Apollo program for climate change?

An Apollo Program for Climate Change. That's the provocative title in an op-ed in the Washington Post. It was written by David Sokol, who happens to be CEO of a large energy holding company owned by Berkeshire Hathaway.

The content wasn't quite what I was expecting from the title. It wasn't asking for a coordinated program toward one thing, which is the wrong approach since it will take many different technologies to stop global warming. Sokol explains:

Besides finding new ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, we need to do research to achieve breakthroughs in renewable energy, nuclear technologies and reductions in demand, as well as improvements in high-voltage transmission systems and the retrofitting of existing fossil-fuel plants. Achieving a future of low carbon emissions is not a matter of choosing one technology over another. All must play a role.

Sokol is instead asking for an Apollo-program level of funding which would be about $46 to $60 billion in todays dollars. That's a good start.

You almost couldn't tell this was written by an energy company CEO except for this dismissal of carbon caps:

Placing caps on carbon emissions before the technology is available to actually reduce those emissions will simply impose a tax on the American people without any positive environmental benefits. There has to be a better way.

Sokol goes on the say we need more than just cap-and-trade which is true but putting a price on carbon at least puts market forces at work for the climate instead of against it. How can a good capitalist like Sokol's boss Warren Buffet object to that?


P.S. Sorry for the long absence. June has been a busy month and I have another week of job-related travel ahead of me. I promise more posts in July.

George W. Bush: "I'm the denier"

As the IPCC reports were released, I expected there to be a lot of the typical "false balance" reporting from the mainstream media. But that didn't happen. The stories about the IPCC reports were straightforward, maybe even a little gloomy, and contained no equivalent amounts of text from the climate change denier crowd. It seems the main media outlets of the U.S. instantly decided Singer and Lindzen et al. were no longer worth quoting. With a few notable exceptions.

But there's one climate change personality the press still treats with unwarranted credibility: George W. Bush.

Now Bush isn't really a denier. He's careful not to say climate change isn't happening or that mankind isn't responsible. He just says we there can't be any forced emission reductions. To me, that makes him a "denier in spirit" because the result is the same as if the denier crowd was controlling the debate: nothing should be done to stop global warming.

In advance of the G8 summit, it looked like some serious pressure was getting put on Bush to do something. First there were all kinds of unflattering leaks about how the U.S. was resisting the text in a statement on climate change. Then direct political pressure was applied from people such as Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who, while in Berlin, said Bush should make a major deal, as quoted in this Reuters story by Erik Kirschbaum:

"The science is clear, the challenge is undeniable," Pelosi said. "We have to work together, though, to reach a solution."

Pelosi met with German Prime Minster Merkel, a meeting which signaled Germany was willing to put up a fight, according to this International Herald Tribune story.

In typical Bush administration fashion, a big speech was rolled out that sounded good but had no substance at all. And, as illustrated by the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin, the mainstream media bought it and sold it back to the public.

The White House yesterday showed that it still knows how to play the American press like a harp.
President Bush yesterday put forth a new proposal on climate change that is most newsworthy for its attempt to muddy the debate about the issue and derail European and U.N. plans for strict caps on emissions.....But a change in rhetoric was enough to generate some headlines about the administration's attention to the issue: Bush Proposes Goals on Greenhouse Gas Emissions, reads the New York Times headline. Bush Proposes Talks on Warming, says The Washington Post's front page. Bush offers to take climate lead, proclaims the Los Angeles Times.

Please read the whole piece by Froomkin to see just how cynical this Bush speech was.

David Roberts over at grist.org comes to a similar conclusion.

As you can see -- and as you would expect -- this announcement from Bush is not a genuine change of heart on climate change. The U.S. still will not agree to any emission reduction targets. It will not agree that the developed countries bear primary responsibility for climate change. It will not sign on to the growing consensus among developed nations about how to tackle the problem

Joe Brewer of the Rockridge Institute dissects the framing of Bush's speech.

Underreported story on CO2 emissions?

My good friend Michael Tobis is wondering why the main stream media didn't make a big deal out of a joint statement by multiple national scientific academies that we should move to a more sustainable energy system. This statement was targeted at the upcoming G8 summit which otherwise has gotten a lot of press in relation to the climate change topic.

