Events | 2009.12.12
Laboratories' outer limits | Mike Hulme
In the furore over our leaked emails, remember the climate debate is not decided just by scientists
In 1997, in the lead-up to Kyoto, I helped organise a statement by European climate scientists. We proclaimed "our belief that nations should agree to substantial control in the growth of emissions", endorsing the then EU position of a 15% cut by 2010. What we didn\'t do was explain the personal values and ethical judgments we each made in reaching this conclusion. By signing it "European climate scientists", the impression could easily be gained that our belief was a non-negotiable conclusion of our scientific work.
As we prepare for the Copenhagen summit , I am rather critical of my naivety 12 years ago. I would still like a world in which greenhouse gas emissions were falling, but it is important when making this argument in public to identify the various lines of reasoning I use to reach this position: scientific evidence, my political philosophy, my ideology of nature and my personal values.
The relationship between climate science, political and ethical judgments and advocacy has been a turbulent one ever since man-made climate change became a public policy issue. The intense political posturing over the last two weeks surrounding the theft from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia of emails between a few of the world\'s more prominent climate scientists has further demonstrated this turbulence.
Science offers unique insights into how the physical world works and the potential consequences of different policy choices. But scientific inquiry is no substitute for political argument. It can\'t tell us what values we should hold (although it might help us understand why we hold them). Neither is science ever "done" or "complete". All scientific predictions about future physical states – whether climate or one\'s own body – carry an irreducible level of uncertainty. And these uncertainties may sometimes remain annoyingly large.
A good example of misunderstanding the relationship between scientific evidence and political action occurred at the Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow in 2007. The protesters claimed they were "armed only with peer-reviewed science". They were in fact armed with much more: a powerful vision of a future Britain, a strong belief in the value of natural ecosystems, compelling ethical principles about the rights of the poor. None of this armoury was to be found in the peer-reviewed science they quoted. They didn\'t help their cause by hiding behind science.
There are several dangers of importing arguments about politics into arguments about science and, conversely, of using phrases such as "as demanded by the science". It hinders the easy working of some of the norms and practices of science that make it such a powerful way of understanding the physical world. And it emasculates public debate. Producing the "trump card" of science to settle debate is not healthy for a democracy. It also feeds the scepticism of members of the public who distrust "big science" or "big government". We owe it to our fellow citizens to listen and understand the reasons for their scepticism over man-made climate change. It is not all irrational fundamentalism.
For too long we have conducted our arguments over different political visions of the future, forms of governance and ethical priorities using the science of climate change as a proxy. We need to free science to be what it is at best: an open, critical and non-partisan form of systematic inquiry into the physical world, open to the concerns, perspectives and insights of science\'s most important stakeholder – the public. The quality of both political debate and scientific practice will benefit as a consequence, and the events of the last two weeks need not happen again.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]s-limits-leaked-emails-climate
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