Excursion Report #3

Joshua Morrison

Event: Making Sense of Climate Change: Confronting Denial

Event Host: Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

The speaker, Bert Drake, talked about the difference between climate change skepticism and climate change denial. For climate change skepticism, he showed how there were papers in the late 1800s and early 1900s discussing the potential impacts of increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. An 1895 paper discussed how a doubling of carbon dioxide levels would lead to a 5°C or higher rise in temperature, but a 1900 paper suggested that this would not happen as greenhouse gases already absorbed all of the incoming radiation, so there wouldn’t be more to absorb and temperatures would stay roughly the same. This was considered skepticism because it was done through experiments and followed scientific principles. Additionally, there was not too much evidence in favor of an increased greenhouse effect at the time. This has since changed, with ice core data showing a strong correlation between carbon dioxide and global temperature. However, there were still people challenging the claim that human activites were leading to global warming. They worked for fossil fuel interests, who had a vested interest in spreading doubt on climate change, as doing so would lead to weaker regulations and more profits. Not only was there already a conflict of interest, but those challenging climate change were also resorting to ad-hominem attacks, calling those in favor of greenhouse gas emission regulations such as carbon taxes “watermelons,” suggesting that while they were pro-environment on the outside, they were really pro-communist on the inside. At the time evidence was first accumulating in favor of climate change, the US was still in the cold war, and many scientists had opposed a plan to use satellite energy weapons to combat the Soviet Union, which led weight to these claims. Of course, these claims were ad-hominem attacks. Other similar tactics were used, such as bring up theories that had since been disproven.

While I understand the point of bringing up the deniers that were funded by fossil fuel companies, as this shows a conflict of interest, this could also be seen as an ad hominem attack itself if there was no weight towards the claims being incorrect. However, as Drake then went on to describe examples of claims which had been proven incorrect and were presented as valid, this adds weight to the claim that denialism was an intentional effort to spread climate disinformation, and in that context, mentioning the conflict of interest is useful. It is still important to make sure that the positions themselves are challenged rather than the people, with the understanding that the conflict of interest may lead to confirmation bias and cherry picking as a good place to start. I also disagree with Drake’s view of the polling showing US citizens think climate change is a problem but won’t affect them. While I can see people thinking that, I don’t really see it as “realistic,” as Drake put it. Climate change is going to impact everyone, and while the US might be able to afford to “adapt,” that still means taxpayer dollars will be spent trying to survive worse extreme weather and sea level rise, rather than on other issues that Americans care about. Additionally, climate change is expected to lead to more people trying to migrate north, and as many Americans already think that there are too many people trying to migrate across the US southern border, I would think that something that would increase this even more is a bad thing that would impact them. While I understand them not knowing about this or having issues trusting the sources saying this, that is not what Drake said. Therefore, I see the view that climate change won’t impact them as unrealistic. There are some people who are old enough that they will probably die before it gets worse, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t already impacting people’s lives. The lecture was given in 2017, which was a year after the warmest year on the instrumental record, though 2023 has now surpassed this.

The other points of the lecture were discussing group identity and how it leads to Republicans denying climate achnage, and how people were pessimistic about climate change. I agree with the idea of group identity, which is why it is a good thing that there are now conservatives advocating for climate action. While I am not sure if CO₂ levels are still levling off, I know that CO₂ emissions per capita have actually stayed roughly the same and it is only the fact that more people are connecting to the power grid for the first time that is leading to increased CO₂ emissions rates. Also, technological growth is exponential, so I can see the slow switch to renewable energy speeding up. At the same time, the main reason why other technologies like hydrolysis to create hydrogen, electric vehicles, and direct air capture aren’t taking off is because they currently rely on fossil fuels, so the switch to renewable energy will also accelerate the transition to CO₂ mitigating and removing technologies elsewhere. Furthermore, electric vehicles are lagging due to a lack in fast charging stations. Even the ones that already exist take an hour or more to charge the car, but just the increased deployment of those charging stations will likely lead to increased electric vehicle usage. So, I can see us finding a way out. Even if we don’t do the best job of mitigating climate change, we will still be preventing the worst of the damage and the ensuing money that will not have to be spent combating it.