I have an underreported story too: this article by Peter Spotts in the Christian Science Monitor covers a report by the Global Carbon Project, which was coincidentally published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that CO2 emissions rose dramatically in the first part of the 21st century:

CO2 emissions from cars, factories, and power plants grew at an annual rate of 1.1 percent during the 1990s, according to the Global Carbon Project, which is a data clearinghouse set up in 2001 as a cooperative effort among UN-related groups and other scientific organizations. But from 2000 to 2004, CO2 emissions rates almost tripled to 3 percent a year – higher than any rate used in emissions scenarios for the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

There's some discussion that maybe its a temporary effect created by leaving the 2000 recession and a spike in natural gas prices leading to more coal burning. On the other hand, maybe this is China showing up. I'm surprised this didn't get more press just for supporting the "blame China" people.

Another quote from this excellent article:

The Global Carbon Project study held two surprises for everyone involved, [Christopher] Field says. "The first was how big the change in emissions rates is between the 1990s and after 2000." The other: "The number on carbon intensity of the world economy is going up."

In other words, the warnings from the IPCC AR4, which were so powerful that cut off access to the main stream media by the denier camp, may now be both out of date and underestimating the problem.

I haven't seen original reporting anywhere else besides CSM.

State and local action to reduce CO2

Since the U.S. government will most like do nothing substantive between now and January, 2009, several states and municipalities are taking action to reduce CO2 emissions and some of this is getting covered.

The San Francisco Chronicle (Carolyn Jones) covers Berkeley's substantial efforts to reduce its carbon footprint:

Six months after Berkeley voters overwhelmingly passed Measure G, a mandate to reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, the city is laying out a long-term road map for residents, business and industry. It includes everything from solar panels at the Pacific Steel foundry to composted table scraps.

The article in places uses what I think is some poorly chosen language about how hard this is going to be. There's the title "IT WON'T BE EASY BEING GREEN: Berkeley sets tough course for its residents to follow to help reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in city". First of all, the residents voted to do this themselves. It was not "set" on residents by some outside authority. And again there's this assumed hardship of de-carbonizing compared to burning CO2 without a care in the world. Has anyone speculated on daily life in an all-carbon-all-the-time future? I bet its no picnic.

The Washington Post covers attempts by the states to set their own vehicle emissions standards. This is fallout from the recent Supreme Court decision that the EPA can regulate CO2. Further fallout is in this article from Joel Havemann and Johanna Neuman at the Los Angeles Times about California's request to set tougher emissions standards. Look at this bizzare comment from an auto industry lobbyist:

Steven Douglas, a representative of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said California cannot prove a link between global warming and carbon dioxide emissions by motor vehicles in the state. Global warming is a global problem, he said, and California could not prove that the state could solve it because there are so many other sources of greenhouse gases.

"prove a link?". These guys are definitely cribing from the tobacco industry playbook. But then Mr. Douglas undercuts his denialism with a small-scale version of the "we shouldn't do anything until the Chinese do something" game.

All CO2 emissions count towards the problem and any reduction is a good thing, including California's cars. No one act will solve the global warming problem. Its going to take many things and this is one of them.

More on G8 summit and climate

The Associated Press has an article by David Stringer about the U.S. obstructing a climate deal from the summit. The article is based on leaked documents from the summit obtained by Greenpeace.

What are the responsible leaders trying to do?

[German Chancellor] Merkel is seeking to win agreements for a global reduction in emissions of 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and bold commitments to energy efficiency strategies at the summit in Heiligendamm, on Germany's Baltic Sea coast, June 6-8.

They are also talking about a maximum temperature increase:

The draft communique also included a commitment to curb the rise in average temperatures this century to 3.6 degrees, said the environmental group Greenpeace - which has published two leaked versions of the document. Without significant efforts, the rise is estimated to rise as much as 11 degrees, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

I'm glad this article mentioned the IPCC upper bound but I wish it also mentioned some of the other suggested emission targets. There's no way to judge if "50 precent below 1990 levels by 2050" is considered middle-of-the-road or conservative.

The U.S. government wants no part of this:

"The U.S. still has serious, fundamental concerns about this draft statement," the notes on the document read. "The treatment of climate change runs counter to our overall position and crosses multiple 'red lines' in terms of what we simply cannot agree to."

Still (as of now) 603 days left.....

Update: Reuters covers the same story but focuses on how dumb Tony Blair looks:

Greenpeace said the U.S. stance gave the lie to confident statements by Blair that Washington's position was moderating as the summit approached.

"This shows more clearly than ever that despite his protestations to the contrary Tony Blair's efforts to persuade George Bush of the importance of tackling climate change have singularly failed," said Greenpeace director John Sauven.

