Governing the Wild: Ecotours of Power

4. Science and Storytelling: Al Gore and the Climate Debate

In the last few years, it seemed there was the potential for consensus ,oratleastuneasyquiet,intheclimatechangedebate.Afterdecades of vacillation, obfuscation, and the production of uncertainty around this issue, particularly in the United States, the mounting scientific evidence appeared to have opened a political window of sorts, bending the weight ofpublicandpoliticalopiniontowardtheunderstandingthatclimatechange was an issue that required action. Even staunch “deniers” like George W. Bush were required to recognize anthropogenic global warming as fact. Indeed,bothU.S.presidentialcandidatesin2008recognizedclimatechange as a reality. Clean energy, the green economy, and the risks associated with oil dependence peppered the stump speeches of Barack Obama and John McCain alike. To be sure, there were still those who maintained that climate change was a fiction, but they seemed, to some degree, bound within theconfinesofright-leaningmediaandquackscience.Itappearedasthough some kind of action was imminent, and the debate would focus on the appropriate methods to both mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis. However,therecenteventsofwhatwasdubbed“Climategate”hasshattered this rather tenuous calm and opened a space for continued dissent. In a sensational spectacle worked through the world’s media outlets, Climategate was the publication of hacked e-mails among various scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climatic Research Unit (CRU). That correspondence was, for some, evidence of scientific malfeasance. At the forefront of the ensuing maelstrom was Dr. Phil Jones, Director of the CRU,who,alongwithhiscolleagueswasaccusedofsuppressingandmanipulating data that contradicted global warming “orthodoxy,” as well as taintingthepeer -reviewprocesstokeepoutthoseviewsthatdidnotcorrespond to the view that anthropogenic climate change was a proven fact. Conveniently , these e-mails and related documents were leaked to the press just beforetheCopenhagenConferenceofPartiesonclimatechangeinNovember 2009. In the flurry of media excitement following the release of these • CHAPTER 4 • Science and Storytelling: Al Gore and the Climate Debate • 139 • e-mails, some suggested that this revealed that global warming is a hoax, with the British newspaper the Telegraph stating that Climategate represents “the worst scientific scandal of our generation” (Booker 2009). Others in the media were less radical in their assessment; Dr. Peter Keleman (2009)notedinPopularMechanicsthatwhilethee-mailsmaybedamaging, in no way do they dismantle the scientific consensus around anthropogenic climate change. Soon after Climategate, Al Gore weighed in, writing an op-ed for the New York Times that elaborated this position, reiterating that although mistakes are often made in scientific research, “the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged” (2010). The degree of separation between those who argue that anthropogenic climate change is a reality versus those who assert that it is a scientific conspiracy is no real surprise. Regardless of the outcome of an independent tribunal that has largely cleared the CRU of wrongdoing, the impact of Climategate has been to destabilize the putative climate consensus, lending some legitimacy to those who suggest that climate change science has been faked. Keleman suggests that “[p]erhaps the most worrisome part of this incident is that it could easily leave the public wondering about the science of human-induced global warming” (2009). It could and by some accounts already has led to a certain degree of public skepticism. For example , a recent survey was conducted by researchers at Yale and George Mason Universities that compared answers to questions about concern for and evidence of climate change in 2008 and 2010. The interviews were conducted from December 24, 2009, to January 3, 2010, just after both ClimategateandtheCopenhagensummit.Thesurveyresultsreleasedthus far showed that there is a marked increase in uncertainty about climate change. For example, in 2008, 71 percent of respondents indicated that they believed climate change was happening; in 2010, that number shrank to57percent.Onthequestionofwhethermostscientiststhinkglobalwarming is happening, the number reduced from 47 percent to 34 percent (Leiserowitz , Maibach, and Roser-Renouf 2010). While these changes cannot solely be placed on the revelations of Climategate as shaped by the media, it certainly has helped to shift the terrain of debate. What Climategate demonstrates is that media matters in the constructionofenvironmentalissues .Newscasters,journalists,pundits,andcelebrities work to shape public perception of the issue of climate change, and hence what strategies might be employed (or not) to mitigate it. “Climategate ” is one salvo in the larger battle between climate change scientists and 140 SCIENCE AND STORYTELLING skeptics, a conflict that is most often fought through multiple sources of media.Indeed,mostpeoplecometounderstandclimatechangenotthrough the reports of the IPCC but rather through the ways in which this information is filtered through news sources, celebrities, public figures, politicians , environmental groups, and so on. This...