Mediating Climate Change

Julie Doyle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138278516
• eBook ISBN: 9781317098584
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Warming & Climate Change
• Index: Biological Sciences

Climate change has been a significant area of scientific concern since the late 1970s, but has only recently entered mainstream culture and politics. However, as media coverage of climate change increases in the twenty-first century, the gap between our understanding of climate change and climate action appears to widen. In this timely book, Julie Doyle explores how practices of mediation and visualisation shape how we think about, address and act upon climate change. Through historical and contemporary case studies drawn from science, media, politics and culture, Mediating Climate Change identifies the representational problems climate change poses for public and political debate. It offers ways forward by exploring how climate change can be made more meaningful through, for example, innovative forms of climate activism, the reframing of meat and dairy consumption, media engagement with climate events and science, and artistic experimentation. Doyle argues that cultural discourses have problematically situated nature and the environment as objects externalised from humans and culture. Mediating Climate Change calls for a more nuanced understanding of human-environmental relations, in order for us to be able to more fully imagine and address the challenges climate change poses for us all.

PART I
Historicising/Theorising Climate Change

Chapter 1
Problematising Science and Environment: Conceptualising Nature, Vision and Time in the Mediation of Climate Change

…although the size of the observed warming is broadly consistent with the predictions of climate models, it is also of similar magnitude to natural climate variability. An unequivocal statement that anthropogenic climate change had been detected could not therefore be made at the time – Reference to the IPCC’s 1990 assessment report (Houghton 2004, 104).

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level – IPCC 2007 assessment report (IPCC 2007, 30, my emphasis).

As illustrated by the quotations above, 17 years marks the time span between the publication of the IPCC’s first assessment report in 1990 and its fourth assessment report in 2007. This period could be characterised as the development of international scientific consensus on the anthropogenic causes of climate change, moving from a position of relative uncertainty to one of certainty (Oreskes 2004). Set up in 1988 by the WMO (World Meteorological Organisation) and UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), to ‘provide independent scientific advice on the complex and important issue of climate change’ (IPCC 2004, Foreword), the IPCC was able to state in its second assessment report in 1995 that ‘human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels, land-use change and agriculture, are increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (which tend to warm the atmospheric atmosphere’, although ‘there are many uncertainties and many factors currently limit our ability to project and detect future climate change’ (IPCC 1995, 3, my emphasis). By 1995 then, uncertainties lay not in the knowledge that human activity was affecting climate, but rather in relation to the nature, magnitude and specific impacts of future climatic changes.

The notion of scientific certainty/uncertainty has been particularly pertinent within the global politics of climate change; brought to the fore most recently by the ‘Climategate’ controversy surrounding leaked private emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in November 2009. Although the emails between climate scientists appeared to suggest that certain climate data was being manipulated to hide a decline in global temperatures which could discredit the consensus on climate change, the scientists were actually discussing temperature data obtained from tree rings, which diverged from the sharp increases recorded in air temperature in the last 150 years (Schiermeier 2010, 286). While the data and email discussions did not challenge the scientific consensus on climate change (Nature 2010; Schiermeier 2010; Science and Technology Committee 2010), and ‘were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead’ (Science and Technology Committee 2010), the event illustrates the political context in which climate science research is undertaken and the difficulties of communicating scientific uncertainties to policy makers (Shackley and Wynne 1996) and publics. While uncertainty is central to climate science in relation to predicting the extent and regional variations/impacts of future warming (Shackley and Wynne 1996; IPCC 2007; Budescu et al. 2009; Schiermeier 2010), such uncertainty is difficult to communicate because of the political context in which climate science has historically developed.

Following the establishment of the IPCC in 1988, the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) was set up a year later, comprised of powerful USA industries, which included Exxon, Ford and Chevron (Gelbspan 1997). Until 2002, the GCC lobbied the USA Government against reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sought to undermine the credibility of climate science through PR that exaggerated the uncertainties within climate science (Greenpeace UK 2001). The notion of scientific uncertainty was deployed as a political tool to aggressively undermine scientific credibility and to forward the economic interests of global corporations. It worked. Supported by a corresponding lack of coverage of climate change in the news media (Andreadis and Smith 2007), or news reports that misrepresented the scientific consensus on climate change by giving equal voice to climate sceptics as to climate scientists, thereby creating informational bias (Boykoff and Boykoff 2004), the lack of public understanding and political will to address climate change continued, remaining so until only fairly recently. The relatively long time it has taken for the world’s media, governments and publics to accept human induced climate change as a reality, is thus historically, politically and institutionally contingent, leading to a concern by climate scientists that discussing uncertainties within climate science will be ‘misconstrued’ as uncertainty about the existence of human induced climate change (Nature 2010, 269).