Five new posts

Its been about two weeks since my last post and I had a bunch of media coverage to go through. It was too cold to sail today (please, no "where's the global warming" cracks) so I had some time to catch up on recent media coverage of a few issues. Enjoy!

20 more months of no U.S. action?

Despite the promising talk from the presidential candidates (see below) and the current Congress, there's still the matter of the current President when considering what might get done about global warming in the 20 months his administration has left.

If this article in the Washington Post (by Juliet Eilperin) is any indication: not much. The Bush administration is trying to weaken some mild language in a climate statement that is supposed to come out of a June G8 summit:

Negotiators from the United States are trying to weaken the language of a climate change declaration set to be unveiled at next month's G-8 summit of the world's leading industrial powers, according to documents obtained yesterday by The Washington Post.

A draft proposal dated April 2007 that is being debated in Bonn, Germany, this weekend by senior officials of the Group of Eight includes a pledge to limit the global temperature rise this century to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as an agreement to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

The United States is seeking to strike that section, the documents show.

First, reducing emissions to 50% below 1990 by 2050 (still emitting in 2050, mind you, but only at half of 1990 levels) isn't enough to limit the rise to 3.6 degrees. But hey, you gotta crawl before you can walk so I'm willing to start there. But the Bush administration isn't.

The Eilperin piece had no counter-quotes from the administration, probably because they called on Saturday (good one!).

Compare that with this article two days later from the Washington Post by Steven Mufson and Michael Fletcher about fuel efficiency. The title sounds great: "Bush Calls For Cuts In Vehicle Emissions: Agencies Ordered To Draft New Rules". But the agency is the EPA which takes a long time to do anything. You have to read the article to find this fact:

"In effect, the president asked his agency heads to share ideas and come up with a plan that is due three weeks before he leaves office," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the new House select committee on climate change. Markey said that "will leave motor vehicle fuel economy stuck in neutral until Bush's successor takes office.

The article is appropriately negative to the administration. So why the sweetheart headline? Reporters who write the articles don't pick the headlines. Someone else usually does.

More on the G8 statement stonewalling from the Financial Times.

Spin alert: intensity reduction

This AP story about Al Gore's criticism of the Canadian government's climate plan includes this quote:

[Gore] said "intensity reduction" - which allows industries to increase their greenhouse gas outputs as they raise production - was a poll-tested phrase developed by think tanks financed by Exxon Mobil and other large polluters.

Gore also called the plan a "Fraud". But lets look at this phrase "intensity reduction". It has "reduction" in it. That sounds good. That's what we want, right?

But intensity reduction means that the rate of CO2 emitted per unit of stuff made by a factory goes down. In other words, the factory somehow becomes more efficient at emitting carbon as it does its thing (make energy or make a car). That doesn't actually reduce the amount of CO2 emitted. If the factory increases production, its emissions will go up and that's ok with this plan.

Note that intensity reduction is the only thing the Bush administration will commit to.

Cheers to the AP for not letting "intensity reduction" get in to the story without qualification.

Public and Republican presidential candidates think global warming is a problem

Remember those polls on public attitudes toward global warming? Christian Science Monitor staff writer Brad Knickerbocker wrote about them for Earth Day:

"The last six months have been the most rapid period of change in public awareness and attitudes on climate change that I've ever seen," says William Moomaw, a Tufts University climate expert and coauthor of the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN-sponsored group of scientists.

Demand for climate-change briefings he's delivered for the past five years have jumped in the past year, says Dr. Moomaw. Audiences who were once polite are now actively engaged.

Cool.

More evidence of a shift in acceptance of reality is that responding to climate change, and not denying it, is something even Republican presidential candidates are doing as mentioned in this Reuters story by Deborah Zabarenko:

[John] McCain is hardly alone in his party. Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney have also staked out positions on this topic, generally pushing for alternative energy and more efficient technologies to stall the globe's warming trend.

One reason for this sea change is former Vice President Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" laying out the science behind global warming, said Eileen Claussen of the non-profit Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

This new Republican openness to discussing ways to tackle climate change may also be an indirect result of recent changes in how the White House has talked about the problem, said political scientist Cal Jillson of Southern Methodist University in Dallas said.

"Once President George W. Bush acknowledged that global warming was a problem, other Republicans were freer not to have to support the administration stance - that the science was incomplete - but now they could say on the campaign trail, 'Here's what I propose to do.'"

