An Abrupt Change on Climate Change?

There's a widespread sense that a change is afoot on the climate issue--so much so, in fact, that some commentators are producing what I view as simplistic accounts of how this came about. See for example Sebastian Mallaby in the Washington Post:

Eight months ago, when Gore's climate documentary was released, this state of affairs was inconceivable. Not only was Bush still a player, the case for climate change was widely doubted. Chortling climate-deniers, expecting an easy propaganda victory over the man whose energy-tax proposal they killed in 1993, greeted Gore's movie with glee. A group called the Competitive Enterprise Institute put out two TV commercials asserting that climate science is inconclusive. A House Republican hearing ridiculed a graph that features prominently in Gore's movie showing the world's temperature puttering along in a steady state before shooting upward like the handle of a hockey stick.

But this time around, Gore has proved a tougher adversary. His movie has grossed an astonishing $24 million, not counting foreign sales; the accompanying book has spent 29 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. His Republican opponents have lost control of Congress. And the Competitive Enterprise Institute has lost the patronage of Exxon Mobil, which decided to stop financing climate lies and start discussing carbon regulation.

"The case for climate change was widely doubted": By the same people who've long doubted it, many of whom continue to do so. The skeptics have not all converted in the last 8 months. Let's not exaggerate.

"Greeted Gore's movie with glee": Yeah right. If anything they were afraid of the influence it might have.

CEI/House Republicans: They've been attacking the science for ages. I suspect they will continue to do so in various ways until this issue is completely off the map.

Al Gore: He's been influential, but if the climate issue is changing, I think that's for reasons even bigger than Gore. He deserves some credit but certainly not all of it.

Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle is a great science writer, but I have a related (if less severe) quibble with his latest article. He writes:

...it took the dramatic images of a hurricane overtaking New Orleans and searing heat last summer to finally trigger widespread public concern on the issue of global warming.

Is there really widespread public concern about global warming? All the polling data I've seen suggest that Americans still do not place it anywhere near the top of the agenda. Sure, they care about global warming if you ask them about it. But if you don't ask them, it's not at the front of their minds.

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Is there really widespread public concern about global warming?

Exactly right. The premise--and therefore the need for scientists to fear that global warming has been oversold--can simply not be taken at face value.

I think a lot of the political change has come not from how Katrina and the other weather events during 2004-2005 directly affected people, but from how it has impacted big business (and thus affected people in a second, indirect way). The 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons hit the insurance industry very hard, and the resulting skyrocketing insurance premiums have basically shut down the real estate market in Florida (as well as hurting a lot of small-business owners). I think this has finally awakened business leaders to the fact that global warming has immediate consequences for their bottom lines, and this in turn has them putting pressure on the politicians to change course on the issue.

Looks like it's still going to be slow going:

Industry lobbyists say they expect to endure a lot of unpleasant climate hearings during this Congress, but they are not too worried about draconian legislation. They do not think the House or the Senate can pass anything too stringent, much less override a Bush veto. And they say their focus groups show that the public's eagerness to do something about global warming droops after hearing warnings of serious economic consequences.

With trillions of dollars at stake, it is reasonable to expect industry-funded ads to raise those alarms, in the vein of the "Harry and Louise" spots that helped sink President Bill Clinton's health-care plans.

"If you're a Democrat in a moderate district, this is not the kind of vote you want to take," said Myron Ebell, director of global-warming policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-funded think tank. "I think Democrats are really going to disappoint the enviros over the next two years, because all they're going to do is talk."

In fact, it's not clear that environmentalists would be all that disappointed. They believe the public is moving in their direction, as climate-friendly actions by companies such as Wal-Mart and states such as California help build pressure for a national solution. Many of them think two years of hearings could set the stage for a Waxman-style bill that a Democratic president -- or a climate-conscious Republican such as Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) -- could sign in 2009.

"If we can get some real facts into the public domain, keep educating the American people, lay down some principles about what kind of bill is acceptable and help get the next Congress ready to act, that would be a success," said Ana Unruh Cohen, a global-warming expert at the liberal Center for American Progress. "You know, Bush is still the president."

By Jon Winsor (not verified) on 23 Jan 2007 #permalink

Next thing you know, Andy Revkin and policy wonk friends will be taking credit for the change, by "breaking up the logjam by discovering the 'silent middle' " (the words to be written on their Nobel Peace/chemistry Prize)

But before we ask "what caused the abrupt change in climate change?", don't we first have to verify that there is a real change in policy?

We have not even heard Bush's speech yet, for God's sake and certainly, even after we have, we can not draw any conclusions from words alone.

The words in one speech do not necessarily signify real change (or real anything, for that matter). Change is signified by actions alone.

By Dark Tent (not verified) on 23 Jan 2007 #permalink