The history of the developing international scientific consensus on climate change, and the eventual acceptance of this science by the public and national governments (though to varying degrees), is therefore not simply a linear narrative about scientific uncertainties becoming more certain, as the work of the GCC, the world’s media, and the UEA leaked emails demonstrates. Instead, the history of climate science reveals the socio-political nature of scientific knowledge and its communication, where such ‘knowledge’ is open to ideological contestation and (re)definition from a variety of social, political and economic actors (Beck 1992). In the politics of climate change, these actors have historically taken the form of ongoing interactions between the IPCC, the mass media, fossil fuel lobbies and environmental pressure groups (Newell 2000). As science is called upon to validate the existence of climate change, the status of scientific knowledge as a form of ‘truth’ is also called into question. Here, the predictive modelling and forecasting upon which climate science is predicated, and upon which many of the uncertainties rest (Shackley and Wynne 1996), is at odds with the logic and methods of classical science as a materialist and objective praxis (Adam 1998a, 26). The unpredictable, irreversible, and not always visible phenomena (Beck 1992; Adam 1994, 1998a, 1998b) that characterises climate change problematises the scientific knowledge system upon which it has been reliant for its detection, validation, and ongoing assessment. The uncertainties of climate change in relation to its magnitude, its explicit impacts, and the rapidity of climatic change, are therefore in opposition to the assumed certainties of science.

Characteristic of environmental hazards in contemporary risk societies (Beck 1992), climate change raises questions not only about the nature of science as a knowledge system and as a set of institutional and methodological practices, but also how the environment is constituted and understood through the discourses and practices of science. At the same time, the ways in which these discourses get reproduced through the mediating practices of other social actors, such as the environmental movement and the mass media, also require understanding. This chapter thus examines the privileged role of science as a set of values, discourses and institutional practices in the (historical and ongoing) validation of climate change, in order to explore the ways in which science, and the epistemologies of knowledge it supports, has proven problematic for the definition and communication of climate change. The chapter firstly offers a short history of the development of climate science (see Hulme 2009 for an extended history), in order to illustrate the definitional struggles between science and politics in the identification and validation of human induced climate change. It then moves on to explore how the epistemologies of science conceptualise nature, vision and time, and the problems these conceptions have posed for understanding and addressing the complexities of contemporary environmental issues. In this context, the chapter also examines how other social and political actors, in the form of environmental NGOs and the mass media, have reproduced and reinforced these conceptualisations through their representational and communication practices. In doing so, the chapter calls for a dissolution of historically dominant conceptions of the environment as a visible nature separate from humans, to a more complex understanding of the environment in which humans, and their social, economic, cultural and political systems, are embedded (Latour 2004). As such, this first chapter provides an historical and theoretical framework which identifies the conceptual and representational practices that have impeded our understanding of climate change, and affected our ability to take action. How, and the extent to which, these conceptualisations are reproduced and/or reconfigured in contemporary climate communication and action will be the focus of the second section of the book.

The history and politics of climate science – uncertainty, prediction and consensus

As many (social) scientists have argued, climate change has been reliant upon science and technology for its detection, and for predicting the various scenarios of its future development and impacts (Weart 2003; Adam 1998a; Beck 1992). As early as 1979, the WMO organised the first World Climate Conference to address concerns about the effects of human activity upon the climate and to call upon the world’s nations ‘to foresee and to prevent potential man-made changes in climate that might be adverse to the well being of humanity’ (IPCC 2004, 2, my emphasis). Spencer R. Weart traces scientific concern about human influences on the world’s climate back further, to the late nineteenth century, through the work of the Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, who calculated that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere could raise global temperatures by 5/6°C (Weart 2003). The dominant scientific view up to the first part of the twentieth century, however, was that climate was essentially stable (ibid).

