Cowspiracy: politics of climate science. Some thoughts from the academics (2)

Following on from the previous post, here is the second question that I asked:

Question 2: What do you think the scientific community should do in response to the unscientific and misleading claim of Cowspiracy or any other similar contents in general?

Dr.S:

Within the scientific community, most people would simply just ignore it. It’s like telling people movies such as ‘The day after tomorrow’ and ‘2012’ do not make scientific sense.

Professor V:

Statistics are often conflicting. However, IPCC should serve as a good starting point for cross-referencing as its one of its main goal is to establish a consensus (despite often being criticized to be conservative).

We know that methane has increased dramatically in the atmosphere in the past few hundred year due to land use change, natural sources, and intensification of agricultural activity. However, some details are still debate. It is not realistic to expect scientist to come up with one single answer such as one proposed by the documentary. As we all know that there is no one single answer for ways of approaching climate change, I’d imagine the scientific community would most likely discredit the idea that by simply going vegan, climate change will be mitigated.

Dr.R:

The scientific community attention to the impact of livestock farming and lobby government on it. However, they should also condemn the over exaggeration in the statistics used by the documentary.

Professor Anson Mackay:

Uncertainty is an area which the scientific community needs to target. Scientists have duties to not exaggerate but to report on the accurate and reliable finding.

My thoughts:

It is again very interesting to see a diversity of views being expressed. Dr.S thinks most scientists will not be bothered with such issues while the others implied that scientists should put efforts into debunking unscientific claims. This led me to think about whether it is true that most scientists do not actively speak out against these controversial subjects as suggested by Dr.S.

Conservatism among scientists?

According to Brysse et al (2012), it suggested that most scientists are quite conservative in terms of the projected impact of climate change, unlike the ‘alarmist’ image some media opinion pieces portrays (See the text box below for an example). It suggested that many key aspects of global warming (such as rising surface temperature, carbon emission and sea level), have been under-estimated in the IPCC report. For instance, despite the important role of permafrost and its potential melting in the global carbon cycle, it was not included in the IPCC projections (Allison et al, 2009), potentially leading to significant underestimation of climate change. Brysse et al (2012) concluded that there is a systematic conservatism in the prediction of climate change.

(Despite some news articles often labelled climate scientists as ‘alarmist’, they are actually rather conservative in their claims. For example, this news article criticised the legitimacy of climate scientists by claiming that scientists in 1970s were warning the public of global cooling. It stated ‘Man was blamed for global cooling as he is blamed today for global warming’. Media coverage like the one above not only oversimplified the science but also discredited the legitimacy of the mounting scientific evidences supporting anthropogenic climate change.)

BUT is the previous analogy applicable to Cowspiracy? On one hand, based on the conversation that I had with Dr.S (who is an expert on politics of climate science) and the fact that 3/4 interviewees would like to remain anonymous, they suggested an degree of conservatism. On the other hand, this is partly due to the fact that they are not expert on the subject of food sustainability nor have they watched the documentary. Additionally, although very few papers/ blogposts/ responses have been published with regards to the false statistics used in Cowspiracy, this could be attributed to the limited viewership of this documentary and its associated literature. Therefore, the answer remains inconclusive.

The scientists seem to lack power in influencing the public discourse and their opinion on climate change. They are often misrepresented and taken out of context (as the example above illustrated and also in Cowspiracy). This is especially true in the realm of post-normal science where ‘facts are uncertain, values are in dispute, stake are high, decisions are urgent’ (Funtowicz andRavetz 1993). People who have different values and stakes from the scientists and environmentalists will naturally reject or distort the idea of anthropogenic climate change in the public discourse. For example, Boykoff’s(2008) analysis of the discourse of UK’s tabloid on climate change showed there has been increasing number of sensational and exaggerated reports and more ‘opinion-driven’ pieces with ‘satirical tones’. Both served to undermine the legitimacy of scientific assertions.