THE GUARDIAN, (guardian.co.uk) recent put out an article with the heading, “Climate scientist are losing ground against deniers’ disinformation”. Simply put, this article examines the ways in which the Tea Party movement and its supporters, described as, “sophisticated echo chamber of right-wing shock jocks, [and] culture-war keyboard commandos”, are all working together to push the skepticism on climate change. On the left, climate campaigners: educated scientists, intergovernmental and non-governmental policy makers, U.N. officials, and amongst others, the President of the United States; On the (far) right, climate skeptics: soccer-moms, Glenn Beck (though some sources say he now believes in the science behind global warming), Sarah Palin, Fox News, and much of the blogging community. Needless to say, these diametrically opposed viewpoints have met face-to-face on more than one occasion, yielding results that illustrate the ways in which “scientific fact” does not always trump the rhetorical force of the “mob”. There are a few points this article raises that I would like to tease out, as they speak to much of the work we’ve be doing here. It must be noted however, that this article was written by Joss Garman, a climate campaigner and described by the Sunday Times as, “ champion of the green movement”.
Garman credits much the Tea Party’s political clout to the fact that they have, “power without responsibility”. As a result, they can afford to throw as much mud as they want and see what sticks because they don’t face the scrutiny as those holding incumbent establishment positions (Garman). In this way, the climate change controversy, once largely resolved, is live once again, “despite”, Garman states, “the rock solid nature of the core facts”. We know the danger in relying on “facts” that fail to get the “mob” to go along with them. Rhetoric and fact are deeply connected, and the recent disconnect between climate change scientists, and the Tea Party and its supporters, speak directly to the ways in which a fact is not a fact until Latour’s “fourth loop”, the loop of, “public representation” (Pandora’s Hope, 105), works along side the science—not in opposition to it.
To Garman’s credit, he seems to understand this point, and provides us with an account of this fourth loop at work in the real world. He writes:
The scientific community, with honorable exceptions, continues to handle the issues badly because they haven’t apologized for their mistakes and come out all gun blazing on the robustness of the climate science. But ultimately, as John Kerry learned, and as Obama mastered during his campaign, an altogether different kind of response is required anyway—one that speaks less in the language of “parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide” and more to people’s value and everyday concerns.
The get the science to become a fact, one must deploy rhetoric that not only speaks to climate scientists, but also to the mob. “Science” Latour reminds us, “is a human activity” and is deeply connected to rhetoric.
Garman closes his article with, “Climate change is real and human-caused, the case for tackling it is just common sense”. Unfortunately, it’s just not that simple. Common sense doesn’t go very far in the face of right wing activist. It’s subjective, what’s common to me, may not be common to you. Bottom line is this: if we cannot get people to go along with climate science, then there is no science at all. Rhetoric and fact cannot, in my view, be separated. To bring the science to life, to make it work, we need to get people to believe in it.
Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/15/climate-science-ipcc-sceptics
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