The Rise of Global Warming

Over the past few decades, the concept of anthropogenic climate change has evolved from a tentative idea to a tenacious fact. Millions – if not billions – of dollars are spent annually on climate research, adaptation to and mitigation of global warming, and public campaigns concerning global climate change. The entire world population is at stake here: if scientific predictions, as depicted in the media, are right and sea water levels keep rising, the consequences of our actions are beyond imagination.

The climate change issue is characterized by two major factors: on one hand the complex nature of the climate, and the enormous number of stakeholders on the other hand. As a result, this problem requires a novel approach, one that complements existing methods.

Unfortunately, tackling this problem initiated in the usual way. Starting in the 70s, climate research developed markedly (Weingart et al. 2000). Meanwhile, journalists paid more and more attention to climate change, and man-made global warming in particular. The media focus on dramatic events, as this lies in the nature of journalism, and try to make the issue as spectacular as possible. This conduct influences the publics cognition and perception of climate change issues tremendously (Lowe et al. 2006). The press brought climate change to our doorsteps.

As the public got acquainted with the global warming issue, however distorted their percepts, they started obliging governments to take action. It was not until the late 80s that political bodies acknowledged the climate change issue, and took it into account during meetings (Weingart et al. 2000).

My personal opinion is that governments should have an active, rather than inactive, stance. Especially concerning complex issues that have large-scale consequences, governments should act before press or public.

Global climate change – a short history

The science of anthropogenic climate change originated in 1827, when Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Fourier first recognized the greenhouse effect (Houghton 2005). Some 30 years later, John Tyndall, a British scientist, found that both carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water vapor absorb infrared radiation. We experience this type of radiation as heat.

The first climate model that included greenhouse gases such as water vapor and CO₂ was conceived by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in 1896. Arrhenius calculated that if the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere doubled, the global temperature would on average increase by 5 to 6° Celsius.

It was not until the 1970s that the scientific community seriously started investigating anthropogenic global climate change (Weingart et al. 2000). As was – and still is – normal, scientists published their results at conferences and in scientific journals, where their results are freely available for both policymakers and journalists.

As science on global warming developed, media coverage increased in a way that would be regarded appropriate. In a recent study, Peter Weingart (2000) and colleagues quantified the relative frequency of attention for global climate change in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, and compared it to the relative frequency of attention given to the subject 1) in German scientific periodicals and 2) by the German parliament.

Until 1987, the parliament paid little to no attention to the climate issue. Political attention increased since then, marked by the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control (IPCC) in 1988[1]. The IPCC was found by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP).

After the establishment of the IPCC, media attention on global climate change increased drastically, resulting in a coverage disproportional to the scientific and political discourse. Governments are drawn into the climate hype initiated by the media. In 2004, Hollywood releases one of its first films that depicts the possible consequences of global climate change, namely The Day After Tomorrow. Massive campaigns are set up, each trying to convince the public that global climate change is man-made.

There is indeed at least an illusion of scientific consensus (Oreskes 2004). In 2004, Naomi Oreskes analyzed 928 abstracts, published in peer-reviewed journals between 1993 and 2003, with the key words “global climate change”. None of the papers disagreed with the consensus that anthropogenic climate change is real.

The 2004 study of Oreskes is extensively cited in articles favoring scientific consensus of climate change. As noted earlier, she did not find one in 928 papers with the keywords ‘global climate change’ that denied scientific consensus. One has to bear in mind, however, that journals may loose many readers if they publish controversial results, and therefore choose not to publish articles that disagree with the consensus position. In addition, the large number of articles that do agree with the consensus may also correlate with funding practices.

Then – on July 2, 2006 – atmospheric physicist Dr. Richard S. Lindzen publishes an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, saying: “Al Gore is wrong. There’s no “consensus” on global warming.” Presently, media don’t report on environmental risks (as much as they used to), but on climate skepticism. Up until now, the pinnacle of this shift of focus is the BBC documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, which was broadcasted on March 8, 2007 on the United Kingdom’s Channel 4.

It may be obvious that, over the years, the climate issue evolved into a problem, and the climate problem has grown to be an immense problem, involving billions of people and vast amounts of money. In this essay I will try to get a better understanding of the perspectives of and communications between some of the relevant parties in the climate problem, namely scientists, journalists, policymakers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the public, after which I will give my own opinion on the state of affairs, and formulate some guidelines that will facilitate the communication of complex problems.