This shift has occurred in the last year or so, Jillson said.

More analysis along these lines appeared in MarketWatch, a business news outfit owned by Dow Jones (the same guys that own the Wall Street Journal:

Al Gore isn't running for president, but in some sense he's already won.
All the major Democratic candidates for president -- and a fair number of the Republicans, as well -- have embraced Gore's signature issue: global warming. In sharp contrast to the current occupant of the Oval Office, most of the candidates say climate change is a major challenge that the next president will have to address.

Most of the major candidates say the scientific debate is over. They agree that human activity is a major cause of the increased temperatures already seen around the globe and that immediate steps are needed to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
But the policy debate is just beginning. It's one thing to diagnose the illness; it's another to prescribe the right economic and political incentives to wean the global economy away from carbon.

The article has a summary of where the candidates are on things like fuel efficiency and future emission targets.

Climate change and the U.S.

One of the conclusions of the WGII report was that poor nations of the world will suffer more from climate change because they don't have the infrastructure to deal with it. Lately, I've been hearing some smart people (at various meetings I've been to) say something that is quite different: that the U.S. and Europe will barely be affected. That appears to be a misinterpretation of the WGII report. I'm not sure how that has spread but I hope readers of this blog know better. Update: Quotes like this from the WGII panel chair Rajendra K. Pachauri in the NYTimes must be responsible:

“It’s the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit"

Note: thats worst hit, not only hit.

To help set the record straight, here are some articles about how climate change will definitely affect the U.S. and not for the better:

Associated Press (Edith Lederer) article title "Panel Says U.S. Faces Change As Climate Warms"

Chicago and Los Angeles will likely to face increasing heat waves. Severe storm surges could hit New York and Boston. And cities that rely on melting snow for water may run into serious shortages.

This commentary by George Monibot in the Guardian talks about charges of censorship from the warming crowd but also mentions that during the wrangling over the WGII SPM, this sentence was taken out: "North America is expected to experience locally severe economic damage, plus substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from climate change related events". And they don't mean only Mexico and Canada. Always remember that the IPCC process results in a very conservative, in terms of climate prediction, document.

This Associated Press article by Seth Borenstein combines the U.S. climate change and national security (see below) stories:

Roger Pulwarty, one of the federal government's top drought scientists, said states such as Arizona and Colorado, which already fight over the Colorado River basin water, will step up legal skirmishes. They may look to the Great Lakes, but water availability there will shrink, he said.

The occasion for this story was that the general's and admiral's report on climate change was issued the same day as a 67-page report on North American climate change (part of the IPCC WGII full report but I can't find it online).

The San Francisco Chronicle's Jane Kay covered the same report and reported:

Severe heat waves -- characterized by stagnant masses of warm air and consecutive nights with high minimum temperatures -- will intensify in the United States and Canada, according to the data on North America released Monday by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

More Climate Change and National Security

When I first blogged about this about a month ago, it was just an article in Le Monde and a small AP story about the U.N. But now Congress is considering the national security issues of climate change and there's been a bunch of stories about it.

Boston Globe: Article by Bryan Bender gives an overview of a Senate bill requiring the National Intelligence director to create an NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) on global warming.

The effort would include pinpointing the regions at highest risk of humanitarian suffering and assessing the likelihood of wars erupting over diminishing water and other resources.

The measure also would order the Pentagon to undertake a series of war games to determine how global climate change could affect US security, including "direct physical threats to the United States posed by extreme weather events such as hurricanes."

I have no idea what war gaming against extreme weather looks like but the first part of that quote seems like a reasonable thing to do. The article finishes with:

"What makes this interesting is the clear effort to make the politics of global warming broader," said Hamre, who is now president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There are legitimate security issues associated with this question."

This AP story covers a recent report written by retired generals and admirals which warns about how destabilizing climate change can be:

The report says that in the next 30 to 40 years there will be wars over water, increased hunger instability from worsening disease and rising sea levels and global warming-induced refugees. "The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," the 35-page report predicts.

More coverage of this report from The Financial Times.
Download the report here.

The spin on these seems to be mostly "wow! Even generals are worried about climate change." I think that's appropriate and underscores just how out-of-touch is the climate-denier crowd.

According to the Washington Post, the Director of National Intelligence agrees its a good thing to do.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell believes it is "appropriate" for global climate change to be considered in a future National Intelligence Estimate, according to a letter he sent Wednesday to Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Joe Brewer at the Rockridge Institute (the guys who know something about framing) has a long essay on security as a progressive issue and how great a match this is with fighting global warming. Funny how this "frame" seems to have come from general's first.

