It seems that the debate on climate science in the media has similar cycles--peaks and valleys--just as line graph of climate variation on earth has. In the months before and also following a high profile international conference, newspaper articles, blog posts and TV media stories increase in frequency and intensity. Debates become heated as each side attempts to poke holes in their opponents’ arguments and destabilize their opponents’ positions. New information comes to light, it is challenged and rebutted. Then the public interest in the discussion dies down and we concern ourselves with other debates such as health care, the failing economy, and many, many more. The interest in climate change and climate science debates seems to lie dormant until the next international meeting or vote on this issue. Yet the total trajectory of how climate science has fared in this arena is most interesting. In the March 18 issue of The Economist it states that “…the scientists’ shameful mistakes have certainly changed perceptions. They have not, however, changed science itself.” If indeed the science hasn’t changed, then what exactly was it that led and still feeds the on-going rollercoaster public debate? Did scientists simply learn to present their findings to a larger audience? Can we blame the media for yet again making a sensation out of a molehill? And what is most influential—the methodology, the findings, how they are visually presented, or how the discussion plays out for the general public?
Possibly the beginning of this debate was with the publishing of Mann et al in 1998 in Nature (often referred to as MBH98) and the first appearance of the famous hockey stick graph. Using various paleoclimate data sets and recent instrument-recorded surface temperatures, they were able to construct a northern hemisphere projection of past climates calibrated with current temperature data. Their conclusion was that, in the northern hemisphere, the last 50 years were unnaturally warm compared to the previous 2000 and then suggests this is due to anthropogenic forces. Their line graph was then challenged by outside observers for its correctness and completeness. They were accused of misrepresenting the data, leaving data out and operating in a cohort of scientists that “rubber stamp” each other’s work. Critics claimed that climate scientists were withholding their data which suggested they had something to hide. Blogs and articles produced by climate change skeptic watchdogs appeared and gathered support while picking apart details of the various reports.
Perhaps most influential on the opposing side were Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick who published papers questioning the statistical analyses of MBH98. The blog of McIntyre (Climate Audit) provided fuel for the climate skeptics and a controversy for the media to cover.
The role of imagery and data projections is certainly central to the debate. While the climate change debate might have started among peer-reviewed journals and academic circles of the physical science world, this discussion morphed onto the secular scene. If we think about the phrase an image is worth a thousand words, then we must understand the images that the general public is viewing when ideas such as global warming, increasing CO2 levels, and melting ice caps in addition to data centric statistically rendered graphs and charts.
While the famed “hockey stick” projection, with its estimates of error and red line climbing high in the late 20th century may be the visualization that most scientists point out to give weight to the vast and diverse studies of surface temperatures, proxy measurements of lake, ice or soil cores and tree ring, and atmospheric gases, it is certainly a target for skeptics. Blog post such as “the broken hockey stick” or “the hockey stick debunked” produced completely flat line or U-shaped graphs.
I would argue that these types of images aren’t the ones that have the most impact. Instead think of all the times images of polar bears trapped on melting ice caps or barren, dry and cracked soil are shown in conjunction with climate change debates. Or other images like maps of projected temperature increases, sea level rise and historic/contemporary glaciers.
Still even more powerful, especially early in the climate science debates, might be Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. This documentary film is based off the scholarship of the science behind the publications and recommendations of the IPCC. Here a hockey stick-like chart needs an elevator to raise Gore high enough to show the rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Inconvenient Truth brought together statistical charts, historic photographs, and heart wrenching cinematography of ecosystems in harsh transitions. I believe that it is these bundles of images that provide the greatest impact to the greatest population. Debate on whether or not scientists maliciously left out data or conveniently tweaked data into conformity will continue. Hockey stick charts and accompanying images of an earth in potentially traitorous transition were the first to bring climate change and especially human driven climate change to the general public. They are now what all science and rhetoric has to build off of and react to.
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