The physical properties of climate are defined through meteorological statistics comprised of numerical data. In the late nineteenth century, meteorologists produced these standardised methods of observation and measurement to measure climate and weather, which involved ‘quantifying it locally at individual places and, subsequently, by constructing statistically aggregated climates from geographically dispersed sites’ (Hulme, et al. 2009, 197). Established in 1950, the WMO defined climate through the statistical methods established in the late nineteenth century. In order to ascertain climate, they identified (and still employ) a 30-year time period as the baseline for defining the climate of particular regions (ibid). From the basis of 30 years of accumulated meteorological data, future predictions about climate are then made. In the 1950s, however, climate was still perceived as a stable entity, and it was not until 1965, at the ‘Causes of Climate Change’ Conference in Colorado, USA, that scientists agreed that climate was neither simple nor stable (Weart 2003). In doing so, the scientific orthodoxy that changes in climate occurred gradually over thousands of years was being questioned, as the potential for climatic changes within a far shorter period of time were now being considered as very possible. Computers began to be employed to generate statistical climate models and to explore potential climate variations (ibid).

During the 1970s, alongside the emergence of the environmental movement, climate experts believed there would be a future cooling period rather than a warming. By the end of that decade, however, the scientific consensus was that the climate would warm as a result of increased greenhouse gas emissions (ibid). Yet, because there was evidence and experience of a cooling period in the northern hemisphere between 1940s and 1960s, it was very difficult for the public and politicians to believe that global warming was happening (ibid); a powerful and early indication that public and political acceptance of climate science is dependent upon the need for climate to be made culturally meaningful (Hulme 2008, 2009), and made evident in the present rather than the future.

According to Weart (2003), up until the beginning of the 1980s, data generated from thousands of weather stations across the globe did not appear to indicate a common standard with regards to warming or cooling trends. At the beginning of the 1980s, two scientific groups, one British, one American, undertook the task of separately examining the data in more detail to try to ascertain global temperature trends. Both groups identified a global increase in temperature, and by the mid 1980s scientists were agreed that global temperatures had increased over the last century, and that CO2 and other greenhouse gases had also risen during this period. Yet, achieving scientific consensus is never simply about producing the research data. Climate scientists required institutional support in order to gain credibility both within and beyond the scientific community and to avoid further fragmentation of their research findings. At the time, climate science was comprised mainly of the work of meteorologists and oceanographers. Although the WMO had established the first World Climate Conference in 1979, more national and international collaboration and funding was needed for the legitimacy and developments of climate science. As scientists began to collaborate across disciplines, international meetings were set up through the 1980s, and attempts were made to persuade politicians about the problem of climate change and secure further research funding.

1988 is considered a significant year for politicisation of the climate issue, and for garnering media and public attention. A series of unprecedented heat waves and droughts in the USA provided an associative link to the issue of global warming, which was covered extensively in the USA news media (Weart 2003). In the UK, the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, delivered a speech to the Royal Society in which she declared global warming to be a key issue, placing this issue on the political agenda. This was accompanied by a significant increase in news media coverage (Farrow 2000; Weart 2003; Carvalho and Burgess 2005). Given the relative underfunding and low profile of climate science within the scientific community and to (inter)national governments, the sudden politicisation of climate change meant that scientific research was afforded a higher public, political and scientific profile. In reality, however, ‘there were still only a few hundred people in the world who devoted themselves full-time to the study of climate change’ (Weart 2003, 157).

The establishment of the IPCC in 1988 illustrates the institutional and ideological interweaving of science and politics. Conducting no new research, the role of the IPCC is to assess existing scientific reports published by the international scientific community in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the status of climate science and consensus on human induced climate change. In order to provide policy recommendations, the IPCC are also tasked with addressing the question of impacts, mitigation, adaption and the socio-economic dimensions of climate change. Comprised of scientists from a broad range of countries and a number of scientific disciplines, the IPCC has come to constitute the most authoritative scientific voice on the causes, impacts and effects of global climate change (Houghton 2004). Yet, it is not just scientists, but representatives of national governments, who constitute membership of the IPCC. Whilst this provides a crucial link between climate science and policy, it has also led to political pressure from the delegates of national governments to alter the final wording, and thus the knowledge claims, of the assessment reports. Publication of the IPCC’s first assessment report in 1990 was the result therefore not only of the accumulative work of hundreds of scientists working on climate around the world, but also the political interventions of government’s seeking to moderate some of the statements made. The final report was ‘not mainstream science so much as conservative, lowest-common-denominator science’ (Weart 2003, 162). As a result, the scientific consensus represented in the IPCC assessment reports (published in 1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007 respectively) is cautious in its judgement.

