How many global citizens does it take to change an incandescent light bulb to something more energy-efficient? None, apparently, because the light bulb doesn’t need changing.
The dissident view of climate change is growing in popularity as the media continue to thrash out both ”sides” of the story: the Earth may be warming, but it’s not our fault. Projections aren’t nearly as dire as the alarmists tell us. So sit back, everyone, and enjoy the sunshine.
This approach assumes there are two sides of the story — which just shows how vast the gulf is between climate scientists and those of us who aren’t privy to the reams of discombobulating data and models on which climatologists build their projections.
Ofcom, the United Kingdom’s version of our Broadcasting Complaints Commission, recently released a long-awaited ruling after protests about BBC Channel 4’s screening of the dissident polemic The Great Global Warming Swindle.
The regulator determined that Channel 4 had not ”misled viewers in order to cause offence”. Neither could Ofcom verify the factual content of the film — which is fair, since that’s not its job (environmentalist George Monbiot points out that the regulator wouldn’t be equipped to test the validity of a claim that, say, the moon is made of blue cheese).
Moreover, the regulator stated that the public needed to hear alternative viewpoints ”in line with freedom of expression”.
Closer to home DEKAT magazine assures its readers that if you’ve been losing sleep over climate change, don’t. You’re just the victim of an organised propaganda campaign.
”Not for nothing did Hitler say that the majority would rather fall for a huge lie than a small one,” proclaimed the magazine this winter. The report not only reveals that there is ”another side” to the climate crisis story, but reckons this unheard side of the debate is, in fact, the more accurate one. After blaming the media for not representing both viewpoints, the article then sides unequivocally with the ”underdog” voice, the unrepresented dissident view.
The story’s author — a sub-editor who freely admits she has no ÂÂscientific background, doesn’t understand how scientific consensus is reached and didn’t attempt to verify the credibility of her primary local source (someone with no climatological credentials) — really believes the public has been duped by mainstream scientists and its lackey media.
It’s tough, from a journalist’s perspective. We can’t all be experts in climate, ocean currents, paleo-geography, Earth’s orbital shifts, sun pulses, volcanoes and every other phenomenon that tugs our climate back and forth between cooler and warmer phases. So when in doubt, we lean on our training: we give a ”balanced” view by presenting both sides of an issue.
Journalists are inherently ÂÂadversarial and contrarian –our job is to seek out the truth (a shape-shifter by nature), support freedom of speech, promote the democracy of ideas and keep a watchful eye on the establishment. So when we see that one viewpoint is getting all the airtime, we tend to jump to the defence of the underdog. But we don’t realise that sometimes the journalistic approach to an issue like this isn’t in sync with ÂÂscientific processes.
The so-called ”consensus” view (the mainstream view put forward by most scientists, namely that climate change is being caused by humans) is not reached by democratic decision-making. Science doesn’t work that way. So we need to understand and trust the methods at work, before we determine whether there even is another side to the story (namely the ”dissident” view).
The scientific method involves observing, testing, throwing out the junk, keeping the rest, having knowledgeable peers tear it apart and only then reaching agreement. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good start, and this is the basis of the science coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This ”consensus” view has been through years of testing and verification by thousands of experts around the world.
That’s very different to ÂÂfinding a handful of ÂÂcontrarian scientists to ÂÂcontest this view on camera, or surf the internet for alternative views. In the case of the Swindle movie director Martin Durkin propped up his case by duping mainstream scientists into being interviewed with the promise of presenting a balanced view when he had no such intention, and he quoted an awful lot of people with vested interests in the status quo –ike consultants on the oil ÂÂindustry’s payroll.
You don’t get scientific conclusions by hiring the best orators or spin doctors. You don’t reach it by debating it in the media, either. You get it by building the most convincing body of evidence and holding it up to scrutiny.
New Scientist‘s Michael Le Page writes in Climate Change: a Guide for the Perplexed that it doesn’t matter which faction believes its ”side” of the debate the most. ”What counts is the evidence. And the evidence –hat the world is getting warmer, that the warming is largely due to human emission and that the downsides of further warming will outweigh the positive effects — is very strong and getting stronger.”
But don’t trust Le Page or me — after all, we’re part of the Hitler-esque propaganda machine that is shoving a monumental lie down your throats.
Leonie Joubert is a freelance science writer and the author of Scorched: South Africa’s Changing Climate