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Do you really believe in climate change?
OPINION
Are you a believer? Climate change is a scientific fact but that’s not enough to make people care. Like it or not, we’ve got to work on people’s beliefs, says George Marshall AT A recent dinner at the University of Oxford, a senior researcher in atmospheric physics was telling me about his coming holiday in Thailand. I asked him whether he was concerned that his trip would make a contribution to climate change – we had, after all, just sat through a two-hour presentation on the topic. “Of course,” he said blithely. “And I’m sure the government will make long-haul flights illegal at some point.” I had deliberately steered our conversation this way as part of an informal research project that I am conducting – one you are welcome to join. My participants so far include a senior adviser to a leading UK climate policy expert who flies regularly to South Africa (“my offsets help set a price in the carbon market”), a member of the British Antarctic Survey who makes several long-haul skiing trips a year (“my job is stressful”), a national media environment correspondent who took his family to Sri Lanka (“I can’t see much hope”) and a Greenpeace climate campaigner just back from scuba diving in the Pacific (“it was a great trip!”). Intriguing as their dissonance may be, what is especially revealing is that each has a career predicated on the assumption that information is sufficient to generate change. It is an assumption that a moment’s introspection would show them was deeply flawed. It is now 44 years since US president Lyndon Johnson’s scientific advisory council warned that our greenhouse gas 24 | NewScientist | 25 July 2009
emissions could generate distortion or scientific illiteracy. “marked changes in climate”. Rather, I see it as proof of our That’s 44 years of research costing, society’s failure to construct a by one estimate, $3 billion per shared belief in climate change. year, symposia, conferences, I use the word “belief” in full documentaries, articles and now knowledge that climate scientists 80 million references on the dislike it. Vicky Pope, head of the internet. Despite all this Met Office Hadley Centre for information, opinion polls over Climate Change in Exeter, UK, the years have shown that 40 per wrote in The Guardian earlier this cent of people in the UK and over year: “We are increasingly asked 50 per cent in the US resolutely whether we ‘believe in climate refuse to accept that our change’. Quite simply it is not emissions are changing the a matter of belief. Our concerns climate. Scarcely 10 per cent about climate change arise from of Britons regard climate “Many people regard change as a major problem. climate change as a Trojan I do not accept that this horse built by hair-shirted continuing rejection of the environmentalists” science is a reflection of media
the scientific evidence.” I could not disagree more. People’s attitudes towards climate change, even Pope’s, are belief systems constructed through social interactions within peer groups. People then select the storylines that accord best with their personal world view. In Pope’s case and in my own this is a world view that respects scientists and empirical evidence. But listen to what others say. Most regard climate change as an unsettled technical issue still hotly debated by eggheads. Many reject personal responsibility by shifting blame elsewhere – the rich, the poor, the Americans, the Chinese – or they suspect the issue is a Trojan horse built by hair-shirted environmentalists who want to spoil their fun. The climate specialists in my informal experiment are no less immune to the power of their belief systems. They may be immersed in the scientific evidence, yet they have nonetheless developed ingenious storylines to justify their longhaul holidays. How, then, should we go about generating a shared belief in the reality of climate change? What should change about the way we present the evidence for climate change? For one thing, we should become far more concerned about the communicators and how trustworthy they appear. Trustworthiness is a complex bundle of qualities: authority and expertise are among them, but so too are honesty, confidence, charm, humour and outspokenness.
Comment on these stories at www.NewScientist.com/opinion
George Marshall is founder of the Climate Outreach Information Network in Oxford, UK
One-minute interview
Renewable oilman Genome pioneer Craig Venter has teamed up with Exxon Mobil to turn living algae into mini oil wells. How will they do it? Algae that can turn carbon dioxide back into fossil fuel – it sounds too good to be true. How is this going to work? Algae use carbon dioxide to generate a number of oil molecules, via photosynthesis, as a way of storing energy. People have been trying to make them overproduce the oil and store it. We’re changing the algae’s gene structure to get them to produce hydrocarbons similar to those that come out of the ground and to trick them into pumping these hydrocarbons out instead of accumulating them. As other groups get CO2 sequestration techniques going, we’d like to take that CO2 and get the algae to convert it back into oil. The aim is to prevent it from further increasing carbon in the atmosphere. How do you get from algae oil to oil you can put in a car or jet engine? The next stage is to take the algae’s biocrude, put it into Exxon Mobil’s existing refineries, and try to make the same products that you get from oil that comes out of the ground. So the goal is to make gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel out of the same hydrocarbons we use now – just from a different source. Instead of pulling the carbon out of the ground we’re pulling it out of the atmosphere. How soon do you think that can happen? There have been a lot of announcements from small demonstration projects claiming they’re going to have major new fuels in one or two years. Our aim is to have a real and significant impact on the billions of gallons that are consumed worldwide. Materials used to make a vast range of products – clothing, carpets, medicines, plastics – come from oil. The goal is to try and replace as many of these as possible. The expectation is that doing it on this scale will take five to 10 years. So will Exxon be producing nothing but algal power in 10 years’ time? I think that’s highly unlikely. The real test is going to be how simply this can be produced so it can compete with oil prices. The challenge is not just doing it but doing it in a cost-effective fashion.
