Opinion
Mann talks “scientization of politics”
By Leigh Preston ’18
April 7, 2016
Tags opinion
Dr. Michael Mann, a professor of Atmospheric Science at Pennsylvania State University, spoke on campus this week about his research in climatology and his role as a scientific communicator. As a lead contributor to climate science, an author of two books and 160 peer-reviewed scientific papers and a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Third Assessment Report in 2001, Dr. Mann became a “reluctant and accidental public figure” for climate change science and a target for the climate denying politicians. Mann was unjustly thrown into public scrutiny after he released his “hockey stick” curve, a graph displaying 900 years of relatively consistent global temperatures followed by a sharp spike upwards after the industrial era. This curve was created using tree-ring data in the northern hemisphere and was included in the 2001 report by the IPCC. Once in the spotlight, Dr. Mann was threatened by American Republicans and accused of misinforming the public with faulty proxy data and hiding the real data.
The IPCC functions through the voluntary and unpaid contributions of thousands of scientists from 190 countries. All the research provided to the IPCC is objective, unbiased and extensively peer-reviewed. In the words of Dr. Mann, “when the IPCC says that the warming of the earth is unequivocal, the warming of the earth is unequivocal.” If humanity had never existed, the external forcings on the earth (sun spots, rotation, tilt, etc.) would be causing a global cooling right now. However, the impacts of human activity have fully reversed this cooling, causing a global trend towards increasing temperature. If 96 percent of the world’s scientists agree on anthropogenic global warming, why, then, does the global climate conversation continue to focus on the very existence of this warming trend?
Dr. Mann made a fair analogy between the political climate change discussion and a circus. Conservative politicians are going out of their way to debunk the science of climate change based on opinion, conjecture and observed weather (which is not the same as climate). Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) brought a snowball onto the Senate floor in 2015 to attempt to prove to the “egghead scientists” that if it is cold enough for snow, clearly the globe cannot be warming. Politicians like Inhofe, with no formal scientific background, make sweeping statements about the falsity of climate change and gain immediate media popularity in right-wing outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. These same Republican politicians are often the recipients of money from the fossil fuel industry and conservative climate denial groups. The fossil fuel industry, much like the tobacco industry before it, has emerged as a major player in our nation’s political system, forcing a political divide over scientific fact.
However, the topic of climate science has not always been and should not be a partisan issue. We cannot forget that George H.W. Bush, our former Republican president, was the first to introduce formal “Cap and Trade” policy for sulfur dioxide emissions. In 2005, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), former Republican presidential candidate, stated that there has to be “an immediate effort to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases… anything less than that is a fig leaf and a joke.” McCain has since retreated from this stance and voted against progressive climate policies aimed at the industry in order to regain popularity in the republican party.
A common fear among scientists and climate-supporters is the ever-increasing politicization of science. Yet, Dr. Mann argued that the problem is quite the opposite: the scientization of politics. Scientists are continuing to perform their research in an unbiased, objective manner, while politicians are sticking their noses into the realm of science and drawing uninformed and agenda-driven conclusions. Not only are these politicians making claims beyond the scope of their own knowledge, but they are also purposely dragging a redundant climate discussion back to its scientific foundation, something that has repeatedly been proven solid.
All effective conversation about the ethics of potential climate change action has been halted by the unnecessary banter over the legitimacy of science. The future of progressive climate change reform relies on the courage of politicians to step over party lines and demand action on the issues, not the superfluous discussion on their very existence.