The History of Global Climate Change, part 2

We used many resources for this article. The most important was "The Discover of Global Warming" at the site of the American Institute of Physics. It is detailed, objective, and well written, and we strongly encourage people to go to the site and read all of it.

Climate is one of the most complex fields of scientific study. Yet nothing they had seen before prepared the community of climate scientists for the new complexities they faced in 1988. Thanks to Jim Hansen’s testimony, global climate change was back in the news. Suddenly, men and women who were accustomed to working in relative obscurity and thinking at highly theoretical levels were faced with the problem of convincing the general public that a potentially catastrophic situation with global impact might…repeat, MIGHT…have already begun.

This was going to be a tough sell. Particularly, it would turn out, in America. America is accustomed to seeing itself as one of the world’s "good neighbors," taking the lead on issues of social responsibility. Not so with global climate change. On this issue, the United States has lagged behind much of the rest of the world, and has taken an active role is slowing and even blocking action to lower greenhouse gas emissions. While the community of climate scientists would soon reach solid consensus on global warming, and would make more and more forceful statements over the years to that effect, public opinion in America remains divided and skeptical to this day. Some would go so far as to say the country is in a state of denial on the issue.

Before we move the history of global climate change beyond 1988, let’s consider some of the factors that have contributed to this divide.

First: Scientists don’t think like the rest of us

While most people makes decisions based on "facts" and "truths," scientists live in a world where neither of these exists. Scientists work, and think, in a world of theories and data. Something is observed to happen; a theory, which is just a highly refined guess, is proposed to explain it. Predictions are made based on the theory, and experiments are devised to test the predictions under more and more specific conditions. The results are recorded and analyzed. If the results support the prediction, the experiment is repeated many times to make sure the results are consistent. If the results don’t support the prediction, the theory is revised, new predictions are made, and new experiments are conducted. Over time, if enough results match the predictions, the theory comes to be accepted by most of the experts in the field. This is called "consensus." There will always be some who doubt the theory or question the research; the scientific method encourages skepticism. But consensus is as close to a "truth" as science gets. Once consensus has been reached, experiments shift from testing the core ideas of the theory to finding out how widely it can be applied.

The results of experiments are always open to debate and interpretation: do they represent the theory in action, or are they being caused by something else that hasn’t been considered? Scientist know that even the most established theories may, over time, prove false. New research or new technology may reveal flaws that earlier research was not capable of recording or measuring. New discoveries may open up whole new levels of understanding. Ideas which formed the basis of a lifetime’s work may have to be scrapped.

This is why, in the public eye, scientists often come across as indecisive or noncommittal. They’re just trying to be accurate. People like simple, certain answers, and scientists know there ARE no simple, certain answers. Good science rarely makes for good PR.

Second: By 1988, the days of the white coats were over

Up until the 1960s, America had an almost boundless faith in science and scientists. Scientists were seen as the epitome of rational, objective thinking, and their ability to improve life and advance society went largely unchallenged.

This unquestioning faith changed with the growth of the environmental movement, as people became aware of the destructive, and often unforeseen, consequences of scientific progress. Science, it was revealed, is often wrong and sometimes shortsighted when scientific principle is turned into public policy. Scientists sometimes let sponsorship dollars, rather than pure reason, guide their research. From the 1960s on, scientific mistakes would make the news more often than scientific triumphs. Just two years earlier, in 1986, the Challenger disaster had shown that America’s rocket scientists could be undone by something as simple as a frozen rubber o-ring.

People were putting a lot less faith in the words of scientists in 1988. It’s notable that Ronald Reagan was just leaving office as one of the most popular presidents in history. While in office he had once publicly claimed that trees cause air pollution. Many Americans had laughed it off. More than a few had believed it.

Third: Nothing bad had happened yet

While there was no doubt within the scientific community that global warming had occurred, and there was strong suspicion that global climate change had already begun, no one knew for sure what was actually going to happen. The possibilities were frightening. Past climate shifts had caused extreme and sometimes catastrophic changes to the world’s environment. But no one could make firm and specific predictions.

As of 1988, there had been some hot weather, some strong storms, some troubling signs. Global climate change had shown itself to be inconvenient and perhaps a bit unpleasant, but hardly worth the fuss. America has shown in the past that it can act swiftly and with great purpose in the face of a clear and present danger. The danger was there, for sure, but it was neither clear enough nor present enough. Yet.

