathtub is nearly full. If we can at least turn the taps down, we can buy ourselves some time - we might still get some water overflowing and messing our bathroom, but we’re going to avoid the risk of the floor caving in and our whole house getting flooded out.
So, to return to your point, we need to address both point 3 and point 4. The CPRS is about step 3. I agree, it is outrageously inadequate. The targets are too weak and the compensation for polluters far too high. So I would support something closer to the Greens’ position than to the ALP’s.
Having said that, to effectively address step 4, we need to put regulate and cost carbon emissions. A carbon price is part of that, inorder to spur new investment in renewable energy, efficient transport and buildings, and eventually taking existing carbon out of the atmosphere altogether.
On to the Opposition and the Senate. I would love to see Senators like Barnaby Joyce and Ron Boswell capitulate to rationality by accepting the reality of climate change. In the UK, the Conservatives have already "capitulated" to the necessity to take action of global warming - I would also like to see Australian conservative parties take that step. I would have thought the Opposition, especially the Nationals, would realise that this is the very best emissions trading deal business and agriculture will ever get in this country; in a post-2011 Senate we may well have a situation where The Greens hold the balance of power and are able to negotiate a much stronger CPRS bill.
Politically, this is the result I believe we will get, driven in part by accelerating alarm by voters and better organised counter-lobbying from scientists, NGO’s and non-polluting industries like insurance and tourism that have far more to lose from dangerous climate change than big miners and energy companies will from the current scheme.
Dear Ben,
Neither you, nor I, nor Australia can turn off the tap. That is even if we could find it in the dark.
Therefore if you are right we had better look for other means of self preservation, perhaps learn to swim or tread water.
That is my point 4. I do not buy point 3 even with the help of the guy in the sky.
Sorry Ben,
A single aside.
By sustainable living I mean getting as closely as possible to neutral energy usage, which is possible today in private residences.
Time to put a serious price on carbon and feed the revenue back into rebates for energy conservation measures at consumer level and serious clean energy projects at energy provider level. The chances the entire scientific establishment has got the fundamentals of this wrong are next to nil by now; the last decade has seen 8 of the 10 hottest years on record as well as arguably the record hottest year, the record highest ocean level, the record warmest ocean heat content, the loss of ice shelves and glaciers and lowest arctic summer ice extent. That’s a decade of cooling? Get serious!
The voices saying warming’s a beat-up are already irrelevant; governments have looked to the experts and have recognised that AGW is real and recognise that it has to be taken seriously. Pehaps not much urgency yet but that too will come.
I don’t know why the Right is reluctant to take climate change seriously but a politically expedient decision in the past to blame the green left for it being an issue at all has left them with a lot of loyal constituents who continue to believe it’s all the green-left beat-up they were told it was. A lot of them have become quite stubbornly attached to that notion. And meanwhile a lot of serious money is invested in and made from industries that require the abundant energy from burning billions of tons of coal which is easy to understand whilst climate science is difficult to believe and hard to understand. Even so, surely conservative politics will see a changing of the guard and begin to face this head on. We may actually see real action result from a more bipartisan approach.