Early in 2007, I wrote a few articles lamenting that framing, by journalists and bloggers, was going to end badly, along with assertions about science being settled, which is a fundamentally anti-science position when presented to (or by) people outside science (much like 'theory is colloquially used wrong) who don't get the context and therefore shouldn't have the term manipulated.
Gradually, the scientific method has won over framing. Yes, there is less autocratic "you are a Holocaust denier if you don't accept X" sniping, which makes young progressive bloggers full of sanctimony concerned, but confidence in science and scientists is slowly being restored because experts are now having a frank discourse about what we know, what we don't know, and how to calibrate all that.
Andrew Revkin, of the Dot Earth opinion blog at the New York Times, has a downright revolutionary exchange in his recent column; no sanctimony, no telling us how stupid the public is (they are not) nor that Republicans are anti-science (they are not, at least not any more than Democrats) and instead laying out the real obstacles.
I'm not going to rehash it all here, I will just include a few snippets to show how far we, climate scientists and the New York Times have come since 2006 when the echo chamber and the smarminess was running at full strength and science was losing its esteem among the public as a result. The genesis of the discussion was a piece by Robert Socolow on a new approach to overcoming resistance to actions that could limit emissions of greenhouse gases without the dopey rationing and mitigation strategies we all know won't work. Instead, he revisits “stabilization wedges” on the road to cleaner energy.
The 2004 Pacala/Socolow paper identified seven “wedges” of emissions cuts that would be required to have carbon dioxide emissions 50 years out no greater than in 2004. Two more wedges of reductions would be needed to accomplish the same feat now.
I'll link to their sites individually, so they get some Google love from us, but go read Revkin for the entire discussion. It's a worthy 20 minutes of your time. Even the comments are mostly literate, another rarity.
Reactions to a New Plan for CO2 Progress By Andrew C. Revkin New York Times
Robert Socolow, energy and climate analyst at Princeton University
I am not one who is calling for political good will. Politicians follow publics, and the publics are dismayed. So, I think in terms of reaching the public. I think the climate change activists, myself included, have lost the American middle, and I’m trying to say that this loss can be explained and maybe even undone.
Michael Levi, Council on Foreign Relations:
I’ve long encouraged people to be more forthright about uncertainties – indeed it is the ugly uncertainties, not the likely outcomes, that should concern people most. (Likely outcomes are fine for explaining why 1000 ppm is unwise; they are less persuasive when it comes to deciding whether, say, 550 is too high or not.)
Roger A. Pielke, Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado:
the world would need to deploy in a round number one nuclear power plant worth of carbon-free energy every day for the next fifty years. Whether one expresses this magnitude in nuclear power plants, wind turbines, efficiency gains or some combination — it should be abundantly clear that the one factor we need most is technological innovation. Today’s technologies are not going to do it.