PROFILE Craig Venter made his name sequencing the human genome. He is founder/CEO of Synthetic Genomics, which has begun a $600 million project with Exxon to transform the oil industry
What makes you think that you, unlike anyone else, can do this? Well, we’ve had some breakthroughs in terms of getting the algae to secrete pure lipids [oils] but I think the real trick is the partnership that we have – the financial resources we now have available to us and the engineering and oilprocessing skills of Exxon. Exxon has a poor reputation on climatechange issues. Won’t partnering with them damage the project’s green credentials? Quite the opposite. I think the fact that the largest company in the world has gone in this direction after several years of study is good for all of us. I’ve said many times this change can’t happen without the oil industry. They have a reputation for studying things for quite a while and acting in a large fashion once they become convinced of an approach. I don’t see how it can be bad news if somebody makes a major change in direction for the benefit of the planet. Interview by Catherine Brahic
25 July 2009 | NewScientist | 25
VITTORIO ZUNINO CELOTTO/GETTY IMAGES
Many of the maverick, selfpromoting climate sceptics play this game well, which is one reason they exercise such disproportionate influence over public opinion. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on the other hand, plays it badly. Rather than let loose its most presentable participants to tell the world how it achieves consensus on an unprecedented scale, it fails even to provide a list of the people involved in the process. It has no human face at all: the only images on its website are the palace or beach resort where it will hold its next meeting. Since people tend to put most trust in those who appear to share their values and understand their needs, it is crucial we widen the range of voices speaking on climate change – even if this means climate experts relinquishing some control and encouraging others who are better communicators to speak for them. Another key to achieving a widely held belief in climate change is collective imagination. We will never fully appreciate the risks unless we can project ourselves into the future – and that requires an appeal to the collective emotional imagination. In the past years I have been delighted to observe a growing partnership between scientists and the creative arts, such as retreats for scientists, artists and writers. It is clear that the cautious language of science is now inadequate to inspire concerted change, even among scientists. We need a fundamentally different approach. Only then will scientists be in a position to throw down the ultimate challenge to the public: “We’ve done the work, we believe the results, now when the hell will you wake up?” ■
Are you a believer? Climate change is a scientific fact but that’s not enough to make people care. Like it or not, we’ve got to work on people’s beliefs, says George Marshall AT A recent dinner at the University of Oxford, a senior researcher in atmospheric physics was telling me about his coming holiday in Thailand. I asked him whether he was concerned that his trip would make a contribution to climate change – we had, after all, just sat through a two-hour presentation on the topic. “Of course,” he said blithely. “And I’m sure the government will make long-haul flights illegal at some point.” I had deliberately steered our conversation this way as part of an informal research project that I am conducting – one you are welcome to join. My participants so far include a senior adviser to a leading UK climate policy expert who flies regularly to South Africa (“my offsets help set a price in the carbon market”), a member of the British Antarctic Survey who makes several long-haul skiing trips a year (“my job is stressful”), a national media environment correspondent who took his family to Sri Lanka (“I can’t see much hope”) and a Greenpeace climate campaigner just back from scuba diving in the Pacific (“it was a great trip!”). Intriguing as their dissonance may be, what is especially revealing is that each has a career predicated on the assumption that information is sufficient to generate change. It is an assumption that a moment’s introspection would show them was deeply flawed. It is now 44 years since US president Lyndon Johnson’s scientific advisory council warned that our greenhouse gas 24 | NewScientist | 25 July 2009
emissions could generate distortion or scientific illiteracy. “marked changes in climate”. Rather, I see it as proof of our That’s 44 years of research costing, society’s failure to construct a by one estimate, $3 billion per shared belief in climate change. year, symposia, conferences, I use the word “belief” in full documentaries, articles and now knowledge that climate scientists 80 million references on the dislike it. Vicky Pope, head of the internet. Despite all this Met Office Hadley Centre for information, opinion polls over Climate Change in Exeter, UK, the years have shown that 40 per wrote in The Guardian earlier this cent of people in the UK and over year: “We are increasingly asked 50 per cent in the US resolutely whether we ‘believe in climate refuse to accept that our change’. Quite simply it is not emissions are changing the a matter of belief. Our concerns climate. Scarcely 10 per cent about climate change arise from of Britons regard climate “Many people regard change as a major problem. climate change as a Trojan I do not accept that this horse built by hair-shirted continuing rejection of the environmentalists” science is a reflection of media
the scientific evidence.” I could not disagree more. People’s attitudes towards climate change, even Pope’s, are belief systems constructed through social interactions within peer groups. People then select the storylines that accord best with their personal world view. In Pope’s case and in my own this is a world view that respects scientists and empirical evidence. But listen to what others say. Most regard climate change as an unsettled technical issue still hotly debated by eggheads. Many reject personal responsibility by shifting blame elsewhere – the rich, the poor, the Americans, the Chinese – or they suspect the issue is a Trojan horse built by hair-shirted environmentalists who want to spoil their fun. The climate specialists in my informal experiment are no less immune to the power of their belief systems. They may be immersed in the scientific evidence, yet they have nonetheless developed ingenious storylines to justify their longhaul holidays. How, then, should we go about generating a shared belief in the reality of climate change? What should change about the way we present the evidence for climate change? For one thing, we should become far more concerned about the communicators and how trustworthy they appear. Trustworthiness is a complex bundle of qualities: authority and expertise are among them, but so too are honesty, confidence, charm, humour and outspokenness.
