By Bruce Hull

Global change science will not produce sustainable development.  Yes, of course, we need more global change science to better understand climate, biodiversity, pollution and the like. We also need better resource sciences (water, soil, oil), social sciences (economics, politics, sociology), and engineering sciences (agricultural, information, mechanical, and more recently biological).  But improved understanding will not be enough. The challenges that lie ahead also require leadership capacity.

A recent PNAS history of climate science reviews the historical challenges and failures of science producing useful/powerful information that leads to change.  It demonstrates the bias that scientists have, and hence university programs such as our Global Change Center have, for science over action. That’s understandable. Scientists derive their salaries and identities from their capacity to offer correct advice about how things work or might respond to possible interventions, not from helping make those interventions happen.

But global trends are clear: sustainable development requires action. Now. We stand at a pivotal moment of human history with climate changing, biodiversity plummeting, global middle class exploding, and both urbanization and agriculture almost doubling by 2050.

Two obvious responses emerge: The Global Change Center could strive to educate and advise our graduate students to be a new breed of activist-scientist that intervene and act and advocate for change. That path is a contentious and high-risk proposal because when scientists become advocates of political solutions, they risk damaging the legitimacy of their science that comes from being neutral and agnostic about application.

Alternatively, the Global Change Center could support two distinct career paths for its graduate students: science and leadership. Students who follow the science career path learn the methods of science and go on to be scientists and to teach the next generation of scientists. Students who follow the leadership path are educated in the best available global change science and in the best methods of leadership and influence. They go on to be the change agents and the bridges between science and change.

Other responses exist for the Center, but these two suffice to raise a question the Global Change Center should ask and answer if it wants to be relevant to the 21^st Century. How should the Center integrate leadership into its programs? Hopefully it won’t retreat into labs and journals and argue that excellent science is what we do best so that is all we should do—and offer a token nod to distant decision makers, saying we will strive to keep them informed of our findings in hopes that our information translates into their action. We must be bolder. We must take more responsibility. We must go beyond the actions of “study” and “inform.” We must also equip global change professionals with the leadership skills they need to succeed in influencing the actions and interventions that will shape our future.

How should we do that?

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About the Author:

Bruce Hull is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability and a professor in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation. He is also a faculty member in the Interfaces of Global Change IGEP and blogs regularly at Constructing Sustainability.

 

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By Bruce Hull

Organizations around the world are adapting to climate change, lending credibility to climate science. These organizations buy, study, and use the best available science to inform their multi-billion dollar decisions and strategies. They not only have access to all the science in the public domain, but have commissioned and kept confidential additional science that gives them competitive advantages. These organizations find climate science convincing enough to change business as usual. Behavior and investment are the ultimate indicators of being convinced.  From their behaviors, we can infer that these organizations calculated that climate is changing.

Conversations with skeptics can be challenging.  But an honest skeptic should admit that they have less capacity to understand climate science than do these organizations.  An honest skeptic should admit that brutally logical analysis of best available information motivates these organizations.  An honest skeptic should admit that these organizations are adapting to climate change.  An honest skeptic should therefore admit that predictions of climate change are reliable and valid enough to warrant additional meaningful responses.

From the New York Times:

by Justin Gillis

“The words are hurled around like epithets.

People who reject the findings of climate science are dismissed as “deniers” and “disinformers.” Those who accept the science are attacked as “alarmists” or “warmistas. “ The second term, evoking the Sandinista revolutionaries of Nicaragua, is perhaps meant to suggest that the science is part of some socialist plot.

In the long-running political battles over climate change, the fight about what to call the various factions has been going on for a long time. Recently, though, the issue has taken a turn, with a public appeal that has garnered 22,000 signatures and counting.

The petition asks the news media to abandon the most frequently used term for people who question climate science, “skeptics,” and call them “climate deniers” instead.

Climate scientists are among the most vocal critics of using the term “climate skeptic” to describe people who flatly reject their findings. They point out that skepticism is the very foundation of the scientific method. The modern consensus about the risks of climate change, they say, is based on evidence that has piled up over the course of decades and has been subjected to critical scrutiny every step of the way.

Drop into any climate science convention, in fact, and you will hear vigorous debate about the details of the latest studies. While they may disagree over the fine points, those researchers are virtually unanimous in warning that society is running extraordinary risks by continuing to pump huge quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

In other words, the climate scientists see themselves as the true skeptics, having arrived at a durable consensus about emissions simply because the evidence of risk has become overwhelming. And in this view, people who reject the evidence are phony skeptics, arguing their case by cherry-picking studies, manipulating data and refusing to weigh the evidence as a whole.

The petition asking the news media to drop the “climate skeptic” label began with Mark B. Boslough, a physicist in New Mexico who grew increasingly annoyed by the term over several years. The phrase is wrong, he said, because “these people do not embrace the scientific method.”

Dr. Boslough is active in a group called the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which has long battled pseudoscience in all its forms. Late last year, he wrote a public letter on the issue, and dozens of scientists and science advocates associated with the committee quickly signed it. They include Bill Nye, of “Science Guy” fame, and Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist and best-selling author.

A climate advocacy organization, Forecast the Facts, picked up on the letter and turned it into a petition. Once the signatures reach 25,000, the group intends to present a formal request to major news organizations to alter their terminology.

All of which raises an obvious question: If not “skeptic,” what should the opponents of climate science be called?

As a first step, it helps to understand why they so vigorously denounce the science. The opposition is coming from a certain faction of the political right. Many of these conservatives understand that because greenhouse emissions are caused by virtually every economic activity of modern society, they are likely to be reduced only by extensive government intervention in the market.

So casting doubt on the science is a way to ward off such regulation. This movement is mainly rooted in ideology, but much of the money to disseminate its writings comes from companies that profit from fossil fuels.

Despite their shared goal of opposing regulation, however, these opponents of climate science are not all of one mind in other respects, and thus no term really fits them all.

Read the entire article here.

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