Science
Elitism is good for you
Kris Anderson
‘Greenland’, a newly-commissioned play about climate change, opened this week at the National Theatre in London. An ensemble play, by an ensemble of playwrights, it presents a polyphony of voices and opinions on climate change and makes a convincing – if fundamentally anti-dramatic and didactic – plea for an ‘every little helps’-style collective activism.
Theatre it is not – it lacks character development or plot – but decent polemic it is in the vein of David Hare’s ‘Stuff Happens’. Accordingly, ‘Greenland’ at least provides a useful exposition of both the diverse questions and conclusions within climate science, and the way that the general public erroneously concludes that these variations mean there is no scientific consensus on man-made climate change. What it also suggests is just how entitled we all think we are to have vigorous opinions on the subject.
BBC journalist Peter Sissons has one such opinion. He made the news last week himself when his new memoir revealed the extent to which he is ‘unhappy at how one-sided the BBC’s coverage of [climate change] was’. Sissons was responding to the BBC Trust’s declaration that, after advice from a panel of climate scientists, they would no longer be allowing climate change sceptics the same prominence as climate change advocates. Sissons’ interest, he says, ‘grew out of my concern for the failings of BBC journalism… we have an obligation to report both sides of a story. It is not journalism if you don’t’.
In a similar vein, in October 2009, Clive James wrote a piece for the (otherwise allegedly unilateral) BBC called ‘In Praise of Scepticism’, in which he said of climate change: ‘Either side might well be right, but I think that if you have a division on that scale, you can’t call it a consensus. […] A conjecture can be dressed up as a dead certainty with enough rhetoric and protected against dissent with enough threatening language, but finally it has to meet the only test of science, which is that any theory must fit the facts, and the facts can’t be altered to suit the theory’.
James, a novelist, doesn’t define ‘consensus’ or even say exactly what the ‘facts’ are to which the ‘theory’ must fit: he, like Sissons, merely asserts that both sides must be reported equally lest ‘threatening language’ and ‘rhetoric’ present an unequal picture. So for James, Sissons and hundreds of angry bloggers, the discourse surrounding manmade climate change is now dominated, unfairly and untruthfully, by the ‘pros’, while the ‘cons’ have been silenced by lack of media interest – as Sissons writes, ‘those scientists outside the ‘consensus’ waited in vain for the phone to ring’.
The problem with Sissons’ and James’ formulation is that there really aren’t any scientists outside the climate-change ‘consensus’, and those statistically insignificant few that are, mostly aren’t climate scientists. A year before Clive James wrote his piece, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that it was very likely (a statistical term meaning greater than 90% certainty) that average temperatures since 1950 were higher than any time during the past 500 years and that it was extremely likely (that is, greater than 95% certainty) that since 1750, humans have exerted a substantial warming influence on the climate. This is as close to certainty as climate science ever gets.
Over 32 national science academies and hundreds of international scientific societies have ratified the IPCC’s report on anthropogenic global warming, and no nationally or internationally recognised academies or societies have come out against its conclusion – at least since the American Association of Petroleum Geologists revised its position in 2007 from opposed (for obvious reasons) to non-committal. ‘Rhetoric’ and ‘threatening language’ didn’t fit into these organisations’ ratifications of the IPCC findings: rather, they looked at the data and evidence and, using reason and professional expertise, agreed with its conclusions.
Sissons writes that ‘we have an obligation to report both sides of a story’. Sadly, that’s not how science reportage works: not all sides are equal. We are certainly all entitled to our opinions, ignorant though they may be: that’s part of what makes democracy work. My grandfather has an opinion on man-made climate change: ‘it’s bullshit’, he says decisively. My co-worker does too: ‘I believe in it,’ she affirms. Lord Lawson, an economist and politician by training, isn’t a ‘sceptic’ per se, but doesn’t believe an aggressive policy is necessary to counter it.
What do our opinions matter? For one, they shape our personal behaviour, obviously; for another, these opinions often direct or prioritise public policy decisions, especially when it is Lord Lawson exerting such influence. That everyone is entitled to an opinion goes without saying – it is a fundamental principle of democracy. But not all public decisions should be contingent upon the voice of the unqualified masses: at some point, experience, evidence and expertise need to factor into the process, which is a difficult proposition in an age where individualism and self-determination are increasingly lauded.
By prioritising those with special knowledge, you’re taking away our democratic representation, chime the protesters. This refrain is often bedfellow to an anti-elitist sensibility: why should those with fancy degrees be allowed to make decisions for us? Across the pond, climate-change denier and drill-baby-driller Sarah Palin has been sniping recently at the US Supreme Court: because all of its justices went either to Harvard or to Yale, she feels like ‘normal, hard-working Americans’ aren’t represented by its judgments.
Never mind that there’s not a single WASP (the traditional game preserve of elitists) on its bench, and never mind that each justice worked his or her way up from decidedly un-elite (indeed, ‘normal’) backgrounds to attend the two law schools that would best allow for the acquisition of the kind of specialist knowledge required for such a career. For Palin et al, as soon as the justices got Ivy League law degrees, they stopped being ‘of the people’ and started acting ‘for the people’ in a way that just ain’t fair, no matter how much they’ve embodied the American Dream.
In a much more trivial way, this attitude is present in education, too. Most works of great literature support a variety of interpretations – indeed, that is often what makes them ‘great’. But there are objective markers even within this highly subjective field, which means that some students’ analyses of a work are just plain wrong, which in turn is why we academics are paid (a pittance, admittedly) to correct them. Doing so is a delicate business, involving protests about ‘rights to opinion’ and much side-stepping around students’ emotional attachments to their point of view.
But that’s precisely the problem – emotionality, ‘belief’, and fairness shouldn’t come into it at all, especially when we’re talking about something as complex and variable as climate change. Expertise and hard data are what’s required. Journalism – and climate policy – shouldn’t be democratic in perspective: both have a responsibility to accredit only those viewpoints that are founded upon expert testimony and evidence. Dissenting voices don’t always need to be heard: personally, I’m only interested in people who know what they’re talking about. If that makes me elitist, so be it. Either way, I’ll shut up now.
Kris Anderson is a lecturer in English literature for the Open University and a tutor in English at Oxford University. She is last year’s UK and Ireland Young Thinker of the Year, an annual competition with which the Scottish Review is associated.