Newly amplified warnings about climate change had to compete in the US with shrill, last-minute political advertising before the party of climate activism suffered humiliation in midterm elections. An illuminating sideshow was exasperation expressed by many voters over video appeals by desperate campaigns that, in the month or so before Nov. 4, made television painful to watch. By election day, Americans had received their fill of sponsored prevarication. From their revulsion, officials of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and their emissaries can learn much.
Republicans won control of the Senate and expanded their majority in the House of Representatives just 2 days after the IPCC issued its latest summons to sacrifice. "Human influence on the climate system is clear and growing, with impacts observed on all continents," began a press release about the last installment of IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. "If left unchecked, climate change will increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems. However, options are available to adapt to climate change, and implementing stringent mitigation activities can ensure that the impacts of climate change remain within the manageable range."
Marketing doom
The IPCC has marketed doom since its First Assessment Report of 1990. It exists to do so. It emerged from political alarm over global warming induced by human activity and has been promoting aggressive response ever since. While its assessments represent rigorous reviews of climate science, its conclusions and summaries for policy-makers bear a consistently political tinge. Who can forget how the IPCC had to retract its 2007 prediction that Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035-then tried to portray the mistake as inconsequential?
The new assessment similarly drifts away from its scientific focus into "issues of equity, justice, and fairness." Its press release says, "People who are socially, economically, culturally, politically, or otherwise marginalized are especially vulnerable to climate change." Yes, marginalized people, by unfortunate nature, are especially vulnerable to every potential malignity. A scientific study doesn't have to assert the obvious-unless, of course, it's groping for political leverage.
The IPCC has reason to sharpen the edges of its message in the manner of politicians resorting to nasty ads when campaigns begin to struggle. Its influence has waned. Past exaggerations hurt its credibility. Leaked e-mails showed political influence over data fed into computer models on which it bases its assessments. Temperature observations are refuting model predictions.
Meanwhile, warming prevention proves not to be cheap. Forced substitution of commercial energy by costlier alternatives has hurt individuals and businesses in Europe, Australia, Ontario, and elsewhere. With claims about cost-free adoption of carbon-free energy increasingly in conflict with experience, doubt grows about the need to make near-term sacrifice in response to long-term phenomena still poorly understood.
That, in fact, is where climate-change activism makes its biggest mistake. It leads with its political prescriptions. The argument runs like this: Because greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere and warming is observed, calamity looms unless humanity, even while gas-temperature relationships remain puzzling, abandons fossil energy now. This is like arguing that because a wound on the hand might become infected and lead to sepsis, immediate amputation of the arm is in order.
Not persuaded
Midterm election results suggest Americans aren't persuaded. Spending of $100 million by a group led by hedge-fund tycoon Tom Steyer was supposed to make climate change a priority issue in the elections. But the group raised only a fraction of the $50-million match it sought to Steyer's donation, and climate change stayed out of headlines. Steyer is reported to have contributed $67 million of the $74 million his group spent on legislative and gubernatorial races. The few winners among recipients of this support probably would have won anyway.
Because self-assessment requires humility not characteristic of their movement, climate activists probably will react to defeat with heightened urgency. And the doubtful, weary of importunity and evidently numerous, will turn even further away.
