The ClimateSafety blog recently published a post on public surveys about climate change. The title of the post (“Do you believe in climate change?”) got me thinking about the meaning of the question, in particular, the use of the word “believe”.
In my case, I work in weather and climate science so I have a good understanding of how the atmosphere works, how it has changed and where the current gaps in our knowledge are. I would not say that I “believe” in climate change because that implies an element of faith that I do not need – I am fully aware that the overwhelming majority of the evidence we have tells us that our planet’s climate is changing and that it is our actions that are causing it. I am convinced by the evidence behind our climate change theory. Similarly, I would not say that I “believe” in our theories of gravity or evolution as the weight of the evidence negates the need for faith.
The use of “belief” is particularly unhelpful when communicating climate science to the wider population because it implies this need for faith. For example, a recent Employment Tribunal in the UK gave climate change “belief” a similar standing to religious belief. However, religion, as far as I can tell, is based on faith in the face of little or no evidence whereas the climate change question has been investigated by thousands of scientists who have collected much evidence and written many papers that all point in the same direction: that the Earth’s climate is changing and that most of this recent change can be attributed to human activity.
So, where does this leave us? I suppose the problem here is that we can only do one experiment (knowingly or otherwise) with our climate at any one time. We are currently blindly performing the experiment where we ramp up greenhouse gas concentrations over long periods of time. All our evidence from the real world (and from computer models) tells us that this is a bad idea and, consequently, I suspect we would all like to believe that it isn’t happening. Under these circumstances, perhaps the prevalence of the term “belief”, even within the climate science community, comes from the hope – however unlikely – that we are wrong about climate change.
Tags: Climate change, public engagement, Science communication
Andy Russell's weather and climate blog 
February 2, 2010 at 3:31 pm |
I recently had a heated discussion with a climate sceptic friend. In the course of this, I said that I believe climate change is man-made. I was then challenged for using the term belief. On reflection, as I’m a non-scientist I can’t claim to understand the science but I do believe those scientists who say that the evidence indicates to them it is man-made. My friend on the other hand believes there is a conspiracy and that there is not a true consensus of opinion among scientists. We’re not going to discuss this any more 😉
February 2, 2010 at 3:44 pm |
@Rachel
Good point. I realised that this post was going a bit far in the direction of semantics so didn’t mention non-experts discussing their beliefs about science, which is strictly what the ClimateSafety post was about. But then you made the point I would have: that you believe the scientists, not the science. Is the problem that everyone is supposed to have an opinion about stuff despite the fact that they haven’t looked at the evidence in any great depth? In this situation, any media debate between climate scientists and climate change “sceptics” comes down to little more than a popularity contest…
February 2, 2010 at 8:13 pm |
I’m a believer in climate change, due to the info I have learnt from and since reading your blogs.
Just a question though. In the past scientists thought they were right based on the evidence they had, but in so many cases they drew different conclusions from scientists who today have more info. Where in the timeline of fully understanding climate do you think we are?
February 2, 2010 at 10:22 pm |
Wow, great question!
Well, the first thing that springs to mind is that a lot of people look back to the 1970s and say that climate scientists thought that a new ice age was imminent. This would be a nice example of your progression of scientific understanding except that this is a bit of a myth. I think that there were a couple of press articles and a BBC documentary at the time and that was it. William Connolley, formerly of the British Antarctic Survey, is very interested in this idea and he’s co-written a nice piece for the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society examining the origin of that particular myth.
Perhaps the next point to make is that climate science is a relatively new discipline and there is still a lot to find out. In the “belief” post I linked to a feature in Nature that discusses the current big gaps in climate science but I think it is behind a paywall, which is a shame because it’s a good piece. Here’s a very quick summary.
The major areas that are picked out are:
Regional climate prediction
We still don’t have sufficient computing power to run models at high enough resolution to make projections on the scale that would be useful to policy makers
Precipitation
Projections of precipitation patterns are really hard to make as they depend on temperature changes, circulation changes, radiative balance changes and pollution (and, therefore, cloud condensation nuclei) changes. Yet precipitation changes will have the biggest impact on society.
Aerosols
The effect of aerosols (i.e. small solid particles or liquid droplets suspended in the atmosphere) is a big unknown. Different types do different things and its not really certain whether they have a generally cooling effect – by reflecting away solar radiation – or a warming effect – by promoting more cloud growth and trapping more terrestrial heat.
The tree-ring controversy
This relates mostly to the “hockey stick” graph and the reliability of the palaeoclimate data we use to put our current climate into perspective. It’s important that we learn from past climate changes as we only have one atmosphere and can’t do experiments with it but it is not easy to get palaeoclimate data (tree rings, ice cores, sediment cores) or to interpret them.
But the really important science on the greenhouse effect and our impact on it are well established. So, overall, my view is that we have a lot to learn but we know more than enough to make big and necessary policy decisions.
February 4, 2010 at 11:16 pm |
There is certainly a lot of misinformation laying around. It doesn’t help that we have incidences like the “leaked” emails from scientists who were apparently trying to tweak reports in favor of global warming. Climate change is under the microscope right now. I personally have done my research and fully believe that while some warming is due to the natural cycle of the earth, we are accelerating the process. As for a solution to the problem, I believe that there is a lot of ignorance on this subject. Part of what we can do in addition to recycling and being conservative is to have this conversation with people who might not be as informed..respectfully of course.
February 5, 2010 at 4:55 pm |
Fully agree. Which is why I wrote Don’t believe the truth back in Sep 09 😉
February 10, 2010 at 5:42 pm |
[…] By andyrussell [This post is based on a question I got in response to a previous post but thought it deserved a short post on its own as there's a few interesting […]
February 24, 2010 at 8:33 pm |
Thanks for the interesting post, I will return to read your blog soon.
April 11, 2010 at 3:29 am |
[…] to important issues by people from all walks of life. One example is Andy Russell’s quick dissection of the word ‘belief’ in relation to climate change. Personally, I’d say I’m […]