Fourth: Controlling greenhouse gases would require significant sacrifices

To reverse the greenhouse gas problem, mankind would have to give up what may be the single most important invention in human history: the combustion engine. Engines burning fossil fuels are the foundation of modern, industrial society. Fossil fuel powers almost all of our transportation, generates most of our energy, warms and cools our houses and powers our factories. The very framework of modern human society is built on fossil fuels: densely populated cities and sprawling suburbs, diverse industries, international commerce, and the freedom to travel, live and work wherever you want.

When the hole in the ozone layer was discovered, all that most people had to give up was hair spray. Combating global climate change would mean rethinking and redesigning virtually all aspects of modern life. It would mean changing, and probably sacrificing, a way of life which had brought an unprecedented level of comfort and convenience to millions of people. And it would mean spending a lot more money for something which had always been cheap and plentiful: energy.

America was not alone in facing this sacrifice, either: modern industrial society was just beginning to take hold in a whole new part of the planet. Economies in South America, Africa and Asia were achieving a new level of productivity, and their populations enjoying a new level of prosperity, all powered by fossil fuels. Asking these countries to give up fossil fuels meant asking their people to give up a level of comfort and security they were experiencing for the first time in their history.

Fifth: The other side mobilized, and got its version of the story out first and most effectively

As the scientific community made its first, carefully-worded statements, powerful interests were already working to increase public skepticism about global climate change. Energy providers, auto producers, chemical industries and agricultural conglomerates were heavily vested in and protective of the fossil fuels that drove their profits. And they had learned from past mistakes such as the ozone threat, when public opinion had forced them to change practices and lose money.

Big business recognized that the best way to combat "inconvenient" scientific evidence was not through advertising and marketing, but by finding and promoting contradictory studies. This was accomplished through anonymously-named think tanks and foundations, which freely funded anyone looking to disprove global climate change. There was plenty of contradictory and unexplained data to use, and it wasn’t hard to find scientists willing to play the role of contrarian in the public eye.

Introduce enough complexity and enough conflicting opinions into the public debate, and people will become confused, overloaded and frustrated. Frustration leads to doubt. And a doubtful public will rarely muster up the will to demand a change to the status quo.

Sixth: The birth of red state, blue state

Reagan’s term in office marked the beginning of a period in America where certain issues became closely tied to political allegiance. The environment was one of these polarizing issues. Republicans would hold the presidency for 20 of the next 28 years, and Republicans, as a rule, didn’t believe in global warming or global climate change.

Reagan’s core belief was that government didn’t do a very good of solving problems. He believed it was always best to turn things over to the free market, and let businesses innovate to find new answers. This free market philosophy would become a cornerstone…for better or worse…of government response to global climate change.

Seventh: The growing influence of religion

At the same time, there was a growing religious movement in America that was highly skeptical of scientific, and in particular Darwin’s theory of evolution. Proponents would actively push for public schools to teach science courses that "proved" that the Bible, rather than scientific history, was correct. The states of Arkansas in 1981 and Louisiana in 1982 both passed legislation mandating that these "creation science" courses be taught. It took a Supreme Court decision in 1987 to overturn these mandates.

The creationism concept would reemerge in the 2000s with a new name, "intelligent design," and a new public battle to force public schools to include it in their science curriculum. Global climate change, in particular, ran afoul of intelligent design proponents, because some of the strongest physical evidence of global climate change is found in the fossil records from hundreds of thousands of years ago. Intelligent design states that the world is only 6,000 years old.

Put all these trends together and it’s easy to see how the debate over global climate change has played out since 1988:

• The community of climate scientists were and are united in their belief that greenhouse gases cause global warming, that mankind’s use of fossil fuels has contributed to global warming, that global warming causes global climate change, and that global climate change has happened in the past and will happen again in the future, perhaps even the near future.
• The general public, and particularly the American public, were and are divided and uncertain on all of these issues.
• The world’s governments, caught between the experts on one side and a resistant public and business community on the other, have acted slowly and cautiously. Green energy, the ultimate solution to global climate change, has received only marginal government support. Again and again, they have looked to appease business interests and climate change doubters by proposing free market solutions instead of mandates. One of these free market solutions is Renewable Energy Certificates.

To find out what happened after 1988, read part 3.