Does calling the climate controversy a “war” accelerate civic polarization?
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0371
Should scientists and citizens use war metaphors in public debate over human-caused climate disruption? Consider two recent reviews and a high-profile letter to the editor about a book with that figure of speech in its very title: Michael E. Mann’s The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars .
In the UK, Simon L. Lewis serves as a reader in global change science at University College London and the University of Leeds. In a Nature book review, he buys what he calls Mann’s ‘three basic points': ‘climate change is a major societal problem,’ campaigns are underway ‘to convince the public that this is not the case,’ and ‘scientists should engage with society and not allow the public to be’ — in Mann’s phrase — ''confused and misled by industry-funded propaganda.’'
But Lewis finds the war cliché ‘polarizing.’ He proposes that because disbelief in the climate consensus ‘is associated mainly with right-wing political views, science communication needs to transcend ideological divides, not reinforce them.’ Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has hosted particular polarization lately, with as big an ideological divide as ever, some of it actively involving Mann.
Also in the UK, Anne Jolis is a London-based editorial-page writer for the WSJ. As reported in September , one of her commentaries sought to amplify the climate-controversy politicization of CERN’s CLOUD experiment. This month, her review of Mann’s book carried a headline that started with a suicide-warplane metaphor: ‘The Climate Kamikaze: ‘The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars’ argues that global temperatures have risen in conjunction with our use of fossil fuels.’
After explaining that the nickname hockey stick refers to the sharp-upswing shape of Mann’s famous graph of temperature rise, Jolis charges that ‘the graph and the name are prime examples of the overblown claims and sloppy science behind much of climatology.’ She disdains the book as a mere ‘score-settling with anyone who has ever doubted [Mann’s] integrity or work.’ She continues: ‘For all his caviling about ‘smear campaigns,’ ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘character assassination,’ Mr. Mann is happy to employ similar tactics against his opponents.’ At the end, reaching again for the war metaphor, she calls him ‘a scientist-turned-climate-warrior whose greatest weakness has always been a low estimation of the public intellect.’
For the headline of Mann’s 22 March response letter , the WSJ chose two clichéd metaphors: ‘Climate Wars Continue With More Heat Than Light.’ Mann complains that Jolis’s review ‘tries to make a book about climate science and my experiences being attacked by politicians come across as a polemic.’ In its ‘biggest oversight,’ he says, ‘it doesn’t describe any of the stories I tell about being attacked by politicians.’
Mann calls to mind the WSJ‘s consistent treatment of the climate consensus as an open scientific question when he writes:
The article’s online headline claims I ‘argue’ that fossil-fuel burning is driving climate change. But communicating scientific facts is not arguing. Every national academy of science in the world, including our own, agrees that climate change is due to increased fossil fuel use. Only politicians and ideologues want to argue about basic, established science.
Near the end, Mann observes that ‘our national dialogue about climate change remains broken.’
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.