Glen Beck's piece on Headline News

What's become of the Headline News Network, a CNN offshoot? When I was an undergrad, I really appreciated its format of a 30-minute newscast every half-hour, 24-hours a day. It was great for the undergrad's schedule. My roommates and I would some times leave it on for hours in the background and it was interesting to follow the ebb and flow of the top stories as they moved around within the 30-minutes.

I stopped watching HNN several years ago. Recently, they dropped the 24-hour newscast and started having prime-time shows. One of these was given to right-wing talk radio guy Glen Beck. Mr. Beck has an interesting shtick: he always mentions being a recovering alcoholic, thus separating himself from most holier-than-thou right wingers. But his "speech" is notable only for its "aren't-I-shocking" racism.

On May 2nd, Glen Beck devoted his show to global warming in an episode titled "Exposed: The Climate of Fear". Fortunately for me, MediaMatters watched it so I don't have to. Their line up of his "experts" is here and debunking of the usual mis-information is here

Should we worry about this ham-handed disinformation hour? I think not. According to the ratings, Mr. Beck had a grand total of 275,000 viewers of his show that night.

Update: Desmogblog has a take with video clips and agrees those ratings are a "crisis" for Mr. Beck....

Coverage of IPCC WGIII SPM release

Wow that's a lot of acronyms in that title. But I'm sure the savvy readers of ClimateSpin know them all by now. The Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC Working Group III report was released on Friday, May 4th. Working Group III "assesses options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and otherwise mitigating climate change." I'll look at the coverage here and update this post during the week.

Washington Post: article by Marc Kaufman. (What happened to Juliet Eilperin who was doing all the climate coverage at the Post?) The opening paragraph echo's a lot of the coverage I've seen:

An international scientific panel for the first time yesterday put a price tag on what it would take to avoid the worst effects of global warming, concluding that the effort would be affordable and would be partially offset by economic and other benefits.

The message that doing something is, well, doable got its first real airing with coverage of this report and this article is a good example. There's the usual Bush administration negative quote in this case that the aggressive $100/ton carbon tax examined in the report is out of the question. Kaufman seems to fault the report for looking at several options without recommending any of them. But the overall tone is that we must do something and it won't be calamitous.

NYTimes: coverage by Andrew Revkin and Seth Mydans. The opening paragraph here is not as hopeful as the Post:

The world’s established and emerging powers will need to divert substantially from today’s main energy sources within a few decades, to limit centuries of rising temperatures and seas driven by the buildup of heat-trapping emissions in the air, the top body studying climate change has concluded.

"divert substantially"? That sounds hard. But the article doesn't really get in to the details of that and gets much better in its tone. I really like this quote from one of the WGIII authors: “We can no longer make the excuse that we need to wait for more science, or the excuse that we need to wait for more technologies and policy knowledge,” said Adil Najam, an author of one chapter and an associate professor of international negotiation at Tufts University. “To me,” he said, “the big message is that we now have both, and we do not need to wait any longer.”
Another high point is this explanation of the cost of delay:

The report also made clear the risks of delay, noting that emissions of greenhouse gases have risen 70 percent just since 1970, and could rise another 90 percent by 2030 if nothing is done.

Carbon dioxide is particularly important, not only because so much is produced each year — about 25 billion tons — but because much of it persists in the atmosphere, building like unpaid credit-card debt.

"unpaid credit-card debt" is a great analogy. Much better then the alliterative "procrastination penalty".

Chicago Tribune: The most positive article yet comes from Tribune foreign correspondent Laurie Goering. Here is the opening paragraph:

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which up to now has laid out some doomsday global warming scenarios, had some good news Friday: Climate change can be limited, and at what scientists said would be a reasonable price.

The title was "UN climate panel: Fix is within reach" and the sub-title was:
"A new report says humans can easily limit global warming without cooling the economy." The article is upbeat throughout, save for the typical Bush adminstration skeptic quote about "global recession". Why don't those guys have to show their work?

WGIII SPM out Friday; Full WGI report online.

All of you climate-media followers have probably already seen pre-coverage of the IPCC Working Group III Summary for Policymakers (SPM) which is due out this Friday. Recall that WGIII addresses mitigation: how to actually do something about greenhouse gas emissions.

The SPM's are just summaries. The full reports are starting to come on line. Thanks to RealClimate who pointed out that the full WGI report, about the science, is now online.

