A cri de couer: Climategate requires a change in global warming communications strategy

This is a cri de couer directed at environmentalists and liberal bloggers everywhere. It’s very hard to coordinate strategy with the huge amorphous blob that is liberal opinion and news. But it’s time for a change of strategy, and if you agree, spread this around. We need to take this climategate leak seriously. Just because most people you know understand that it doesn’t change anything about the certainty of climate change science or make the consequences of global warming any less severe, you can’t simply wish away the ugly picture that has just been painted of climate change scientists. And we have to adjust to that.

Simply put: the argument that the science of global warming is settled needs to go. It’s not that the argument is false. The problem is that the validity of that argument is based on elitist assumptions differentiating the opinions of scientists with the opinions of ordinary people. Worse, when global warming activists – and especially Democratic politicians - implicitly ignore the opinions of scientists who disagree by talking about a “global warming consensus”, it suggests that being a liberal is a prerequsite for being a member of the enlightened elite. Even a guy with a Ph.D. like Richard Lindzen doesn’t get to join the club of scientific consensus. Why? Because he disagrees with liberal political positions.

Thomas Sowell calls liberalism “the vision of the annointed”, and if you read through the personal histories of people like Ann Coulter, Robert Stacey McCain, and that crazy Legal Insurrection guy, you find common references to a young adulthood experience in which they realized that educated liberals can be cliquish and condescending to conservatives, even educated conservatives. Conservative partisans wear their sense of victimization openly, but this basic argument has plenty of resonance with independents, especially in the South and Midwest – two places that are looking increasingly bad for Democrats. It is imperative that we get global warming messaging as far away from that whole universe of conservative self-pity as possible.

Right now, there is no weaker communications strategy than “you should trust the elites.” Not after Katrina, the Iraq war and the economic collapse. The belief that climate change is a real problem was already falling according to almost every poll, in this era of don’t trust anyone over 1. And now, at this crucial moment in the history of our response to climate change, we get a (heavily distorted) glimpse into the world of the elites, giving conservatives the opportunity to paint it as everything they say it is: condescending to people who disagree, intolerant of opposing ideas, totally convinced their own ideas are correct, willing to manipulate data to prove them to the public. This is a gold mine for the true conservative argument against global warming, an argument whose appeal is emotional and cultural rather than rational. You can pound your fists and talk about how unfair it is that the entire career of scientists gets implicitly discredited by the worst email out of thousands that he ever wrote, or that cultural grievance is a dumb reason to take a position on a scientific dispute. But when you’re done with that, it’s time to adjust the sails.

We get into this argument because conservatives want put you in a vice with a two part argument, one part explicit and the other implied:
1. That we should only take serious action to combat global warming if the science on the matter is settled.
2. That the science on the matter is settled.
The main action on the global warming debate occurs at point #2. But that is a much, much weaker argument for the take action side, not only because of the class and cultural implications, but legitimately on the merits. The science is complicated. There are scientists who know more about global warming than I do, and disagree that it is a major threat. I’ve never heard an argument that makes me think that they are right, but we can’t build a messaging strategy on our ability to explain tree ring data, ice cores, or anything along those lines to the average voter.

The problems with argument #1, on the other hand, are really obvious. If a bunch of scientists thought that a food additive was killing children, but the scientists weren’t certain, would you give it to your kids? Would you spend some extra money to buy products that didn’t contain the additive?

Liberals and environmentalists do, in fact, make this argument. But argument #2 is more emotionally provocative for the media, in part because they like to play on these cultural grievances, and in part because it sets up a showdown of credibility: the conservative experts who say that global warming isn’t caused by humans versus the liberal experts who say the conservatives don’t know what they are talking about or aren’t real scientists. The media loves that shit. So when global warming comes up, on the cable news or in columns, they always want that to be the focus of the controversy.

If we’re going to change that, we need to drop the argument on point #2 completely. Offer no resistance to the point that the science is not settled. And there’s a more important reason to do that anyway. When liberals respond to explicit point #2, and do not respond to implicit point #1, they accept the conservative framing of the issue. And that is a more important point for the argument. The truth is, if human beings have the technological and economic power to pump 28 billion tons of carbon dixoide into the atmosphere, we almost certainly have the power to do other things that will screw things up in the future. Even if you believe the science is certain, it took decades for the science to get that way. We needed to be acting on global warming by the late 1980s to make the transition away from fossil fuels smooth enough to be effective. And back then, the science really wasn’t certain. We need to set the precedent of the precautionary principle: we need to act before the science is certain. That precedent is as important as dealing with global warming as a problem.

Democrats, everywhere: stop saying the science is certain or that the debate is over. When the media asks you if the science is certain, repond by saying “most scientists believe that it is highly likely that we are putting ourselves in peril by emitting greenhouse gasses. The Republicans want to take the chance that the small number of scientists who disagree are right. In doing so, they are putting millions of lives at risk.” Nothing is certain in that sentence other than the Republicans. Then when Republicans say that means we shouldn’t do anything until more facts are in, then you go on the offensive. “Would you trust your child’s life to the hope of a minority of scientists that the majority might be wrong? Because that’s what the Republicans are asking you to do.”

That argument is a winner. The argument from scientific certainty is a huge loser. Thank you for reading all of this. If you agree with me, share this somewhere. I’m at the point where I find myself yelling at every Democrat on TV when they talk about climate change, but it doesn’t stop them.