Comment on these stories at www.NewScientist.com/opinion
George Marshall is founder of the Climate Outreach Information Network in Oxford, UK
One-minute interview
Renewable oilman Genome pioneer Craig Venter has teamed up with Exxon Mobil to turn living algae into mini oil wells. How will they do it? Algae that can turn carbon dioxide back into fossil fuel – it sounds too good to be true. How is this going to work? Algae use carbon dioxide to generate a number of oil molecules, via photosynthesis, as a way of storing energy. People have been trying to make them overproduce the oil and store it. We’re changing the algae’s gene structure to get them to produce hydrocarbons similar to those that come out of the ground and to trick them into pumping these hydrocarbons out instead of accumulating them. As other groups get CO2 sequestration techniques going, we’d like to take that CO2 and get the algae to convert it back into oil. The aim is to prevent it from further increasing carbon in the atmosphere. How do you get from algae oil to oil you can put in a car or jet engine? The next stage is to take the algae’s biocrude, put it into Exxon Mobil’s existing refineries, and try to make the same products that you get from oil that comes out of the ground. So the goal is to make gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel out of the same hydrocarbons we use now – just from a different source. Instead of pulling the carbon out of the ground we’re pulling it out of the atmosphere. How soon do you think that can happen? There have been a lot of announcements from small demonstration projects claiming they’re going to have major new fuels in one or two years. Our aim is to have a real and significant impact on the billions of gallons that are consumed worldwide. Materials used to make a vast range of products – clothing, carpets, medicines, plastics – come from oil. The goal is to try and replace as many of these as possible. The expectation is that doing it on this scale will take five to 10 years. So will Exxon be producing nothing but algal power in 10 years’ time? I think that’s highly unlikely. The real test is going to be how simply this can be produced so it can compete with oil prices. The challenge is not just doing it but doing it in a cost-effective fashion.
PROFILE Craig Venter made his name sequencing the human genome. He is founder/CEO of Synthetic Genomics, which has begun a $600 million project with Exxon to transform the oil industry
What makes you think that you, unlike anyone else, can do this? Well, we’ve had some breakthroughs in terms of getting the algae to secrete pure lipids [oils] but I think the real trick is the partnership that we have – the financial resources we now have available to us and the engineering and oilprocessing skills of Exxon. Exxon has a poor reputation on climatechange issues. Won’t partnering with them damage the project’s green credentials? Quite the opposite. I think the fact that the largest company in the world has gone in this direction after several years of study is good for all of us. I’ve said many times this change can’t happen without the oil industry. They have a reputation for studying things for quite a while and acting in a large fashion once they become convinced of an approach. I don’t see how it can be bad news if somebody makes a major change in direction for the benefit of the planet. Interview by Catherine Brahic
25 July 2009 | NewScientist | 25
VITTORIO ZUNINO CELOTTO/GETTY IMAGES
Many of the maverick, selfpromoting climate sceptics play this game well, which is one reason they exercise such disproportionate influence over public opinion. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on the other hand, plays it badly. Rather than let loose its most presentable participants to tell the world how it achieves consensus on an unprecedented scale, it fails even to provide a list of the people involved in the process. It has no human face at all: the only images on its website are the palace or beach resort where it will hold its next meeting. Since people tend to put most trust in those who appear to share their values and understand their needs, it is crucial we widen the range of voices speaking on climate change – even if this means climate experts relinquishing some control and encouraging others who are better communicators to speak for them. Another key to achieving a widely held belief in climate change is collective imagination. We will never fully appreciate the risks unless we can project ourselves into the future – and that requires an appeal to the collective emotional imagination. In the past years I have been delighted to observe a growing partnership between scientists and the creative arts, such as retreats for scientists, artists and writers. It is clear that the cautious language of science is now inadequate to inspire concerted change, even among scientists. We need a fundamentally different approach. Only then will scientists be in a position to throw down the ultimate challenge to the public: “We’ve done the work, we believe the results, now when the hell will you wake up?” ■