Thinking about Framing Science? Don't.

A little late, but I thought I'd comment on the Nisbet and Mooney article called "Framing Science" which appeared in the April 6th edition of Science magazine. In case you missed it, this set off a minor storm in the science blogosphere. A long summary is here (see updates at the bottom)

After reading the article and some of the follow up discussion, I'd say I agree with the take at Mixing Memory and in particular the post by Greg Laden that this was a botched job.

I notice that there's been little crossover from the science blogs to the lefty blogs where frames were first discussed about three years ago. My first introduction was this post on DailyKos.

First, Nisbet and Mooney misunderstand the word "frame" which, in Lakoff's work, is more of a noun then a verb. Frames are something people have hard-wired in their brain and the politicians job is to invoke one or the other. Its a not a processor you run your presentation through.

Nisbet and Mooney seem inspired by a Pew center poll which showed lack of interest/understanding on global warming. However this poll was taken in January of 2007, before the 3 month long IPCC press barrage. As more recent polls discussed below show, the AR4 reports have had a major effect on the public understanding and acceptance of global warming, without any "framing".

The article is mostly about examples, some accurate, some not, of framing. They actually don't say much about how to do a better job of "framing science" or what that even means. Here's what comes closest to a proposal in their text:

Without misrepresenting scientific information on highly contested issues, scientists must learn to actively “frame” information to make it relevant to different audiences.

I disagree. The key phrase in the above is "frame information". Scientists deal in facts. Verifiable facts. And we should describe them using the words we know when asked. A Princeton professor had a recent book out called "On Bullshit" which talked about how pervasive it is on our culture. I think people are exhausted by this and would like a break. If a scientist finds him or herself in front of an audience, its probably because the audience wants to hear about some science, some facts. To "Frame information" sound like "turn facts into bullshit" "wrap facts in a layer of bullshit" to me. Scientists are one of the few groups who can be counted on to not bullshit, at least when asked about actual science. We give that up at our peril and the peril of the scientific enterprise itself.

There are two problems here: communicating science and communicating policy. Communicating science should follow the simple rules laid out by Mixing Memory: be nice, know your audience and realize that words have power (the take-home message from the theory of frames.) I would add never refuse to answer a science question. If it requires more detail, go in to the detail. Hide nothing. Let the audience tell you when to stop.

Now if you're a political leader trying to persuade the public to some action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and/or energy use, then you have to worry about the words you use and what frames they evoke.

But for scientists communicating the science of our climate system, just stick to the facts. Thats what people want from you. Reversing the global warming trend will require a level of world-wide cooperation unprecedented in human history. Its only fitting that people have an unprecedented understanding of the science behind it. There's no room for "framing" in that undertaking.

Update (5/2/07): I think this last paragraph is where I've been misunderstood. Although I said "just stick to the facts", note that its "when communicating science." And I didn't mean you had to do it in a monotone or that you should use the figures right out of your papers. If you have other things to communicate, like how to solve the problem, why its a problem worth solving, then you can and should use all the persuasive skills you can muster. And facts.

A closer look at recent polls

The recent polls I've been talking about paint a pretty consistent picture that the public believes global warming is real and a problem. I've looked at the poll results themselves and have a few comments.

The original questions and answers:
Washington Post/ABC News
Yale Center
NYTimes/CBS News

With its 83% saying global warming is a serious problem, one might think the Yale Center poll is an outlier. But the poll also asked some general belief questions and found that 58% of those surveyed also thought the world was literally created in 6 days like the Bible says. So they probably weren't just polling the Yale student body. I don't find that 58% discouraging. It shows that people with conservative religious beliefs aren't necessarily in the global warming denier camp. That's a good thing.

One of the more dispiriting results from the Post/ABC poll was the finding that 41% think global warming is caused by people while 42% think its equally between people and natural causes.
First look at the question itself:
Do you think a rise in the world's temperatures is being caused mostly by things people do, mostly by natural causes, or about equally by things people do and by natural causes?

It uses "a rise in the world's temperatures" instead of "global warming". Why is that? The Post said this was an attribution of "global warming". I think this question is confusingly worded. "A rise" over what time period?

The NYTimes came closest to asking an attribution question in question 49 of its poll:
49. Greenhouse gases are released when coal, oil and gasoline are burned by cars, utilities and factories. Which comes closest to your opinion: 1. The release of greenhouse gases is the most important factor causing global warming, or 2. The release of greenhouse gases is one factor among many causes of global warming, OR 3. The release of greenhouse gases is NOT a factor causing global warming at all.

