Scientists get no respect these days. When they speak, no one listens. It doesn't matter how many scientists are speaking, what they are saying, or what their qualifications are, they get a fraction of the media attention lavished on a reality TV star or an American Idol contestant. Three thousand scientists and experts, including a number of Nobel Laureates, joined together and issued a warning several weeks ago about the planet and possible "catastrophic consequences" for global civilization, but Kim Kardashian and her alleged marriage woes stole the headlines. The Royal Society, the world's oldest and most distinguished academy of science, late last month issued a report on how increasing population and rising consumption are imperiling the planet. Sir John Sulston, the Nobel Prize Laureate who chaired the working group,cautioned about a possible "downward vortex of economic, socio-political and environmental ills," but his warning got less press attention in the U.S. than Mitt Romney's dog.
If scientists get any media attention it's only because the science-deniers are ridiculing them. When the Royal Society produced its "Population and the Planet," report, the ink was not even dry before the critics were slashing away at it. A writer for The Economist declared, "On the whole it stinks." A self-described "global expert on the metal scandium," asserts in Forbes and The Telegraph, that it is "an appallingly bad report" and "a dismal failure." Really? Did anyone actually read the report, or look at the credentials of those who wrote it? Doubtful.
We live in the Era of Willful Ignorance. It is not only acceptable; it is fashionable to throw scientific caution to the wind. The Euro has more 'currency' than scientific warnings about climate change, food security, the oceans, or biodiversity loss. Any scientist venturing into the public realm, no matter how respected by his or her peers, is treated like an intellectual varmint by politicians, special interests, and arm-chair critics, who immediately open up with a volley of prefabricated rebuttals and personal attacks.
Because these rhetorical assaults are so successful, political leaders shy away from embracing scientific conclusions for fear that they will alienate uninformed voters, who easily make up a majority of the electorate. You can count on one hand the number of politicians taking a leadership role on climate change or any of the other environmental challenges facing the world. And God forbid that any elected official should suggest that the planet is in peril or that the economic growth engine as we have known it over the past century is not sustainable. Issues like food security, loss of biodiversity, and resource scarcity are politically taboo. Do a search of the Congressional Record and you will find that these issues are rarely, if ever, discussed.
History will not be kind to today's leaders. Decades from now, posterity will look back at what passes today for political discourse in this country and they will ask, "What planet were they living on?" They will marvel at how politicians could be so heedless of science and so neglectful of posterity.
The fault, of course, is not with our leaders, but with us. In a representative democracy we get the government we deserve. If we are more concerned about Kim Kardashian's marriage or Mitt Romney's dog than we are about the future of humanity, we can hardly blame our elected representatives for their lack of courage and foresight. As England's Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said more than a century ago, "There go the people, and I must follow, for I am their leader."
I don't know how we translate scientific warnings into actionable awareness, but the key, I suspect, is making people understand that the future is now. A year ago, Jeremy Grantham, the co-founder of GMO, one of the largest investment management firms in the world, caused a stir in the financial community when he wrote a newsletter titled, "Time to wake up: Days of abundant resources and falling prices are over forever." Grantham's analysis suggests that the world is already experiencing the effects of resource scarcity, and that climate change and other factors could make life more difficult for current generations, not just posterity.
Grantham is highly respected in financial circles. If his analysis is correct, and there is every reason to believe it is, then people may begin to attach a higher degree of urgency to what scientists are telling us about the world. Let's hope so.
Bill McKibben: Too Hot Not to Notice?
Richard Alley: How Science Connects the Dots: Global Warming Didn't Stop in 1998
Jamie Henn: "Connecting the Dots" Between Extreme Weather and Climate Change
The science community has been debunked by non-experts,who react with emotional,or theological responses throughout our human history. It took a hundred years for Coppernican theory to be accepted,and today,even though we have the venues to present unbiased facts that can be accessed by standard model John Q public types,like myself,many choose just to turn their faces away from the winds of change.
What does it take to move our public discussions in the direction of facts,instead of speculation?
Ooooh, don't tell me Alex. I know this one. Just give me a second Mr. Trebek. Hmmmm.
What is famine, drought, failure of food stocks, and inability of governments to sustain infrastructure in the face of increasingly violent and unstable weather?
Is that it? Did I get it right? Did I?
Sadly, my feeling is that most people operate on belief rather than knowledge.
