To Stop Global Warming, Fight the Fools First

(MoneyWatch)  In Utah, the House has passed a resolution rejecting climate science. Fox News is trying to launch the next Climategate. On the left, a prominent playwright suggested that Sarah Palin should look to earthquakes and tsunamis for evidence of climate change; some environmentalists are blaming the lack of snow at the Vancouver Winter Olympics on climate change. What's behind this latest outbreak of idiocy?

Perhaps it's just the East Coast's record snowfalls and resultant cabin fever that's raising hackles, or it may be the continuing Republican attack on the credibility of climate researchers; but whatever the cause, argument over global warming appears to be reaching a new pitch. Unfortunately, it appears the debate is shifting ever further away from anything resembling scientific thought.

Some climate scientists seem to be recognizing the perilous state of affairs that has sprung up around them, and are looking for its source. "Like the financial sector last year, the IPCC is currently experiencing a failure of trust that reveals flaws in its structure," wrote one researcher in Nature magazine.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is certainly at the center of the storm right now. Its problems arguably started months or years ago, but the most noticeable error of late are its now notorious claims that the Himalayan glaciers are rapidly melting, a conclusion that was more hearsay than science.

In fact, the IPCC issues four reports, and few serious errors have emerged -- something of a feat for such a large bureaucratic undertaking. But if the IPCC's problems have been blown out of proportion, then its leadership has done little to defuse the tension, or make necessary changes.

Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC who failed to identify the glacier error several years ago and even defended it, is one of many at fault. Like Phil Jones, the director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit that was sullied by the Climategate emails, Pachauri has refused to call for process changes or cede his position to anyone else.

While the Nature editorial offered good suggestions -- reviewing the IPCC process, adhering more tightly to standards and becoming more transparent -- the climate science movement is suffering more from a crisis of leadership. Pachauri and others have adopted a confrontational style that does little to get their message across to the populace, ending in widespread disbelief of the science.

In fact, few of the real spokespeople of the climate change movement are scientists at all. Al Gore, for instance, has become an empowering symbol for the opposition, who brandish his name as an example of everything that's wrong with science: imperious intellectualism, grandiose overstatements of climatic side-affects (like the potential, but yet-to-materialize extinction of the polar bears) and a fundamental disconnection with everyday citizens.

While it seems clear from the outside that Gore is often a liability, the man himself seems blinded by his own celebrity. Worse, his acceptance of the 2007 Nobel peace prize on behalf of the IPCC left him as the de facto public spokesman of the organization -- despite a lack of scientific credentials, or apparent will to act and speak with the caution of a scientist.

The Northeastern blizzards provide another good example. Writing in Time, Brian Walsh notes that an individual weather event cannot be interpreted as climate change -- yet both before and after the statement, he suggests that the snow is indeed evidence of climate change.

That claim may be true, but it's not likely to change any minds; any sensible climate skeptic would feel equally free to equate snow with global cooling. The hard truth is that either side of the debate, pro- or anti-climate change theory, is capable of utilizing pseudoscience and speculation.

But there are different rules for each group, and right now the burden of proof lies on climate change believers. There is a near scientific consensus that global warming is real -- but at the moment, that consensus means nothing because of the popular view that the science is suspect. And as long as climate change's most visible advocates continue making unsubstantiated claims, the opposition will remain intractable.

For now, it's time for scientists to hunker down and work on releasing an unimpeachable, transparent international report that advances climate science past its current public relations morass. In the long run, that might be a good thing; the world's population needs time to consider the more austere proposals to cut greenhouse gases, and policymakers need time to regroup following Copenhagen.

And more than anything, scientists need to take their rightful place at the head of the public debate -- even if they can only offer uncertainty. That's a state of affairs that the climate change movement has consistently rejected to date, preferring strong and immediate action. But with the politics of climate change bogged down by manufactured scandals and confusion, there may be no choice but to take it slowly.