The result was 21% most important and 63% one among many. They didn't throw in "natural causes" so we have no idea what is the "many" people might be thinking of.

The Post also reported that only 4 in 10 are "extremely" or "very" sure global warming is happening. They must be referring to question 8:
How sure are you that the world's temperature (has/hasn't) been going up - extremely sure, very sure, somewhat sure, or not sure at all?
But the result was actually 49% extremely or very sure which I would round up to 5 in 10. Is this bad news for those of us concerned with communicating the science? Simply asking the question may cause a non-scientist to waiver. This question was only asked of the 84% who already agreed that the temperature has been going up over the last 100 years (question 7). Should we be concerned that half the 84% aren't extremely or very sure?

Finally, there is the perception of scientific disagreement question:
Do you think most scientists agree with one another about whether or not global warming is happening, or do you think there is a lot of disagreement among scientists on this issue?
40% said most agree while 56% thought there was a lot of disagreement. I first thought that that was a bad result until I considered the rest of the poll and the other polls and came to this conclusion: Who cares what the public thinks of the scientific debate? They already think there's a problem and that something needs to be done. Isn't that what scientists who hope this problem gets solved want to see?

The last bit of depressing info from the Post/ABC poll is in question 3:
How much do you trust the things that scientists say about the environment - completely, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, or not at all?
The results are 5% completely, 27% a lot, 43% moderate amount, 19% little and 5% not at all. The Post reported this as "Americans' skeptical attitudes toward scientists". Well American's are skeptical on just about everything they see in the news so a lot depends on where/how they're hearing scientists "say" things. I wouldn't want scientists to be trusted completely. I agree that there is some work to be done to move people from the "moderate" to "a lot" column.

The blog Pro-Science also examines the Post poll in more detail.

NYTimes/CBS Poll: Warming is real, not sure what to do about it

A new poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS News reaffirms what the three previous polls discussed here say: the public overwhelmingly thinks global warming is real and a problem. The confusion is over what to do about it. This is another phone poll of about 1000 adults but this one was conducted very recently- April 20-24. Among the findings:

• 84% of Americans see human activity as at least contributing to warming.
• 90% of Democrats, 80% of independents and 60% of Republicans said immediate action was required to curb the warming of the atmosphere and deal with its effects on the global climate. 19% said it was not necessary to act now, and 1% said no steps were needed.
• 52% said that generally speaking they would support protecting the environment over stimulating the economy.

Note that Democrats and Republicans were based on self-identification "do you consider yourself a...". They weren't asked if they were party members.

Its interesting to contrast this result with the National Journal poll of members of Congress which Jonathan Chait wrote about in the LA Times. It showed a deep divide among Congressmen by party with only 13% of Republicans agreeing that global warming is caused by humans and that gap grew in less than a year (original poll here). That poll and these other four show something that is obvious to anyone following politics: members of Congress aren't a good proxy for the general public. Can you say "sample bias"? Also the National Journal poll was taken before the IPCC press blitz.

Also consider this Pew center poll which inspired Nisbet and Mooney's framing article in Science (I'll have more on that later.) It was taken in January of 2007, before the AR4 Working Group I report was released.

We'll see what similar polls say in a year but it appears that the IPCC AR4 reports, and their publicity, have really changed the debate. The public is no longer listening to the deniers and contrarians about the reality of global warming. That doesn't mean we should relax. But scientists who are engaging the public should separate questions/confusion about the science vs. questions/confusion about the response.

Tom Toles says it all

I hope this cartoon was syndicated widely.

Two spins on one poll

One poll on climate change views was taken jointly by The Washington Post, ABC News and Stanford. The Post and ABC News then each did a story on it and comparing the two provides a good lesson on climate spin.

First look at the headline and sub-headline:
WPost: Growing Number of Americans see Warming as Leading Threat: Most Want U.S. to Act, But There Is No Consensus on How
ABCNews: Concern Soars About Global Warming as World's Top Environmental Threat: Increasing Numbers Believe Global Warming Is Caused by Humans and That Scientists Agree on It

In the Post it's a "growing number" while in ABCNews its "concern soars". The trends are up but did they grow or soar? I guess you need to look at a lot of these polls to tell. The rank of global warming in important environmental problems doubled in a year and is the clear number one. That sounds like "soaring" to me.