At least, that's my belief.
Overpopulation is such a charged issue that politicians will not address it. The Catholic church has made overpopulation a cornerstone of its dogma, and the church attacks any attempt to limit population through birth control. Fundamentalists and the Republican Right prevent the dissemination of birth control in Africa. Overpopulation has increased the wars fought for control of land and famine is widespread. Right-wingers pass laws to ban abortion and to prevent sex education in schools motivated by their own unconscious death anxiety. Commentators vilify the Chinese for their attempts to limit population.
Unless we raise our death anxiety to consciousness, we are doomed as a species.
Nature doesn't care about pain, suffering, fairness, right and wrong, justice, good and evil. The process will be pretty dam awful.
That said, this writer is discussing Climatology, and unfortunately as such he's opening a political barrel of monkeys from which his message becomes slanted. He seems to bemoan that the position he favors is not being properly paid heed to, but there are other Scientists who oppose his point of view. This is just how Science works, really. They argue and argue and argue for decades until eventually everyone is "sure enough" that something is true. The real problem with Climatology is that the Scientists arguing for swift action now are bucking against this tried system of arguing and arguing over the data and interpretations of it and are encountering resistance because of it.
I take no position here exactly except to say that just because someone disagrees with a majority view on something (and I would argue there is a majority opinion in support of anthropogenic climate change) it does not make them "deniers" or mean they are wrong. This is a process, and regardless of what causes climate change we're just going to have to accept that it's coming and griping about why or not being listened to is not going to help in the short term.
Some very good scientists also share some of the blame by being poor communicators. The precautionary principle elevated fear to the level of a scientific conclusion and is a truly hideous perversion of science. The endorsement of the precautionary principle by regulatory agencies reflects the failure of scientists to communicate effectively.
I used to work for a large government agency until 2006. In 2003, most decision makers there chose not to listen to my interpretations of many scientific issues because they did not support decisions seen as practical and expedient. After a teleconference on a particularly thorny problem, an agency administrator three levels of management above me asked me to step into the stairwell and let him know my thoughts. He wanted the truth but he didn't want to be seen talking to me and only sought me out when the stakes were too high to ignore.
I wholeheartedly agree with Robert that history will not be at all kind to today's decision makers.
@TedWSimon
http://tedsimon.authorsxpress.com
But the corporate controlled media has the advantage of being able to control most of the memes.
So, they are able to spread mind contagions associated with ideology.
This is what science is up against.
Question is, can science build it's own insurgent meme factory to counter that commercial message that has altered everything from the foods we eat, to how we love, to how democracies function?
Prominent MIT researcher -- and conservative -- Kerry Emanuel receives “frenzy of hate” after a video featuring an interview with him was published...
Emails contained “veiled threats against my wife,” and other “tangible threats,” Emanuel... director of MIT’s Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate program, said... “They were vile, these emails. They were the kind of emails nobody would like to receive.”
“What was a little bit new about it was dragging family members into it and feeling that my family might be under threat, so naturally I didn’t feel very good about that at all,” Emanuel said...
The video... documented a climate change conference run by a group of Republican voters upset by their party’s anti-science rhetoric...
In one clip, Emanuel says, “It makes me feel to some extent disgusted with politics and to some extent ashamed to be an American.”...
ClimateDepot [blog] posted Emanuel’s email address.
Emanuel notes that in the full video, he went on to explain that the Republican candidates “have either been misled, in which case it’s not great to be part of the political system where candidates for the president of the United States could be so misled on such an important issue, or they were dishonest, which [is] equally bad in my view: How could we live in a country where candidates are being dishonest about an issue of such importance?”
http://tinyurl.com/74larxf
Further compounding the problem is that nearly all scientific breakthroughs are communicated to the public through journalists, who spent the bare minimum time in required science survey classes to get their B.A. degrees. Journalist's purpose in reporting has at least as much to do with selling papers or getting air time as it has with increasing our knowledge of the physical world. So we have a system where poorly qualified reporters are the primary source of scientific knowledge for the majority who have little science education. Is it any wonder John Q. Public is so easily manipulated by radio talk show hosts, negative PR campaigns and politicians funded by corporate interests?
Ironic that so many Americans are so distrustful of the very scientific method that has given them all their modern conveniences, medical breakthroughs, etc.
Scientists should know better.