Having achieved a high degree of media coverage and public interest in 1988, climate change went off the political and media agenda for a relatively long period of time (Carvalho and Burgess 2005; Boykoff and Boykoff 2004). Yet, the work of climate scientists and the IPCC continued, and their second assessment report in 1995 was the first official international declaration that human activity was affecting global climate. By the time of the publication of the third assessment report in 2001, ‘the existence of a climate response to human activities and the sign of the response’ were identified as robust findings, whilst ‘key uncertainties’ were ‘concerned with the quantification of the magnitude and/or timing of the response’, as well as ‘model projections’ of future emissions of greenhouse gases and changes to global climate (IPCC 2001a, 30). In other words, the observable signs of the existence of climate change were undeniable, whilst the exact magnitude of change as well its effects were less quantifiable.

The credibility the IPCC has achieved as a result of the painstaking process of drafting reports and statements which have to be agreed by all scientists and government officials comes at a price. Beholden to political power, the threat of climate change is downplayed. As a consequence, uncertainties related to the nature and magnitude of climatic changes have been misinterpreted by the media and the public as evidence of the uncertainties of climate science, making it easier for powerful corporations to undermine the credibility of climate science through PR and advertising. Even the 2007 IPCC Assessment Report, which stated unequivocally that the climate system was warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, did not escape the lobbying powers of corporations. Funded by ExxonMobil, the think-tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), offered cash to economists and scientists to dispute the scientific claims made in the report (Sample 2007). None did.

Science and the environment

The historical developments of climate science illustrate the interweaving of science and politics in the legitimation of scientific knowledge, and the political contestations over the strength of scientific claims about the existence and magnitude of climate change. The uncertainties which have characterised the ability of scientists to make absolute claims about climate change have been used by businesses and governments to undermine scientific credibility. Part of the reason this has been successful is that science is perceived by society as a praxis based on objectivity and materiality. Yet, as an ‘industrially produced phenomena’, climate change is ‘characterised by invisibility and periods of latency’ (Adam 1998a, 10). Climate scientists have had to make future predictions about climate change based upon existing data. Yet, normative conceptions of science do not allow for uncertainty, making it difficult for climate scientists to legitimate and communicate their findings to governments, publics and the media.

The nature of climate change means that it is impossible to define exactly how rapidly, or the ways in which, climate systems will change. Climate is unstable, and does not adhere neatly to the rationalising logic of science. This instability has posed a paradox for climate scientists and for the legitimation of their research; working with uncertainties and future predictions does not fit with the empirical ‘truths’ demanded of classical science. Barbara Adam notes that for modern industrialising societies, science ‘is the knowledge system that is called upon by the globally powerful to establish the truth, provide proof and guide public as well as political action’ (Adam 1998b, 227). The IPCC fits with the model of an authoritative international scientific institution, given the task of corroborating the scientific consensus on climate change and making policy recommendations. Yet, as Newell points out in relation to the IPCC, ‘By seeking to validate arguments by reference to science, policy-makers allow the scope of future options to be partly constrained by the evolution of scientific research and ensure an ongoing demand for scientific advice’ (Newell 2000, 41). We have also already seen how the knowledge produced by this particular institution has been moderated and constrained by political pressures, illustrating how the production of scientific knowledge on climate change, in this instance, is circumscribed by the processes of political mediation (Shackley and Wynne 1996). Furthermore, as an international organisation which advocates international climate policy, the IPCC has faced criticism for inscribing a northern and western perspective through its focus upon policy measures that are about economic efficiency, rather than human wellbeing.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Making Climate Change Meaningful
• PART I: HISTORICISING/THEORISING CLIMATE CHANGE
• PART II: MEDIATING/ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE
• Epilogue: Positive Action in a Changing Climate
• References
• Index