Consider the attribution question on what's causing the warming. 41% say the rise in temperatures is man made while 42% say its a mix of human and natural causes. The Post reported this as "Americans are also split on what causes global warming in the first place" while ABCNews "finds a 10-point increase in the belief that global warming is caused mostly by human activity (to 41 percent, up from 31 percent last year)". So is the trend more important or the current numbers? I'd say the trend considering the barrage of mis-information put out by the Right Wing Noise Machine.

The poll asked "Do you think most scientists agree with one another about whether or not global warming is happening, or do you think there is a lot of disagreement among scientists on this issue?". In the Post, this result was a downer: "56 percent continue to think there is "a lot" of disagreement among scientists about climate change." While ABCNews accentuates the positive: "This...poll...finds....a significant decline — the first in a decade — in the belief that many scientists disagree on whether global warming is happening." The decline was from 64% to 56% in a year. Again, considering how much disinformation is out there, I see the glass as half full.

What's the takeaway lesson here? The Post is a conservative paper but we already knew that. Coupled with the Yale poll, I think we can be optimistic that the public is hearing through the noise.

Public overwhelmingly thinks global warming is a problem.

Three recent opinion polls suggest a large shift in public perceptions of climate change. We can probably credit the IPCC reports and AIT for that. First a roundup of the polls in the order they were taken. (Has anyone seen the first two covered in the press? Pointers are appreciated.)

The first poll was conducted by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and released in March of 2007. The poll surveyed 1000 adults the week after the IPCC Working Group 1 report was released (Feb 5-11). Among the findings:

• 83% believe global warming is a serious problem (up from 70% in 2004) including 56% who think its "very serious"
• More than two out of three (68%) Americans agree that global warming is something people can control. And fully 81% agree with the statement, “It is my responsibility to help reduce the impacts of global warming.”
• Two of three Americans (67%) say that, if they had to, they could explain global warming or climate change “to someone I meet in passing.”
• The most trusted source of information on environmental issues is scientists at major universities (76%) followed by the EPA (62%). George Bush and Republicans in Congress are the least trustworthy.

This last point is the most encouraging. The Inhofe's of the world may talk a lot from a place of prominence but people can mostly see through their bullshit.

I found out about this poll in a column by George Will (more on that later). I've seen no other coverage.

The second poll was conducted by USA Today and Gallup. This poll was published in USAToday's April 19th edition on page 7A. The byline with the poll is Marcy Mullins. In that issue, their were three stories on "going green" but no other reference to the poll. USA Today is part of the Rupert Murdoch empire so that isn't to surprising. Can anyone find this poll on the web?

The poll surveyed 1007 people from March 23-25 (after Al Gore's testimony to Congress).

• 60% believe the effects of global warming have already begun
• 38% say major and 28% say extreme changes will happen in the next 50 years if nothing is done about global warming
• 58% think it takes more drastic measures then recycling, etc. to reduce global warming.
• 46% think the government should require a surcharge on utility bills when energy-use limits are exceeded
• 44% think vehicles that do not get at least 30 miles per gallon should be banned.

Wow. No one, and I mean no one, in any political office is talking about banning vehicles with less then 30 mpg and yet it already has 44% support.

The final poll actually does have some coverage from the Washington Post because it was their poll. Actually they conducted it with ABC News and Stanford. The poll surveyed 1002 adults from April 5-10 which includes the release of WGII's report. The article is by Juliet Eilperin and Jon Cohen. Their poll finds:

• A third of Americans say global warming ranks as the world's single largest environmental problem, double the number who gave it top ranking last year.
• 70% of Americans want more federal action on global warming, and about half of those surveyed think the government should do "much more" than it is doing now.
• 42% think the government should require greater fuel efficiency for vehicles.
• Americans are split on what causes global warming in the first place: 41 percent say the temperature rise stems mainly from human activities -- a 10-percentage-point increase from last year -- and 42 percent attribute it about equally to human and natural causes.
• 84% think that average global temperatures have been rising over the past century, and more than half say weather has become more unstable where they live. Still, only four in 10 are "extremely" or "very" sure global warming is happening, and 56% continue to think there is "a lot" of disagreement among scientists about climate change.

Those last two points seem to contradict the other polls. I'll look more closely at the polls in another post. See also ABC News coverage of the same poll.

Overall, there is strong public belief that global warming is real and the government needs to do something. That's good news. The last two points of the Washington Post poll suggest sites like this one and RealClimate still have some work to do.