The range of predicted future warming is enormous — apocalyptism is unwarranted.
climate activists delighted in defining their opposition this way, with help from prominent figures such as Barack Obama, who in 2014 used Twitter to condemn “climate change deniers” and promote a website, run by Organizing for Action (formerly Obama for America), that featured large black-and-white pictures of then–House speaker John Boehner and Senator Marco Rubio atop a green “Climate Change Deniers” banner. “On climate,” asked the site’s headline, “whose side are you on?”
For a while, this seemed to work. Framing the climate debate as one between noble keepers of the scientific flame and people akin to Nazis gave the former group license to say almost anything. To the casual observer, even the most egregious exaggeration about climate science could seem reasonable compared with its outright rejection. Thus, Obama’s assertion in his 2015 State of the Union address that “no challenge — no challenge — poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change” became widely accepted. When Senator Bernie Sanders warned during a presidential debate that “the scientific community is telling us that if we do not address the global crisis of climate change . . . the planet that we’re going to be leaving our kids and our grandchildren may well not be habitable,” he was not laughed off the stage.
Often, the politicians and pundits targeted with the “denier” label did deserve blame. Ignoring the best available scientific research — an obvious starting point in any other policy debate — was irresponsible or dishonest. Their arguments rarely emerged from any valuable scientific insight, but usually from a fear that acknowledging the scientific basis of climate change would mean accepting radical and costly responses. This was doubly counterproductive: Not only did it grant by default a mainstream foothold to outlandishly overblown climate fears, but also it sidelined and undermined more important and compelling policy-based objections to the activist agenda.
And then a funny thing happened: “Denial” gave way to those more reasoned arguments. Perhaps the accumulation of scientific evidence changed minds. Perhaps it was only the political reality that sank in. Regardless, opponents of aggressive climate policy mostly stopped questioning whether the climate was warming and whether human activity played a role — the two points of agreement that define the famous “97 percent consensus” of climate scientists — and started explaining why that consensus did not justify costly and ineffective policies.
This shift in focus from the basic science of climate change to its public-policy implications has been a disaster for climate activists, exposing the flabbiness at the core of their position. Softened by years of punching down at their opponents’ worst arguments, they became addicted to asserting that “science says so,” and they are now lost when it doesn’t.
When Sanders, back in the Senate, questioned Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt during the latter’s confirmation hearing to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, it was the interrogator who couldn’t keep his facts straight. Pruitt asserted that “the climate is changing, and human activity contributes to that in some manner,” explaining that he had inserted the caveat (“in some manner”) because “the ability to measure, with precision, the degree of human activity’s impact on the climate is subject to more debate.” Pressed by Sanders, he stated again: “The climate is changing, and human activity impacts that.”
Pruitt wanted to discuss “the job of the [EPA] administrator,” which he noted was “to carry out the statutes passed by [Congress].” He also agreed that the “EPA has a very important role at regulating the emission of CO2.” But Sanders was determined to show that Pruitt rejected the scientific consensus, even if this meant falsifying the contents of that consensus.
Framing the climate debate as one between noble keepers of the scientific flame and people akin to Nazis gave the former group license to say almost anything.
Sanders claimed that “97 percent of the scientists who wrote articles in peer-reviewed journals believe that human activity is the fundamental reason we are seeing climate change.” That is wrong. A survey-of-surveys published last year in Environmental Research Letters reported that prior surveys had found 78 percent of scientists agreeing that “the cause of global warming over the past 150 years was mostly human,” 82 percent agreeing that “human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures,” and 85 percent agreeing that “anthropogenic greenhouse gases are the dominant driver of recent global warming.” Of course, even among those expressing agreement about the “significant” or “dominant” human role, debate would presumably have emerged about whether natural factors accounted for 0, 10, 25, or 50 percent.
Sanders also claimed that “97 percent of scientists who have written articles for peer-reviewed journals have concluded that climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and it is already causing devastating problems in our country and around the world.” As to the devastating problems, this also is false. He said “the vast majority of scientists are telling us that if we do not get our act together and transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, there is a real question as to the quality of the planet that we are going to be leaving our children and our grandchildren.” Also untrue.
